Love in a Mist
by Owen Banner
Wordcount: 2103
Genre: Suspense
Synopsis:
Elm lays awake at night, listening to the quiet whirr of his dad running the push mower over the grass in the backyard. Mom left a month ago and things haven’t been right ever since. As Elm watches his father through his bedroom window, he recalls the changes he saw in his mother before she left, and the changes in his father after.
First 500 words:
Dad’s at it again–mowing the lawn. I smell the grass and hear the quiet whirr of his pushreel mower even through my closed bedroom window. It fogs up with my breath, and I rub my palm over it to clear the fog away, hearing the squeaky rubbery sound of skin on glass. Mom left a month ago, and, since then, Dad’s been out there every couple of days.
It used to be their thing. He’d cut the grass in his riding mower. Mom planted flowers: powdery lavender, sweet white and pink peonies, yellow California poppies that closed up at night, and bright pink azaleas that looked like trumpets bursting open with so much color. Her favorites, though, were the Love-in-a-Mist bushes. They’ve got pale blue stars for flowers with wispy green veins stretching out behind them. She said they were a perfect cottage flower.
A few years ago, at a garage sale, she’d bought a beat-up garden gnome with a red hat, blue pants, and dirt smudged all through his white beard. She always put him right in the middle of the Love-in-a-Mist. It drove Dad nuts. He complained about it every time we grilled out in the backyard.
The gnome’s gone now. Mom must have taken it with her. The peonies are dead. All that’s left of the California poppies are their grey-green leaves and stems.
I can’t see them now, anyway, because it’s nighttime, but I can see the line of freshly cut grass that Dad’s leaving as he walks the imaginary boundary between our yard and our neighbor’s. He’s wearing grey sweatpants and a zip-up hoodie because it’s getting colder at night. His white tennis shoes are slick with dew and spattered with blades of grass like bugs on a windshield. Before mom left, he kept his face shaved. Now he’s got a week-old beard climbing up his neck. It’s a lighter brown than the hair on his head–the part of his head that isn’t bald. The beard’s closer to the copper on the rims of the glasses he’s wearing.
Dad passes by the California poppies with his mower singing, to himself, “I can’t go for that. Oh, no can do,” by Hall and Oats, his favorite band. He pushes the mower from one side of the yard to the other, tripping the motion sensor spotlights like he’s on stage at a concert. He passes by the two trees on the right, then doubles back.
When I was born, Dad named me after his dad, Elmer. I don’t know why he did it, because we only see my Grampa at Veteran’s Day and the Fourth of July. The day I was born, though, dad planted an Elm tree in the back yard. Two years later, my mom got pregnant again. “And this time,” she said, “I get to name the baby.” She picked “Ashton” for my brother and planted an Ash tree beside the Elm.
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