KNICK-KNACK AND SCRAPS
By Jeff Bowles
A mother, a waitress, a wife. Passive, stinking drunk; old, frail but still alive. This was Jean’s mother. This was all she had been.
Jean stood in the apartment, unpinning odd scraps of paper from the wall. Ancient Denver Broncos season schedules, a year’s worth of reminders to keep hospital appointments. Leonard sat in his recliner, puffing on a light cigarette as he always did.
“Don’t know why you guys kept all this stuff,” said Jean. “It always just amounted to clutter.”
Leonard smiled. “You take it. Let it clutter up your walls.”
She unfolded a one-sheet illustration of old Mile High Stadium. An image flashed through her mind: she, her mother, and Leonard. Sunday afternoon, gathered around the TV, watching the game and eating fried chicken. Jean looked over the illustration before tossing it into the box at her feet.
“You don’t want any of it?” she said.
“No, I really don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because, Jeaney, I’ve got enough memories.”
Jean nodded. She removed the next scrap from the wall, noting the perfect white square it left in the surrounding yellow.
“It’s funny,” said Leonard.
“What’s that?”
“It takes you a lifetime to collect this much junk, but it can all be taken away in an afternoon. As if it was never yours to begin with.”
“Mmm.” She unpinned a magazine article, let it fall into the box, stuck the pin back into the wall.
“She mentioned we had too much just last week. She laughed when she said it, too. Poor thing could barely see, but...do you think she knew something?”
Jean sighed. “No, Leonard. She was just being a pain. She was always like that.”
“I know that about your mother. She loved her jokes.”
Jean paused. In a flash she saw her mother laughing with a group of friends, cocktail in hand, beckoning for Jean to sing Heartbreak Hotel one more time. “Does my little Jeaney have a set of pipes or doesn’t she?” She had laughed again. Jean had laughed too.
She returned her focus to the wall. “Well...I’m about done here. Do you need anything else?”
“How are you holding up?”
Jean paused. She shrugged her shoulders. “Fine.”
“I know it’s been a rough year, what with the divorce and-”
“Yeah, well, what else is new? This year’s no worse than the last.”
“Things change.”
“Yeah, but people don’t. Not husbands or wives or even...”
“Moms?”
She shrugged again.
Leonard grabbed his ashtray from a side table. He put his cigarette to it, smearing in figure eights and stabbing.
“You’re just going through a rough patch. Your mother and I had plenty of them, as many as she and your father had.”
Another flash. She saw a hand reaching toward her, fumbling with a belt buckle. Her mother lying on the couch, eyes half closed, pretending to sleep, watching.
Jean picked up the box. She moved to the TV, looked over the knick-knacks that covered its top and cluttered its sides. “I sometimes think Dad was just a phase that ran its course.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I know she loved him. I know she felt pain when he passed.”
Jean gently lifted the snow globe. “I guess you knew her better.”
“No. I just knew her at a different time in her life. She was a changed woman.”
“Mom? She never changed. She was never serious, never willing to protect what was hers.”
“No, Jeaney.” His expression changed, sobered. “Some people go their whole lives without lifting a finger to better
themselves. Your mother wasn’t one of them. When your father passed, she took a good long look at herself. There were things she didn’t like, things she didn’t want to be anymore.”
A flash. She, her mother, and Leonard. Sunday afternoon, gathered around the TV, watching the game and eating fried chicken. A soda in her mother’s hand instead of a cocktail, a husband by her side who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“Your mother was a real lady.” Leonard’s voice broke. “A real trooper. Don’t you ever forget that.”
Jean paused, took a breath. She gave a modest smile and put a hand on his shoulder. He patted it and smiled back.
“You sure you don’t want any of it?” she said.
“Jeaney, everything here reminds me of her. I’ve got good memories, two decades of them. Is it so wrong that I want to forget the past year?”
Jean shook her head. “No. No, I don’t think it is.”
She turned back to the box, loading the knick-knacks it had taken her mother a lifetime to collect.
Jeff Bowles is currently seeking a BA in English at the University of Colorado Denver. He spends his knights writing creatively and his days preparing for a career in technical writing. Contact Jeff.
