The Summer Mickey Lost His Finger Trying to Start the Lawn Mower in the Dark
Wendy told her husband he smelled like a stranger one night in bed, and her husband got the impression that Wendy liked the idea of the stranger more than the idea of him, and he pouted made a big deal of rolling around to get comfortable, so Wendy went out to the couch. Her husband did smell like a stranger because he’d been to a two day training about a new type of cash register and he’d used the hotel shampoo, plus the liquor on his breath. He drank the liquor when he got home, kind of a makeshift Old Fashioned with a sugar cube but no orange peel, because he wanted to feel like a weary traveling business man and not a second-generation gas station owner.
So that’s why Wendy was on the couch. And it was because she was on the couch she heard Mick scream from his garage next door and ran over. Not because they were involved in some tryst, although they were and had been all through the summer. Micky and Wendy slept together three times, mostly due to the fact that that May Mick had seen her bent over in her garden in pink shorts that were too short and too tight and couldn’t stop thinking about her ass (Wendy had the shorts since high school and couldn’t seem to part with them so she’d relegated them to yard work clothes). Then Micky got up the courage or drank enough or was just stupid or bold enough to ask her one day why she wasn’t wearing her pink shorts. This was back in June at the gas station while she was giving him change on the old cash register where the drawer jammed. Wendy had blushed and uncrossed her legs on the stool she was sitting on. She blushed and uncrossed her legs because it made her feel like a teenager again to hear that comment and she’d never felt as pretty as she did when she was a teenager (which is why she couldn’t part with the pink shorts). So Wendy replied, still blushing, I can’t even button them up anymore. And Mick said Even better, and walked out quick.
He walked out quick because his wife Rachelle was outside honking the horn. She was honking the horn because she’d seen the pink shorts too, not just this May, but four summers straight at the beach back in high school (and don’t let her fool you, she didn’t button them up back then either). Rachelle had resented Wendy since forever because Wendy had always been so goddamn cheerful. She’d been cheerful because she was happy and pretty and free. Rachelle wasn’t ever cheerful because the women in her family just never were. They said Rachelle’s grandfather died young because he didn’t believe in divorce. Har har.
So that’s why Rachelle assumed Wendy was in the garage in her nightgown for the wrong reasons when her husband cut his finger off. And she shouted and wailed and the cops came. Mrs. Berza called the cops because Mrs. Berza called the cops every time something woke up her dogs and the cops were slow to come for that same reason. And that’s why they never got the finger back on.
Wendy and Micky never fooled around again after that. Mick griped it was because of his missing digit and Wendy said, no, it was just too much drama, but really it was because she kept thinking about her husband, in a way, as the stranger, as the weary businessman, and she fell back in love with him. Just to themselves, they always use the summer Mickey lost his finger as a marker for the time their marriage got its second wind.
I don’t know why he was trying to start the damn mower in the dark, though. Who knows why these things happen?
A Story That Is All Happiness
I want to write a story that is all happiness. There will be blue skies. Long smiles. Thick eyelashes, batting. There will be a calm quiet. The grass won't feel scratchy. The hands held won't be clammy and they won't be cold and dry. All of my characters will be in the moment. There will be no memories.
The names of my characters won't remind the reader of anyone they know in real life and think is kind of shitty. They’ll have names like Judy and Patrick and Madeleine and Arturo and Stan and Paula and Tamara and Mare and Shelby and Bud.
No one is thinking about having to go to work the next day. Or about not having work. No one's uncomfortable in their outfit. No one was comfortable in their outfit until someone else came over looking like they look, and now they're thinking that their own shirt clings to their belly in an unattractive way. No one said, Who's all gonna be there? when they were invited. No one is thinking about being anywhere else.
There will be descriptions of delicious food, something simple that the reader could make at home right now if they wanted. Really good toast, probably. Or warm fresh baked rolls. Something with a slick of butter. Something everyone can agree on. There will strawberries, the small kind, not the big ones that inevitably lead to discussions about bad flavor and genetically modified food and the climate crisis and anything that ends in these days. My story will only be about this day.
Someone just told a joke. Someone left with someone else to go on a walk and they’ll come back with a funny story about an animal they witnessed. Someone has a happy secret that they’ll later blurt out, blushing, when they can’t stand to hold it in any longer. There’s a good song on the radio and no one starts talking about the story behind the song or the band members, everyone just listens. The kids have sweaty heads from running around and their parents are kissing the sweaty heads and ruffling hair. There will be no worries for the future in my story because, as I said, the strawberries are the small kind.
I'm sorry, but there won't be much of a plot, because it has to be all happiness. I'll have to leave the butter out to make sure it’s nice and spreadable. I can't let the conversation lean too much toward current events or those characters not in attendance. I might even have to take out the song.