Her Fight
After she got the news, Emily went home, sank into bed, and tried to figure out where all her fight had gone.
Some of it went toward her super, Sal, of course, the corrupt, bribe-taking, slime ball. The one with the ski house upstate. Emily remembers confronting him in her flooded apartment, after her pipes had burst again and Sal lying about it all. She had threatened to destroy him, her exact words, “I’ll bury you,” and how when she said it, every nerve inside her had felt like an electrified fence. She’d stayed that way for hours, sure she was in the right, even after her husband, Donald, had called her out of control. Not that Sal was such a bad super. He’d kept the building running all these years.
Some of her fight went to the dinnertime phone marketers, the waitresses, that sullen clerk at the dry cleaners, the cable company. And her deadbeat brother.
For years it had gone to Sam’s school. There was the winter she’d awoken night after night consumed with how his fifth-grade classroom had turned so sour. Her husband had pushed for this school, the jock school, even though she’d wanted the artsy one, because it had more smart kids than midget Neanderthals. She’d ended up teaching Sam ways to protect himself from the aggressive, body-checking ten-year-olds in the stairwell. And there were the karate classes she got him to on Saturdays and all the silly plastic trophies they gave the kids just for showing up. There was the time she marched into the fifth-grade teacher’s office before school and demanded that the boys who kicked Sam off the lunch table be punished, that things be made right. Clueless Mr. Cole had pinched the insides of his blueberry muffin and had a look of total surprise. After school that same day, Sam had refused to talk to her. Only later did she learn that the same kids had tossed Sam’s sneakers out the window because she’d snitched on them.
Emily rolled over in bed and gazed out the window at her block. Her fight had gone into protesting that twelve-story monstrosity on the corner. Those pricy condos. The corner with Sam’s favorite playground. She hadn’t minded the tedious community board meetings, those strident-voiced young women rambling into the microphone or the scoldings—dotted with long, labored-breath pauses—from those ancient neighborhood historians. There, amid all the outcry, Emily’d felt part of something, a collective standing up for something, even though she’d only gone because Sam had wanted to be there. She’d used her Saturdays to collect signatures, make phone calls. Then Sam petered out for no good reason. Ten weekends gathering signatures, time off from work and school for the meetings. The building went up anyway, a few stories shorter perhaps, but it still cast a huge shadow on the sidewalk. Sam’s favorite playground was gone.
There were the badge numbers and employee names she’d written down on the back of business cards and then called out in letters of complaint. The bank accounts she’d closed in a huff and then reopened down the street. And the slow burning that always accompanied these eruptions, that smoldering wedged deep inside in her gut.
There was the gigantic parking attendant who just last week threatened to put a boot on her car because she’d backtalked him after he asked to see a receipt to prove she’d been a patron at the lot’s store. She’d never park where she wasn’t supposed to. But she’d tossed the receipt when she left the store, not thinking. And that man refused to believe her. If he’d been a foot shorter, she would have written down his name and badge number too.
There were arguments in the car. The three of them driving home late that evening, and she and Donald bickering about the route. It didn’t happen often, but that Sunday night they’d gone at each other. She’d taken a back road to avoid the freeway traffic, her idea. Donald thought it was a waste. He had a thing about being right, even when nobody else cared. He had been complaining that the back roads were a 45-minute detour, not worth the gasoline or engine wear and tear. She’d been trying not to rip into him, trying to ignore him, while pressing her foot on the pedal, the speedometer inching up. She was about to say something. She’d glanced over at Donald sitting beside her, but before she could utter a word, the car hit black ice and began to skid. They slid sideways off the road, into the night, and slammed into an icy snowbank. A metallic tearing, a deafening thud, then quiet. Engine smoke swirled in the car headlights and Emily rushed to unbuckle her seatbelt. She called Sam and Donald. When neither answered, she’d fought her way out of the car, unbuckled and yanked Sam from the back seat. He’d stood there frozen while she yelled and yelled for him to get away from the car. She climbed over to the passenger side, all the while threatening Sam with awful things if he didn’t move. She reached Donald, undid his seatbelt, and pulled him by the arm pits across both seats, over the controls, past the steering wheel, out the door, and onto the ground. She doesn’t know how she did this now because Donald is a large man.
Then she called 911 and yelled at them, too.
After the emergency room, after the car was towed to the junk heap, after the insurance company provided a lender and a pile of paperwork, and they were home safe, not a soul mentioned how that night she’d yelled at everyone, fought with everyone.
That afternoon, after Emily got the news, after she listened very carefully trying to take it all in, learning about her options, she could see what lay ahead. She’d hailed a cab and on her way home, she considered all those years, all those things, all those people she’d fought. At home, she’d gone straight to bed. When Sam and his father arrived at the apartment, they had no idea she was there. But she could hear them in the kitchen, the TV blaring, them watching a baseball game. She listened to the clattering of dishes, maybe some glasses, the two of them hanging out together, laughing, talking, father and son. They both liked TV sports, had a thing for sitting around the kitchen table, eating a big bowl of popcorn, staring at that huge, flat screen watching somebody else battle for a win.
Emily supposed that any of her fight that was still left would have to go to the cancer.
Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Styx, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters, and Southampton Review. She’s a member of the faculty at The Writer’s Studio and also a member of the school’s Master Class where she studies with Philip Schultz. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on Twitter @d_marcusa.
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