Issue 11
Iron
Peggy Duffy
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The Shape of Things to Come
Stephanie's mother liked to cook. For breakfast she made eggs and pancakes in an iron skillet, a few sausages on the side. She filled lunch bags with fresh-baked goodies: chocolate chip and gingersnap cookies, profiteroles, her secret-recipe fudge. Stephanie was the envy of the seventh grade lunch table. One homemade cookie was worth five Oreos; a square of fudge, three crunchy candy bars. Technically, they weren't allowed to trade. Peanut allergies were a concern that year.
Dinners were feasts. Stephanie's father worked late, and so her mother could indulge her every whim. Hers was a main course of spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese, chicken and dumplings, steak and mashed potatoes. Dessert was always chocolate. Milk chocolate mousse. Devils food cake. Chocolate dipped cherries. Brownies, no nuts of course. Stephanie didn't like nuts.
Her mother didn't like to eat. While she whipped up these treats, she herself only drank hot water with lemon. She relished the numbness her nonstop hunger created, took pride in her iron will. She'd eye her daughter, grown ever wider, marveling that one person could have such control over the shape of two lives.
~Peggy Duffy
Peggy Duffy's short stories and essays have appeared and are forthcoming in
The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Brevity, Octavo, Drexel Online Journal, So To Speak, flashquake and elsewhere. Website.
© 2003 by Peggy Duffy. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.