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Pumpkin Spice Day
Michael
In my experience, Sunday mornings generally sucked. Sure, there were the ones when you got up late, made pancakes and lazed around in flannel pajama bottoms longer than you should. And those were okay, at least when Daniel was with me.
But the Sunday mornings when my son was at his mom’s house?
You’d think I’d be happy for the peace and quiet, for the freedom from the expectations and demands of a grumpy pre-pubescent twelve-year old. But you’d be wrong.
That was what I lived for. We’d been divorced almost Dan’s whole life, and though I didn’t miss the chaos that had been my poorly thought-out and hastily completed marriage, I missed Dan anytime he was with Shelly.
So Sunday mornings when I woke up alone in a quiet house with nothing specific ahead of me felt like purgatory. Like a penance of some kind. Like they were engineered specifically to remind me what my life was supposed to be about—and how I’d failed.
I guzzled a cup of coffee, gave myself a pep talk—hard, since I was not a peppy guy exactly—and headed out to run.
Let’s be clear here: running is not something I do. At least not historically. But I need to keep myself healthy for the sake of my kid, plus, it gets me out of the house on days when there’s a chance I might just decide to give up and wallow in my bed for the entire day. I’ve found that the feeling of actually running feels a little bit like running away might. And so on days when I have the chance, I pretend to run away. I pretend to run toward some shimmering version of a life I’ve already forsaken—one I turned my back on twelve years ago.
It was a crisp fall day, one of those where you can practically smell winter just around the corner. The humidity of the mid-Atlantic had finally given way to cooler air, turning leaves, and that scent that always seemed to accompany the arrival of autumn, full of rich earth, dewy grass and cinnamon spice. That last part might not be so much due to fall as to Lottie Tanner’s penchant for baking cinnamon spice everything the second the first hint of fall arrived. The Muffin Tin, Lottie’s cafe, occupied one corner of the main square in Singletree, and though I made a point to cross the road instead of running directly past it, cinnamon still wrapped itself around me as I passed.
The Muffin Tin was a popular Singletree locale, but aside from sending Daniel in with a fistful of cash now and then, it wasn’t a place I ever went. It was a Tanner establishment, after all, and I’d no sooner enter that place than Lottie or her sister Verda would buy a book at my aunt Veronica’s shop. Tuckers and Tanners didn’t mix. It was tradition.
I jogged to the top of the hill past the town square, my breath coming hard as I pushed myself up the incline toward the old Easter mansion at the top. There was a time this would have been easy, back when I was pretty sure I was going to college to play soccer. I could run for miles back then. But that was twelve years ago. Now? I was an almost middle-aged dude trying to keep himself sane through sweat and near-death exercise experiences.
The hill leveled off in front of a set of old iron gates, chipped and rusted in spots, but chained securely in front of the creepy old Easter mansion. The place had been beautiful once, I’d bet—all Victorian gardens and turrets, wide sweeping porches and an expansive front lawn. But now it gave me a chill every time I passed it, and I headed away, my lungs screaming.
A group of boys on bikes pedaled past me in the other direction, cackling and hooting about whatever boys Dan’s age cackled and hooted about. I ignored them but glanced over my shoulder to see them drop their bikes outside the gates of the dilapidated mansion. They were up to no good, I could feel it, and since I thought I recognized a couple of them as Dan’s friends, I felt the urge to keep them out of trouble.
“Hey, you kids!” I turned around and moved faster, upping my flagging pace to intercept them just as they were about to squeeze between the iron bars. The old Easter place was endlessly fascinating to local kids. Especially at this time of year as scary movies and pumpkins were getting brought out. “That’s private property, see the ‘No Trespassing’ signs?”
“Yessir, Mr. Tucker. Sorry.” One of the kids had the guts to actually face me, which was reassuring, since I was now definitely sure these were some of Daniel’s lesser-known pals.
I waved my arms at them. “Go on, get out of here!”
The kids scrambled, hopping back onto their bikes and shrieking with laughter as they pedaled away, leaving me to realize I’d skipped mid-life and progressed directly into the high-pants-wearing grandfatherly phase of my time here on Earth, where I screamed at people to get off my lawn. And this wasn’t evenmylawn.
I stopped running, leaning over to catch my breath in front of the rusting gates of the big house. I let out a breath feeling disgusted with myself, but not just because I’d stopped some kids from vandalizing a decrepit old house I didn’t give a shit about.
No, there were plenty more reasons for me to feel like I was watching my life swirling around the toilet bowl of existence, making a slow but steady spiral toward utter and complete failure. Or maybe not failure as much as stagnancy. I. Was. Going. Nowhere.
Now more literally than usual, since I was just standing here in front of the creepiest house in town, staring at the old Victorian monstrosity when I was supposed to be jogging. But...Wait, had I just seen something move in the upstairs window? I was one hundred percent sure the place was deserted, and had been since I was a little kid. A chill ran through me as I squinted up at the darkened windows of the second floor. Creepy.
“Now I’m seriously losing it.”
I sighed and turned away, determined to finish my run, even if nothing else in my life had gone according to plan.
Crosswalk Tango
Addison
“Pie me.” Mom held her hands out for the lemon meringue that sat on the work table in the kitchen at the Muffin Tin. I’d been hiding in the kitchen for a couple days now, pretending to help, and Mom kept coming back and asking for things—her way of checking on me without really checking on me. I guessed it seemed to her this was better than demanding answers from her thirty-five year old daughter who’d shown up suddenly at her childhood home, refusing to discuss what had happened in her fantastic independent life in New York City.
I’d have to tell her eventually, I knew. But my mother, Lottie Tanner, had an affinity for gossip, even when it was her own. I couldn’t really tell her until I was ready for everyone in Singletree to know what an utter fool I was. For now, only my sister Paige knew what had happened.
“Here.” I handed Mom the pie and looked around the small kitchen, gilded in stainless steel and feeling suddenly suffocating in its cleanliness and shine. “I’m going to take a walk, I think.”
Mom’s eyes widened a touch beneath the perfect steel gray bob, and she pressed her lips together before saying, “Sure, honey. You go get some air.”
Lottie was showing remarkable restraint, which I appreciated. I knew she had thirty thousand questions she was dying to ask, but instead she had welcomed me home with a hug, made up my old room for me, and told me I could stay as long as I liked.
