that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Julie opened the door of her Odyssey and was hit with a wall of musky, sweat sock stench. “Jason!” she yelled back through the still-open kitchen door, “get down here and get your lacrosse stuff, I’m already late for work!”

She could still smell it, five miles up the road, even after she’d rolled down all but her own window, hoping to avoid ruining the hairdo she’d so carefully sprayed into place. She should have known better, she did know better, and it took about thirty seconds for those thirty minutes spent drying and curling and combing to become a complete waste of time.

She closed the windows, ignored the mess swirling around her ears, and turned on the radio, hoping she wasn’t too late to catch the Business Report. “Okay, deep breaths,” she reminded herself, and in an almost involuntary reflex, reached for the mug of coffee that was not in its holder.

“Oh, so it’s going to be one of THOSE kind of days.”

She said this aloud as she reached for her bag, the giant vermillion designer tote Bill had given her last Christmas, so happy with his purchase that she didn’t have the heart to tell him how much she hated red. I mean, had he ever, once, in 26 years of marriage seen her wear that color? But she had simply smiled and thanked him, too exhausted after all the holiday prep to do much else. And it was just a bag, right? Her co-workers had ooh’d and aah’d when she had carried it in on January 2nd, and joked that she must have been a very good girl for Santa to put something so expensive beneath the tree.

After a while, it became a badge of sorts, she carried it with her everywhere she went, and though she still didn’t care for the color, she had to smile when she thought about why Bill had picked it. He had asked once how she liked it, and during the course of the conversation mentioned that he had stood in the store trying to decide between black and red for 15 minutes, and then chose the color of love.

But the bag, sitting on the passenger side floor, was now six inches out of reach. She really wanted to tell Jason to dump her coffee in the sink before he left, so the cat wouldn’t knock it off the counter and stain the new carpet. She stretched an inch farther, and then another, and another, until her fingers caught the metal logo tag dangling from the handle. “Success!” she grunted as she straightened back up, just in time to see that she was veering straight for the guardrail. She had managed to pull the bag up onto her lap, but the thing was so big it got caught underneath the steering wheel, and by the time she got it free and cranked to the left, it was too late to stop the collision.

She felt the van start to tip and for one split second thought how it was a good thing she’d forgotten her coffee, because she would have been scalded. Then glass started breaking and tires started screeching and when it all stopped, it didn’t matter what she’d left behind.

Back at the house, Jason heard his friend Joe out front honking his horn, and he raced down the stairs to grab some breakfast on his way out the door. He saw his mom’s travel mug, filled with still-steaming coffee, sitting on the granite countertop. He pulled out his cell and dialed her number, but Julie never picked up. “Maybe she forgot her phone, too,” he muttered, and left the coffee where it sat, jogged out to the car, ripped open a strawberry Pop-Tart and laughed at Joe’s jokes all the way into school.

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I’ve signed up for A Story A Day’s May challenge, which is to write a short piece of fiction every day. I don’t think I’ll be posting every day, but I will be writing, and I’ll post whatever seems worthy.

The prompt for this piece was “640 Words–including the words musky and vermillion.”

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