2: The Widowed Soccer Mom

Sarah Benn

Monday, 2nd March 2015

7:31am

Sarah looked at her distorted reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed some pain-killers and popped two pills into her open palm. She put them in her mouth and lowered her head to the faucet, allowing the tap water to wash the pills down her throat. She’d slept badly and her head throbbed painfully.

After straightening up and wiping her mouth on her sleeve Sarah opened the bathroom door to call out to her son. “James if you don’t hurry you’re going to miss the bus!”

Sarah knew her eight year old son was sitting at the breakfast table absorbed in his new game console.

“Hang on, I’ve almost beat the Gym Leader,” he yelled back. She heard him clicking buttons furiously.

“Save it now,” his mother ordered as she marched into the kitchen. “Or I’ll confiscate it.”

“But you can’t save in the middle of a battle, Mom!” he cried desperately.

“New rule; no game-boy until after school, once you’ve done all of your homework.”

“It’s not a game-boy,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “It’s a Nintendo 3DS XL. Duh.”

“Well pause your Nintendo 3DS XL and plug it into the wall while you’re at school.”

“Ugh. Fine.” He plugged the game into its power cord.

“Now, go, go, go!” Sarah ushered him from the kitchen and towards the front door as she heard the bus pull up outside their house. James retrieved his backpack, which he’d abandoned in the hall the previous day.

It was raining outside so he balanced the bag on top of his head as he ran to meet the bus.

“Bye!” Sarah called from the front door. “Have a good day!”

James didn’t reply; his friends were watching from the bus, and ever since his eighth birthday he was adamant that he was too old for a kiss goodbye. It was embarrassing enough, he said, that she waved from the door wearing her dressing gown and slippers. Other moms went to work.

As the bus pulled away from the curb the mailman walked up the garden path, flicking through a stash of envelopes.

“Hey Mrs. Benn. Miserable day, isn’t it?” he said, handing Sarah an electricity bill and a royalty check.

“I feel sorry for you, Erik, working in this weather,” Sarah replied. “How’s your wife?”

Erik was in his sixties, and his wife was sickly. He’d been Sarah’s mailman for the last ten years.

“Ah, she’s all right,” he said, looking up at Sarah’s gutters. They were clogged with leaves and beginning to flood. Great streams of water cascaded from the roof like miniature waterfalls, splashing upon the porch and soaking the feet of anyone who came to the front door. “I think you need to get someone in to unclog those,” he said. “I’m getting trench-foot just standing here.”

“Darrell was the one who took care of that stuff,” she said, “And Chris isn’t exactly the handy type. He’s more … academic. Guess I’ll have to call a man in.”

Erik looked guilty as he handed Sarah a stack of envelopes. “Sorry Sarah … I didn’t think-“

“It’s fine. It was five years ago. Try to stay warm, okay?”

Erik tipped his hat and bade Sarah goodbye as she stepped into the house and closed the front door on the swamp developing on her front lawn.

Sarah opened her electricity bill, which was always higher than she expected. She blamed it on James’ video game consoles.

Before Sarah’s husband had died she was a freelance writer. She’d even assisted in ghost-writing for some well-known personalities. Sarah had been unable to write anything remotely interesting since Darrell had died. The words refused to come to her and she often found herself sitting in front of the computer staring at a blank screen for hours on end.

Now that James had gone to school Sarah was left to her own devices. Her boyfriend, Chris, wouldn’t come over until at least five-thirty. He was a history teacher at a very prestigious private high-school. The kind that wore blazers and ties and cost about twenty-thousand dollars a year to attend.

Chris was a great guy and quite handsome, a fact proven by the number of female students that constantly sent him love-letters. He had asked Sarah to marry him on their one-year anniversary. She had said no. It was too soon and he was too eager to jump into things. Their relationship had struggled through the rejection, but Sarah was adamant that she would not marry again, not after she had lost the father of her child.

However, Chris was persistent. On their third anniversary, just a month ago, he had proposed again. This time she had agreed to be his fiancé, but would not marry him for another few years, when her son was old enough to understand.