The BLT is a variety of sandwich containing Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato. The sandwich traditionally has about three strips of fried bacon, leaves of lettuce (traditionally iceberg or romaine), and slices of tomato, all sandwiched between slices of bread or toast which is commonly spread with mayonnaise. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Want me to make you one too, hun?”
“No thanks, Dad. I had a bite earlier. Just this tea is fine.”
“I don’t mind. I’m already making one for your mother.”
She watched his slow yet precise movements around the kitchen. He’d always been the cook in the family, taking simple pleasure in the routines. He opened the fridge, took out the bacon, turned to the cutting board, picking up a knife on the way. He cut off two thick slices, placed them in the pan, back to the fridge with the bacon – part of a smooth dance that he’d done for years.
“I’m making her favorite,” he said, “a BLT. Fresh bread from Henderson’s, bacon nice and crispy, a tomato from our garden, some mixed greens, and light mayonnaise. Tell you what, I’ll split it between the two of you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “So, have you thought about what we talked about?”
“Chelsea Lodge? I don’t know hun, this has always been our home. You grew up here, all our friends are in the neighbourhood.” He gestured around the room. “How could we leave all this?”
“Dad, most of the old neighborhood gang have moved away. Some are even in the same retirement home, don’t you remember when we went last week to see it? And all those friends greeted you and said how much they loved it there?”
“Yes, yes, I remember now,” he said.
She sighed quietly. His memory had really started to slip the past few months. She watched as he took some tongs from a drawer and carefully turned over the bacon pieces.
“Can’t let it cook too fast,” he said.
“We did see a nice unit there, remember Dad? A cosy bedroom, nice sitting room, and a compact kitchen. You could make your own little snacks there. And if you felt like a change, the dining room is quite nice. You’d been impressed with the meal we had there.”
He poked at the bacon, picked it out of the pan and laid it on a paper towel. He carefully sliced some bread, placed it in the toaster, and pushed the lever down. Her father glanced over to the table. “Your mom and I met fifty years ago, you know, and we bought this place together. I’d miss her so much. And I don’t like being alone.”
“She’d never be far from you, Dad. And we’d all come to visit you often. It’s only a few miles away.”
“I know,” he said. “But it’s a big change. My goodness, what would we do with all this stuff?”
“Dan and I have lots of storage,” she said. “We can help you sort through things, separate what you really need now from what you might need later. And maybe you’ll find some things you’ve enjoyed but can now pass on to the needy.”
He plucked the toast out as it popped, buttered it carefully, then spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on both slices.
“We really have settled in here,” he said. “It’s been a long and happy life together.”
He added the bacon, tomato, and greens, slowly and methodically, sliced it in half, and set the two plates on the table.
“There you go, for my two favorite girls.”
She enjoyed her half-sandwich and watched her dad clean up the kitchen, listening to him chatter on about some TV show. He wasn’t doing too badly physically. She’d hired a weekly housekeeper to help with some laundry and vacuuming, and to try to manage all the leftovers in the fridge.
“Thanks, Dad, this was nice. Sorry I have to run, but I’ll be back next week.”
“We’re always glad to see you,” he said. “I’ll get your coat.”
She picked up both plates, hers and the untouched one across the table. As she tipped the other half-sandwich into the garbage and stacked the plates in the sink, she wondered how long it would take him to adjust to his loss. She pushed in her chair, and walked into the front hall.
“Take care, Dad. We’ll talk some more in a few days.”
The End
*****
Filed under: Guest Writers | Tagged: bacon, BLT, Dad, flash fiction, kitchen, Making A Sandwich, mayonnaise, Mike Young, old neighborhood, tomato | 2 Comments »
Writing About Death
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I’ve never been to a funeral. I don’t like them. I know, most people don’t like them but most people do not refuse to go. When my father died a few years ago, Mom had him cremated like he wanted to be and there was no funeral. That was fine with me.
My father and I had a real love/hate relationship. Early in his marriage he was a wife beater. He would get drunk and beat up my mother. By the time I was a teenager the beatings had stopped but as soon as I became 18 I dropped out of college and joined the army because I didn’t want to be around him. That’s how I ended up in Vietnam.
To this day I can’t help but to cringe at the beatings and the fact that I was the oldest son and could do nothing to protect my mother.
Of course, I know now that I was too young to do anything about the beatings, but the guilt of not protecting my mother will be with me for the rest of my life.
Of such things are flash fiction stories made from.
********************
Hills Beyond The Bridge
He was too weak to get out of bed and slept on his back under a white sheet in the white room, only his head uncovered by the sheet. I sat in a chair beside the bed. Another skeletal old man slept under a white sheet in the other bed. Through the screen of the open window I could see a railway bridge with green hills beyond the bridge, the bright blue sky full of swiftly moving white clouds. On the white pillow, my father’s dark brown thin face began to turn toward me. He was cleanly shaved. What hair he had was cut close to the scalp. The room smelled of urine.
“Hugo?” the face said. “Is that you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s me, Dad.”
“Is your mother here?”
“Tammy’s bringing Mom.”
He was trying to make me out. I was fifty-six and he was ninety-two and his sight was nearly gone.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked.
“I’m doing okay, Dad.”
“School okay?” he asked.
“School’s fine. I might even have a talent for teaching. Better late than never.”
“That’s right, champ.”
In his youth he’d been a pretty good light heavyweight. He’d fought under the lights of Madison Square Garden. The face seemed to be smiling at me. I couldn’t tell.
“I’m going to be published,” I said.
“Good, good,” my father said. “That’s what you always wanted.”
“It’s just a local weekly, but they want to showcase my stories.”
“Good.”
“Maybe someone will want to publish the entire collection, but at least it’ll help me get a job after my fellowship runs out.”
“You staying in Pittsburgh?”
“I’ll never leave Pittsburgh.”
“It’s a good town,” he said.
“It’s a good town.”
“It’s been a good town for me and your mother. I wasn’t always good in it but it’s a good town.”
“It’s a good town.”
“Well,” he said, “you kept at it all these years.”
“All these years.”
I had just turned twenty when I got back from Vietnam and told him I was going to be a writer. He told me writing was a hobby for rich white boys. During the year I was in Vietnam I sent home to Mom most of my pay. It was this that he had used to get my two brothers and two sisters, all younger than I was, and Mom out of the ghetto and into the suburbs. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been trying to get them out. He was a truly fine electric welder at J&L and then US Steel and he drove a jitney out of the Hill District, too. It was just that he could never get them out until I sent home those nice, fat checks every month for a year.
“Maybe,” he said, “maybe things would have happened for you sooner if you didn’t have to help me.”
My throat tightened up. “I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready in my twenties or my thirties or even in my forties.” For years I drank too much, slept around and had contempt for regular employment. It’s probably why now I don’t have a woman and family of my own. I’ve always been a bad bet. The reason I joined the army at eighteen was to get away from him coming home drunk and beating up my mother. I wanted to kill him.
“No, Dad, I wasn’t ready.”
“Well,” he said, “I want to thank you for what you did.”
My throat tightened up.
He said, “Now you got your shot.”
“I got my shot.”
Footsteps were coming down the hall. I looked around. Mom and my sister Tammy came quietly into the room.
The End
********************
The Writing Of “Hills Beyond The Bridge”
My father was a wife beater but then he was the only father I had. He’d stopped beating my mother around the time I was thirteen years old but the memory of the beatings is why I left home as soon as I turned eighteen and could sign myself into the army.
My father had many good qualities. He was a proud, dark-skin black man who had grown up in the South and suffered all the humiliations of segregation. He came North and became a good professional boxer and after his boxing days were over and he gave up his hand-to-mouth small time mob activities (because of my mother) he took a steady job as a welder in the steel mills of Pittsburgh earning a very good living for a working class man (black or white) for his growing family. My mother was the reason for his transformation to respectable, hard-working middle class husband and father. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he did like his liquor.
Whenever he and my mother went out and he drank he’d come home and beat her up. She was a beautiful, fair-skinned black woman, a natural brunette, and I think in some ways she must have been threatening to him. He got jealous if other men looked at her. When she stopped going out with him the beatings stopped.
Although he instilled in me the ideas of mental toughness, pride in learning and being good at a skill (writing for me) and pride in my manhood, the memories of the beatings filled me with shame and anger. I loved and feared him and at times probably hated him. I know after he died my dreams were full of the two of us angrily shouting at each other and a couple of times coming to blows.
“Hills Beyond The Bridge” is my fictional record of the last time I saw my father. There was no funeral. He was cremated. As with much of my fiction the story is 90% true.
Guy Hogan (Editor/Publisher)
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