He drove to pay off a few bills, most of them important ones. I kept a wire basket in the junk room for financial matters and that was how they had been forgotten.

While he was away, I used instructions from a magazine to bake a heart-shaped meatloaf. The magazine was corny. I'd stolen it from the doctor's office accidentally, obsessed with the pictures of well-made food.

I folded the ingredients, breadcrumbs and spices, into the meat and kneaded the cold mixture. I hated for raw meat to get under my nails, so I kept my fingertips out of it. Then I dropped the mixture onto a casserole dish and formed the shape.

It had to bake for a while. I was grossed out by the meat. So I took a shower, shaved, and dried my hair with a hair dryer not just a towel.

He was home, in the other room, playing his re-run of the World Series when our team won. He cheered still.

None of my clothes fit me right. This had been going on for over a year. Everything I bought was cheap and shrunk or I ate crap and grew out of things. I pulled a box down from the closet. It was the alligator skin purse and heels my grandmother had given to me, remnants of when she was my age.

He found me in the heels, my panties, and a top I'd settled on. "What's for dinner?" he asked.

"Nothing special," I answered.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked.

I answered.

Jennifer Pieroni is Editor in Chief of the literary journal Quick Fiction. She has work in Hobart, Bateau, Another Chicago Magazine, FRiGG, Sir! and others. An essay will appear in Rose Metal Press' Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.


To link to this story directly: http://wigleaf.com/200903nothing.htm

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Photo detail on main page courtesy of kaet44.

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