A work of flash fiction that highlights a unique benefit of being a skilled thespian…
by: Jennifer Bannan
It’s 1983 and my boyfriend and I are fighting. He doesn’t want me to be an actress. I’m rehearsing for my audition, for a high school that will let me study acting half the day. He’s begging me not to.
His primary objection is that he can’t stand the idea that I would kiss anyone else.
We stand under a massive ficus tree, one of the many in my neighborhood that pull up the sidewalk and crack it, that make a ride around the block on my bike more interesting. Standing on the higher chunk, I’m still shorter than he is, but taller than usual, enough that there’s something maternal about the hug I give him.
It’s acting, I insist. It’s not real.
He’s older than I am and while I have three more years of high school, he’s enlisted in the Navy. He has never asked me how this makes me feel. He’s becoming an adult and has to do something with his life. I never question him or put limits on him. All of this double-standard is baked in. I don’t even see it at this point in my life.
I apply to the school anyway, and he is furious. There are more fights.
After weeks of it, there is a night where he starts in again, berating me. This time it’s too much, he’s not worth all this. I tell him it’s over. He starts screaming, saying that’s it that’s it. Running to his parents’ room and retrieving his father’s gun from a bedside table.
He’ll kill himself, he says. He’s waving the gun around. His grandparents appear, imploring him to put the gun down. They are so small, so frail. I wish they would stop lurching toward him. His grandmother’s housecoat is so thin it reminds me of tissue paper.
OK, I’ll stay with you, I say. I’ll stay, I’ll stay. I love you. Of course I love you.
And he’s crumpling into my arms.
It’s not real. It’s acting.
The gun drops to the bed.
Jennifer Bannan’s first short story collection, Inventing Victor, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2003. She has had stories in the Autumn House Press anthology, Keeping the Wolves at Bay, and has been published in literary journals including the Kenyon Review online, ACM, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review and more. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Millions, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and others. Her webpage is at Jen Bannan (jenniferbannan.com).
