All-American Special
Postpartum

All-American Special

He constructs lemon wedge structures on the Formica table. She draws a spiral with her straw in spilled salt. On the back dining room wall, there is a series of raised plaster rectangles. Each one is in the shape of a flag, displaying a coffee mug, checkers, and a kid and his dad fishing.

He wears a cap with Rebel scrawled on one side. She wears her hair half on top of her head like those fluffy Shih Tzu dogs. His French toast is topped with a mess of butter and strawberries. Her blue corn pancakes have a blueberry sauce that looks like fish eggs in gelatin.

There is a man in a wheelchair, being spoon fed by a weary woman who smiles under fluorescent lights. Their teenage waiter is wired on the energy drink Monster. A plate of onion rings is becoming cold in the kitchen window. A fly fights his own reflection in the windowpane. Mama Cass with "Dream A Little Dream" comes through the speakers.

Postpartum

What if she reached out and pushed the stroller right off the landing?

The thought poked up, uninvited.

The baby is in the stroller, screeching like a dying bird. She imagines pushing it in one swift movement-- in the blink of an eye, the flick of the wrist-and watching the stroller tumble and crash. She sees him falling head first onto the concrete, his tiny head bursting open and his brains flying out like silly string.

She isn't truly contemplating it, not in the way people really consider the edge of things.

Does a man pause to consider before jumping off a thirty-story building? Or if not, then in the midst of falling, does he wish with every fiber of his being that he could grow wings and fly?

She swats the thought away with her hand like a mosquito. This question of pushing the baby down the stairs is no different than the questions she'd entertained as a little girl: What if night never turns to day? When I go to sleep, what if I never wake up? What if the world ends tomorrow?

Brittany Michelson has short prose published in Every Day Fiction, Flashquake, Glossolalia Fiction, Espresso Stories, and other online journals. She has print essays forthcoming in PMS Journal, and an anthology by Bona Fide Books. She lives in Los Angeles.