Channie Greenberg, An Orbit of Chairs
excerpt
An Orbit of Chairs Publisher: Seashell Books Date: February 27, 2024 Length: 262 pages ISBN: 979-8880280087 |
This collection of fifty-five tales contains genre literature as well as mainstream fare. It's Channie's tenth published short fiction collection. Two of the stories — “New Intimacies” and “Not Quite a Bullseye for Owmapow” — were originally published in Bewildering Stories.
Free Time
Natalie scanned the park. She was there as a mother taking her preadolescents on “an adventure.” She, herself, had visited those grounds many times during the earliest span of her life.
As a girl, she had used the baseball diamonds for softball. Similarly, she had rocked on the playground’s plastic horses and had used the swings to “reach the moon.” Together with the members of her coterie, she had taken turns running on short legs to spin the metal carousel holding those girls.
When not thus busy, those lasses had climbed the wooden logs marking parking spaces (they had pretended to be circus acts.) Additionally, those mademoiselles had sifted through the gravel, at the entrance to the town dump adjacent to the playground, to find “precious” stones for their collections.
Sometimes, they had contented themselves with watching Little League games- they used their allowances to buy artificially-flavored ice balls from opportunistic vendors while they spectated. Their treats, which had been served in paper cones, inevitably stained their clothes.
For years, Natalie had arrived at that park on her bike. Her glistening green contraption had had three speeds! To boot, it had been decked with handlebar streamers (unlike the bikes of her friends, which had playing cards inserted among their wheels’ spokes. Natalie didn’t like rattling sounds.)
In the present, after making sure that her car’s brakes were secured, Natalie summoned her progenies. Steven was seated behind the driver’s seat and Phyllis was perched behind the front passenger spot. Neither of them, though legally tall enough, had wanted to sit in front.
Natalie sighed. After knocking on Steven’s window, she opened his door. Her son barely looked up from his smartphone. Noticing his mother staring, he removed a single earbud and put his recorded program on pause.
His sister, in the next seat over, hadn’t perceived her mother’s approach as her eyes were closed and she was tapping out a rhythm on her knee. Eventually, she looked up, nodded, and mumbled “today’s playlist.”
There had long been tennis courts at the municipal park, too, but Natalie had never used them. She had not been interested in tennis lessons, specifically, nor in competitive sports, more generally. However, when the community’s girl scout council had hosted its annual camp week in the park, she had always shown up. Her favorite activity had been emblem trading.
Each picnic shelter’s band of girls had made their own icons. One season, Natalie’s group had made faces out of halved walnut shells. Another time, they had used thick slices from zucchinis, whose diameters were so great as to render them undesirable for inclusion in soup pots, as bases for wildflower bouquets. Yet another summer, she had glued beans and lentils to cardboard to make pictures. Adult Natalie wondered whether all tradable items had started as comestibles.
Regardless, on the fourth day of those five day camps, a loud siren, which was located at the first aid hut near the playground, sounded. Girls scrambled to trade as many doodads as possible. Those wild swaps had been even better, in Natalie’s esteem, than had been the each year’s’ only dinner, which had been held, forever, on the third night of camp.
Natalie picked up the wrappers near Steven’s feet. He didn’t notice. She then leaned into her car to tap Phyllis on the shoulder. As well, she held out her hand to indicate Phyllis’ discards. Her daughter begrudgingly scooped up her debris and handed it to her mother. Thereafter, Natalie knocked on her car’s roof. It was time for her offspring to disembark and enjoy the park.
She was met with slit eyes and tight mouths.
The mom considered seizing their electronic devices, but decided that music, while hiking, was acceptable. So, she inhaled and exhaled as her two juveniles very slowly unpacked themselves from her car.
Outside that vehicle, they neither disconnected from nor pocketed their gadgets. Rather, they frowned, again, at their mother. Suddenly, each of their phones rang. Neither let those calls go to voicemail.
Natalie had come prepared. Having assumed that complete immersion in the real world would be too much for her children, she had researched Pokémon GO, Jurassic World Alive, and Pikmin Bloom Flowers. Whereas she’d prefer for her descendants to focus on collecting pinecones than trying to complete a pokédex, race across ball fields than battle dino teams, and visit the recycling center situated within the municipal dump than plant and harvest imaginary forbs, at least her choice of undertakings could combine her son and daughter’s grip on their smartphones with actual exercise.
Hours later, Natalie returned to her car. The park was less than two miles in length and one mile in width. As a bike riding youngster, that area’s lone drive, which ran up and down a small hill, had constituted a sufficient thrill for her. Her kids, contrariwise, had ignored the slope to remain absorbed in finding Mew and Bulbasaur, in identifying Atrociraptors and Giganotosauruses, and in locating elusive blue nectar.
Natalie suspected, although she had forgotten to point out their locations, that her young ones had found the public restrooms. After all, WAZE had the park charted.
At dusk, Natalie removed her own cellphone from her car’s map compartment. Skipping lunch was one thing. Missing dinner was another. What was supposed to be a family outing had disintegrated into her waiting and waiting for her young gearheads.
When, at last, those descendants returned to her car, they were smiling. Although they hadn’t joined Natalie in watching a pickup match at the basketball court, petting a feral cat, or feeding crumbs to squirrels, they had found red nectar, a Spinosaurus, and a Vulpix.
On the way home, those youths lambasted their mother over failing to take them to the park sooner. Community venues, they complained, were the best places to spend free time. Didn’t parents know that it was silly to spend hours and hours on the sofa attending only to electronics?
Copyright © by Channie Greenberg
