Page 59 - 2017 WTP Special Edition

—I won’t know until the exams. —You won’t know until the exams.
again to her mound of clothes, and sets again to flailing.
I put the book down. Anika throws the slip of material back onto her pile.
I go ask Rita, where Anika is getting money for all this gallivanting. Thomas has an earphone re- moved. He has an ear cocked towards us.
—Anika, that child of yours, the way she’s using that iPad, she’ll melt the eyes from her head.
—I gave her some, now would you move, Rita says. And I weave from her way, so she can slide the plate of grilled sausages to shrivel even worse in the oven.
Anika looks up, seismic scowls rupture the blue plaster of her face mask.
—How much did you give her? —Not much, Rita says, shunting past.
—What?
—I said, Rosie is going to blind herself with that iPad.
Third Place for the Literary
Anika undoes the towel from her head, switches I follow her up the hallway.
the hair about. That same whip of red hair as her mother, combs fingers through it, then redoes the towel.
—In my day, you had no money, you went no- where.
—Jesus dad, you told us our eyes would turn rect- angular.
—That was your day, Rita says, closing the bat- room door.
And that’s how it happens, I’m picking a fight I never intended to pick. But I’m dug in, so I keep going.
—But what lesson are you teaching her, I say.
—And where are you going anyway, I say?
—Out.
—Out where? the door handle. And it’s open. A sure sign of a
—Just out.
—With what money?
troubled romance. —Get out.
—Dad, says our eighteen-year-old daughter, straightening, and enunciating —I’m. A. Cheap. Date.
My wife is up-close in the bathroom mirror, prod- ding the skin around her eyes, making O-shapes with her mouth.
She tweaks the towel about her midriff, stoops
The first memory I have of Rita she’d just been 50
—Not everything’s a lesson, says Rita —and didn’t she miss out on her youth when Rosie came along?
Hold on, I might’ve sworn it was Anika’s gallivant- ing got her pregnant in the first place. So, I try
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