Line of Sight

A work of flash fiction where an act of careless, open betrayal ignites an impassioned fervor for sovereignty….

by: Claire Massey

She tries to resist another trek to the window. Tries and fails. His car has been in Veronica’s driveway far too long for a simple inspection of a leaky pipe.

Twenty-one years of marriage and he never once offered to “thin the woods” between their house and what was once the Landrums’ unmolested patch of pine saplings and wild petunia, which had formed a sort of benign barrier she rather enjoyed.

Thanks to new neighbor Veronica’s coquettishly distressed damsel act, performed in short-shorts and a halter top, she now has an unobstructed view across Veronica’s lawn to the front of her house. But the shuttered living room windows share no secrets today. Her breath comes shallow, fogs the window. Who wears a top the size of a child’s kerchief in February? And what kind of fool falls for such stunts? She wipes the moisture away. Calm down. You’ve got this.

He fled two hours prior, as if running from a five-alarm fire, yelling that a tearful Veronica had called about a vicious leak spewing beneath her kitchen sink. But he never came back for his tools. She walks the length of the house to the screened-in back porch, re-stations herself on the long-legged wicker stool which affords a view of Veronica’s back door, the one that opens into the mud room. She knows the layout because Penny Landrum was her friend. But Veronica is a different animal, a throwback to the 1950s, a wanna-be trophy wife barking up the tree of another wanna-be.

Veronica’s back door finally inches open and it’s a slow-motion exposure of two middle-agers sucking face like teenagers. It looks as though the sloppy send-off is cancelled when he kicks the door closed for more. 

So, you like helpless, do you, she asks the absent husband in the empty room. Helpless costs. Helpless demands. Helpless exhausts.

She hits dial on her cell, connects with Margaret Joseph & Associates, the all-women firm where Penny once worked as a paralegal. Bolstered by the Just Breathe meditations she’s been practicing, her voice never breaks as she relates the cold facts of betrayal.

A brave new vision of reinvention has her roaming the house, packing his suitcase with the dirty jockeys and sweatshirts he dropped on the laundry room floor for her to wash. She lines a carry-on with the golf magazines he’s littered on the bathroom floor, dumps in the musk cologne, Just for Men, a pack of rubbers, and the bottle of Cialis hidden behind economy-size T-Boost vitamins. The Bible study guide he’d thrown in the trash goes in the zippered compartment, but not before she writes on the cover: Thou shalt not overdo the second commandment while screwing the seventh. He’d been attending the same megachurch as the mayor. Said it was a smart business move. After she’s photographed last night’s reply to “LadyLonging,” coded with all the aplomb of a horny adolescent, (“Coming in the morning to Foam-A-Fill your pipe”), she drops his phone into the mix. She’s surprised at her strength when she hoists his toolbox to top the refuse piling in the drive. A long inspiration expands her chest. Standing over the pyre of his remains, she dusts off her hands in the classic gesture that signals Finished.

Claire Massey enjoys reading hybrid genres with a deep, depth to length ratio. Her stories and poems have appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Lucky Jefferson, Streetlight Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Literally Stories and many others. Claire teaches creative writing through the non-profit Center for Lifelong Learning of northwest Florida. She is the author of Driver Side Window: Poems & Prose, a collection of fiction, poetry and memoir vignettes.