The effort of driving away from them exhausted Lindy. Patrick and the twins behaved as if she would never be back, not as if she only needed to get to the store before it closed, to buy milk for breakfast. And it was always like this. They all dragged her down, pulling at her, adding their enormous weight to her thin shoulders, especially Patrick.
Lindy pulled into the parking lot of the store, jamming the brakes as the tires bounced off the curb. The farther she drove from the house, the more energized she’d become, and as she drove faster, her lethargy became a kind of sizzle of anger.
She stepped out of the car and grabbed for her purse, then realized that she had left it at home on the kitchen table when the twins started crying and fighting over the stuffed rabbit. “Goddammit!” She slammed the car door and leaned against it. She wasn’t going to go back home for the money because by the time she got back to the store it would be closed for the night. Maybe the clerk would take an IOU, or let her come back in the morning with the money.
When Lindy stepped from the darkness into the store’s white light she didn’t see the clerk behind the counter. As she walked toward the glass doors of the refrigerators she checked to see if the clerk was down the aisles of cookies and chips and pretzels and beer, but he wasn’t. She turned to look into the large circular convex mirror up at the top of the wall, and saw that she was the only person in the store, and the only sound she heard was the hum of the fluorescent light tubes.
That was when she decided to take the milk and walk out the door. It wasn’t like the store would miss it. They charged so much more for the milk here than the grocery store she usually shopped at. She reached into the glass door and chose the quart size of whole milk, not feeling the soft coldness of the carton as she tucked it into her sweater. She turned and walked out straight and tall, even though there was nobody around to be suspicious.
Lindy got into the car and drove off, the milk on the seat beside her, and she buzzed with excitement. She didn’t see anyone following her when she looked into her rear view mirror, and she took a turn around the block to look at the store again. As she drove by she could see through the window, the clerk at the counter, reading a magazine in the empty store.
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There's so much tension in this story - even though on the surface, not much seems to be happening. One way you accomplish this is by the words you use. The 'sizzle of anger,' the 'hum of the fluorescent light bulbs.' These choices give the story a sense of suspense that builds beautifully.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you're taking this character further, but the first paragraph sets the reader up for a whole lot more. She is a woman on the edge and we want to know how she got there and where she's going.
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