flash fiction by Janet Bohac
We were happy.
We were sad.
One of us died.
Then, the other one died.
If asked, I think this is how my parents would tell the story of their life together.
But, of course, that?s why they had me.
To bear witness.
They would never tell you about our house, how there was no artwork, only one
gigantic photograph of the Teton Mountains my father ordered from the back of Popular Mechanics or Field & Stream. We never took a road trip to Wyoming or out West, not once, but this photograph dominated the living room wall. My father even made it a nice pine frame with mitered corners and varnish that honeyed to deeper hue over thirty years. No explanation for the presence of Grand Teton in our living room was ever given. It hung facing a wall of mullioned windows that looked out on the drive-in theater across the street where I gave my virginity away and not a moment too soon.
We Were Sad
The garden was a thing of beauty. Fresh peas I?d pop from pods. Yellow pear
tomatoes I?d eat plucked from the plants. Plums that mostly fell, uneaten, except by
worms and wasps. A green apple tree to sit in.
My chores in the summers included picking strawberries in the morning before
the sun got hot, then coaxing black and red raspberry drupelets from their receptacles,
and drawing down tart cherries where I could get to the highest branches in the four
trees that lined a de-commissioned chicken coop my father used to store lumber and
tools, an old Ford tractor and a riding lawnmower. There were two pear trees. Peaches
never seemed to take. Black cherries were stolen by blackbirds before we could pick
them no matter how many nets or tin pie pans my father hung on the branches to scare
them off.
My parents were raised on farms about ten miles apart. My mother?s family grew
mint in the black muck of Rochester Colony near the Maple River which the French
originally called Riviere du Plain. It is an area of farms, roadside ditches, and trees
planted north to south to break the fetch of the prevailing west winds. On my father?s
farm they ran around all summer without shoes to save money. It was The Great
Depression. They only butchered meat when it was cold enough to keep and a two-
seater outhouse still was in place when I was a kid. There was a chicken coop out back
and I had to steal eggs from the hens when I stayed with my grandmother if I wanted
eggs for breakfast.
I stayed with my father?s mother when my mother had her nervous breakdowns
so my father could work his summer job. How many times I can?t say. Some were before my memories began. Some I?ve blocked out. Let?s say every two years? Every six? I?m not even certain it started with postpartum depression, though I?m sure that was one of them. I know my mother had some trouble finishing high school, an unexplained delay or absence. In later years she mentioned an old neighbor who frightened her, who gave her an orange in the winter. When she was much older she referred to her time in locked psychiatric wards as the time when she “got down with flu.”
One of Us Died
When my father?s Chevy Lumina was plowed into by a gravel hauler, he was on
his way to find my mother. I had become her guardian by then in a court appearance
three weeks before where my father appeared in soiled pants and filthy undershirt. It
wasn?t clear he understood anything that was said during the proceedings, and yet a
neurologist later that same day said he passed the mini-test for dementia and so she
couldn?t recommend his driver?s license be revoked. He drove two hours west, trying to find the hospital where my mother had been admitted, and I think he finally gave up
when he saw the gravel hauler coming and thought, “Fuck it” and pulled out onto the
highway.
Three days later the doctor in the ICU stood next to me and asked, “If something
were to happen tonight . . .?”
I think he might have prefaced it with the idea that they would be taking my father
off the ventilator, but I was suddenly alert and aware this was not a hypothetical
question. “He?d probably be pissed off if you didn?t try to save him once. But after that,
let him go.”
There were tubes coming out of his head, and clots of blood moving through the
tubes. Closed-head trauma was what the death certificate said the next day.
Every Easter we drove to Florida for spring break. On the way we?d stop in
Nashville and go to the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman. I would fall asleep up in the
cheap seats, the music of Skeeter Davis and Kitty Wells and Minnie Pearl?s? “How-
DEE!” echoing in my ears.
My mother played guitar and sang duets with her sister Ann Mae at the drive-in
picture shows where they grew up. Sometimes she sang a few bars of “Please release
me, let me go . . .” and then had to hum the rest. Whether this was because of the
Thorazine or ECT or just regular memory loss, I can?t say. I know she twice threw away her wedding rings in fits of pique at my father, so maybe it was memory that silenced her. She stopped playing guitar altogether at some point, but hung onto the Gibson J she was given as a high school graduation present. My father seemed to hate it when she sang in later years, although I?ll bet that was one of the things that had attracted him early in their short courtship. Sometimes she sang “Fascination turned to love . . . “ by Nat King Cole. I sold the guitar a year before she died when I took one lesson and knew I?d never want to play for real. My father never sang or answered her in kind, but it was the money he left that paid for her eight years in a nursing home after he died.
Then, The Other One Died
So, yes. They were happy. They were sad. He died, then she died. It was
important to her that she be buried in the little cemetery near Rochester Colony where
her parents, and sisters, and brother were buried. She was terrified at the thought she
would die first and be buried with my father?s family. I can?t remember how I knew that or when we would have had such a conversation, but when my father died, the first thing I did with her estate was buy her plot, her funeral, and a headstone. When I asked her if she wanted to see a picture of it, she looked coy, then said yes. The lunch after her funeral service was held in the hall of the same church, St. Cyril?s, where they had been married. The ceramic urn with my father?s ashes–he had no stated burial preference, only said, “Not going,” when asked for comment about death–got tucked into her casket at the last minute, stuffed in at her feet, as the funeral director closed her in.
Perhaps it was one time in all the years we discussed my remaining single.
“Too damned independent,” my father decided. It was he who had paid my
expensive undergraduate tuition despite the pittance he earned as a public school
teacher and a summer job coach.
It was after he left the room, my mother said, “It?s because of us,” and we just
looked into each other?s eyes.
Janet Bohac’s fiction has appeared in Palm Circle Press’s 2021 Short Story Anthology.
Read and share this story on Substack.
Click “Surprise me” to read more flash fiction.