By Coleman Bigelow
The time will come when I’ll find a partner and make partner and partner up, and you’ll be satisfied. “Put her there, partner,” you’ll say, extending your hand to me like I was some deal-made-good and not your only son.
The time will come when disgusted with my theatrical scrawniness, you’ll declare soccer is the play for me. You’ll drill my shots, until I can fire cannonballs into the back of the net. “Wouldn’t you rather be a stud, than a thespian dud?” But, I’ll take my game-winning goals, and keep on auditioning. Then I’ll land the lead in Pippin and the concept of family will be revealed in a cast. Only, just as I’m finding my corner of the sky, the time will come when my grades sink so low you say “no more show.” You’ll find me a tutor and get me back on track to attending your alma mater.
And once I’m in, you’ll have it all mapped out. No time for musical theatre. I’ll be too notched into your networking narrative: the eating-clubbing and endless summers iced inside your friend’s investment bank. One night, when the rest of the interns are out drinking, I’ll buy last-minute Sweeney Todd tickets and, for the entire show I’ll imagine slitting unimaginative throats. Afterwards I’ll walk back to corporate housing singing “I was half convinced I’d waken…” And when I confess how much I loathe finance, you’ll pivot to regaling your lockjawed yacht club friends about how I’m going to law school. My head will spin like one of your golf balls redirected back onto the fairway.
So, off to law school I’ll go, burrowing deep within those dusty stacks and devoting myself to the minutiae of constitutional amendments. And, for a moment, flickering with unusual excitement, I’ll imagine using my law degree to become a producer. My mind will race with the possibility of mounting the next Broadway smash. But when graduation nears, you’ll snuff out that spark, with your one-man-show on the dangers of debt.
The time will come when I’ll take the firm money and… walk. I’ll keep wanting to run, but each concession will shackle my ankle with another obligatory manacle. Then the time will come when I’ll go on a date with the Stanford MBA, who’s your friends’ friend’s daughter, and you’ll slap my back and say “She may not be a homemaker, but she can buy you any home you want!” And when I reply “Maybe I’ll try being a kept man,” your liver-spotted skin will color over like a dark cloud passing across your already cloudy face. “Don’t even joke,” you’ll say, eyes narrowing.
So, I’ll marry that girl who has a father just like you. And our fathers will be happy, and we’ll be happy making our fathers happy. At least that’s what we’ll tell ourselves. Then, almost immediately after our first dance to “Till There Was You”, our mothers will begin their campaign. “If you have a boy, you should name him after your father,” and we’ll struggle to decide which father to honor, and our mothers will titter and add, “Don’t worry. You can have more than one!”
And we will. We’ll have two girls and two boys and two dogs and too much. We’ll be the folks who live on the hill. And we’ll join the clubs and fund the causes and run the races. And I’ll get a thrill with every recital and play, but our children will prefer the behind-the-scenes no matter how much I nudge them toward the glory of the boards and you nudge them toward the glory of the fields.
Eventually you’ll be gone, but I’ll still carry the echoes of your every opinion. I’ll tell myself I’m satisfied. We’ll tell ourselves we’ve got it all, even as we circle the emptiness. And, one day, the time will have come… and gone. My wife will have taken up painting and, after finishing a seriously sensuous landscape, she’ll turn and ask, “Why did I wait so long?” And I’ll get cast as Billy Flynn in the community theatre’s production of Chicago. And I’ll lose myself inside that singing lawyer and his cavalcade of feathers, and after my final bow, a retired casting director will approach and say the words that will make me weep.
“You have a gift. Why did you never pursue it?”
Coleman Bigelow’s latest flash fiction collection “Man’s Best Friends” digs into the strange, tender, and sometimes absurd ways people and animals collide. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best Microfiction. Recent stories have appeared in Flash Frontier, Cleaver, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie, and Your Impossible Voice. You can find more at his website: ColemanBigelow.com.
