Mother-in-Law

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Merv turned on her then, one hand clamping down on her bony shoulder, the other rooting itself in the thin hair on top of her head. Her endless carping turned into screams, beautiful screams as the muscles in his wrists and arms and back flexed; and when her head tore loose from her neck, it did so with a glorious meaty rending sound and a fierce spatter of hot blood.

"Well?" she added, in her finest buzzsaw screech -- the woman was old and frail, but still had a pair of lungs on her. Merv sighed inwardly as his fondest daydreams once more made way for reality. Not that Julia wasn't a hell of a woman, better than a man like him deserved, but goddamn, her mother...

"No ma'am, Mrs. Feldman," he replied -- seven years he and Julia had been married, but God forbid he refer to his mother-in-law by her good Christian name; nossir, that was one liberty that Mervin J. Kincade was not in a position to take. "I most definitely am going to do that first thing tomorrow -- just as soon as the boss comes back from vacation, y'see."

"Hmph," the old bat replied. She craned her neck forward, glaring up at him as though expecting to skewer him with just that look in her eye... that haughty you-never-deserved-my-daughter look that he didn't know how he had managed to put up with this long. That, in fact, he couldn't put up with anymore. And wouldn't. The force of his clenched hand smashing into her face was enough to slam her back against the wall; he pinned her there with the other hand, and kept punching, and punching, and punching. She wasn't giving him any look, now, not through the welter of blood that had previously been her face.

Merv blinked. "Are you even listening to me, Mervin?" she snapped, hands on hips, practically sneering at him. "You'd best get your act together, young man, or my Julia may just start realizing just what a mistake she made in marrying you -- "

"Yes ma'am," Merv interrupted, speaking quickly so he could maybe get out of this conversation before she could get on his case for that, too. "I'm real sorry, ma'am, but I promised I'd help Julia set up for dinner, and you know how I hate to disappoint her."

He hurried out of the room, though not quite quickly enough to avoid hearing her mutter something about how it was already too late for that.

The story about promising to help Julia was, of course, a lie; but she was pleased enough when he showed up to help carry things to the dining room table. They all managed to sit down and start eating with a minimum of snark... and then the smoke detector in the kitchen went off.

Julia jumped up from the table. "Oh, my pie!" she exclaimed, and rushed back through the kitchen door. They could hear her in there, pulling open the oven door and muttering over its contents.

A flicker of movement caught at the corner of Merv's eye, and he felt another of those stifled sighs coming on. Mrs. Feldman was taking in a deep breath, no doubt to fuel her latest nagfest at his expense. He started to turn toward her --

-- and froze.

She was choking.

The old bat hadn't bothered to actually finish chewing before starting in on him again, and now she was actually choking on something.

For a moment he sat there, listening to his wife's movements in the next room, and watching the weak struggles of his mother-in-law across the table.

Finally he rose from his chair, set his napkin down carefully beside his plate, and headed into the kitchen to see what he could do to help.



Are mothers-in-law really that shrill in real life? I realize that in the wacky wacky sitcoms and whatnot they are awful harridans that exist only to torment and humiliate their put-upon sons-in-law (assuming we're talking about the wife's mother, which is the case in the comic). But does that actually bear out in reality? I can't really speak from experience, seeing as I don't have a wife; but, I mean, people aren't nearly as simple as TV tends to make them out to be, so I'm thinking that this relationship is probably generally more nuanced.

Also: every character name in this one is lifted from a webcomic which, in its original incarnation, was one of my favorite Keenspot titles back in the early days of that particular collective. This is because I randomly decided to name the husband Merv and then found it amusing to go with the theme. A delicious ham sandwich to anyone who spots the ref! (Void in the state of Idaho.)

Collection

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Cora watched the boy hobble into the classroom, feeling an unpleasant suspicion twisting around in her gut. Third time this year that Robbie had broken a bone; and while some children were just unlucky, Cora didn't think it was just bad luck dogging this child. Not unless you counted the luck of the draw when it came to parents.

Robbie's mother had run off with a trucker when the boy was three years old; Robbie's father was rumored to be a prodigious and violent drunkard, although he was apparently smart enough to do most of his drinking out of town. Robbie himself was a small child, with the kind of face that always looked bruised around the eyes. Cora sometimes wondered whether he ever got any sleep at all. A bit of prying had revealed that he and his father lived out by the woods in an old Airstream trailer, but nothing beyond that. She didn't like to get too nosey about her students.

The problem, she found herself thinking as the clock edged towards 7:30, was that Robbie's case was so... unusual. He acted enough like any second-grader, and seemed only a little shy. Loud voices or noises did not cause him any apparent fear. He committed the usual number of classroom transgressions, and responded to discipline just as well as the other children. But there was that look he got, sometimes, when no one was paying him much attention, as though he were sadder than any little boy had a right to be...

And there was the fact that he kept breaking bones, of course. And the oddly-shaped bruise she had once found on his arm, that he had refused to talk about. That was the one time he had seemed... fearful. As though the bruise was part of some guilty secret. Cora wondered now, for the millionth time, whether she should say something to someone, or whether she was just being paranoid.

The morning bell rang, and Cora forced herself to smile as she rose from her desk. "Good morning, class," she said, and "Good morning, Miss Sedgwick," they all chorused back at her. Except Robbie, who was looking down at his fresh white cast as if afraid to meet her eyes. By the end of the week, she knew, it would be covered with the names of classmates; more well-wishing signatures for a collection already bigger than any child that age should have.

R&R

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At the end of a long day -- the stressful morning commute, the exhausting hours of work, the mad rush-hour struggle to get home -- Bob did not, he felt, ask for much. Dinner on the table, and not burnt. A half-hour with his pipe in the alcove of the living room that he called his den. A quiet, relaxing evening in front of the TV.

He didn't feel that these were too much to ask for, and so felt himself justified in becoming angry when they were not provided.

"I'm sorry," Cheryl repeated tiredly. She kept her hair dyed blonde at his insistence, but hadn't touched it up in a while, and the brown roots were showing. The sloppiness only added to his irritation. "I didn't mean to have dinner late, but I didn't get Lynn back from the doctor until three-thirty, and then there were still the other kids to pick up from school..."

"Then you should've made them walk home," Bob snapped, even though it had been he who decided that Cheryl should take their school-aged children to and from school in the first place. "Maybe then they wouldn't have the energy to whine all through dinner. And for Christ's sake, could you maybe put some damn salt in the meatloaf next time? It was like trying to eat shoe leather." From somewhere down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, three-year-old Lynn started crying again. "For Christ's sake," Bob repeated in disgust.

"The doctor said you needed to cut back on your salt," Cheryl murmured, but he could tell she wouldn't try to pull that health-foot shit again.

Bob shifted position on the couch. "Now hand me the remote and shut that kid up, will ya?" he grunted.

"Oh, but before you get too into your show," Cheryl began.

"But nothing." She handed him the remote, and he shook it at her. "I've been working my ass off all day to make money for you to spend, Cher; I need to relax now, and you are going to let me relax."

She retreated quickly down the hall. He heard her talking to Lynn, but softly, as though she was afraid to make too much noise and thus incur his wrath. Well, fine. It was nice to be shown a little respect for once. Maybe she could even get the kid to quit whining. Hadn't the doctor prescribed any damned pills?

Maybe five minutes passed; in the kids' room Cheryl tried to soothe the pain of their toddler's ear infection, and on the couch Bob flicked idly through the channels. He had just about decided which of the two currently-playing episodes of CSI to watch when his son advanced cautiously into the room.

"Uh, hey, dad?" Terry's voice was just starting to change, and the words came out in a sort of squeak. The boy cleared his throat and tried again. "Dad? Can I, uh, have the TV now?"

"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" Bob snarled. "Can't you see that I work all damn day for you, and that the least I ask is to have some peace and quiet when I finally come home?!" He glared at Terry. "Get out of here before I really lose my temper."

Cheryl emerged from the hallway just as Terry tried to disappear down it. "Honey, that's what I was trying to tell you." She made a helpless little gesture. "Terry has to watch that special on PBS tonight for his honors English class."

"The hell he does!" Bob roared. "Terry, you're grounded for a week and don't you dare tell me any more lies." The boy pelted out of the room, and Bob turned his attention to Cheryl. "I knew you were stupid, but falling for a twelve-year-old's lies? Christ, woman. Christ."

Lynn began wailing in pain again, and Bob winced. "And now I've got a headache. Great job, Cheryl. Way to ruin my evening, again." Then his voice dropped. "I ought to just strike you," he muttered, glaring at her. "God knows there's no other way of getting any sense in your head."

Cheryl took a step backwards, and he noticed that. Terry, listening from just outside the room, clenched his fists and then held them to his mouth to stifle a sob. Fortunately for him, Bob didn't notice that.



This one's for you, dad. Are you dead yet? I honestly have no idea. If so, how's the weather down there?

Sometimes I wish you'd beaten up on us kids, instead of just always telling us we were worthless, and screaming at us if we were ever in the living room/bathroom/kitchen/wherever when you Needed To Be There, and regularly threatening to hurt mom while being just crazy-crafty enough to not actually do it. Maybe if I'd shown up to school with my eyes blackened and my teeth knocked out when I was eight, then you wouldn't've still been around to make our house a place of fear when I was eighteen.


For the record, this scene never happened, and Terry isn't me. The scene just kind of popped into my head when I saw how happy that bear was to have his R&R.

*adds the 'sidetrack' tag*

Ran

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"Spare some money for gas?" Elly called, as a smartly-dressed man approached her on the sidewalk, head tucked down into his collar against the cold. The smartly-dressed man gave no indication that he had heard her, and she sighed inwardly and pulled her jacket a bit tighter. It was starting to snow, and she wished yet again that she had on something warmer.

For about the millionth time in the last couple hours she glanced back over her shoulder, checking that her car was still parked by the curb. Not that anyone could steal it with the tank dry as it was, of course. She'd run it till the very fumes were used up. Run it as far and as fast away from home as possible. "Or what was home, anyway," she muttered to herself, and then made a sound something like a laugh. Not that the situation was particularly funny.

"Spare some money for gas?" she repeated yet again, as two women passed by. One of them gave her an odd look, then quickly turned away; they both sped up slightly, as though wishing nothing more than to escape from Elly's request. One of them tittered brief laughter as they disappeared into the thickening snowfall.

Elly shivered, then uttered a series of deep coughs. Stupid to have left without coat or hat or even a pair of gloves; stupid to have left with a dollar sixty-three in her wallet. Stupid to have even done this in the first place, but she'd had to do it, she just couldn't take any more...

Making that not-quite-a-laugh sound again, Elly felt gingerly at the latest bruise on her face, the one that had been the reason for her sudden flight. "Never again, you bastard," she said through a humorless grin. "I don't even care if I freeze out here, as long as you never get to hit me again."

My Space

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Rebecca curled up tighter on the bed, despite the pain that shot across her middle. One hand cupped her face gingerly. She wasn't crying, in part because her left eye was already swelling up enough as it was, but mostly because she didn't want to draw any more attention to herself. She was safe in her room, at least for now. Better to keep quiet, and hope dad didn't find reason to come in here and continue their "conversation".

One shaking hand reached out and snagged the fluffy foot of a stuffed rabbit. Rebecca clutched it to her chest and allowed herself one small sob. She'd had no idea this would happen when she decided to go out with Shelly. Seeing a movie wasn't worth this. Maybe nothing was.

She'd come home from school at 3:30, just like always. No one else had been home, but that was normal. Rebecca had thought nothing of leaving the note on the fridge; she'd had a twenty burning a hole in her pocket since her birthday last week, and she and Shelly hadn't hung out in ages. "At the movies," she'd scrawled, "back 8ish." And she had pinned up the note with a magnet shaped like a tomato, and skipped right back out the door.

Now, alone in the silence of her room, Rebecca squeezed the stuffed rabbit tighter. Dad had been waiting in the living room when she came home for the second time. She should have realized something was wrong as soon as she came in the door, but the smell of beer hadn't registered at first. Then he'd fairly leapt across the room and seized her wrist like grim death. She wasn't to go out without permission again, it seemed. This became abundantly clear shortly. Dad supplemented the argument with his fists, as was usual when he'd been drinking; then, at last, he had sent her to her room. She'd gone gladly.

Now Rebecca lay on her bed, hardly daring to move, a few silent tears falling to wet the fur of the stuffed rabbit. The room softly faded to darkness as the last of the light drained from the sky outside. Finally she slept, and when her father left for the bar, she did not hear.

Loaned Out

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Terry's smile lasted until the front door closed, then fell immediately into a scowl. He glared at the open toolbox for a moment before bending to close it up and shove it back into the closet.

Lanie leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. "Was that your brother?"

"Yeah."

"Well, why didn't you invite him in? I could've offered him some coffee -- "

Terry snorted. "He already got what he came for. 'Hey, Ter, mind if I borrow your belt sander?' 'Sure, Adam, why not? You've had it the last four weeks out of five, after all, what's one more?' Cripes."

"Language, dear," Lanie replied mildly, laying a hand on her husband's arm. "And anyway, why don't we just buy him a belt sander for his birthday? It's coming up soon, after all, and then you won't have to worry about him borrowing yours anymore."

"You know how much those things cost?" he grumbled. "Plus it wouldn't work. Remember how he used to always be over here borrowing my drill? Then his wife got him one for Christmas."

Lanie tilted her head to one side. "Didn't he stop borrowing the drill and start borrowing something else after that?"

"Uh huh. My angle grinder. Until someone got him one of those and then he switched to something else." Terry shrugged. "He's been doing this since he was a kid. If he wants something of yours, he'll just keep borrowing it until you give in and buy him one just so's you can get yours back. And I'm tired of having to keep up with that."

"Maybe you should actually talk to him about this if you want him to stop."

He gave a humorless little grin. "Probably," he agreed. "But right now it seems easier to just sacrifice my sander to the cause of savin' me that headache."

Grandchildren

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"Well, what's wrong with that?" Ivan replied, a trifle defensively. "They're good kids, and they like spending time with me."

Deborah sat back down at the table and propped her head on one hand. "Oh, I know. I just wish they didn't hate spending time with me."

"Oh, honey." Ivan sat down beside her. "You know that's not true... little Ellie gets so excited whenever you come to visit, after all..."

Deborah shook her head emphatically. "It is true. Oh, sure, Ellie still likes me well enough, but that'll change soon enough." She sighed, looking vaguely off into the distance. "Do you remember when they were all younger, and Pete would show me his drawings, and Sandy would call me 'Nana Deb'? But as they got older, they both started distancing themselves from me, because they realized they weren't actually my grandchildren."

Ivan clasped her hands in his. "Of course they're your grandchildren, Debbie -- "

"No, they're not. I'm not really their grandma. I'm just some woman their grandpa married." She drew back, then rose from the table and busied herself with the teakettle. "Ellie will realize that soon enough. Or her mother will make it clear to her. Either way." Then, as Ivan began to respond, "And don't tell me that she wouldn't, because we both know she would. She's your daughter, and you know her well enough to see that. She's never forgiven me for marrying you."

Ivan looked at her for a moment, and then merely nodded. "No," he replied quietly. "You're right. She never has."

Blessings

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I'm currently (04/14/2010) looking for the image to this one -- unfortunately I no longer have the slightest idea what the original comic was about. Judging from the tags I put on the post, grandparenting was involved... blah blah blah grandparents know how to count their blessings, given that those blessings are grandchildren? Bah. No clue.

Stay tuned for possible future pictoral update!

Brian waved energetically from the porch as the car eased down the driveway and headed off. "Bye, Grandma, bye, Grandpa!," he hollered. "See you next year! Love you! Byebye!"

"Okay, champ, I think that's enough," Tony chuckled, ruffling his son's hair. "They can't hear you anymore, but I sure bet all the neighbors can. Come on back inside, huh?"

"K," the boy replied cheerfully. He ran back inside, and Tony followed, carefully closing the door behind him. He could hear Brian chattering happily to Sue in the kitchen.

" -- and then Grandpa pulled a quarter out of my ear -- this one, right here, see -- " Brian held up the coin excitedly, though Sue gave it only a brief glance before going back to scrubbing a pan in the kitchen sink. "And he said it was magic, and that maybe he'd teach me how to do it sometime -- " He broke off as Tony came into the room, then headed off on another train of five-year-old thought with just as much gusto. "Daddy, how come we only see Grandma and Grandpa once a year? They're so nice, we should see them all the time!"

Sue paused briefly in her scrubbing, then set to it again. "Yes, dear, that's a good question," she said in a voice starting to fray around the edges. "Why is it, again, that we're only graced with your mother's presence once a year?"

Tony addressed his reply to Brian. "Maybe it's just to give you something to look forward to, kiddo," he said, then nudged the boy gently towards Sue. "How 'bout we help your mom with those dishes, huh? I'll wash, you dry, sound good?"

"Okay!" Brian chirped, pocketing his quarter again.

Tony tossed the boy a dish towel, then winked at his gratefully smiling wife. "And if you really want to be talking mother-in-law woes, then maybe I have a few stories to tell you, eh?" he joked, before taking up the dishcloth and going to work.

The Price of Gas

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"Gas is at two-thirteen at the Speedway," she commented as they drove past.

"Huh. Not bad. We'll have to fill up on the way back." He grinned a bit. "I remember when two bucks was a bad price for gas."

"I remember when one dollar a gallon was too much. At least for my mom. There was this one place in town where it was like 89 cents, and she'd only fill up there." She nodded mock-gravely. "It was an Arco."

"Good to know."

"Yep, very important fact there." Idly she rolled her window down a bit. "Of course, then at some point the price started going up -- I don't remember when, sometime in the middleish 90s -- and I think the one cheap Arco went out of business or something, and then mom just basically gassed up wherever looked cheap at the moment. Dad freaked out about the raised prices, though."

He glanced at her. "Your dad was kind of prone to freakouts, wasn't he."

"You could say that. I remember about when it was at $2.75ish -- the first time, if you will, since it isn't like that's such an extraordinary price anymore -- he started going around saying that it would hit five bucks a gallon soon." Her mood dimmed slightly. "He got really angry at mom when she disagreed. They wound up having another one of their fights." Then she shook her head. "I don't even know why I still remember that. It isn't like it matters anymore."

"Well, yeah. You won't have to worry about dealing with him anymore; you're halfway across the country from him now."

"True." She grinned crookedly. "And it wasn't even a bad fight, really. He didn't throw his gun through the window that time, or anything!"

Serving

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"You're insane!" Anne shouted. "You just got home from that mudhole, and now you want to go back?"

"I don't want to go back," Gary replied, jaw set obstinately. "And it's hardly a mudhole."

She threw her hands up angrily. "Fine. I guess you're right; calling it a mudhole would be assuming there was any damn water, when it's actually nothing but desert." She turned away, arms crossed. "That's not the point, anyway."

Gary sighed. "See, this is why I waited to tell you until after I told everyone else. Even my wife didn't put up this much of a stink about it. You're my sister and I love you, but I have made up my mind about this."

He thought that when Anne turned around again, it would be with tears in her eyes, her anger giving way to sadness. But no, they were still dry. Hard. He supposed he should have known better; she had never been given to sentimentality.

"You want to be the big hero, and I get that," she told him. "But you've been to Iraq already. You've done it. Why go back now, if they're not asking you to?"

"Because if I go, that's one less other guy that needs to. And what if he's got his own family? Kids that depend on him to feed and clothe them? Mary's got her own career, and we never had children." Gary shrugged. "I can't risk dooming some stranger to death and knowing that I put his kids one step closer to being orphans."

"And if that means dooming yourself to death?"

He shrugged again. "It's my choice, isn't it?" Anne made no reply, but still he nodded, as if agreeing with himself.



* With all the stoploss measures currently in place in Iraq, I don't know that they're actually letting anyone go home for good anymore. A few years ago, though, I knew someone whose close friend served a term in Afghanistan, then turned around and enlisted to help relieve forces in Iraq not long after. His friends and family were not entirely pleased with his decision, but he figured he was just a single guy livin' the military life, so he might as well help take the pressure off the poor saps who actually had wives and kids to spend Christmas with. That's what this particular vignette is inspired by, along with the usual Plugtasticness.

Edit 12/22/2007: I'm going through tagging old posts, and I just noticed that I named a guy Gary and his wife Mary. Whoops.

Empty Nest

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They ate in silence for a while, the only real sound the clinking of their forks on their plates. Finally Myra looked up. "It was so nice to have Billy visit us today," she began tentatively.

"Nice," Fred echoed. "It's always nice when any of the kids visit."

"Yes," Myra answered, nodding vigorously. They were both silent again, until she added, "A pity he couldn't stay for dinner, though."

Fred shrugged. "He's a busy man, Myra. I mean, between his work and his wife and children..."

"Oh, I know, I know," Myra replied quickly. "I wouldn't want to impose on him, after all."

"Mmm."

"But..."

Fred sighed. "Our children are grown up now, dear," he said quietly, not for the first time. "They just don't have time for us anymore."

"Mmm." She sighed as well, then set down her fork. "I suppose it will be leftovers again for dinner tomorrow night."

Proud

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Richard pulled aside the living room curtain slightly. Yep, there she was, a half-hour late, as usual. For all that she claimed to love visiting with him, she certainly did take her time showing up.

She pulled her car up into the driveway, barely missing his petunias on the way up, and parked by the garage. Then the car doors opened, revealing both of the car's occupants. Perfect. His irresponsible daughter and his bigshot lawyer son, both in one visit. Definitely not a good sign. He let the curtain drop and walked slowly to the front door to let them in anyway.

"Hey, dad," Ellie said brightly, swooping in like a miniature hurricane as usual. She hugged him briefly before going to hang up her coat. Brad was more reserved, merely smiling and offering a polite handshake and a "You look well, dad" on his way in. Richard shut the door behind them, offered them a drink (which they both declined), and lowered himself down in his armchair to wait out whatever bad news they'd come to drop.

Brad began first, after a meaningful look from his sister. "You're probably wondering why we're both here today, dad," he started. "It's just that we're -- "

"You're both getting tired of having to drive all the way up here to check on dear old dad, and figure it'll be easier if you can drop me in a nursing home and be done with it, right?" They looked surprised and guilty, and Richard chuckled humorlessly. "Don't think I haven't noticed the signs. You've been thinking of this for at least a year." He pointed an arthritic finger at Ellie's purse. "I'm sure you've got a stack of brochures in there to show me, don't you?" She blushed, which was all the answer he needed. He chuckled again.

"Well, yes, sir, we have been worried about you lately," Brad answered. Calm and collected again, Mr. Bigshot Lawyer ready to argue his case. "I mean, three times in the last month alone, you've called one of us to say that you can't find your keys or your glasses..."

Richard snorted. "Everyone loses things. Doesn't take being old and senile to do that."

"Still." Brad looked levelly at him. "We care about you, dad, but we can't keep caring for you this way. I've got my practice, and Ellie's got her own family to look after. It's an hour's drive here for either of us, and as you get older you're going to start needing more and more help... help we just can't give you if you're living in this house all by yourself."

Ellie reached out and put her hand on Richard's. "We're just worried about you, dad."

Richard pulled back sharply. "I don't need your worry. Or your pity -- just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm helpless, dammit -- or even some goddamn geezer hotel. I'm perfectly fine on my own, always have been, always will be." He folded his arms and glared at them both in turn. "So you can just save your meddling and your planning my life for me. I may be nearly seventy now but I'm still your father, just as much as I was when you were both growing up, and if I say that I'm perfectly self-sufficient, then that means that I'm -- "

"You're not any such thing," Ellie snapped back. "You're just proud. And pride will do you a fat lot of good if you fall on that damn sidewalk some December and break your leg. Again."

Brad looked positively mortified, but Ellie just pulled the rest home brochures out of her purse and slapped them down on the coffee table. "Your choice, dad. Pride or common sense." Then she rose to her feet. "Let's go. He doesn't need our help making any decisions, apparently."

They let themselves out, leaving Richard alone to stare moodily at the pile of brochures.