The Most Wonderful Book

- A short story I wrote for NPR's 3 minute fiction contest. The assignment was to write a story that started with: "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door." I didn't win anything, but it was a fun exercise nonetheless. -

The Most Wonderful Book

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. She would have liked to stay longer; to let her mind run on past the end of the book; to unravel the meanings and mysteries of its protagonist who seemed so surprisingly like herself…  but real life was calling; real life in this case, being her husband's father, who would be arriving for dinner in one hour.

Descending the stairs to the living room she could hear the blare of the TV and the playful fighting of her sons. They had emptied a box of crackers onto the floor and were now wrestling on top of the mess. She could have yelled, but remembered the character from her book. At one point he had yelled quite violently at someone. Yes, he had his faults as any human does, but she had told herself she would learn from them. So she held her tongue, gathered her wits, and calmly asked the boys to stop fighting and to clean up the room.

She stepped into the kitchen to start dinner: enchiladas. About halfway through the preparation, her husband called. He would be home a little late. That was ok. His father however, would be early. That was not ok. Her father-in-law was a sweet man, but he liked conversation. The kids could not maintain intelligent conversation for more than two minutes, so she herself would need to sit and talk to him at least until her husband showed up. The food would have to be cooked, or at least in the oven before her father-in-law arrived, but even then, there was always the problem of what to talk about. The character from her book had not been gifted in speech either. It often took him pages of thinking before anything would appear in quotations. That is one area where she took issue with the book. In real life there was never that much time to put one’s thoughts together.

The doorbell rang as she slid the pan of enchiladas into the oven. She rushed the boys out of the living room and off to set the table, then answered the door with an attempted cheerful greeting and showed her father-in-law to a chair.

She made the best conversation she could, but nothing seemed to interest the man. He simply nodded and eyed the books and magazines on the coffee table. Finally, he said, “Have you read anything good lately?” At last, a subject she could talk about! She replied that she had just finished the most wonderful book; one of the best she’d ever read. He asked what it was about. She tried to explain about the protagonist and his experiences, but that did not satisfy him. Again, he wanted to know what it was about.

At that moment, however, there was a crash from the dining room. Her youngest had dropped a whole pile of plates. She sprung from her seat, “How many times have I told you to carry one plate at a time!” The boy shriveled back into a corner, but his brother stepped forward to report that something was burning in the kitchen.

The enchiladas were dark brown as she pulled them from the oven. She swore and slammed the oven door shut. Her father-in-law followed her into the kitchen, still wanting to know what the book was about. She dumped the burnt enchiladas into the trash and told him she didn’t know.