June 2002
Short story sort of thing I wrote for a grad school assignment.
Sharon Duffy descended the steps in front of Brockton Trial Court in her loafers, careful not to twist her ankle again. She waved off her two favorite colleagues, Karina[1] and Patty[2] who had parked on the other side of the new building—it was a few years old now[3][4], but it was still new to her.
The sweetness of the late May afternoon breeze drifted by as she walked to her Camry[5] parked in the packed full[6] lot behind the red-orange brick courthouse, and she felt that familiar anger in her chest. Though she had been satisfied working at a private law firm in Boston in the early 80’s, her husband Tim and her mother both convinced her to stay home for the first two years after Alec was born. Though she never brought it up to him directly, Sharon suspected Tim’s motives were based on dodging housework and child-rearing responsibilities. As for her mother, Sharon knew her mom felt trapped[7] by responsibilities she didn’t want when Sharon and her brothers were growing up—chauffeuring the family around, cleaning the house, cooking breakfast and dinner, packing her husband’s lunch for the workday[8]. Born in 1989, Alec had turned 13 two months ago. It was a thirteen-year-old grudge[9] that Sharon couldn’t seem to let go.
Sharon noticed her ankles ached by the time she got to her car, like she had been stomping out her frustrations on the pavement. She sighed, releasing some of the day’s headaches as she slipped into the driver’s seat of her car. Everyone was “strongly encouraged” to adapt to the newest Microsoft update[10], and teaching the younger kids in the clerk’s office was a bigger challenge that she wanted to be stuck with. The Camry seemed to groan after she twisted the keys in the ignition, and the radio quickly resuscitated. She caught the end of a soft rock song she liked but could never remember the name of. She zoned out during the Toys ‘R’ Us and Toyota ads she had heard a million times before, annoyed at the two companies for already eating up a significant portion of her annual salary of $38,792.[11] Of course, her salary was before the taxes got taken out, taxes that went towards doing nothing about the abandoned shoe factories and empty housing in the city[12], which her father used to call “Shoe City,”[13] though Brockton had always seemed to be more of a suburb to her.
The voice of the usual host of the five o’clock news interrupted her tirade of thoughts, which she knew were mainly self-victimizing[14] but necessary nonetheless to go home and be a good mom to her son, her daughter, and her pseudo-son who lived next door. She followed the litany of news until she made it to her driveway—the newest Star Wars movie Tim was supposed to take Alec and Charlie to see this weekend was grossing incredibly well,[15] the Toy-Box Killer had died of a heart attack,[16] and poor Chandra Levy’s remains were found in a park in D.C.[17]
Sharon was relieved to shut off the deluge of terrible news and exit her car. She stroked her daughter Fiona’s hair gently, as Fi sat on the warm driveway and colored with chalk. Fiona, the youngest of her and Tim’s two kids, would be 10 years old at the end of the summer.
“Hi, Mummy,” she said, extending her tiny arms out for a hug.
Sharon loved that Fi spelled Mommy with a “U” instead of an “O” still, and that she always wanted to paint her nails whenever she saw Mummy decorating hers. Sharon always picked Fiona up from the elementary school on her late lunch hour, while Rose Sanchez, their neighbor, picked up her grandson Charlie along with Alec when the middle school dismissed students.
The Duffy’s moved from Boston to Brockton five years ago, in the summer of 1997, after Tim got offered a better-paying job in the Emergency Department at Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital. The Cape style home[18] next door had belonged to the Sanchez family for quite some time—Tim initially theorized that the house could have been in their family since the ‘60s when the shoe industry’s growth stopped, and immigrant families of European descent left Brockton to look for other work.[19]
In their one-story ranch built in 1962, Sharon, Tim, Alec, and Fiona Duffy lived next-door to the Sanchez’s for the last five years. While Alec and Charlie were fast friends, it was only recently that Sharon started to develop a friendship with Rose. Rose’s daughter-in-law lived in Puerto Rico[20] still. Rose’s son was dead. Sharon never wanted to ask how long Rose had been bringing up Charlie, who was a year younger than Alec, and his brother Felix[21][22]. Felix must’ve been 22 or so years old, but Sharon hadn’t seen him around in a while and tried her best to mind her business.
From ages 6 to 16—until the boys grew apart—Sharon and Tim Duffy loved Charlie like one of their own children. On the cusp of the 2010s, Charlie would grow into an adult who tried not to think about the Duffy family. He avoided them out of shame for years, until their family of five became a family of four once again.
No one could have predicted what was ahead back then, as the boys rushed out of the Sanchez’s house, laughing, paying no mind to the door slamming behind them. Like clockwork, Rose appeared five seconds later and scolded them for slamming her door. She then exchanged a wave with Sharon and smiled.
Sharon felt like she was in middle school again herself. Rose didn’t smile often, and Sharon strangely felt like she was being selected by one of the popular girls to join their lunch table—or maybe it was more like she wanted to please her mother all over again.
Her neuroses could wait, she decided, as Rose walked over to join Sharon on the brick front steps of the Duffy’s house where Sharon and Tim often watched the kids play outside.
Sharon squinted at the boys in the corner of the yard, ducking behind the bushes that divided their property from their other neighbors, the Santrys, a couple in their late seventies. “What are they playing?” she asked Rose, pointing in their direction.
Fiona, diligently coloring in her chalk-outlined silhouette, also briefly glanced in their direction.
“Charlie got mad at me for using the word ‘playing’ earlier. I guess they don’t ‘play’ anymore,” Rose said, shrugging as she sat down next to her friend.
Sharon chuckled and shot Rose a soft smile. “They’re growing up so fast,” she said. She was only half-joking.
“Where is Tim?” Rose asked.
Sharon noticed his car was home when she returned from work. He was either working out in the basement, or they were headed for another rough patch. Given the outdated resentment Sharon felt resurfacing, she feared it was the latter.
As if she could read her mind, Rose said, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Sharon furrowed her brows. “About what?”
“Whatever you’re worrying about.”
For the first time in a long time, Sharon didn’t feel that undercurrent of instability[23] humming underneath the ground and buzzing through the air. Maybe that was merely her wishful belief that things would turn out okay in the end[24], but it was enough for the moment, her future both in front of her and behind her.
[1] “2010 Births in Puerto Rico.” Although the 2010s are a decade ahead of when the story is set and several decades ahead of when someone in the workforce in the early 2000s would be born, these name choices are meant to reflect the diversity of the Brockton community.
[2] “Popular names of the period 1950s.” Short for Patricia, this indicates the colleague character would be 45-50 years old around the time the story was set.
[3] Reid. The Brockton courthouse construction was complete in 1999.
[4] “Trial Court completed capital improvement projects.” The Brockton courthouse construction was complete in 1999.
[5] Eldrige, Earle and David Kiley. In late 2002, the Toyota Camry had been the most sold car for at least several years.
[6] Reid. Following the construction of the courthouse, it was anticipated that parking in downtown Brockton would be a significant challenge.
[7] Nicolaides, Becky M. and Andrew Wiese, page 303. Mothers in the 1960s had different expectations placed upon them than mothers in the 1990s.
[8] Nicolaides, Becky M. and Andrew Wiese, page 300. The excerpt from Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique provides an overview of the day-to-day responsibilities of 1960s housewives.
[9] Nicolaides, Becky M. and Andrew Wiese, page 303. The “resentment” husbands felt towards their wives over the division of household labor is cited, and it is reasonable to conclude that the feeling may be mutual, even in a similar dynamic decades later.
[10] “Microsoft Office XP Licenses Exceed 60 Million Mark.” Microsoft Office XP was a popular workplace software in 2002.
[11] “Wages in legal occupations in 2000.” The average salary of a law clerk or paralegal in 2000 could be estimated to be $38,792, based on the provided rate of $18.65 per hour.
[12] Nicolaides, Becky M. and Andrew Wiese, pages 410-411. After manufacturing moved out of suburban communities, these signs of its presence remained.
[13] Granberry, Phillip and Vishakha Agarwal. Brockton’s economy thrived based on the success of the shoe-making industry prior to World War II.
[14] Knapp, xv. Knapp references and builds upon Catherine Jurca’s argument that some suburban novels use “the empowering rhetorics of victimization,” allowing the privileged characters to deflect blame.
[15] “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.” The movie was released May 16, 2002, and it made more than $310B.
[16] Shrock, Denise et al. The serial killer David Parker Ray died on May 28, 2002. Coverage of his death, due to disturbing details of his 14 confirmed and 60 suspected killings, would likely be in the news in late May 2002.
[17] Robertiello, Gina. The disappearance of Levy received significant news coverage in 2001 and 2002. Sensationalist coverage of tragedies like this would likely have an impact on the suburban psyche.
[18] “Brockton MA Web GIS.” Redacted.
[19] Granberry, Phillip and Vishakha Agarwal. Immigrant families of other backgrounds then began to move in, with a significant Cape Verdean population boom in the 1990s.
[20] Granberry, Phillip and Vishakha Agarwal. Although this publication is from 2021, it is noteworthy that it states that Puerto Ricans “make up more than half of the city’s Latino population with 5,743 residents” (4).
[21] Mendoza, Nancy. Mendoza reports, “In 2019, an estimated 1 out of 7 Latino children lived with a grandparent, and 1.6% were being raised solely by a grandparent, with no parent in the home.”
[22] Rivero-Vergne, Alicia and Reinaldo Beirros. The cultural value of familismo in Puerto Rican families is defined as a sense of loyalty to one’s family.
[23] Knapp, xvi. Knapp refers to how the suburbs were no longer defined by stability following 9/11. On page xv, Knapp also mentions that the illusion of suburban security was shattered in part because so many victims killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11 where residents of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey suburbs.
[24] Knapp, xiii. Knapp writes that many post-9/11 narratives were too quick to heal wounds within the story.