Portrait of a Nuclear Family by J.P. Behrens

Author:J.P. Behrens [Behrens, JP]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

6

February

"I can't handle this anymore, Wanda.”

"Handle what?"

"Don't be like that."

"Our children were kidnapped, Charles. That's it. We need to accept that.”

"I can't."

The fog of bourbon on Charles’ breath told Wanda how far gone he already was.

"So get a hobby or something."

"A hobby? Are you serious? I can't erase the memory of what you did with crosswords and sudoku."

“What I did? I didn't do anything wrong! We protected this family from a shit-storm." Wanda focused her words, enunciating each syllable to brook no argument. “I. Didn’t. Do. Anything."

Charles slinked out of the room. Wanda lifted a nearby picture of her cheerful Simon beside a dour Nathan. She pulled the photograph out of the frame and carefully sliced up the middle, separating Nathan from Simon. She needed to get a new frame to display Simon properly. She placed both pictures in the now over-sized frame. Nathan’s tucked behind Simon. One day she might forgive Nathan. Until then, out of sight, out of mind.

There were plenty of other photos on display from past years, back when Nathan smiled easily and listened more. Before something twisted his innocence into malice. Wanda tried so hard to bring him up right, to teach him how to be. He learned to clean, to be some degree of respectful, but joy disappeared and he surrendered to self-pity. Nathan chose to be the victim instead of becoming a leader.

Wanda tried to work around the house, cleaning, straightening. No matter what project she found to do, each attempt ended with her facing the mismatched picture and frame. Nathan’s picture peeked out from the sides like an insidious growth threatened to overtake and swallow Simon’s image. At each confrontation with the frame, she imagined the edges of Nathan’s image curling around Simon’s more and more. Desperate to save Simon, she took the frame and ripped it open, breaking the backing and snapping the corners of the frame. The glass splintered, but not enough to shatter into an explosion of biting shards. Wanda jammed the photo of Simon into her pocket and tossed the frame along with Nathan’s picture onto the table. The impact cracked the glass the rest of the way. Glass shards bounced up, landing over Nathan’s photo in an overlapping pattern. Through the glass, Nathan’s featured appeared disjointed and wrong. Wanda approved.

Without announcing her intentions, Wanda left the house and took her car. A small, independent frame and photo store existed near the commercial center of their small town. A handful of small businesses survived on the strip, buoyed by the thriving local bars and bistros. People on lunch break or out for a walk occasionally found something in a window they didn’t mind paying a premium for, but mostly, everyone drove the extra twenty minutes to the mall for their shopping needs. She found a parking space, free of meters a few blocks from the shop.

Wanda wanted to avoid a public spectacle, yet still desired to be seen walking through town. Stoic and refined under the stress of unthinkable loss.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.