Before Mother Married Father
Scrambled eggs, bacon and toast,
coffee steaming between them
in the Red Robin Diner
in Johnson City New York,
she listens to her older brother,
recently married, visiting from Florida.
He sells cars, lives in a tract home
in Sarasota, no plan for kids.
Conversation shifts to a man she met
with eight brothers and sisters,
father a draftsman at IBM,
mother at home with younger children.
She thinks of her family—
mother emigrated from France at 16,
father grew up in foster care.
Her brother fifteen hundred miles away,
no nephews or nieces ahead,
she feels a pull to the man she recently met
she’ll follow for fifty-four years
when he starves to death
in a nursing home after breaking a hip,
refusing to eat, nurses unaware
of a denture stuck in his throat.
She doesn’t know
the sisters won’t accept her,
her husband wants a housewife
not a working partner.
They have two children, seven years
apart, one moves to Florida,
the other to California.
Much of her life spent at home
playing the piano, knitting, cleaning,
cooking, reading romance novels.
In this diner in 1940, she doesn’t know this.
She knows that tug,
hard to explain to her brother
who asks, “What about college,
you always wanted to be a writer?”
She smiles—
asks the waitress for a check.
In the Catacomb
I hold the thick plastic blue ring
in both hands. As the machinery
kicks in, I feel flutters
in my chest as the scanner
moves left, right,
a few minutes of analysis
then a soft sigh
when the beam begins to shine—
two minutes one way,
two minutes the other.
No pain or discomfort,
just a clink, click and whir.
The machinery quiets.
I sit up carefully,
slide off the slick metal table,
beeline to the bathroom.
On the thirty-minute drive,
I gulped down twenty-four
ounces of water,
the daily ritual—
empty rectum, full bladder.
I entered ground level,
walked down one flight,
then another into the hall
to the changing area—
a johnny and pale blue robe.
Five days a week, nine weeks—
feels like an eternity
then I hear
the waiting room stories.
Marc Swan is a retired vocational rehabilitation counselor. Recent work out in Stonecoast Review, The Nashwaak Review, Channel Magazine, Gargoyle, among others. His latest collection, all it would take, will be published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK). He lives in coastal Maine with his wife Dd, an artist and yoga teacher.