Flash Fiction by Jolie Smith
Audrey is playing House tonight. She runs to the corner, scoops air from the carpet, and feeds her make-believe children. They may as well be eating magnolias or the dust on top of daddy’s telescope. The neighborhood kid is over. She goes by Lil but her name is Jillian. Lil cries because she’s sick of being Dad. She flings her arms around to make dinner and it isn’t good enough for Audrey. I’ll do it, she says. And Audrey flails her arms bigger and better. She spoons her big dinner into the mouth of invisible children and the invisible peas dribble down that invisible chin and the invisible napkin only soaks so much up before Lil has to go to the store with buttons in her pocket.
Mom tells Dad, “Four buttons will buy us some napkins.” And Lil goes off to clean up the invisible mess. She heads into the bathroom and places the money in the sink’s valley, tearing tissue into tiny napkins. Lil returns with a smile on her face, happy to play Hero. She pulls out wads of napkins like a magician’s trick and hears invisible children laugh, the chatter of possibility, the wild mess of the future like long-grain rice cooking for forty-five minutes. For the rest of Imagination’s time.
But Audrey is done. She has picked up her Nintendo Gameboy and holds it tightly in her hands. Lights flash on the display as Lil drops the tissue, the thread of it all gone.
Jillian goes by Jill now. Twenty years have passed and the great big doors have opened her up to the world. She lives in a small apartment with her decent sized cat. It’s been years since she’s heard from Audrey. But something has changed. It’s October 2020 and the streets are still empty. Work has slowed down and Jill has spent the past six months thinking about the past more than she ever has. In three months she could birth a baby and name it self-discovery.
She has time to think of her parents who are still together, and her sister who is going to college next year. She remembers the way her dad used to tell their friends about lifting her up above the gates of Niagara Falls as a child. He would tell them that the water was so loud that he thought his daughter was laughing. Until Jill’s sister tugged on the bottom of his worn out sweater and said, “Daddy, Lil is crying.” Jill has heard this story so many times that the memory itself becomes the long, deep breaths of her father’s storytelling.
It’s Tuesday night. Jill has finished another day at the library. She loves this job, loves the long sifting hours as the sun picks a new genre every few minutes. Today a young boy with thick eyelashes and brown curls places a book on the counter. He stands there, seemingly aware of Jill’s responsibility to do her job. He spins a pink sucker between his lips, hitting the two front bulging teeth. Jill glances down at the book. An Elegant Spirit. She smiles and says, “Audrey Hepburn, huh?”
Later that night Jill thinks about the beautiful boy and wonders if he is reading the biography, or maybe someone else is reading it to him. She takes out a pen and paper, hoping the kid will give her some inspiration for a poem. Instead she writes a letter.
Dear Audrey,
Today I saw a small boy dancing, purple shirt falling, baby hairs stuck to his ears like jewels. It made me smile. Made me think about the way our bones used to fly like that. I couldn’t help but lay in bed that night and think about the calamities of childhood, how they go right through us until we’re adults. It reminded me of the time I sat on a patch of grass with my dad and he kept arguing about the color of the sky. He’d say, It’s not blue. And I knew he was just trying to make me laugh. I didn’t have any idea that one day the lawn would shrivel and die, or that one day he would struggle to keep up. But I suppose somewhere in my little head I began to wonder about death and when it would come. I was too young to understand that it could get anyone. My tiny bones were so fragile that it felt like only I would be plucked. But I imagined it was God’s hand or someone like the Big Friendly Giant—and in the end, I would be okay. Anyway. That boy checked out an Audrey Hepburn book and I thought of you. And then I remembered the magic of childhood, the ways we used to play.
Do you remember the neighborhood girl who dyed her hair pink? Sometimes she would play with us, too. We used to sit on the lawn and wait for the hot air balloons to come—it seemed there were more back then. Maybe people had time to float. We would find ladybugs in the meantime, combing back patches of grass like we were checking for lice.
I don’t know what you’re doing these days. Once your grandfather sold the house, I lost track of you. We were only eight at the time. At the cusp of change, as it always is. I miss being a child. And I miss that child’s friend. We were so good at pretending nothing was everything.
Sincerely,
Lil
Jill reads over the letter once, folds it in half, and stuffs it in an envelope. There’s a scratching noise behind her door. She leans over, opens the door and finds Alby, her cat. He’s hungry, fed up, clawing at the hours his owner has been wrapped behind. Jill pushes the envelope to the corner of her desk, and leans down to pat her beautiful, fluffy, companion—the thread of it all gone.
Jolie Smith is a writer, sister, friend, tsunami-footage watcher, mind wanderer, and, once in a while, a psychic. She isn’t great at math (other than algebra) but she can make bird calls using her hands and has generally okay balance. Most of all she loves people and their minds and will spend time vehemently invested in anything you show her--including (but not limited to) books, films, homemade comics, and self-produced music videos.