Fiction Friday

Another excerpt from the dark comedy that will never see the light of day....

Nate: more fluff and puppies next week, hopefully.

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Estelle found the first lump by accident, on the morning of Adam’s wedding. The night before her youngest son Charlie had given her a pill, and she’d overslept, and then she had to race to get ready. She rushed through her makeup, painted on eyebrows and colored her cheeks. She’d been planning to wear the dress she wore to her niece’s wedding the year before. Now it didn’t sit right in the bosom, and as she was slipping it this way and that and adjusting her brassiere she felt something hard and uneven in her right breast, like the end of a chicken bone. She thinks about all of those medical shows and the books she reads and the women she’s known who’ve gone through such things and when they talk about tumors, they talk about them like food. A pea, and orange, a grapefruit. This was nothing that friendly, and nothing that round. This was like a knuckle, a dagger, a hand grenade. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoked three cigarettes in a row. The phone rang twice and each time she didn’t answer, just sat on her damask spread and smoked and smoked and listened to it ring.

The first time when the answering machine picked up nobody left a message. That was Adam. Adam didn’t leave messages.

The second time it was Charlie.

“Ma. Just seeing when you want me to pick you up. Call me at the hotel.”

People do this every day, she thought. People get married. Other people dress up and go see them recite their vows and step on the wine glass. They eat rumaki and drink champagne and slip checks into the groom’s pockets. They smile and wish them well and gossip about the in-laws and debate the couple’s chances in the car on the way home.

She didn’t know about that Liza. She just didn’t know. Something wrong about the family, something wrong about the way she was raised by her father, like a boy. Adam needed a woman. He had Eddie’s feckless streak and needed a firm hand, someone like herself. She just didn’t know if Liza was up to the task. But Liza was a smart girl, a practical girl. Estelle hoped to God Liza was smart enough to figure out how to make the marriage work.

The phone rang again. If she didn’t answer maybe the boys would wonder if something was wrong and rush over and she didn’t want to tell them now, she wouldn’t, not like this, not on the day of his wedding. She wouldn’t do that to her Adam. Whatever she thought personally about Liza, he seemed happy. She wouldn’t make this the day he found out the time bomb went off. But she prayed it wouldn’t be Adam calling.

It’s Charlie, asking how she’d slept.

Fine. She’d slept fine. Your schmuck of a father, she’d said, may he rest in peace, he couldn’t drop dead on the golf course like everybody else, he couldn’t go quietly in his sleep, he had to have a massive coronary in the middle of synagogue on Yom Kippur and make the newspapers and scar the entire community for life.

“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose, Ma. Although if you have to go, it might as well be memorable.”

“Adam could have gotten married anywhere. A catering hall. That beautiful park on the river. But no. He had to pick Temple Beth-make-the-rest-of-your-mother’s-hair-fall-out.”

“You need another Valium?” Charlie had said.

Estelle lit another cigarette. “Bring the bottle.”