Doctor Cyril’s Office of Remedies By Claire Bezdek Gochal,bitter lemon

 

 

Sara Withers blinked under the overhead lights of the terminal. Her boys met her and Greg, her husband, by the wheezing doors of the airport entrance. Or exit, depending on how you looked at it. Her hands shook violently as they always did.

“I’m just going to go to this appointment. Greg, are you all set?” she said.

“Mom, did you get our bagels?” Tom, their oldest son, said before her husband answered.

“How long will you be gone?” Greg looked anxiously at the children from his wheelchair like he didn’t know what he’d do with them.

“What appointment?” Harry said from behind his Kindle.

“I’ve told you three times.”

“Who has a doctor’s appointment right before a flight?”

“Did you go to Dunkin’?”

“What doctor has an office near the airport?”

 “I should be right back.”

She handed the boys the bag of bagels. “Next time, you’re old enough to get them yourself.”

Tom took two plains before he passed the bag along.

“We didn’t want poppyseed,” said the twins.

            “I’ll take it.” Oh, Jonathan, in the middle. She’d forgotten to get him one.

Before she could stop herself, she marched to the automatic doors and into the wall of exhaust of the departures curb.

“Wait where is Mom—?” The doors swallowed the rest of Tom’s words and silenced Jonathan as he mouthed that Mom was going to see a doctor about her hands.

The tremors in her hands began after Tom was born 15 years ago and worsened with each subsequent birth. The padded base of her thumbs quivered as though receiving aftershocks from a source higher up in her body.  In the last few years, she’d given up driving almost entirely, relying on carpools and bike rides, limiting her time behind the wheel to local and essential errands. Greg did a lot of driving but couldn’t right now with his broken leg. And he refused to pay for an Uber to the airport on a convoluted principle of frugality, which she found insensitive. During the 25-minute drive, she had not broken up the kids’ fights; she hadn’t responded to Greg’s musings about the election. He reached for the wheel from the passenger’s seat four times.

If it weren’t for her beloved cousin, Meg, getting married, she would never have risked it. Any of it. Driving to the airport. Meeting with a doctor she’d found when she asked an artificial intelligence chatbot for “radical solutions to involuntary tremors.” Driving so far once they landed at their destination.  But she had to. Meg, after innumerable failed relationships, was getting married in the far northern reaches of Maine. Meg, who’d chased fireflies with her after summer family dinners, who’d barhopped with her until dawn in their twenties. Who’d stayed overnight with all of Sara’s children as newborns while worrying her own biological time slipped away from her. 

For years, Sara had googled her symptoms continuously, frantically, trying to get new results to either confirm she was dying, or she wasn’t. She didn’t want to die, not at all, but the extent of her worry and complaint over the tremors had bored, then irritated her family and old friends so extensively, she’d almost hoped for a dramatic diagnosis to justify the oxygen she’d wasted.

She tried medicine, MRIs and CT scans. Therapy, hypnosis, massage. None of it worked or provided answers.

She considered asking her local friends for recommendations. She’d seen the version of her tremors in the tensing in their jaws, in the manicured feet of her coworkers, in the mothers’ bikini bellies rippling on summer weekends. But her friends in town weren’t the kind one trusted with vulnerability. It would be spread over texts and coffee and wine and contorted in a way Sara couldn’t handle.

So, she’d asked AI for help. The sexy robotic voice returned Dr. Cyril’s name along with dozens of glowing reviews. Among all the stars, the paragraphs of praise about how the good doctor changed lives, was no mention of his actual methodology. Only how his treatment worked when nothing else had. He had a degree in neuropsychology from a school in the Caribbean she’d never heard of. She couldn’t find a picture of the man, but he did have an address in a building within the concrete campus of the airport, and an appointment available just before their flight.

GPS delivered on its promise of the office’s proximity, and she found the brick building after a short walk along the airport road shoulder. The lobby was worn but mostly clean, a few clumps of dirt ground into the corners by the staircase. An engraved sign with a short list of offices hung next to the single, waiting elevator. About halfway down Dr. Cyril’s name was freshly etched. She could still hear the airplanes.

She tried to run a brush through her hair while she waited for the elevator. She’d cropped it, a cut Greg hadn’t noticed for weeks, and still it tangled. She couldn’t grip the brush in her shaking hands and only managed to rip a few blonde strands.

The narrow elevator reminded her of the ones of her dreams in which she’d go up and down, missing the floor she’d selected. She suddenly felt very alone, despite the nearness of the airport and her family. Her left thumb trembled painfully, and she sucked it the way the children did as babies. The twins sucked them for way too long, her mom friend, Kelly, told her once at a birthday party while the kids rode a pony and ate gourmet burgers from a food truck. Sara made the twins quit their thumbs after that and sometimes she thought if she’d let them continue thumb-sucking, they wouldn’t be so restless now. Which all reminded her she needed to book the magician for their party next month at the arcade.

The number six glowed in the bank of buttons, urging her to press it, and the other buttons receded. She pressed, she stepped on the elevator, and the doors closed.

She considered what the doctor would ask her about her medical history. The only thing she could truly note was the shaking had worsened as she entered perimenopause, the long final descent into the “change” or “the pause,” whatever euphemism you’d like to apply to the looming cessation of her ability to reproduce.

After an agonizingly slow climb in which she grew convinced that she’d be trapped and miss not only her appointment but her flight, the elevator doors opened onto a waiting man in a faded navy-blue cap and coat. He had tightish curls beneath the hat and a wide smile with the early hints of tobacco staining.

“Sara,” he said. Not as a question, but a greeting. His voice was melodic and lightly accented, which, along with the outfit, reminded her of a train conductor in old Disney films. He led her gently by the elbow, but with some hurry to a door immediately across from the elevator. She didn’t have much chance to look down the hall and though it was empty, it didn’t give her the sense it was deserted. A phone rang out of sight. She was pleased how easily this was going, how kind he seemed.

“Let’s use this office. It’s for my special patients.”

When he opened the door, she saw right away it was a large, single stall bathroom with a grab bar and in the center a chair that looked plucked from a country dining room. This was wrong. Very, very wrong.

He began to ask her questions as the door shut. “Did you find the office OK? Getting warm out there?” He locked the door, still smiling, and stood in front of it.

She said, “I think this is a bad idea.”

He said, “Why?” And his whole face not only fell but transformed like a mirage. His eyes went from a pleasing, lake blue to milky and hard, with contracted pupils. He was much younger than she initially thought, and not exactly handsome but there was something erotically attractive about him. He stared at her with distaste and a small frisson of lust behind those eyes.

He was going to hurt her.

He didn’t even necessarily look excited, but as if it was routine for him, inevitable.

Except, he didn’t block the door as she got closer; he stepped aside. She, despite her fear, wanted his strong arm to reach out and stop her. She was testing him. He was testing her. Why had she ever decided to do this? And why couldn’t she completely bring herself to rush by him, tackle him, grab for the door? A pull, a force, evinced by a man she’d never met before today. She was as terrified as she’d ever been in her life. And she froze, entranced.

She looked down. The grout was dirty, and her eyes swam, and she was afraid she’d lose her balance and crack her head. She focused on his conductor’s uniform and then looked up to his face that had changed. If she looked one way, like those old hologram cards she had as a kid, his face returned to the conductor. That was the false image, the imposed one, she understood now. The one you saw first. If she turned more the image underneath, the one printed on the card was the man who terrified her, and yet, to whom she couldn’t stop advancing. She thought she might know him after all. He raised his eyebrows. In menace, in something else, she couldn’t tell.

He gripped her wrist.

What if she never saw her children again? Her fear was nothing compared to the desire not to let them feel any themselves.

“Let me out of here,” she said.

He laughed.

How airless the room was. No windows. The heavy door seemingly sealed shut. Maybe it was. She’d missed her chance for escape.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“What?” she said. What? She didn’t know what she expected him to say. Any question would’ve surprised her: routine, clinical or absurd.

“You heard me,” Dr. Cyril said.

 “I, I am 48,” she said. Was he asking to mark the end of her time on Earth, like stopping a clock at the time of a person’s death? She did not want to die.

He said quietly. “I’ve never had a patient like you.”

 “You say that to all the girls,” she said. Jesus, Sara. Why was she joking with this man? Because she was scared and what else was she going to do. And, because she knew him, somehow.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “You’re very beautiful.”

He didn’t say “still’ very beautiful, which is what most people said about women in their forties. It prompted her to say, “Until menopause.” And then, “The end of my useful life.” 

“The end, the beginning,” he said, reading her mind, or not.

The surrealness and fear caught up to her in a sudden aural swoosh. She wanted to go home. She wanted to rewind and not come here. Yet, she wanted him, too. Him who called her beautiful and stared at her, like inside her.

“Do you know why your hands shake?” he said.

The last thing she remembered was him catching her and lowering her to the ground. He smelled earthy and not exactly familiar, but real. She still wasn’t sure he was real, if this place were real. But his smell, the hardness of the floor, convinced her she wasn’t dreaming.

 He didn’t let her slam her head against the ground.  He whispered her name as it went dark.

When she woke, Dr. Cyril sat in another chair she hadn’t noticed in the corner, watching her. He wasn’t smoking but had the posture of someone who was. The mask of the goofy conductor had entirely slipped in the shadows. “Don’t get up,” he said. He smirked. She imagined how his mouth would feel on her skin.

Her body got hot and then shivered. Wanting and repelled. The room smelled of her own sweat and his musk from a riverbed. “Please, let me go.” Her voice was hoarse.

He shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to come here,” he said.

It was the chatbot, actually, who’d led her here. Artificial results, telling her what she was supposed to do.

He held her gaze, challenging her.

“You’re blocking the door,” she said.

“Am I? Or do you just want me to be blocking the door?” he said. “Two things can be true at the same time,” he said.

“What are you going to do to me?” she said.

He lifted a hand to her, and she ducked. She wasn’t sure if he were going to hit her or not. It was instinct to duck. He tucked a strand of her broken hair behind her ear.

Here was the chameleon again. Turned and he was a familiar stranger with a dangerous pull to the depths of her desire and turn another way and he was the humdrum doctor, as routine as her children’s YouTube shows.

“What do you want?” Dr. Cyril said.

Sara wasn’t even sure Dr. Cyril wasn’t generated by AI himself. It didn’t matter; despite the supreme, terrifying, oddness of this whole thing, she trusted he was leading her where she wanted to go.

“For my hands to stop shaking,” she said. “For my life to go on. For my children to grow up. For them not to grow up.”

“I see,” he said. “Do you want more children?”

“No, I have plenty. I just want.”

He waited. She didn’t know what else to say.

She wanted the chance to restart and redo everything now that she knew better. To not be invisible in midlife. To stop the arms race of parenting. For her children to grow up happy and healthy. For them to stay young forever. To escape the trap of all of it. She wasn’t sure how much of this she said aloud.

“If you didn’t know it was there, would you still worry about it?” he said, after a long pause.

“Didn’t know what was there?” She was so tired. She wanted to go home.

“Didn’t know anything,” he said. “Who you are. Who you were. Worry makes it real.”

“You have to worry about some things,” she said, irritated now. “I have to be someone.”

“Do you?”

She sighed. She thought, playing whatever this game of his was. “I guess I couldn’t worry if I didn’t know something existed, yes,” she said.  “Or if I just let it exist.”

 He smiled. A sudden deep sense of relaxation washed over her, like she’d taken a rainbath.

One of his top teeth was snagged across the other one and was graying, dying. For a doctor, she’d think he’d get that fixed. Why she continued to believe, or wanted to believe, he was an actual doctor was beyond comprehension. Every piece of evidence should’ve convinced her otherwise by now.

He spread his palms on his knees, and said, “Well, who are you then?”

“I am Sara.”

“Look down,” he said. “At your hands.”

She did. And her tremors were gone.

He rose from the chair. He put his arms around her waist, and she thought he was going to kiss her on the mouth, his breath surprisingly fresh, but he didn’t. And again, the fever dream sensation only he and she were real. “You did it,” he said.

 

She didn’t remember leaving his office, or getting back to the airport, or to her gate. It was as if she awoke midway through the flight with a start. She only retained the feeling of how it had been hard to part from him, and the increasingly hazy memory of how he’d almost kissed her once more, a deep farewell and about which she felt no guilt. Although, she did not tell her husband.

When they landed, she drove without incident to the Canadian border. A lake house in the family of Meg’s new husband for generations. The wedding was quiet, a sweet country silence. They swam a dozen times over the weekend. The lake sloughed her skin clear and bare. Her hands were still.  

“So, he just scared you, basically?” Meg said.

“No, it was more than that. It was like a hologram. I can’t explain it. Everything and nothing is real.”

“Maybe it was just the intensity of the session,” Meg said. “What are you going to tell the other women when you get home?” she asked. Her cousin knew her so well.

“Just a little. They’re going to want to go,” Sara said. 

About the author

  

aire Bezdek Gochal has work published in the North Dakota Quarterly and The Astorian. She was a semi-finalist for the Story Foundation Prize and an Honorable mention for the Adele and Robert Schiff Award. She lives on the coast of Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author thwe other half goes to expensse se.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

Saturday Sample: Torn by Sharon Overend, Bitter lemon

I snap to attention as my teenage daughter charges toward me, a pair of garden shears clutched in her hand. Head spinning tantrums are nothing new in our household, but the introduction of sharp objects is new.

Blood rushes from my limbs and my hands tingle like when I wake from a nightmare. I’m on my knees. Two bags of black soil and a bouquet of four potted chrysanthemums crowd the flagstone walkway. I’ve just finished raking the first of the autumn leaves and pulled out the last of the summer flowers.

Her charge stops inches from me, her weapon held waist high, parallel to my face. She’s breathing hard, her chest rises and falls in quick spastic jerks. Her cheeks are blotchy and tear-stained, her eyes wild.

“What’s wrong, Cassie?” I ask. My left hand grips the side of the empty planter, my right hand curls around the handle of a semi-submerged trowel. I’m surprised not only because of the shears, but also that her face is tear-stained. She doesn’t like to cry. Even when she was little and fell, her chin would quiver and her Adam’s apple piston up and down as she fought to swallow back tears. I’m a crier and nothing drives her crazier than when my voice chokes.

“I want my phone back. If I don’t call them, my friends will dump me.” The autumn air is cool, but she’s wearing shorts. Her leg muscles are tight, and like a horse in the starting gate, she shifts her weight from side-to-side.

“Your friends aren’t going to dump you,” I say and bring one hand to my forehead to shield my eyes from the glint bouncing off the blades. A halo of yellow surrounds her head.

Her eyes narrow and the shears follow my movements. “How would you know?” she asks. Her right eye turns in, the way it does when she’s tired or manic. The scents of her lavender shampoo and a freshly turned garden hang in the open air between us. “You don’t know anything about me, or my life.” I stare at her in disbelief. I know this child, my dramatic child, my middle child, the one we planned, the one who hadn’t been an oops. I know each of my daughters. My eldest is quiet, studious, a deep thinker. The youngest is an athlete, the golden girl. And this child, the one wielding garden shears, the one always on the verge of hysterics, is the difficult one.

I leave the trowel upright in the dirt and push up from the ground.

“Put the shears down,” I say. She’s three inches taller than me, and I’m forced to look up into her face.

 

 

The tantrums began in her first months of life when colic robbed her of the comfort suckling at my breasts should have provided. Maybe her baby mind had concluded it was my milk, my breasts, her mommy, that made her belly cramp.

“I bet you wish I would.”

Brat. Drama queen. Manipulator. Mental. Wounded. Words others have used to describe her, words I’ve used to grab her attention, needles pushed through a pincushion.

My fingers coil into a fist. Loose, dirt-encrusted garden gloves fold and bunch inside my palms. I’ve been working in the garden, the early autumn sun beating on my bowed back, for a long time. I’m tired and thirsty and definitely not in the mood for yet another of her over-the-top outbursts.

I lower my voice and speak slowly. “Someone’s going to get hurt.” It sounds like a promise.

“That’s the point, Sue.” She never calls me Mom anymore. I’ve told her if she doesn’t want to call me Mom, then she doesn’t get to call me anything. She knows where the button is that makes my arms, legs and mouth flap. I inhale deliberate, measured breaths – one Mississippi, two Mississippi. She angles the blade tips toward me. “It’s your turn to be hurt.” Heavy chunks of strawberry-blonde hair hang outside her chaotic ponytail.

I stagger back. The pain I’ve tried to hide from her kicks back against me. So that was it. She needs to hurt me, her protector, because she doesn’t know, because I’ve hidden my true feelings too well. I’ve never told her how it felt to find her blacked-out drunk on the living room floor, what it was like to hide her shoes each night so she wouldn’t sneak out, or that I vomited when a police officer knocked on our door to say she’d been found beaten and raped the one night I forgot to hide her shoes.

A muscle twitches beneath my eye.

A gaggle of geese squawk overhead, a feathery platoon of drones. The rumble of a postal truck reaches us, and I worry the mail carrier, or a neighbour, or the geese have clued into what is happening. What would an assault charge do to her future?

“This isn’t the end of the world,” I say.

“Oh my god!” Like a toddler, she stomps her foot. “Give me my phone.”

“No,” I say.

 

The smartphone had been a peace offering, her reward for surviving three weeks with underage prostitutes and drug addicts. As we signed the admission form, the director of the youth treatment centre held my shoulder and suggested Cassie’s problems were bigger than her father or I could manage. As though we were leaving her at the babysitter, he insisted our goodbyes be quick. Except these babysitters would not be taking her to the park, or reading her Dr Seuss books. Her chin trembled and she battled me away when I tried to hug her. I cried for twenty-one days, but not during parents’ night.

If she breaks your house rules, use a currency she understands, we’d heard at our parent support group.

Less than twelve hours into her phone prohibition, and she has already resorted to physical threats, to garden shears. I square my shoulders.

“Dad caught you texting at two this morning.” Violation of house rule #26 – no phone calls or texting after eleven. “If you pass your math test, you’ll get your phone back.”

I chase a look up the street. Although I pray no one is watching, I hope to see one of her sisters coming home.

“I need to talk to my friends.” She points her hip at me. The cold look on her sullen face slips and the lines around her mouth soften. For a fleeting moment the little girl who played dress-up with her cat is back. “I won’t text after bedtime. I promise,” she says, deep dimples appearing on her cheeks.

I sigh and my fists unclench. I’d thought we were good parents. I gave up my career to stay home with my girls. Their father worked sixty hours a week to provide a good life for us. She never had refined sugar before her first birthday cake.

She doesn’t get it. “I’m not giving it back. A cell phone is a privilege, not a right.” Maybe she’ll never get it.

The sweet child vanishes. “It is my right.” Oversized hoop earring bang against her neck. “I have every right to say goodnight to my friends.” She kicks at a chrysanthemum pot, the red one, and it topples. Blood red petals and moist black earth splay away from us.

“They’re your friends, not your family,” I say, my voice louder than I intend. Last night, I knocked on her door and she told me to fuck off. I put my mouth to the door jam and wished her goodnight. She threw a shoe and the wood panel bounced against my face. I turned the knob and she braced her body against the door. I pushed back. Her feet slid and a sliver of space opened. I sandwiched myself into the gap, and she pressed harder. I avoided looking at the line of bruises on my torso when I showered this morning.

“No, they’re my family. You’re the people I’m forced to live with.” When the therapist asked her younger sister what would be the one thing about our family she’d like to see change she’d answered, that Cassie wouldn’t hate her. Her father stays late at work most nights, then every weekend disappears downstairs. He says if he gets too close to Cassie, he might say or do something he’ll live to regret. “Give me my phone.” She stretches her free hand toward me.

I shake my head.

Her hand and the shears wave between us. “Give me my goddamn phone, right now.” My gaze fixes on her and my heart pounds, not because I fear the waving shears, but because I realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she really and truly doesn’t trust me. I reach for her.

“Don’t.” She drops her phone-empty hand and jabs her weapon at me. “Don’t you dare touch me.” I pull the garden gloves off, drop them to the ground and surrender my palms to her. Cool air brushes across warmed skin, and the hairs on the

back of my hand stand on end.

“Why not help me tidy up this flowerbed?” I ask. “You don’t think I’m serious. You don’t think I’d

cut you, do you?”

“I think if you hang out here with me, we can talk through what’s bugging you.”

“I told you what’s bugging me. You’ve got my phone, and I want it back,” she says but does lower the shears to her thigh.

I pull the trowel from the dirt and sweep it over the garden. “I thought I’d put these flowers along here, but if you’d rather, you can help me turn over the soil.”

“I’m not touching your disgusting muck.”

I again stoop to the ground and gather up the gloves. “Put these on,” I say.

She considers me a moment, then the gloves. “Then can I have my phone?”

“Maybe,” I say.

She places the shears next to her foot, the blade tips pointed away from both of us. Our fingers touch as she takes the gloves. I watch as her doughy soft hands fill first one, then the second deflated glove. “I hate this shit,” she says.

“Gardening can be cathartic.” I hand her the trowel. When she and her sisters were younger, I’d squared off three sections in the garden and let each girl decide what to plant in their plot. Cassie asked if she could plant a peanut butter tree. She sulked when her father laughed and told her peanut butter didn’t grow on trees. I crouch beside her and begin pulling weeds. The sky changes when a cloud passes above us. With the sun blocked, the air feels more authentic, cooler, more like fall. I tilt my head slightly, just enough to watch her as she works, but not enough that she knows I’m studying her, a sly sideways look. She pays no attention to the goosebumps that have appeared on her arms and legs. She digs a hole, then raises the nearest chrysanthemum, the orange one, out of its pot. The plant leans away from her. The hole is too small, and half the root ball rests above the ground. A groan gurgles in her throat. She brushes

loose dirt toward the flower and stands. “There,” she says. “I’ll take my phone now.”

“You can do better than that. Just set the plant to the side and make the hole a bit bigger.”

“I did what you told me to do. I helped you plant your stupid flower. Now give me my phone.” The trowel clatters to the ground.

“I’m not giving you the phone unless you finish what you’ve started.” I’m on my feet.

 

“You lied. You said I could have it if I helped.” “I don’t lie.”

“Ha,” she says. Like an enraged hockey player, she shakes off the gloves.

“Cassandra.”

She notices me notice the way her hand is shaking. Fresh tears swim across her eyes.

“You’re not perfect. I’ve heard stories. I know who you really are. I know you did drugs, and I know you were a slag. You’re not better than me.”

Her words echo through me. I’ve been found out. When I was seventeen, I’d run away from home. Booze and drugs, plasters to help stop the bleed. Sleeping with every boy who groped under my t- shirt, the only way I could convince myself someone wanted me.

I raise my hand shoulder height. I want to slap her, to stop her from saying anymore, to stop her the way I’d been stopped. My mother had used a wooden spoon, my father a leather belt, an ex-boyfriend, his fists.

She steps closer. “Try it,” she says. Her breath puffs into my face, coffee and peanut butter.

I lower my hand. I’ve never slapped any of my kids.

“Wonder what the neighbours would think about you if they knew the truth?” she asks. Gleeful satisfaction sways across her face. She knows she’s rattled me.

 

My throat tightens. She’s too young to understand. She’s had an easy life. All the bad that has happened to her, happened because of the poor choices she’s made, not because we ever mistreated her, not because we ever rejected her. “I’ve never used drugs, and I sure never let any boy use me.” One day, when she’s older, I’ll tell her what kind of man her granddad was.

“Liar.” Her voice is loud, her words wild again. “I’m done talking.” She grabs the rake I’ve rested against the house. “You don’t give a shit about me.” A flip of her wrist and the rake is upside down, each metal tine aimed at me. I don’t want her to think I’m scared, but for the first time that afternoon, I am. I’m scared for both of us. “You sent me away and I hate you,” she says.

She doesn’t hate me. “I love you.”

A moment of stillness. The point of return. “Bullshit,” she hisses. My gaze remains steady, unwavering. “Bullshit.”

Her facial features twist together, her brow, her lips, her jaw, her eyes. She moves, urgent, crazed, frenzied, a dog lunging for a rabbit.

The point of no return.

My feet won’t move, but my torso does. I curl away and fold into myself.

A low whoosh of air as it separates and bangs back together. The tines of the rake catch my sleeve. The tearing sound stops her.

 

Inside the split-second pause, I glance over my shoulder to see where she is, where the rake is, then it’s coming toward me again. Hot pain sears my cheek. My hand covers the opening gashes each tine has made. Her face unfolds and my pain flashes in her eyes. Sticky red seeps between my fingers, blood red. Then a moan, outside of either of us, ascends.

The sound of metal and wood explodes against stone.

She drops to her knees. I drop to the flagstone.

 

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About the author

Sharon Overend is an award-winning author whose fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry have appeared in Canadian, American and UK literary journals and anthologies. Originally from Toronto, Sharon and her husband now live on a 156-acre property where she has found inspiration for many of her latest writing projects.

www.sharonoverend.blog

The Other Woman by Sharon Boothroyd, bitter lemon

'Why are you hanging on to these kitchen blinds?' I asked Dad.

'They might come in handy one day,' he said.

I gazed at the heap of junk that filled the garage. Apart from the blinds, there were piles of  books, a stack of CDs and old VHS videos, and a collection of dusty board games.

There were pots of left- over paint, plus gardening and DIY equipment, old kettles and broken laptops and – oh, I could go on!

I'd forgotten about the extent of my widowed dad's hoarding habit.

He looked shame- faced. 'Sorry love.'

I'd rent a storage unit instead...I hadn't anticipated moving back home at this mid- life stage. Well, he had a spare room and it was nearer to work for me.

I worked as a receptionist at a dental surgery.

At weekends, I didn't have the inclination for housework, so it was a good job that Dad had a cleaner. Audrey was a decade younger than Dad - red- haired, cheerful and efficient. 

I sighed. I hadn't expected to  be a 'silver splitter' – that's a fancy media term for couples over the age of 50 who had broken up.

I thought back to when James and I had first met...

                                                                 ***

 

James, a vet, was on the verge of getting engaged to someone else.

We begun chatting at the local Am Dram group.

The group usually went for a drink after rehearsals, but in the pub, James and I drifted towards our own table.

At the time, he'd lived with a woman called Ella for around fifteen years. She was a personal trainer. 

He showed me a pic of him and Ella on his phone – it was a silly snap, taken in their kitchen, with them grinning over a plate of pasta. They looked happy, but...

'That was taken a long time ago,' James muttered.

Ella was slim, pretty, freckled- faced and brown- haired. James told me she was always in the gym.

'I suppose I'd better propose,' he announced glumly.

'If you don't mind me saying, it doesn't sound as if you want to,' I remarked.

He pulled a face. 'She's been dropping hints.'

One thing led to another between us, so he split from Ella.

When we found a riverside apartment, busy with setting up home, we temporarily bid farewell to the Am Dram group.

We were in our late forties, and as we'd hadn't married, I hoped for a whirlwind engagement and wedding. 

'I wouldn't push him into it Bel, if I were you,' my colleague Amy had advised. 'Let's face it, he wasn't keen on committing to his ex, was he?'

It was a fair point but he was with me now, not Ella. Yet I kept my counsel. Amy was turning into a good friend.

Well, James and I had our careers to focus on. We often worked extra hours.

Time passed and sadly, intimacy wasn't the priority it should have been. 

Tired and stressed, James went to bed early.    

 

                                                                        ***

When James announced that he wanted a separation, it came as a shock.

'Do you want me to move out?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'There's an empty flat above the vet's. I can stay there for the time being.'

I blinked back tears. 'Do you still love me, James?'

He hesitated. 'I think so.'

I nodded. 'I think so' was better than an outright no. It gave me hope.

When he packed, I told myself that he just needed time out.

In a few weeks, I mused, he'll return with a rueful grin and admit to missing his home comforts - the river view, my cooking, and his office.

 

                                                                 ***

He didn't. James stopped answering my calls and texts. But I needed to talk to him about an unexpected bill.

The flat didn't have a landline apparently and he wasn't on social media, either.

I'd visited James's flat in the evening, but strangely there were no lights on and there wasn't a reply from the Intercom.

He was clearly out – but where had he gone? Had he re-joined the Am Dram group?

I didn't know what to do!

I could hardly storm into the vets and demand to see him.

Even if I did.. what if he was in the middle of an operation? I'd look a fool as I took a seat in the waiting area with a clutch of clients.

Eventually, I rang the vet's, only be told by a receptionist that she'd pass the message on to James.

The subtle tone was – don't pester us again, please Miss Crawford!

I sensed something amiss.                                                                           

 

                                                                        ***

'You keep on nagging, Bella. Look, I'll have a clear out when I'm good and ready.' Dad adjusted his tie in the mirror.

Irritation pricked. 'Hoarders always say that.'

He was dressed smart and I wondered if, instead of going to a pub darts night, he was actually seeing Audrey.

She was single, too. I couldn't blame him. We all needed company, didn't we?

'See you later, love. Don't wait up.' He trotted off, whistling.

I switched the TV on, ready for my favourite house hunting programme.

James and I had enjoyed watching this, too. Oh, how had our relationship dissolved beyond repair?

When my mobile rang, my spirit soared. It was James!

'Hi Bel. I'm ringing about the furniture.'

I was taken aback. 'Furniture?'

'My flat is missing the bare essentials. I wondered if we could come to some kind of arrangement? You're living with your dad, so you don't need a washing machine or a fridge freezer, do you?'

His bare- faced cheek took my breath way.

'It's all in storage, James.' In the background, I thought I heard a muffled woman's voice.

'Well, if I had it, you wouldn't need to pay the storage company fees,' he concluded chirpily.

'I guess not.'

The next day at work, I relayed the conversation to Amy, over lunch in a quiet cafe.

'There's no point dwelling on it, Bel. Move on. See it as a new start,' she urged.

'Hmm. I think he's secretly seeing someone.' I blurted it out without thinking.

Amy thought for a moment. 'You need to confront him about this other woman.'

I sighed. 'Why bother causing a fuss? I'm emotionally drained.'

'But surely you'd like to know why he's kept it secret? I mean, how long has this affair been going on?'

My mind flew back to the lack of intimacy, those early nights...he'd probably been talking to her on his phone.

So I took Amy's advice and rung him.

He finally fessed up. 'Yes, I've gone back to Ella. We're - er engaged.'

'Right.'

I should have known. They'd looked so content in that pasta snap.

He apologised for the deceit, but to be honest, I was past caring. Then I realised that I'd stopped loving him.                                                                 

Three months later, Amy's taken me on as a lodger. I've re-joined my Am dram group, too!

Oh, and I discovered that Dad was seeing Audrey -  they're a couple now.

I'm pleased for them. I just hope, as a neat freak, that she can get cracking clearing out his garage...

 About the author

 

Sharon is fitty- something and suffers from anxiety. Writing short stories acts as a kind of occupational therapy for her. Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)

Join the Club by Rob Molan, bitter lemon

I estimate that the combined age of the four of us on the committee is at least two hundred and fifty years but the others have not got any wiser as they’ve aged. The meeting has dragged on much longer than necessary due to Stanley’s pedantic chairmanship but thankfully we’ve reached the last item.  The heat in the room is becoming insufferable.

‘You’ve all seen, I assume, the recent editorial in the 'Gazette'.” Stanley opens up a copy of the paper. ‘As you know, this made some disparaging comments about us.’ He wrinkles his nose and reads from the offending publication. ‘Specifically, it commented how odd it was that Tatsby Social Club has never been known to have any members from the nearby village of Haston. Do they have a ban in place, we wonder?’

 

‘That new editor is trying to make a name for himself,’ mutters Harold before striking a match to light his pipe.

 

‘He's got a bloody cheek,’ snarls Ken. ‘Probably been got at by some sod in Haston, who’s envious we can buy a pint for fifteen pence while they have to pay a few pence more in their local.’  His shock of unkempt, white hair is more unruly than usual tonight.

 

‘Indeed. He’s clearly an over-promoted scribbler who's trying to stir up trouble.’ Beads of sweat are now appearing on Stanley’s bald head. ‘There has been a shocking decline in newspaper ethics in recent times.’

 

‘We have been advised in the past that there is nothing in our articles of association which prevent a resident of Haston from joining our club.’ I have to remind the others of this fact.

 

Stanley leans forward and studies me through his horn-rimmed glasses.

 

‘That maybe so, Les, but we don't want to broadcast that, do we?’

 

I hate the condescending way he talks to me.

 

‘No one has applied from there in the forty odd years I've been coming here.” Ken’s back is so straight it doesn’t touch the back of the chair. “If one of them rang up enquiring about membership, they were told that someone would get back to them. That never happened, of course, and they soon got the message.’

 

‘Having new members would bring in an extra few bob in takings. We're barely covering our costs these days.’  This is the umpteenth time I’ve reminded them we’re barely solvent. It’s hard being the treasurer in this place.

 

‘We don't want their bloody money,’ snaps Harold through clouds of smoke.

 

‘But the two communities share a lot of history. It would be good to intermingle.’ When I was a child, I loved it when we used to visit my uncle there.

 

‘Get away with you.’ Ken jabs a finger at me.  ‘The place is full of inbreds and they like a bit of fisticuffs after they've had a few pints. This place would go to rack and ruin if they were admitted.’ 

 

‘My late mother-in-law was born inl Haston,’ says Harold, lowering the corners of his mouth.

 

‘Enough said,’ murmurs Ken.

 

Stanley leans towards me.

 

“I think you have a rosy-eyed view of the place, Les. I remember when we held the joint jamboree to celebrate the Coronation, the Haston lot gobbled up the meat sandwiches before we could get a look in and then helped themselves to the biggest cream cakes.’

 

‘And they didn’t pay their share of the marquee rental either,’ adds Harold, raising his bushy, grey eyebrows.

 

Stanley clears his throat.

 

‘I think it is agreed that this scurrilous article should be ignored.’ He looks me in the eye as he speaks. ‘This week's Gazette will be fish and chip paper in a few days’ time and their pompous editor will no doubt have moved on to some other spurious campaign.’

I bite my tongue.

 

‘I call the meeting to an end. We can now adjourn to the bar for a pint or two of mild.  'A Question of Sport' will be starting soon on BBC1 and young Bobby Moore is on the panel this week.’

There must have been a function in here earlier as the room stinks of ciggies and stale beer. I notice the picture of Her Majesty on the wall is hanging askew.

 

The door opens and Stanley waddles in looking flustered.

 

‘Apologies gentlemen for being late. My moped wouldn’t start and I had to walk here.’

 

He hangs up his coat, sits down and pulls some papers out of his briefcase.

 

‘Thank you for attending this extraordinary meeting of the committee. I've received two vexatious letters which we need to consider. The first is from a man called Collins from Haston applying to join our club, together with a postal order for fifty pence to cover the membership fee.’

 

‘No doubt he was put up to it by that bloody paper,’ Ken snarls.                  

 

‘It was certainly most improper of him to have applied without talking to me first,’ says Stanley.

 

‘Typical Haston behaviour,’ mumbles Harold. The white shirt which he is wearing is too tight for him and his double chin hangs over the collar

 

‘Can't you just pretend you never received it?’ asks Ken.

 

‘Not really. It was hand delivered,’ responds Stanley with a frown.

‘Just tell him we're full up,’ says Harold.

 

‘The place is empty during the week,’ I pipe up. ‘Anybody passing could tell that by looking through the window. The takings on those nights don’t cover the heating and lighting costs and….’

 

Stanley jumps in.

            ‘But if he came on a Friday or Saturday night, the queue for the bar would be that much longer. We're already getting lots of complaints already about the slowness of service.’  He shakes his head.

 

‘If we let one in, the floodgates would open,’ says Harold.

             ‘A point well made,’ comments Stanley. ‘I suggest we now turn to the second letter which arrived by post this morning from a solicitor called Alan Jones claiming to represent Collins.’ Stanley lays the letter out in front of him. ‘It says that if we refuse his client's application without good reason, he will take legal proceedings against us. He claims the courts have ruled against a number of clubs who refused to accept applications for membership from certain groups in society.’

 

‘What’s the world coming to if men can’t decide who they drink with?’  Harold rolls his eyes.

 

‘He's a flaming Quisling that Jones.’ Ken bangs the table with a fist. ‘He was born and bred in Tatsby but developed hoity-toity ways after going to university and opening his own practice in the city.’ Judging by the smell of his breath, he’s already had a few.

 

‘He's bluffing,’ says Harold.  ‘Collins won't have the brass to pay the legal fees.’

 

I have to correct him.  ‘I wouldn't be so sure about that. He's a coal merchant and owns several lorries.’ 

 

Harold looks daggers at me but I plough on.

 

‘We would have to pay a lawyer to defend any action against us and we’ve not got the money to do that.’

 

The room falls silent for a few seconds before Ken erupts.

 

‘Which side are you on, Les?’ he shouts. ‘Always worried about the pennies but not about doing what’s right.’ His spittle goes flying over the table.

 

‘Calm down, man,’ says Stanley sharply.

 

Ken grunts and falls back in his chair.

 

‘I’m sure any judge with a shred of common sense would refuse to hear the case as it would be a waste of the court's time."  Stanley pulls a pocket watch out of his waistcoat and glances at it. "Some of us now have a darts match to take part in. I don’t think we should be rushed into deciding how to respond to these letters so I propose we reconvene in a week's time to determine what to do.’

 

 

My resignation letter is sitting on the sideboard. It was hard to write as I've been a member for decades, following in the steps of my father and grandfather. But I've had enough of the place.  I can no longer remain on a committee of dinosaurs who can’t see they’re heading for extinction. Furthermore, the last two nights I've popped in the bar nobody spoke to me, no doubt because someone (probably Ken) had been blabbing about my comments on admitting members from Haston. I'll pop down to the Post Office after lunch and get a stamp for the letter.

 

The telephone starts ringing and I get up from my armchair to answer it.

 

‘Tatsby 1586,’ I say.

 

‘Good morning, Les. It's Tracey from the ‘Gazette’. Remember we spoke a few days ago?’

 

‘"I do.’ She was trying to get me to comment on their editorial but I kept schtum.

 

‘I understand you were unable to attend last night's meeting of the Tatsby Social Club management committee.’ I could hear the relief in Stanley’s voice when I rang him to tender my apologies. ‘They've just faxed us a statement which I'd welcome your comments on.’

‘

"What does it say?’

            ‘’The committee have decided that, with immediate effect, existing members will be able to bring wives and girlfriends with them to the club and, to that end, the bar will start to stock Babycham and Dubonnet; and in anticipation of increased numbers being present on the premises, new applications for membership cannot be considered for the foreseeable future to comply with fire regulations.’

 

The cunning beggars.

 

‘It’s great they’re moving with the times. Don’t you agree?’

 

I take a deep breath.

‘

‘I’ve got nothing to say on the matter. As a widower, the change will not benefit me. Thanks for calling.’

 

I put the telephone back down on the receiver. If I'd ever suggested letting lasses in, they would have shouted me down. They’ll be moaning before you know it about giggling young women spoiling the atmosphere and their wives talking too much. Still, they’ve made their bed and they’ll have to lie on it.

 

I’ll go down to the British Legion tonight. My brother will be there and I’m sure he’ll be happy to sponsor me if I apply for membership. They’ve got a better range of ales on offer there.

 

About the author

  Rob lives in Edinburgh started writing short stories during lockdown. To date, he's had several tales published by Cafe Lit and others in various anthologies. He likes to experiment with different genres and styles of writing. 

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