Sour
The sour cream just appeared in the refrigerator one day. No one remembered buying it. Dad asked everyone and when they denied buying it, he denied buying it himself. The expiration date was within the appropriate time frame and the seal was unbroken so the sour cream was kept.
That night we turned up the music so we couldn’t hear them fight. It was the first time the radio couldn’t go loud enough to drown them out. Most nights it was about money, what he spent, what she hid from him, and that wasn’t very interesting. But the night the sour cream showed up and he acted like the “grand inquisitor”, those were mom’s words, they were almost funny.
“I don’t see how you can accuse me of buying sour cream.” Mom was allergic to dairy products. Dad knew this fact; they had been married for 20 years.
“Who else does the shopping around here?” Dad liked to play the victim after he initially attacked anyone, and he was well known for going on grocery shopping extravaganzas of his own.
My opinion of the whole thing was that Dad either forgot he put it in there, or he was trying to kill Mom.
While things were steaming along between Mom and Dad, my two siblings started to go at it. It was only ever a matter of time that those two brats stayed neutral during an almost nightly skirmish.
They were twins, 7 years old, and couldn’t be more opposite. Bobby, the boy, was just like Mom and sided with her on everything, and Billie, the girl, was just like Dad and sided with him on everything. It seemed that each parent’s growing dislike of the other, even at that point in their relationship, trickled down into the kids’ genes.
Billie had Bobby by the hair and Bobby was giving Billie an Indian burn. I had to break it up immediately, because if either parent heard their own fight being interrupted they would both direct their ire towards me.
I got the kids settled down in time to hear the end of Mom and Dad’s fight. There were some slammed doors, followed by stomping.
“Maybe I’ll just leave then,” this was Dad’s old standby threat.
“It’s about time, why don’t you run off to your secretary. And don’t come back.” Mom had done it, she had confronted him with the thing she swore she’d never bring up; the thing she cried on my shoulder about at night. There was one more slammed door.
The four of us lived on in that house for another six months, until Dad refused to pay the mortgage; with no fights, no questions, no tears. Even Billie’s allegiance to Dad, and the initial anger she showed towards Mom “driving Dad off” faded. When it came time to empty the refrigerator, that damned sour cream with its unbroken seal was the last thing to go.
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this is not a bad piece of writing. the only part of it that i would consider rewriting is the sentence that starts “it was only a matter of time…” it doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the sentence.
I guess I like your idea but I didn’t feel it. You tell me about the people in your story but I don’t see them, feel them, know them. Perhaps you could shade it with a little more description about what the character’s feeling, seeing, doing. I’m not cutting down your style but to get to your goal I think you might need to bring the characters to life more than you have here.
Wordiness:The expiration date was within the appropriate time frame and the seal was unbroken so the sour cream was kept.
How does he act to fill this role? But the night the sour cream showed up and he acted like the “grand inquisitor”, those were mom’s words, they were almost funny.
Give me a feel for who they are, look like, etc.: They were twins, 7 years old, and couldn’t be more opposite.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
The twins, their red hair tossled about like flames, were red faced with effort from their squabble which seemed to flare up soon after Mom and Dad started. It seemed that my parent’s genes had trickled down from the argument into the brats I now watched tugging at one another. Bobby was the boy of the pair. Rough, ready, and always picking on Billy because of her love of Dad.
Just some thoughts. Good luck on your goal! Practice will get you there.
don’t repeat “buying it” in the first two lines.
even at that point in their relationship <-what point? When the twins were conceived?
towards me “in my direction”? or not?
This is a really nice short story. I’d like to read it at about 50 pages with a lot more dialouge and using the ‘show don’t tell’ philosophy. Great job, keep writing!
This reads more like a personal essay than a short story, but just the same I love the arc this story takes. I didn’t quite know where you were going with the sour cream, especially after we got into Mom and Dad’s fight and then the twins getting into it too, but I really like this one. Though I don’t see a literary magazine taking it.
It’s more a genre piece if it is fiction, than literature. If not there are plenty of places which would publish it either as a personal essay or a short fiction piece.
You have cleverly applied humor to a not-so-funny situation, and it works well. First, I love the title. Its meaning is hinted to immediately with the introduction of the sour cream, but its full depth is really left to the rest of the story, with the bitterness that is fostered within this family you’ve written about. You’ve got some punctuation errors and such, so I would suggest another edit prior to submitting. And I’m wavering on one other thing…part of me feels like this story could be rounded out a bit more by expounding on some of the mini-stories within (perhaps the affair to which you’ve alluded), but part of me really feels like the story is complete as is. Go with your gut! Nice work!
This is a rather interesting short story. It was short and sweet, or sour I should say. I almost think of it as a short short story by the length of it. At any rate, I enjoyed how you used the sour cream as the ideal throughout the story. It started the issue and lingered through to the end. Interesting usage to tie into the family problems. Good job.
I like the fact that the sour cream in this story is almost like another character. People rarely fight about what they are really wanting to fight about, as proven in this little melodrama. They were really fighting because they were almost at the finish line for their marriage, but it was sour creram which thery chose to use as the fuel for their discontent for one another almost as a catalyst. I found it interesting although a little short. I would add some more descritption about the characters especially the narrator. I gather that he or she was one of the children, an older one, but that was all. Other than that it was fantastic. Keep up the good work.
just wanted to say that i really enjoyed this story! i was hooked from beginning to end. a nice vignette. the only area that really threw me for a loop and made me come out of the world you created was when you described the twins. “they were twins, 7 years old, and couldn’t be more opposite”.... that paragraph, for some reason brought me out of the great story you created. but i was able to draw myself back in to the end and i’m glad i did. :) a few punctuation edits needed.
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