Soon their oil tank would be boom hollow and the pipes cool
to touch. At the gas station, Simon breathed vapor, jiggling the pump, filling
a plastic funnel. In the backseat, the baby dropped his bottle and as she
twisted to pick it up, her older son booted her.
“I won’t curse at you,” she said.
“You did,” her son said, pulling on his mittens, not looking
at her straight the way she wanted.
“Maybe I did once. But I won’t again.”
Simon stuffed the receipt in his pocket. Later she would
find it in the wash, a tight fibrous crumple, ink bled. She'd struggle to make
out the print, to know where the money went.
She said again, “My brother thinks the diesel and oil is
going mishmash in the system, be a problem later for the landlord.”
Simon slowly let the compressed air out of a soda, took two
swigs, then emptied in whiskey, his after beer drink. He could resist an
argument, no problem. She leaned back in her seat and watched the rise and fall
of snow banks along the highway as they neared the indoor playground, Little
Bears.
Her older son began to ask for treats: hard blue candy and
thick gummy chews. “Don’t be a monster and maybe,” Simon said and pulled into
the parking lot.
She went to her youngest. He was slow and she knew it. She
would pick him up and he’d never become rigid with his own will. Simon helped
the oldest, who was his brother’s opposite. For the rest of their years, they
would be unalike. Like Simon was from his sister. Like her siblings from her.
Crumbs came down from the oldest’s lap onto the ice. He started asking if they
could go home.
Inside, she noted the sign FREE SATURDAYS and removed the
boys’ sneakers before shooing them through the gate. She removed her own and
left them beside Simon’s. His weren’t meant to be here at all; the dust of the
factory floor leaving cancer wherever he walked.
Simon carried the diaper bag and coats to a recliner and
opened a celebrity gossip magazine, the kind of thing you read when there's
nothing else to do.
The oldest darted toward an inflated castle. She sat nearby
on the floor where the baby chewed a track of train, her arms loosely crossed
over her breasts. She wanted to feel them full again. She wanted to shop and
see herself in the mirror with the sweaters snug up top and loose below. She
wanted to be the one to ask a salesgirl for mismatched bras and panties, one
size up, one size down.
Simon closed the magazine and passed her on his way toward
the restroom. Both boys whined after their father, but she kept them busy with
the family of child-sized stuffed bears in the center of the room. She pressed
the button on each of the necks and the little bears shuddered into action.
Jennifer Pieroni studied writing at Emerson College and her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Another Chicago Magazine, Hobart, Guernica, Mississippi Review and others. It has also been anthologized in Best of the Web 2010, Brevity and Echo and Mammoth Anthology of Miniscule Stories. She served as founding editor of the print journal Quick Fiction for nearly a decade.
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