Margaret Fulmouth realised how ironic her name was and felt a stirring of anger. Her name, her namesake, her… She one day found that it had all become one and the same.

Her life had snowballed down an urbane landscape of a husband, two kids, a home and a car. Culminating in the garage, it was an avalanche of unwanted schoolbooks, redundant board games and tired kitchen utensils, an avalanche that she noticed only when it was all too late to even raise her arms. Her defiance – if she’d shown any – would have proved nothing but futile.

She realised this on a Tuesday, staring into the cramped, busy maw of the beast that they called the garage. The board games, the schoolbooks, the clutter… None of it cared for her plight. That dimly lit den of suburban life stared back coldly, waiting to eat that small woman.

She’d intended to sort things out. “Things” being the everything that sat within that garage. It had long been the domain of her husband and she felt like she needed a border-pass, standing in the sunlit driveway, staring through the wide doorway to where the light filtered away.

‘My name is Margaret Fulmouth,’ she thought. ‘I have nothing to declare.’

And she was right. She truly didn’t. She was nothing but a housewife, standing before the garage.

Something broke within Margaret that day, as she stood there in the driveway. Broke is perhaps too harsh and abrupt a word for it, though. What happened to Margaret deserves much more grace – two syllables, at the least. Margaret Fulmouth stared into the garage and truly went weak at the knees. We’ll say that Margaret decayed. The word has at least two syllables and her grief, after all, proved to be organic. As stifling a death as it was, it would grow into something else.

Margaret Fulmouth thought of her name and suddenly felt empty, pressing her dry tongue against her dry teeth. The garage was full and her mouth, and perhaps her soul, wasn’t. Her name had become an insult, drenched in tragic irony. This was her first ever panic attack and anxiety was thick like cotton wool, packed tight behind her unblinking eyes.

She wanted to clean up that garage. She really, truly did. She also wanted to curl up and die, falling in that sun-drenched driveway to wilt like a sad, urban flower. Margaret’s mouth was far from full, and Margaret had had enough. She realised this and so much more as she stared at a shelf stacked with board games.

Scrabble, Monopoly, The Game of Life…

Every attempt she’d ever made to make her a family a “family” could be placed in a humble box. Not a big box. Not a small box. But a box tailor-made for an assembled shelf, tailor-made for wanton dice and the game pieces that had since gone astray.

Her gaze shifted along the shelf, looking to the Monopoly box. There were two houses missing from the set. She knew because earlier in the year she’d dragged the game out from the linen closet and had counted every piece. She’d read the contents list thoroughly and had made sure that two houses were missing. She’d asked Graham to throw the game away. He’d instead placed it there on the shelf, hidden within that dark garage.

As Margaret stared at that game that was missing two houses, she wondered what she herself was missing. She wondered why her husband kept her. She pictured herself upon that shelf and her heart skipped a beat. Margaret Fulmouth was dying, a little bit every day. This just happened to be the first time that she’d noticed.

Earlier that morning, her son had shrugged, her daughter had grunted, and her husband had glanced back without a word, not quite sure if she’d spoken or not as he’d headed off to work. These had all been token responses to all her token questions. She’d accepted each one of their crude replies, their indifferences par for the course.

‘It took you thirteen hours,’ she thought, thinking of her son who’d rudely shrugged. ‘Thirteen long, woeful hours for you to claw your way out from my cunt.’

This was the first time she’d ever used the C-word, even if constrained to thought. Her first ever panic attack also happened to subside as she allowed herself this profanity.

‘Thirteen fucking hours…’ she thought, her anxiety waning more so.

It was then that she loudly said, ‘Fuck.’ The word was swallowed up by that garage, as though it had been no more than a whisper. She then more loudly said, ‘Cunt!’ feeding that bloated beast.

She entered that dimly lit garage, crossing that darkened border. Her angry stride carried her to the shelf where she kicked at the Monopoly box. The contents – sans two houses – fell to the garage floor. When she kicked the box lid across the floor the “Gas Company” card fluttered in its wake.

She looked at the mess she’d made. The cards, the dice, the small silver top hat and dog… The money, hotels, the small green houses – sans two. Margaret stared at it all and felt like crying, long sad… Long kept upon a shelf.

Why did her husband keep her? Why had she kept him? A greater question yet was why she’d done this at all. The garage was her husband’s domain and, in truth, it hadn’t needed sorting at all. Graham had always kept it clean. All she’d done was make a mess.

Her spine had tensed before she’d even realised, ready to bend her tired back and tidy that very same mess, that relentless urban avalanche. Her determination, had she shown any, would have proven futile. The chaos had long descended and she was buried in it up to her neck.

Her tired spine also knew this before she did, as vertebrae by vertebrae she slumped in weary defeat. Her fingers nonetheless twitched in protest, eager to pick up that board game as she stared at a card that told her she could get out of jail for free.

Margaret was a kept woman. But by what, she didn’t know. It wasn’t her kids – she hated them, but she knew that this would pass. They were teenagers, that was all. This was to be expected. There were even eight books there on parenting that could easily back her up – all of them packed in a cardboard box beside a now obsolete microwave.

Come this year’s hard rubbish collection she’d ask Graham to throw out that oven. But she’d still keep those books. This, Margaret Fulmouth believed, was part of being a decent mother.

Nor did she stay for her husband. She hated Graham, too. But, unlike the reluctant spite that she held towards her kids, she couldn’t say for certain that this sentiment would pass.

‘Sentiment…’ she thought, looking to the game of Scrabble. The box was slightly askew, a hapless, innocent bystander of Monopoly’s assault.

Sentiment… It was a funny word. It sounded pretty, but behind it there could have been any meaning. Sentiment was one of those words that constantly wore a mask.

‘You couldn’t make that word in Scrabble,’ she thought, knowing that every tile that held an “S” was missing from the set.

She knew because she’d hidden those tiles, along with those two green houses. They were kept in a box by the sewing machine, very discreetly nestled beneath a collection of bobbins and thread. She’d hidden the tiles three months after she’d snuck in those two plastic twee houses. She certainly wasn’t staying for Scrabble, and nor for her husband and kids.

‘Maybe I stay just because I should…’ she thought, looking to The Game of Life. Was that why she stayed? The tangled web of a mortgage and motherhood. The fine print of a wedding vow and a sense of obligation.

‘Servitude…’ she thought, glad that she’d spirited away those “S” tiles. ‘Now there’s a word I don’t like. Along with Sentiment, Shackled and Sad.’

She may have conjured up more such words but her train of thought was broken when she realised she was being watched. She turned to find Graham standing outside the garage.

He wasn’t meant to be home yet. He was early by two hours. Lost to her own musings, she hadn’t heard him pull into the driveway. She glanced to the car outside, frowning as though it had betrayed her. Margaret felt very cheated, along with feeling very surprised.

Surprised was yet another word that would have proven elusive, had anyone bothered to play that game that didn’t have all its tiles. She was wondering what the word would score when she found herself picturing the game board. Double and triple word scores, that star in the center of the board… It depends on the squares you use, she realised, looking sadly to her husband.

Graham entered the garage and Margaret watched his face disappear, a darkened oval eclipsed by the halo of sunlight that fell at his back. She turned away, looking down at the Monopoly pieces strewn about her feet.

‘I came out to check the Scrabble…’ she said. ‘And I knocked the other game over.’

‘It’s Monopoly…’ Graham said, to which Margaret only nodded.

‘I thought we could all play Scrabble,’ she told him, when Graham said nothing else. ‘So I came out to see if we still had it. But the pieces…’ she added quietly, wishing she’d instead said, Fuck.

‘All the “S” tiles are missing,’ Graham said, also wishing he’d said something else.

Margaret had never explained why she’d asked him to throw it out. She turned to face him, waiting for him to comment on how he could know such a thing. She wondered if he had also counted the tiles before shelving the game. With the sunlight still at his back, the shadow she’d married only shrugged.

‘We could maybe play The Game of Life?’ he said, and she could tell by his voice that he knew.

He hadn’t counted the Scrabble tiles, he hadn’t read the content lists to find that all “S” tiles were missing. For whatever reason he may have had, he’d looked inside her thread box. He’d found those hidden tiles and those two lonely plastic houses. He’d also found the playing pieces she’d taken from The Game of Life.

In her thread box was a white plastic car, designed to hold six plastic pegs. Each peg that was used in The Game of Life represented a family member that could be gained to win the game.

That small white car in her thread box, it only held three pegs. Blue for a son, pink for a daughter, and a third peg for the husband. There was no fourth peg within that car. Hidden within that thread box, Margaret had walked away. Margaret couldn’t see Graham’s face, but his tone of voice when suggesting this game had told her that he knew.

‘Colin shrugged at me this morning,’ she said, not knowing what else to say.

‘Colin always shrugs,’ Graham told her, his chest and shoulders held stiffly, lest he also do the same.

‘And Susan grunted at me, Graham,’ she told him.

Unlike their son, who’d often shrug, Susan didn’t often grunt. Graham said nothing to this. He was a quiet silhouette, the sunlight falling at his back.

‘And you…’ Margaret began.

‘I glanced back at you without a word. I know,’ Graham said, finishing on her behalf. He’d said this as a fact, without a shred of remorse. ‘I know,’ he said again softly. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. It’s rude.’

‘It’s not rude,’ she told him, shaking her head sadly. ‘It’s something else.’

‘I know it is,’ he agreed, to which she only nodded.

‘I’ll clean all this up,’ she told him, and he gave a nod of his own.

As he turned to head into the house, she said they’d have chicken for dinner. He glanced back without a word as he left, not quite sure if she’d spoken or not. That’s how their shared moment ended. It would never happen again.

Three weeks later Margaret would buy a new set of Scrabble, and four weeks later than that she would ask Graham to throw it out. He would put it atop that first Scrabble set, shelved in that darkened garage. He would also look in her thread box to find every “M” tile squirreled away. He’d find them beside that small white car that would suddenly hold four pegs.

The night before this, however, with a full set of Scrabble at hand, Margaret would smile and make the word “Servitude”, winning the game by thirty-two points.

#UrbanLife #UrbanFiction #UrbanNoir #LiveDontLie #HeForShe #ShareTheLoad

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