"The Problem with Good Intentions"

        “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
         “So is the road to heaven paved with bricks of ‘I want to slap you, bitch?’”
         Jessica wasn’t having a good day with her mother, if such a thing were possible.  Robert watched them go at it.  He flinched at the more violent parts.  It was as if they were two poles of a magnet, and Robert was being caught in the middle.
         “Don’t you talk to me like that!”  Jessica’s mother raised her hand and shook her fist in her daughter’s face.  She was turning red, the wrinkles ever deepening in her potent, poison frown.  The merest suggestion of this frown was known to reduce the will of men to dust.
         “Shut up Laura.”
         Jessica knew she had gone too far, could tell before the look of hurt had tinged the roots of anger on her mother’s face.  The slap that followed was lost in numbness, and it took Jessica seconds to realize she had been hit.  Laura’s face was streaming with tears as she stalked out of the room, outside.
         “Mom!  I didn’t mean…”  The door slammed, a painting fell off its maladroit hook.  Jessica half fell, half sat down on the floor.  Robert sat down beside her and put his arm around her.
         “Jessica, Jessica… poor thing, don’t look so sad; I hate to see you like this!”  He put his hand under her chin and raised her to look at him.  Her mascara fell down her face in floods of black, and he tried to wipe it off.  She sobbed a couple more times and buried her face into his chest. 
         “I know you don’t mean to say those things about your mother,” he said.
         “I hate her.”  She choked on her tears.
         “You don’t.  Look, I’m going to go out and get her, and tell her you’re sorry, ok?  I’ll have her come back here and you can apologize, ok?”  He gave her a gentle shake. “Ok?”  She nodded her head.  Before he left, he got her a Kleenex from the counter and gave her a quick kiss.
         “Back in a second.”


         He found her sitting on a bale of straw in the barn.  She was wearing her work clothes, a plaid t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and faded jeans with holes.  A pair of leather gloves sat on the bale with her.  She sat perfectly still, staring at the sky outside.  Her face was wet, but she was not rocked by the sobs of sorrow that shook her daughter.  She addressed him when he walked up next to her.
         “She’s so different from me, I don’t think I’ll ever understand her,” she said, her voice even, sad, not at all angry.
         “She’s more like you than it would seem,” he said.  Sometimes he wished that Jessica was more like Laura: tough and responsible.  But, Jessica’s innocence could not allow her to be caged in by rules, even those that are self-imposed.  “She loves you.”
         Laura nodded.  “She’s so young.  She doesn’t know.  Before…”  She shook her head.
         “She’s crying, you know.  She hurt herself more than I think you ever could have.  She’ll learn.”  Robert was aware of his sounding precocious, being yet 17, but it came natural when he talked to Laura.
         “Yeah, she’ll learn.”  Laura looked at Robert, and held his gaze.  He would be a good husband, she thought.  She did not want to think, however, of giving up her only daughter.  She got up, put on her gloves, and picked up the bale, carrying it to a wheelbarrow. 
         “She’s sorry, she said.  She wants to talk to you.”
         “Yes?”  She picked up another bale.  Her anger was coming back.
         “Guilt is a harsh teacher, often you lose more than you learn.  Compassion could be better.”
         She stopped, struck still by his words.
         “I’ll finish the work in here.  Would you let her say she’s sorry?  It would mean a lot to her, and to me.”  Laura nodded.  She gave Robert her gloves, and took off without a word.

         It was an unusually nice day out, compared with the bad weather that had been plaguing the farm recently.  The sun shone, and lent some transient warmth to the skin, though the wind was to take it out.  The trees in the yard had lost their leaves, and they crunched underfoot as Laura walked.  She looked down the short driveway at the road, where the trashcans stood empty, lidless.  It was a stupid thing to argue over, Laura though.  Instead of going into the house, she went down to the road.  She’d do the chore for Jessica.  She wasn’t ready quite yet to face her daughter.
         They had been getting in fights constantly, she reflected, as her boots crunched on leaf-covered gravel.  The worst of it was that it was her own fault.  She was afraid to let her daughter go, and they had been growing further apart each day.
         Laura picked up a can.  She decided: she would let her daughter have a looser rein.  Hopefully the two of them could be friends.  As she bent down to pick up a lid for the can, she heard her daughter call her.  She looked up and waved to her daughter, who was standing at the top of the driveway.  Jessica’s looked so innocent to Laura.
         Then came a scream, Jessica’s hands were flung out to Laura, who tensed with fear.  She looked to her right, and saw a large, green truck flying down the side of the road, twenty feet from her.  She had time only to fling her hand out in a sign to stop.

word count: 944