She was mad when she came home to find him on her couch.
“Honey,” she said when her boyfriend came home, “hasn’t your father lived with us enough?”
“Well his boss found out he was living there so he fired him and now he doesn’t have a job or a place to stay. It’s just for a little while.”
“I thought he was supposed to be in jail?”
“Yeah.”
As the weeks went by he passed the time on her couch, playing Sudoku and Nintendo. Every time she walked past him on the way to school or work she got a little madder. Plus all her alcohol was dissapearing, even the mouthwash. She did the math and realized he’d lived with them for two years, when you added it all up. That’s a lot of mooching for a grown man. Finally she put her foot down. It was him or her, she told her boyfriend.
He was gone when she got home from work that day. It was so nice having her house back to herself. She cleaned all around the couch where she hadn’t been able to get to for weeks and aired the place out. It was great. It was so great that she decided to shampoo the carpets that weekend. Friday night she headed out to the shed for the carpet cleaner. The cord was all tangled up in other things: a blanket, the pool stuff, a couple backpacks, and a foot. A foot? She yanked the blanket away. There he was. “You!” she screamed. “What the fuck!?!” and she slammed out of the shed.
She was waiting up when her boyfriend got home that night.
“Honey. Did you know your father’s living in our shed?!”
“What?”
“He’s LIVING IN OUR SHED. Get him the fuck out of there.”
Her boyfriend went out, but he returned quickly. “Well, he says he’ll leave, but he’s just laying there.”
A couple days later the boyfriend’s mom stopped by to drop off some of her fresh blueberry jam. “Did you know your ex-husband is living in my shed?! We can’t get him to leave. And he hasn’t come out in days. He could die in there or something.”
She gave it her best shot. “We all love you, and we just want you to get help. You can’t live in their shed. They’re young… you wouldn’t have liked it if your parents had lived with us when we’d just gotten married, right? Come on out, we’ll help you get help.”
He just stared at the wall.
“Well,” she said, “call me if he’s still here in a few days and I can have my boyfriend toss him out for you.”
The next night she talked to her boyfriend again.
“Honey. Your father hasn’t been out of the shed in four days. He doesn’t have any water in there. You have to do something.”
He went out but he came right back. “The doors locked. He won’t answer me.”
“Fuck, he’s probably killed himself in there. What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna mow the lawn.”
“What? Your father’s locked himself in the shed and could be dead and you’re going to mow the lawn?”
“I saw the neighbor this morning and he said he was jealous of our grass. I gotta keep it nice.”
And out he went to mow the lawn.
The next night she called her boyfriends brother. “Your father’s locked himself in my shed and he hasn’t come out in five days and he’s probably killed himself.” Then she went to bed.
They woke her up a couple hours later. They’d broken the door down. He’d agreed to go to jail in the morning, he just wanted to come in and have one night on the couch before he went to jail. Sure, she said. They came right back. He was afraid of her now, he needed to hear it from her that it was okay for him to come in. So she got out of bed and tramped out to the shed to tell him to get his ass in the house.
When she got off work the next day he was still there. The next day she gave him a ride to jail, but it was too late: they don’t take prisoners after five. The day after that they got it right and she got her house back.
The speech references were a little bit hard to follow here:
“A couple days later the boyfriend’s mom stopped by to drop off some of her fresh blueberry jam. “Did you know your ex-husband is living in my shed?! We can’t get him to leave. And he hasn’t come out in days. He could die in there or something.â€
I thought it was the mom saying that, then got confused and then finally I backtracked and corrected for the ex-husband.
I know, Sylvia. The problem is that I made everyone a he and she because some people just don’t want to be written about on the internet. Do you know how I could have done it better?
A paragraph break so that the speech is separated from the main character gives a hint. I know trying to reference everyone can sound awkward but something like this?
A couple days later the boyfriend’s mom stopped by to drop off some of her fresh blueberry jam. She was immediately begged for help/recruited to speak to him/put on the spot.
“Did you know your ex-husband is living in my shed?! We can’t get him to leave. And he hasn’t come out in days. He could die in there or something.â€
She spoke to her ex-husband.
Oohhh, thank you! 😀
You should delete these comments. And I hope you don’t mind me going on — I really liked this piece and so it’s sticking in my mind.
In a wonderful sequence of work avoidance, I realised the obvious answer to your he/she referencing dilemma. Give your main narrator a single characteristic: brown hair, wide eyes, tom-boy. Now you have your reference to clarify when it’s here: A couple days later the boyfriend’s mom stopped by to drop off some of her fresh blueberry jam. The brunette asked for help: “Did you know…” As long as you only give one of them physical characteristics, we can follow the sequence with all the other “she’s” being “not the main she” if that makes sense.
I gotta hand it to HoboStripper,,,few authors would be so cool and gracful when listening to ‘instuctive suggestions’. I, for one, had no trouble following the narrative flow. Keep on writing,,You’re very good,,what is really cool is that you live these writings and that empiricism shows in the immediacy of your prose.