Ice cream

 I'm so happy. My writing buddy and I are back on doing our writing exercises, this time on Skype because she's in Argelès and I am in Geneva. The hiatus was caused by her moving. Now that she is settled our next writing date is tomorrow. The exercises are a wonderful trigger. Interesting in this one she concentrated on Betty and slowly unwound thread after thread. The book we used for this exercise was...(she said it was the only book unpacked.)

Welcome to the World Baby Girl

Fanny Flagg

Trigger: Betty said, “Mackie get some vanilla ice cream in a dish. I’m a nervous wreck.”

Mackie sighed. Betty solved every problem with ice cream which was why she was no longer the lithe girl he’d married twenty years ago. Now she heaved herself out of chairs and panted when she walked upstairs. She used ice cream as something to calm her nerves or to celebrate any event such as the sun going down.

Who ate ice cream on a winter night?

His wife did.

He took his car keys off the peg by the door where they always hung. His truck was parked in the yard. He had bought it shortly after they were married and it had over 154,000 miles on it, but it still was in pristine shape.

He wasn’t one of those good ole boys who let his truck get rusted. Any spot of rust and he was out there with his sandpaper and spray paint can. Even the bed where he hauled wood and landscaping equipment was cleaned every Sunday.

The engine hummed with the turn of the key. He pulled out of their driveway. Sometimes he felt like just going down the road and to keep going to he didn’t know where—a new life somewhere. He could set up a landscaping business anywhere.

He loved his work, turning chaos into something beautiful. His latest job had come from the new rich bitch in town who had bought the $4.8 million mansion that everyone said would never sell because of the price. The lawn had been boring she’d told him, and she’d wanted him to create a magic spot. He’d done that with fountains and bushes that hid a silent place with a mosaic bunch where she could sit and read.

He suspected she never had time to read, what with her being head of the software company that he was always reading about when he looked at the financial papers.

Quite a looker she was. Not skinny-skinny, but well curved and not over curved. Her hair was always in place not like Betty whose roots were two inches of dark trimmed with blond.

Not reasonable to compare the two women. Betty was his wife. She was loyal, took care of the kids, kept the house nice.

The store was coming on his left. He started to signal a turn and then changed his mind and gunned the engine heading toward the open highway.