Ups and downs (An Original Very Short Story)
Tami had a worried look on her face. Holding the baby in her hands, she scanned through the passengers of the Tokyo-Los Angeles flight.
Ten months ago she told her boyfriend Franky that she was pregnant. Franky scratched his head and shook it with understanding. His parents liked her – she cooked well and knew how to behave at the dinner table. So he didn't mind. Only he wanted to make sure it was his kid.
The test revealed differently.
‘Damn, how could this happen?’ Tami bit her lip in deep thought. ‘Unless it was that soldier she spent the night with to get back at Franky. Boy, did he have her going in circles.’
After the baby was born, Tami found the soldier serving and at the Naval base in Okinawa. He didn't mind. It was his baby. He said he'd fly to LA first chance he'd get.
And now Tami was worried. She remembered him from the waist down very well, but the face…
I'm afraid I couldn't help laughing when I read that line about Franky not minding Tami being pregnant (I guess meaning he would be willing to marry her) because she "knew how to behave at the table."
Suddenly, I'm thinking- what, is Tami a chimpanzee? And I'm seeing her at dinner with Franky's folks: napkin tucked daintily under her chin, silverware clenched in hairy fists on either side of her empty plate, staring intently at Franky's Dad a few seats down...
...and NOT jumping on the table, reaching back under her dress into her diaper and grabbing a handful of poo to fling at him for not passing the potatoes fast enough.
The way all Franky's previous girlfriends used to do.
Hee.
Anyway, that said... the plot and the suggested questionable relationship between Tami and Franky AND the "open ending," taken together, were "edgy" enough that I am left wishing this were a longer story. So I could enjoy all the missing bits this shortie leaves for me to only imagine.
Such as what, exactly, DOES Tami's knowing "how to behave at the table" actually MEAN?
Anyway- nice read. Thanks for posting it.
Thank you. This is so sweet of you.
I imagined Franky being a very simple basic guy, who doesn't really know how to behave at the dinner table. That is to know which side of the plate to put two knives and two forks, which glass is for wine and which is for water, how long one supposed to wait after the prayer before putting your spoon in a soup, etc. So when they both sat at the dinner table with Franky’s parents, the parents were impressed seeing that Franky finally did it right and figured whose influence this was. And yes she didn’t jump on the table and did other similar damage.
Thank you again