Waves of steam arose from the Spaghetti entangled and dripping in the rich bolognaise sauce. Mum shakily poured out dad another glass of wine. Four placemats were set out yet only 3 were at the table.
"Mikey! Come down please. Dinners here." Called mum. As expected, Mikey would shuffle down the stairs and mope about til he found his seat. Our usual routine consisted of Mum calling Mikey who would eventually come and then we could all enjoy dinner together as a family. Mum shakily poured out dad another glass of wine. Everyone was in a content silence as we all savoured the taste until dad broke it.
"And how was everyone's day?"
We all looked up and chipped in with the mumble of "good" or "fine", carefully picking words which couldn't offend him.
"Good. Why can't it be great? It's always good. It's always fine. God gave us words. Use them." He said looking at us all. We instantly looked down at our food. Someone would have to go first.
"Dad, my day was good because although I was tripped up on the way to school, Mary gave me a half of her twirl bar." I said. "Thanks for asking though." I added. "How was yours?"
"Oh mine?" Shit, I could feel everything was abut to go wrong. It was like a premonition or a gut instinct. Dad was going to end up shouting. Seeing his glass empty, mum shakily poured out another glass of wine.
"Give me the damn bottle." He shouted as he snatched it off her, "You pour as if I'm a child. Right, You want to know about my day. Ok, well, I woke up asking God why he blessed me with such a lousy, stingey-wine-pouring wife. Then I asked him why he gave me two ungrateful little gits for children. Then I asked him why everyone was so dumb as to not give me a job. Then I asked him why did he give jobs to the gits who wouldn't give me a job. Then I asked him why he would want to bestow me with bills that I cannot pay. Then I asked him why did..." he paused and took a glug from the bottle. "Why did he give me two kids who contribute to the expense of the bills. Then I asked him why did I have to be the unlucky sod whos contraception failed him twice, TWICE! Then I asked him to kill me before dinner time where I would have to sit and talk to you!" I winced as he emphasized his harsh, mean words.
And then it came. My word vomit. I couldn't help it. I had been wretching for months to say it and now it was going to come thick and fast.
"DAD... You ungrateful git! If mum wasn't so bloody scared of you, we would have been gone by now. You are rusting our family away and you don't even realize it because you are to drunk to remember! Mum should be praying and asking why she was blind to fall in love with such a completely drunk, lazy man like you. We shouldn't even consider you as a father. You can't get a job because you don't turn up to most of the interviews and if you do, you're too drunk to even have anyone take you seriously. Your contraception propbably failed you because you were probably too drunk to even remember it! And now I am wishing we could all die because I can't bear the thought of spending another meal time with you!"
"I thought you wanted children, Richy???" Mum whispered, tears brewing in her eyes.
Completely ignoring her, dad stabbed me with his eyes. "You wish you were dead do you? Congratulations darling, you're going to be!"
He launched at me. Crazy, he was. Mental. He threw his hands around my neck and hung on for dear life. "Devil's child" He screamed as he attacked me. I couldn't see anything. I could only hear mum screaming and crying, petrified. He was doing a good job for once as he put his all into seeing the death of me.
Smash! Mum gasped. Green shards of glass spattered everywhere. Dad suddenly became paralysed and lossened his grip as he fell to the floor. Mikey shuffled back to his seat and stared at his dinner.
Everyone imediately fell silent. Mikey turned to mum, "Thanks" he mumbled as he passed his plate to her before shuffling back upstairs.
What I particularly liked about this piece was the way you twist and escalate a simple discussion about the day into something with potentially disastrous consequences and the presentation of the (presumably oldest) child as the principle challenge to the Father's authority. The rhetorical device of the Father repeating his questioning of God out loud and therefore raising the tension and issues facing these people is also great.
ReplyDeleteThe Father is both villainous and endearing you have put across the subtleties of his character. I think you could spend more time developing the other characters, the Mother and Mikey in particular, but as they are not central to the scene it's not a big issue here. What motivates your narrator and these characters other than exasperation, disappointment and outright anger with the Father?
I felt that, although compelling as a scene, the violent ending was a little far fetched and over-wrought, and eventually unconvincing. The shift in tone of the piece is too much, changing from a subtle portrayal of dysfunctional family dynamic to, in a way, farce. Often the most effective way of portraying violence is to not mention or show it in full, merely imply. Especially odd is how Mikey deals with the situation, I would think there would be more trauma involved than you allow for.
There are some spelling errors here and there ('lossened', in the penultimate paragraph springs to mind), and one question mark is always enough. Always thoroughly read through your work before submitting anywhere.
Really this only needs a few small adjustments to make it very strong.
S.
Hi there
ReplyDeleteA great lead in to the scene here by starting with the wafting bolognese - it really sets us up well, and invokes a sense of smell as well as more visual descriptors to put us in the scene. It gives us instant immediacy and a good idea of what kind of scene we're expecting - some family dinner-table drama.
I agree that the progression to violence seems too accelerated - we don't have enough of a sense of backstory/characterisation/internalised thoughts of the narrator to make this lunge&stranglehold from the dad seem natural. One thing which I think would help a lot would be to chop up your dialogue quite a bit more and intersperse with actions or internal thoughts/memories etc. It keeps the pace up and stops dialogue from feeling too explanatory or staged.
I like the repetition of the mother pouring the father a glass of wine. I like how it builds significance as the piece develops. To make an even better use of this, though, I think you should cut 'shakily' - for one thing, it makes the repetition too intrusive, but principally, I think it gives away too much at the start. If we begin by thinking it's just a neutral action, then it gives more of a sense of drama as we are only gradually being clued in to the darkness behind the family scene.
Good job with this, and indeed all year! It's been great reading your pieces
claire