Untitled

“Untitled”
By: Joshua Bingham

          It is in no considerable fact or understanding that a boy of age twelve has been sitting on the lawn crying for a good part of thirty minutes now, trying to put together the pieces in his mind of the lamp, he apparently just broke only moments ago. It is also to no avail that his parents’ Puerto Rican maid has been yelling at him in Spanish to no real understanding margin on his behalf.
          Eric would wake around six thirty every morning, shake off the dust and march off to brush his teeth and comb his hair, in his parents’ two story house on the corner of Salem and Cambridge. In his mind he would always hear the sound of nails on a chalkboard as he brushed up and down and a cross his teeth. He would hear this while wishing he had no teeth to brush. There would be no troubles in the world, no margin of error, and no scum to scare of the flaky girls that past him up and down the hallways of school. Than he decided it wouldn’t do and continued to the brush. Most of his life he tried to keep things simple and at all times safe.
            There were eight houses on the street that kept him entertain, three of them held his friends, Bill, Scott, and James and like mosquitoes they would buzz up and down the street riding bikes, or busy likes bees with their games. Eric’s favorite games was pirates and when the cards were in his favor he would get the job of Captain Hook and make them all walk the plank. This was not to say that he was at all a mean sort, but he favored the sword.
            The boys each had their favorites: Bill liked to see who was a faster racer. Scott liked to play the dodge and James was usually quiet and stayed back and watch the others have fun, though that rarely happened. I say that rarely happened for if it did, he would have no friends.  James came from a quiet family—a more reserved family. There enjoyment out of life came from the gratifying experience of finishing a good book.
          This morning was same like any other Saturday before, after grooming himself he saw his mother and father head off to their meeting and was left with the caretaker Annabelle. She was a respectable woman in her late thirties. She wore only the plainness of cloth, a cotton gray shirt and blue jeans. Her hair was tied in a bun and swirled in back, with two black sticks holding it together, that was an inscrutable sign that she was in a delightful mood this morning of the 11th of June. 
Eric would usually take his seat at the left of the table, but he saw that his breakfast was placed at the head and sat down in enjoyment. Normally he would never sit in his father’s seat, he had down this once before only to get two lashes from the belt for not truly understanding that his father worked for a living. Though now at twelve he had a bit of bravery still left and leap at the opportunity. He sat down placing his left elbow on the table and picking up the spoon with his the other. He pushed his hair aside from his face to reveal his smile glimmer off the reflection of the milk in his bowl of cereal.
          Around the corner Annabelle was spraying cleaning chemicals into the airs and  sniffing it with a great indulgence. She loved the smell, the look, and the hinter of a clean house. She was the sort that hated germs, they revolted, turned her eyes red and blind at any sight of an imperfection. I would even hint to for a likeness to a compulsion, but I have too much respect for her to call her nuts.
Once and not a moment before Eric was done his Alphabets, his friend Scott was knocking and ringing, knocking, ringing and knocking once more on the door, which sounded more of a secret code than anything on the means of getting anyone’s attention. Eric knew immediately it was time for play and rushed out the door, leaving his breakfast half finished in the kitchen. Annabelle was so enthralled on dusting three times of each brick on the fireplace, that see ignored any mention of a good bye.
            She continued for sometime dusting all ninety-seven bricks and than retreated into the kitchen to clean up the young boy’s breakfast. She face had plain stare as she pushed the chair closer to the table and placed the dish and spoon into the sink and walked back into the living room to polish all eighty-three floorboards. The dish that retained in the sink was tilted to its side. One could hear the drip, drip of the milk as it slipped off into the drain, just close to falling off the edge was the few letters that remained from the boys breakfast and from any sight one could see the word: palm.
            Outside the boy met up with Scott and continued to move about the houses, waking or getting their other friends to come out. The night previous they had all talked about following the old trail to go fishing in Old Man’s Pond. Everything in this town, the boys noticed, belonged to some. The pond being the old mans’ or the Lisa Doe’s Cemetery; they never figured out who Lisa was, but the old man was still alive. They had met him last summer in the woods under peat moss, hunting.
          “Watch where you step, if it moves your either on quick sand or you’re on top of my sorry butt.”
          The quote stuck with the boys for the longest time, under they were eleven and the word, “butt,” lost its interest. They were older and with that came the experience of saying even more forbidden words, though I won’t bother repeating anything of them; they lose their connotation if repeated three times, with not immediate pause.
            It was about an hour after Eric first awoke, when the sun began to just peek out from behind the clouds and they were just beginning to walk up the road to the pond. Bill had brought his father’s two fishing poles and a Maxwell coffee can, filled his whatever was still alive from Thursday. The boys talked about Friday morning’s classes and filled in missing pieces to each other to get everyone up to speed on the politics that cursed adolescence. When they had finally arrived at the pond they found seats on four tires into front of a nice cut off, baited and sunk the poor worms into the depths of black muddy water.
            Backtracking from the pond, from the trail and to Eric’s house, Annabelle continued to polish the boards. Her knees sat upon a small couch pillow as she scrubbed and scooted across the floor, not missing a single speck of imperfection, and eyeing each piece before moving on to complete another one. She used her fingers to scratch out any thing that wouldn’t come up and when there was something even her nails couldn’t fix, she would take out a file from her back pocket.
          It was about forty-five minutes after Eric left that the silence of the house was interrupted by the loud sound of knocking once more. The knocking was more vigorous than before that not totally interrupted the maid’s focus, but did instead catch her notice. She had been expecting a visitor, though not this early. Every Saturday Gregory, her lungful and secret lover, would interrupt the silence. They would screw not once, but twice in one of the rooms she hadn’t cleaned, before he would head off to work.
            Annabelle had been married for fours years and work at the Graves’ house only on Saturday’s to see a man she should have married, but didn’t. He usually arrived at nine; he was early today and this is what through Annabelle off. She was eager to see him, but the house was not up to par in not any fashion that met her approval. The knocking continued and she began to sweat, she wanted to impress him so much, from what she told him this was her house. This place was hers from six-thirty to twelve, so had to keep it tip top, had to impress him, but in her mind the what ifs have at so high at a price, that she kept her mind focused on the prize.
Would it be possible to shift his attention to her eyes just for enough time to get into a room, where he wouldn’t see the mess in the living room? She quickly rushed to the door, kicking the pillow under the table and than after several hardy breaths opened it with an ear-to-ear smile on her face. Greg kissed her without hesitation, grabbing her neck and pushing her into the house and kicked the door shut. Annabelle tried to lead him into a general direction of a bedroom, but he grip on her was too strung and forced her down on the couch. She kicked off her shoes and kicked his off, his left shoes flew close to the door, but the other hit the leg of a small table that held a decorative lamp atop of its mahogany base. The lamp rattled back and forth, to and fro, until it lost its balance crashing to the floor, throwing Annabelle into fiery temper and than kicking of her boy toy out to clean up his mess.
            Her eyes turned bloodshot and her hair messing and entangled. In her mind, the epitaph was coming. There would be no long any fun for her; the mister and misses would never understand. She thought of saying goodbye forever to Greg, but he was long gone. She scurried up and down and all around the house thinking and trying to any lying words she could say, anything at all that she would tell the Graves when they arrived home of this tragedy that conspired.
“…The Tragedy of how Eric broke the lamp.” She grinned, but I didn’t