Like Bells - Flash Fiction Winner

         

Like Bells

        Looking at my first-grade school picture, my mother laughed and shook her head. “Would it have killed you to smile?” She swatted me with the envelope before tossing it to my father. “Must be genetic,” she said.
         “Looks like he needs more fiber in his diet,” my father said.
         My mother sighed. “Looks like his daddy.”

         My father winked at me. “Son, you’ve got to do better or people might take you for serious. When somebody points a camera at you, you just…He pulled his lips back as far as they would go, crinkling his eyes and forehead like a demented chimpanzee. My mother tried to frown, but her lips twitched, finally loosing her ringing laugh that animated our house like bells.

         Forty years later, I sit at the same oak table while my mother brews coffee. She pulls out a third cup before she remembers. It’s just us now. She’s been going through a box of old photographs. I pull them out one by one, handing them to her. Her face has become impassive like mine, and I count the minutes until I can decently leave this house where silence presses down like a tangible thing.

         The photo is near the bottom. I hand it over and she stares at it. “You really did look constipated.” It’s the first thing she’s said since hello.
         I nearly turn away, but something I do not recognize steals over me and I say, “But now when somebody points a camera…”
I feel it spreading over my face before I recognize it – a chimp’s grin that shows off my third molars and bugs out my eyes. It pulls my lips so tight it’s painful.

         For moment, I thought she would cry. But then, the twitch. She put down her cup and there – bells.

         
         300 word - Prompt: smile, bell, coffee