Aurora Magazine 2019

The Sycamore

Jessica Calvert

There she sat again—same bench, north end of the park. There were two children running by at present, but neither looked her direction to see the disgusted look on her face, eyebrows con - stricted, mouth and cheek scrunched on the right side. To walk to the drinking fountain required soliciting the attention of those beastly furred arches, and he couldn’t deal with the scrutiny today. He stayed by an ancient sycamore—a sturdy monstrosity that held an impossibly extended swing in his youth. Pearlescent in the approaching dusk, he was distracted by the nostalgia of flying back and forth beneath its fifty-foot branches when he was eight or nine; now, at thirty-nine, the swing was ages gone and he wondered if the heart of the tree ached for himself and the other children who used it when it still had purpose. It hovered over the north end of the park like an Atlas of the small town—a vil - lage if it were half-a-century earlier—bereft of attention, except for the occasional photographer. The woman threw pieces of bread at a wondering wild turkey. He edged further into the sycamore’s waning shadow to guild himself from her view, should she look up and gasp the gasp of older middle-aged ladies who have been married several times and had grown children who didn’t speak to them except in trite letters at Christmas. Dear Mother, they wrote, we won’t be able to come this year, but here are the sweets you like, and a blanket Laura made. The children are well and send their love. But the love wasn’t tangible, as the children had met her twice, and she was glad they weren’t going to touch her Precious Mo - ments collection again. She was sad about her son not arriving at Christmas, but not his wife. She was loud and had awful opin - ions; why he’d married that woman against his mother’s advice,

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