Joe Couture
He was lying in bed eating shrimp-flavoured crackers when he got the call. His mother had finally died. The news made him feel low. Not so low as to express emotion, but low enough to slow the pace of his crunching. Then a pleasing thought occurred to him—he would get some time off work. Maybe a whole week away from the center. A couple of days at least, and with pay! Yes, the news wasn’t so bad after all. He hoped the folks at the home would arrange some sort of service, and decided to let the phone ring, should that not be the case.
Then again, if there were a service, he would have to wear funeral attire. He still had that collared gingham fishing shirt she had bought for his thirty-third birthday, and since he didn’t fish, and plaid reminded him too much of his father, the shirt was practically new. There was also the issue of bottoms. He had no pants save for sweats and old jeans, and he couldn’t afford to buy trousers. Nor could he stand the thought of seeing his relations, all of whom would glare, then gossip about his inappropriate dresswear.
That settled it; he would pretend the call had never happened. When his uncles, aunts, or cousins spotted him buying groceries, he would act completely dumbfounded. If pressed, he would claim to have thought the call was a dream. A dream come true, he mused to himself, until his thought was suddenly interrupted. He grimaced as his fingers grazed along the crumbly, grease-smeared bottom of the bag. Gone too soon.
He licked the salt from his fingertips and rubbed the sweet clay that remained along the glossy side of his bare mattress. His sticky fingers froze mid-swipe as a terrible new conflict emerged, spurring his profound frustration—the question of whether to relieve himself of the oncoming urge to urinate, or to sleep, knowing he would awake with a pained bladder in a few hours’ time.
Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. His latest work is published or forthcoming in The Literary Underground, SHINE Quarterly, and Marrow Magazine. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social
Featured photo by Lisa (Pexels)
