Doing What's Best (written 2002)

I wrote this story my 2nd year of college and never really made any changes (as you can see from Draft 1 on the right). I think it was one of my first and the character of the mother is over worked as well as most of the descriptions. This eventually found its way to a group of vegetarians in my school who enjoyed it greatly.

I plan on putting up some other old writings but I don't want to cluster them together.

Steve Browne

Creative Writing

Draft 1

Doing what’s best

The Tuesday meal of spaghetti and meatballs, is very common in the Callard family. Mrs. Callard has cooked filet mignon, chicken cordon bleu and fine steaks. She is not a bad cook; but since she has had her son she finds herself economy cooking for the past 17 years. Of course there was one time where she left chicken legs in the oven, forgot about them, took the dog for a walk, and came back with the fire department in her kitchen. Nothing serous happened, the chicken scorched and smoked just enough to make the fire alarm on their security system go off. The firemen where there in full gear about six minutes later. Living in a small town the volunteer firefighters love to hang out at the firehouse. Mr. Callard still jokes about how she burned down the house.

Mrs. Callard refuses to buy the store bought sauce; she always complains that,”You never know what is put in there” and “Why should I pay $4.50 when tomatoes cost $1.25 a pound.” Frugal is a good word to describe Mrs. Callard but most of the time her son uses cheap or stingy. In her grocery bags there is wine from a box, never from the bottle. She buys the store brand potato chips although she knows that she likes the taste of the name brand more. She likes fancy cars but her 1990 Mitsubishi Precis is still running so it is still good to her. Money is an important agenda in her life but in times of necessity she is the first to spend the money that she earned.

Two years ago her sister “Aunt Louise” was sent into the hospital for an emergency procedure. The doctors said they had to remove part of the liver as soon as possible or elce the canser will destroy her entire liver and spread to other vital organs. As soon as Mrs. Callard heard this she drove to the hospital, dropped her debit card off at the desk, and sprinted to her sisters room. Her sister was not poor but Mrs. Callerd knew that she didn’t have health insurance. The procedure worked and no canser has been detected since. When “Aunt Louise” tried to pay her pack she wouldn’t accept it, instead she just smiled and called it, “my late dues on the little sister tax.” Now the two sisters meet every Thursday for coffee.

I didn’t meet with Louise this week she thought to herself as the spaghetti is poured out of the box. It’s frail and the use of two much force shatters the sticks into small fragments. The small sticks bounce on the linoleum floor as Morgan, there family dog, hears the noise. In no time at all the small chocolate brown Dotson is beside Mrs. Callard searching out the tiny peace of uncooked spaghetti. Mrs. Callard doesn’t even notice the dog since it has happened so many times before; she just proceeds to put the spaghetti into the boiling water. After all the full strands of the spaghetti are in the pot she proceeds to cover the top with the lid leaving a crack exposed to let the steam float out.

As a child Laura would play with her dolls, Making there beds at night, reading story’s to them, and even bandaging there imagined booboos. Everywhere she went there also went a plastic stroller with her dolls in them. The dolls she cared for consisted of her favorite three. There was only three, which was the perfect number of children she thought, three, two girls and a boy. On the weekends this pretend family would go on excursions. This particular weekend they decided to go to the nearby pond to go swimming at the beach. She packed her “children” in the walker and walked down the town road to the pond. The summer sun came out of the morning clouds and began to heat the earth. When the family arrived she was sweating but a quick swim can cure that she thought. She laid out the blanket and applied sunscreen to the dolls then herself, as well as she could reach. She told the dolls to stay there and wait until mommy came back, and then she ran into the lake.

“Is dinner ready yet?” Luke isn’t really that hungry but he likes to pester his mother, lovingly. He jokes around with his parents a lot, they have a TV sitcom relationship where there isn’t any real bickering but when there is it all ends up with some kind of moral showing through. Of course it is not always perfect, when last year Mrs. Callard found pot in Luke’s pocket she was engulfed in fury. Without hesitation she when to the rec. courts three miles down the road, grabbed Luke in the middle of his game, pulled him to her car, and proceeded to explode in front of him. She went on about how hard that his father and she worked to give him an opportunity to get ahead in life and all that pot was doing is “flushing it down the toilet”. Ever since then Luke didn’t try pot again, he drank every once and a while but only when there was no danger of getting caught. He couldn’t face his mother like that.

Luke grew up and matured over the previous year, he found new friends; he began to concern himself more in school based activities, and is now dating the class president Tasha Brook. Tasha is a fine girl who influenced Luke that killing animals is wrong. Luke ate meat, he loved the occasional steak. He never really liked burgers or roast beef so he figured maybe it was a good idea not to kill animals, it can’t hurt. His full vegetarianism lasted a week and three days until his mother forgot about his new found love of domesticated animals and cooked barbequed chicken wings on the grill. The smell of lightly basted sizzling flesh hit his nose and taste buds like a hammer. He began salivating instantly and needed to eat a leg. From then on it was just red meat that he wouldn’t eat.

“No and it won’t be for a while, go watch TV.” Mrs. Callard swung open the old refrigerator door. The screw keeping the door connected to the rest of the refrigerator squeaks gently but it goes unnoticed by the two in the kitchen because it happened so many times before. She reaches into the bottom shelf where the left over broiled chicken from yesterday is. It is still sitting there wrapped in the Christmas green plastic wrap. She grabs the cold poultry and begins to close the door. As she is closing the door she notices a plate with the same green wrapping on it. The door again opens making the squeal more noticeable now because of the slower motion used. Mrs. Callard grabs the plate and looks around to see if Luke is still around.

Ever since Luke began his no red meat diet he has also preached to his family to do the same. Some time Luke would even pretend to gag when he saw his family members eat the meat. Mr. Callard just laughed “you are lucky we have enough to eat to be picky about what you eat.” Mr. Callard loved his steak, loved to boil his own lobster, loved to go hunting pheasant and bring that home to eat. He never thought about giving up anything and meat would be the last thing on his list. Mr. Callard’s father was an immigrant who would say grace before every time he ate; when he was a child eating was not as common. Luke used to joke about how Pop-pop must praise his tic-tac before he ate that. Mr. Collard didn’t say grace before every meal but his father still instilled in him a sense of thanks for the food he received.

The tomato sauce was beginning to boil in the pan and small chunks of tomato where being shifted around geysers of sauce that erupted around them. It was time to put the chicken in. Since there are no longer meatballs in the spaghetti then Mrs. Callard decided that chicken should go in the sauce. She tears off the crunchy broiled skin of the chicken and threw it into the sink. Then inserting a knife at the highest part of the leg she slowly slid down the muscle until it was sliced cleanly through. With her hands she tore the muscle off of the tendon, and then tore that into smaller peaces. When she had a pile of meat and a pile of bones she smiled softly.

Laura came out of the water with her fingers now prunes and her lips were a light shade of blue. She hopped up the sandy beach to her towel ware the dolls where still laying waiting for her to get back. She grabbed the extra towel in the stroller that she took form the main bathroom closet. As she wiped her legs she asked her “children” what had happened while she was away. The dolls told her how the boy threw sand at the two girls and how it got in one of their eyes. The young girl slicked her hair back violently and shook her head at the boy. She said how she had worked all day just to get the time off to come to the beach with her children and this is how he repays her. She grabbed the boy in her fit of pretend rage and walked him over to the nearest tree, where she sat him down, facing it. Ten minutes in time out she said as walked away imagining how disgusted she was with him.

Mrs. Callard then unwrapped the other plate with the green plastic wrap around it and pulled out a burger. This was a 100% all beef patty (store brand of course) cooked over the weekend for her husband. He only ate two of the three burgers that she cooked for him so one was left over. Thinking to herself she didn’t want it to go bad she began to break up the burger into small pieces. The pieces where as small as she could get them, to a point where they looked like a pile of lightly browned crumbs. After the entire burger was broken down into small pieces she combined the pile of chicken with the pile of meat crumbs. Her conscience began to nag, but she had a logical reason for what she was doing. It’s just a phase he is going through for that girlfriend of his, and it’s not healthy for him as a teenager not to eat meat. I know what’s best for him, I am his mother. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t lookout for the well being of my only son. With the new reassurance that she received she dumped two handfuls of the mixture into the sauce, stirred, and tasted it. Perfect.

As Laura got back to her angelic daughters she saw her next door neighbor Ted by the road. She yelled his name and sprinted toward him. He saw her, rolled his eyes, and in a sigh he got out hi Laura. She began to tell him about her other neighbors, the guy to the right’s dog Spot, how Mr. Randal burned leaves and it smelled bad, and the “stop ahead” sign on their road was missing. Ted acted polite as usual and smiled to please her knowing that her rant would end eventually. The one-sided conversation ended bluntly when Ted mentioned the time and Laura realized that she needed to get home for church. She said goodbye to Ted, ran off to the dolls, threw them into the carriage and raced home.

The family sat down at the dinner table. The plates have already been served and are steaming. Morgan has assumed his normal position underneath the table with his head on Mr. Callard's foot. Holding hands Mr. Callard begins his thankful prayer that his father has taught him. At the end of the prayer the entire family says, “Amen” and begin to work on the plates given to them. Mrs. Callard is never worried about if Luke is going to find out there is meat in his food, she knows he cannot tell. She smiles lightly and looks over to Mr. Callard. Mr. Callard gives her the I don’t know what you’re smiling about look and then he smiles lightly back because he knows it will please her. All three are quiet during dinner with only talk about how the neighbors came over earlier to ask if they can barrow the grill for there family cookout next weekend.

The family finishes dinner and put the plates into the dish washer. Luke goes off to his room because he wants to get a start on his English paper and Tasha will be calling soon. Mr. Callard goes to the couch where he turns the TV to the history channel. It is most likely another “Great Battles of World War 2” although he has already seen them all. Mrs. Callard puts the rest of the dishes into the dish washer and starts it up. Then she joins Mr. Callard on the couch where they just sit, snuggling.

Laura and her real family get back from Saturday night mass. The family breaks to there own business, her father goes to work on the car that is never fixed, her mother is finishing up on another meat and potatoes dinner, while she goes to her room to play with her dolls. The toys are all put away in her toy box and her books are in the shelves over her bed. The stroller is in the middle of the room where she left it to get ready for church. Sand falls out of the towel when she rolls it up and places it into the hamper. The two girls are lying in the stroller looking up, almost longing for there mother. Laura takes them out and brushes off the sand on them. She reaches into the stroller once more to get out there brother but the stroller is empty. Panic fires threw her body and instantly she remembers where he is, in time out. Her eyes swell and tears begin to run down her cheeks. Confronting her mother, almost hysterical, she told the story of why they need to go back to the pond. Her mother, still preparing dinner, told her it was too late to go to the pond. Laura broke down into a tantrum yelling at the top of her lungs. Her mother not even looking at her said, “how will you ever be a good mother if you don’t even know what’s best for your dolls? We can go tomorrow to see if it is still there but I doubt it.” Laura ran to her room and she cried herself to sleep.

The phone rings and Luke runs out of his room to pick it up.

“Hey Tasha, I’m good, nothing much but my mother made the best spaghetti tonight.” Luke smiled in a lovingly joking way to his mother.

“You know that spaghetti did taste very good today Hun. Was it a new recipe?”

“I tried something new and it worked, that’s all.” Now she smiled full blown not being able to hold it back anymore. Mr. Callard looked at her confused like he missed a joke then shrugged it off and began to watch his show again.