Boredom and Brussels Sprouts. Photo by cottonbro from Pexels
By: Anjali A. Sarkar
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Fiction Writing, Short Fiction, Short Read

Boredom and Brussels Sprouts

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Robyn leafed through several books on her shelf unsure of which one to pick up and dive into that would give her some relief from the monotony of being confined to her room. Is it possible to find something to explore that would take her out her immediate claustrophobic surroundings, at least mentally, if not in the flesh?

A teetering pile of books nestled in the crook of her arm, Robyn made it back to her bedside work-desk, managing not to drop any. She could make it as a waitress, she commended herself.

Pulling her chair back by its bean-shaped backrest, she bent down to pick up the square piece of slick blue cloth she used to wipe her glasses clean, when she noticed a slip of paper sticking out from under the drawers on which her tabletop rested.

She tugged at the edge of the paper to pull it free, but it wouldn’t budge. There was something scribbled on the chit of paper, but she could only make out the incomprehensible right edge of a few lines of what could be a short paragraph.

Robyn tugged harder at the edge of the paper. The weather worn scrap tore at a slant and she fished in out from under the drawer with the butt end of her paper knife.

A few broken-off words on the frayed scrap of yellow legal-pad paper formed a curious triplet:

…eaten

…toes

…ted

Robyn stared at the piece of paper for a few long minutes, trying to figure out whether she was the one who had written it and if so when, and more to the point, why.

But try as she might, she couldn’t remember the origin of the piece of paper. It did look a lot like her own handwriting, but she couldn’t be sure.

She turned the paper over and saw a section of a doodle that looked like the side of a face.

Disregarding the pile of books on her desk Robyn plopped on the bed and rolled onto her back, arching her spine over a mound of pillows like a miniature bridge, her head tilting back.

She dusted off the scrap and inspected it closely.

This could not be her handwriting. It was written with a fountain pen. She did not own a fountain pen. She never had. People didn’t own fountain pens these days. The last time she recalled seeing a fountain pen was at her grandfather’s desk.

AndyPa, a childish misconstruction of ‘Grandpa’, at times sat little Robyn on his lap as he wrote his prayers in longhand in a large, thick, notebook with a fountain pen that oozed purple ink. Playing with the oversized square buttons on his soft sweater, Robyn thought her grandfather to be a magician to be able to produce such beautiful letters.

But the ink on the scrap of paper from under the desk was black and the letters too slanted and elongated to be AndyPa’s.

Must she move the heavy desk to retrieve the remainder of the scrap? Robyn eyed the stack of books on her desk and ran her eyes down their spines. None caught her fancy.

She sat up and kneaded her lower back with her knuckles. Was it wise to try to move that heavy desk for a scrap of paper that might mean nothing?

She examined the scrap again. Could it be a poem? A haiku perhaps? Something she had penned and forgotten all about?

Too intrigued now to give up, Robyn moved the chair out of the way and pulled the edge of the desk away from the wall. The thick carpet did not make things easier for her exercise-averse arms.

She bent under the desk again. The paper was free. It wasn’t an entire sheet, just a roughly shorn bottom of a sheet from an old legal pad.

Robyn leaned her back on the drawers and held the two torn pieces together like a primitive puzzle. In nearly faded ink, the note said:

3 eggs, beaten

6 fried green tomatoes

12 Brussels sprouts, roasted