Haunted
by Marta Randall
"Here, darling, I fixed you a nice turkey sandwich," Mrs.
Nichols said, disturbing the quiet of the workroom. "And
a bit of macaroni salad, just the way you like it. Doesn't it
look nice?" She thrust the tray between Robert's face and
the drawing board.
   Robert's fingers clenched around his pen; his hand
ached. "I'm not really hungry," he said. " I do have a
deadline."
  Mrs. Nichols snatched the tray back. "I just thought
you should -- you work so hard." Her voice quavered.
   He laid the pen down and looked up from the drawing
board. Her chin trembled; she wore one of his old,
discarded bathrobes. His shoulders tightened.
  "Mom, it's the first commission I've had in two
months, and the deadline's tomorrow--"
   "Well, I'm sorry. I just want to help you, you don't
have to snap at me like that."
  "I'm not -- " He caught his breath and let it out slowly.
"Sorry. All right. Put it on my desk, I'll eat it in a minute."

   "Good," she said happily. "I brought enough for both
of us. You go ahead and work, I won't bother you."
   He closed his eyes while the tray thumped onto the
desk, a chair scraped back, china clattered. Anything he
said would only lead to tears, accusations, and, if he
persisted, an afternoon of slammed doors and blaring
soap operas, the dissonance of her unhappiness. She
hummed to herself, cheerfully out of tune. He sighed and
picked up his pen.
   Before him, calligraphy spilled in elegant lines across
the paper, translating the stark typeset of the advertising
copy into a work of art. A simple enough piece, similar to
the works that used to slide in a seemingly endless line
below his pens before computer graphics nibbled at, bit
into, eventually ate his business. Now the work came
slowly, if at all -- perhaps a blessing, his mother said,
since the arthritis in his hands had worsened. Besides, she
said, they could both live on her pension, now that he was
back at home. Back at home. The pen shook and he lifted
his hand away before ink splattered over the work.
   "Oh, Bobby," Mrs. Nichols said, around a mouthful of
sandwich. 'We must go shopping this afternoon, we're
almost out of chicken pot pies. You know how you love
chicken pot pies. Just yesterday I noticed that we only had
two left, I said to myself, we'd better get to the store,
Bobby will miss his chicken pot pies."