Fiction: Words Across Generations by Kimberly Hallman

Photo Source: Pickpik

“Honey, I’m home!” Silence answers me as I drop my purse on the armchair and hang my coat in the closet, but I know he’s home. Charlie’s presence fills the house, dank and heavy. There was a time coming home to him was like wrapping myself in a warm blanket, but now, I’m suffocating in the material.

            I find him exactly where I knew he would be – in his home office, hunched over the computer screen. Next to him, a pile of dirty dishes wobbles precariously with his every movement, threatening to fall. Only months ago, I would have cleaned them up without a word. Now, I just stare at them through narrowed eyes, breathing through gritted teeth.

            “What’s for dinner?” I ask.

            “I don’t know.”

            “You haven’t started it yet?”

            “Just order out or something.” His eyes still haven’t left the screen.

            “We just ordered out two nights ago! Can’t you just throw something together?”

            “I don’t have time right now.”

            “I don’t have time right now.” My father’s voice echoes in my memories, speaking the words I heard him utter time and time again.

            “I know you’re busy, but I need the car tomorrow to get to work.” My mother’s voice is endlessly gentle, in spite of her constant frustration. “Can you see if you can fix it?”

            I sit at the dinner table between them, my feet swinging under the chair, my pigtails dangling over my half-empty plate, trying to block out the most recent in a long series of arguments.

            “I’ve been working on cars all day, Melanie. The last thing I want to do is look at another car.”

            “Then can you call the garage?”

            “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

            “Why don’t you do it yourself?” Charlie looks up at me, his expression a mix of annoyance and expectation. “We don’t need anything fancy. Just throw together something simple.”

            My face grows hot at the suggestion. “You know I can’t cook. I wouldn’t know where to start, and you don’t keep any frozen meals that I could just throw in the oven.”

            “Why would I? Food made from scratch is healthier and tastes better.”

            “Maybe, but what good is that when you won’t cook?”

            Charlie blanches, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. Dividing the household responsibilities the way we had was his idea – he cooks, I clean. Simple. At least that was the idea.

            “Are you saying I’m not pulling my weight?”

            “Are you saying I’m not pulling my weight?” Mom’s voice is building, her frustration making her bolder. I sink into my chair, wishing it would swallow me and spit me out somewhere far away from here.

            “Who makes the real money? Who keeps everything in the house working? Last time I checked, it wasn’t you! For God’s sake, you can’t even call the damn garage!”

            “It’s not as if I spend every day sitting in front of the television. Somehow, I manage to find time to go to work for eight hours a day and then come home and cook for you and clean the house!”

            “Clean? When was the last time you cleaned?”

            “When was the last time you cleaned?” Charlie fires back at me, shot for shot, and now I’m the one wearing a guilty expression.

            “I cleaned on Saturday,” I tell him, not quite lying. It wasn’t the first time I’d done the bare minimum to make the house a little closer to presentable. To say a few tasks were avoided or ignored would be an understatement.

            “Really? Then why is there a pile of dirty laundry in the bedroom, a stack of dishes in the sink, and a floor in desperate need of a mop?”

            “Do you think I sit on my butt all day?” My frustration, embarrassment and anger all come bubbling out of my gut and spewing out of my mouth. “I do it when I find the time. You’re not the only one who’s busy!”

            “You’re not the only one who’s busy!” My tears fail to capture Mom’s attention as she lets loose everything she’s kept locked behind her wall of makeup and good manners. “At least I don’t hang out with work friends and call it a business meeting!”

            “No, you just sit and gossip with every busybody in town!”

            Mom’s face darkens, and she hisses her words through her clenched teeth. “They are my friends, and I have lunch with them once a week! Am I not allowed to have a life?”

            “Am I not allowed to have a life?” The air feels thin, and the room begins to shrink. Is this my life? Just a cycle of work, housework, and sleep, over and over again until I collapse? Is that what Charlie expects from me? Just like Dad expected from Mom, until she couldn’t take it anymore.

            “Whoa! I never said that!” Charlie holds up his hands defensively, and his expression changes – wide eyes and raised eyebrows replace the annoyed scowl, and I realize, he’s scared. Of me? “I was just frustrated that things were piling up; the mess makes me agitated.”

            It’s too much; it’s all too much. The laundry, the dishes, the sweeping, the vacuuming, the cooking. Task upon task, all just sitting there, waiting for me to take them on, to fight with them until I’ve conquered them, but I don’t want to fight anymore.

            I collapse into the chair across the room from Charlie. “I’m just so tired.” 

            “I’m just so tired.” Mom’s voice is quiet, barely above a whisper, but in the silent room that Dad left behind, I hear it as clearly as if she’d shouted it.

            The argument is over, won by Dad, as they always are. For perhaps the first time, Mom put up a valiant fight, but it made no difference. Now that the battle over, she is left questioning everything – marriage, motherhood, love itself. And I, still sitting at the table, staring at the aftermath, have been caught in the crossfire and then left to limp along behind them, picking up the pieces and assembling them into some semblance of a heart.

            She gets up from the table, and I shrink from the chilling calm that surrounds her like a cloud. As she walks out the door, leaving the room and my life, I hear her last words. “I can’t do this anymore.”

            “I can’t do this anymore,” I say with my last bit of energy.

            “What do you mean?” Charlie is out of his desk chair and standing in front of me, his eyes searching me for answers. “Can’t do what anymore?”

            “This,” I say, widely gesturing to the room. “All of it. The cleaning, the errands, the fighting, the—”

            “Hold on, the fighting?” I barely raise my head to meet Charlie’s eyes, but when I do, there’s no anger there, just wide-eyed confusion. “We had one argument!”

            “This isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last,” I tell him. “And how many times have I dropped an issue just because I didn’t want another fight?”

            “I-I had no idea you did that.”

            “You didn’t?”

            “No.”

            We stare at each other, marinating in the uncomfortable silence, until finally, Charlie kneels down in front of me and takes my hand in his. “Talk to me, babe. Please.”

            His hands are warm against my skin, and his eyes are full of concern. He doesn’t yell, he doesn’t demand, he doesn’t dismiss me and walk out of the room.

            “It’s just too much,” I say. Four simple words, but speaking them aloud opens me up, and I can breathe easier. “I can’t get it all done, and even when I do, I have no energy to do anything else. I barely make it through the day, and then I have to do it all again the next day. I’m carrying so much, and if I can’t put it all down, I will either drop it all or be crushed by it.”

            “Then ask for help.” One of Charlie’s hands squeezes mine while the other brushes my hair away from my face. “I don’t want to lose you, not because of some stupid fight, and not because you’re burnt out, and definitely not because I don’t know what you’re going through. I don’t want to be the one piling things on; I want to be the one who helps you carry the load.”

            His arms wrap around me, and he pulls me close to him, and in that moment, I feel supported in a way that gives me hope. Charlie is not my father; I am not my mother, and where they failed, perhaps, we will not.

Kimberly Hallman lives with her husband in Pennsylvania. After over a decade in early childhood education, she pivoted to writing and editing in 2021. Her short stories have been featured in Flash Fiction Magazine’s 101 Words, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Flash Phantoms. When she is not writing, Hallman can usually be found reading or crocheting. Follow her on Bluesky to learn more about her work: https://bsky.app/profile/kimberlyhallman.bsky.social