The Thingamajigger Contest

So I didn’t win NPR’s Three-Minute-Fiction contest.

If you haven’t heard of it, the goal is to write a dynamic story in 600 words, which is three minutes on air. For each round, a famous author selects a premise—this time, writer Danielle Evans proposed that one character come to town and another leave town—and chooses a winner from a few thousand entries. The award-winning author is set for life: cruise, beach house, little dancing creatures that clean her house and prepare cookies and tea.

Just kidding. It’s only public radio, after all.

I thought I might win by the sheer force of hope. You see, this is the first time in my life that I’ve actually become serious about my fiction. I am consciously devoting myself to my characters and my imagination every single day.

For a long time—since grade school, I suppose—I have written stories. I’ve been in love with words, of the rewarding effort it takes to create an image, to get a sentence just right. I’ve wondered about what motivates people, about the powerful effect one person can have on another. For me, there is no better place to explore this, to grapple with life’s most challenging issues, than in writing.

I suppose I wanted some reward for all those deep thoughts. (But what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?)

I re-learn that writing is its own reward.

Blah Blah Blah.

(Wink.)

The next best thing to being published on NPR, I’ve decided, is being published on my own blog. Below you will find the first and only winner of the Attitude Adjustment Three-Minute-Fiction/Six-Hundred-Word-Thingamajigger Contest: Moi.

Enjoy. (Though why did I make it so gosh-darn sad?)

The Imperfect Kind

I’m in her bedroom, watching the old trees sway in a heavy September rain. I have no idea what to do with her things. I open a drawer and find knee highs, the kind she held up with garters.

“Love is imperfect,” I had told her as she lay under a long fluorescent light in a hospital nightgown, waiting to die. She wanted details, so I described the job Jack was offered in Miami, how we kissed goodbye in a crowded airport, his guitar slung over his back, suitcases rolling on either side of us. I sent letters, but he never wrote back.

“Love’s not imperfect. It’s people.”

I pull out a white sweater she wore often and hold it to my face. The long dresses can go, but I want to keep her sweaters, wear them to bed and pretend I’m wrapped inside her arms.

“Is this how you sat with my mother?” I had asked.

She closed her eyes. The heavy grey bags fell outward, toward her jaw. My mother was my age when she died, and pictures of her hung throughout the house: sunburned, sitting in a beach chair, the sand wrapping her ankles; skin aglow in the white sheets of her bed, holding a baby, me.

She shook her head. “She went fast. I’m worried about you.”

I took her hand, so pale and cold and thin, a piece of lace through my fingers. Soon, she would be gone, my childhood house empty, the blowing of her long gray hair just a memory. How could I bear this, another leaving?

“I’ll be okay, Gram,” I said, squeezing her hand. “I promise.”

The ends of her mouth stretched in what once would have been a smile. Over the next few hours, she slept. Her breathing slowed. A priest came in, and finally, a doctor. “12:54,” he whispered, his fingers grazing Gram’s neck. As I left, they were covering her with a wrinkled sheet.

I lie in her bed now, every drawer open, the green bedspread smelling faintly of mildew. The tumor took root almost a year ago, then blew like wind throughout her body. She never spoke of it. Every time I saw her, she made me tea with milk, then sat at the table and circled her thumbs, nodding at whatever nonsense I told her: job, friends, a film I saw, the man I thought I loved. I fall asleep and try to dream, but the image of the sheet over her eyes cuts through the darkness.

I remember a morning I took her to the city’s art museum, months ago. She had never been inside, and her dense heels echoed on the shiny floor as she walked from one painting to the next. Finally, she paused in front of a brown-orange Rothko and relaxed her hands at her sides. “I like this one,” she said. “It’s simple.” I tilted my head, admired it more for her words. Later, I took her elbow as we stepped toward my car. I still had not known her body was beyond repair.

My eyes sting open when I hear the clack of the knocker on the front door. I walk down the stairs, my mouth dry from the nap and from crying. When I pull the door open, I see a man with wet hair, tired eyes. Jack. I almost shut the door, but he calls to me. “Abby.” He pulls me close, and I allow myself to rest. His shoulder is alive, and strong, and perfect.

You can read the real winning entry for NPR’s Round 7 Three Minute Fiction Contest here.

Image: “Rothko, AbExNY, Moma” by gsz via Flickr.

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Tagged as: Danielle Evans, NPR, Rothko, round 7, three-minute fiction contest, writing