"I
left Beacon Hill when I was three." She laughs. "I can
barely recall."
He
prods. "What do you remember? Tell me one thing."
"I
remember the robins clinging to the trees."
He
smiles, encouraging. Gentle. "One thing more."
This
one thing more. His way, always, of digging deeper, deeper, deeper,
until, by the end of the time she finds herself exhausted. "I
remember the roses that grew in the garden of the next door neighbor.
He would let me touch the petals, and they were so soft. So, so
soft." Her voice trails off for a moment before she continues.
"I remember one morning, just after a rain, or maybe it was
raining still, a misty sort of rain you don't really notice."
She looks at him. Is he paying attention?
He
nods behind tortoiseshell glasses.
"Anyway..."
She rubs a thumb along the velvet of the couch. Stares off into
space. "A bit of water had gathered in a fallen petal and it
looked just like the petal, that one red petal, was cradling the
water like a child."
He
leans in. "Good," he says. "Good." He
echoes himself before sitting back again and recrossing his legs.
"My
mom held me that way. My father too."
He
nods, picks up his pencil, begins to write on the long yellow pad
with blue lines. Her life could never be contained on those blue
lines. Not all of it. Even with his incessant questions. Never could
her life fit on those blue lines. Blue lines. Something she'd
forgotten to tell him last week: "I took a pregnancy test."
His
eyes widen. His pencil falls to the ground. It makes a little click
on the hardwood floors. "When?"
"Last
week." She notices he hasn't retrieved his pencil. Perhaps he
doesn't want to write this down.
"And?"
"No
need to worry." She smiles and reaches for his pencil; Hands it
to him. "Two blue lines."
He
removes his tortoiseshell glasses, wipes them on his handkerchief,
neatly starched. "I'm glad," he says.
"Me
too," she replies. "It wouldn't be good for my biographer
to be the father of my child."
He
laughs and begins writing again. "One thing more," he
says,"about Beacon Hill."
Labels: flash fiction, one-minute writer, writing prompts