A Brontosaurus Can’t Walk Me Down the Aisle
I rarely come home these days, preferring to meet in the brightly lit diner on 5th Street.
A rusted fifteen-foot brontosaurus—the closest thing I’ve had to a father—looms in the front yard. Mom had completed the sculpture when I was eight, after months of us scouring ditches like abandoned kittens, for hubcaps, broken bikes, and other bits of scrap metal.
I find Mom in the back garden, nestled in an overgrown patch of weeds dotted with Pepsi-can roses, rusted-chain petunias, and milk-carton tulips.
“I just need my birth certificate.”
“Mm mm.” She waves me off, concentrating on the mirror she’s tapping with a small hammer.
“Nice to see you too,” I mumble.
In the house my chest tightens. I pass through rooms filled with second-hand furniture and half-completed projects. I rarely come home these days, preferring to meet in the brightly lit diner on 5th Street.
Mom keeps every scrap of paper since the dawn of time in a giant basket woven from plastic bags.
I wade through unopened bills, expired coupons, and a finger-painted Mother's Day card from my single year of public school. Miraculously I fish out the crumpled certificate, peeling away a faded Free Tibet sticker.
Back in the garden Mom tilts her chin to the sky, eyes closed.
“The wedding’s one month from today. Promise you’ll be on time.” I block the sun with my body. “I know you abhor government-sanctioned love contracts, but it’s important to me.”
Her smile is brilliant. “I made this for you.”
The tiara’s tiny, delicate. Mirror shards and copper filament have been smoothed and shaped into an intricate mosaic.
“It’s beautiful.” I kiss her cheek. She smells of turpentine and patchouli. “You have time for a coffee?”
“Sorry darling, it’s almost golden hour. I can’t lose the light.”
“I’ll see you at the ceremony.”
She’s already mixing oil paints on an old coffee can lid.
The delicate tiara catches the pink sunset from the passenger’s seat as I drive away, the brontosaurus’ head still visible a mile down the road.
Christy Hartman pens short fiction from her home on Vancouver Island, Canada. She is a two-time New York City Midnight winner published by Sky Island Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sunlight Press, and others.
