Short Fiction
A SIMPLE TASK By Michelle Bailat-Jones
It is her second day of driving. Anne is traveling east on Route 12 and has finally descended from the fog that hangs over the bulgy waist of Mt. Rainier. Sunset is approaching but even as the light dims, the air on this side of the mountain appears brighter, cleaner, squeezed of its moisture. Anne squints, fidgeting. As the car advances now across the plain, she feels she has suddenly shot forth into an unsafe and exposed space. Her music is too loud, her passenger seat a mess of receipts and empty cups. She has been at it non-stop, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, stumbling into and out of fluorescent and sanitized convenience shops and then sliding back into the warm burrow of her seat. Anne runs her tongue along her teeth toward the back, worrying the spiky tips of a wisdom tooth that never fully emerged from the gums. Inside the action is her mother, how she looked when she brushed her own teeth. She had to take them out of her mouth to really get at them. She’d cradle the dental piece in her hand, then scrub at it with her toothbrush. Anne would watch from a perch on the closed toilet seat, watch her mother’s left breast jiggling under her nightshirt while the cloth on the right side hung still and flat. She’d watch her mother cleaning with such precision and wonder why she had such trouble buttoning a shirt or tying her shoes. Why
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