Patricia Fuentes Burns
How Much Time Will Go By
1. If you start life with a mother, a father, and a brother, an uncle in Montana who has 4 stepchildren you’ve never met, 2 grandfathers in heaven and 2 grandmothers on earth (one forgets your name, the other smokes), and when you’re 23 your brother hangs himself in the garage where 3 rubber bins hold your childhood, how many years later will you tell people you just met that you have no siblings?
2. You are 26 when you meet a girl, also 26, and a year later you marry her when she is 3 months pregnant, and she gives birth to a boy a little on the small side at 5 lbs. 7 oz. In the next 5 years you have 2 more boys. On year 6 of marriage, you notice that one of the boys is not like the others, 4 couples you know get divorced, and your mother has both breasts taken. What is the square footage of your bedroom and how fast can you run?
3. When you’ve been in your job for 11 years, you get called into an office and given 4 months of severance plus the 2.2 weeks of paid time off you did not take. You bench press 140 lbs. and call 5 contacts. Every day you do one more thing to help with the kids. Your wife does not work outside the house but takes 2 Pilates classes a week and your special needs boy sees 3 specialists. This continues for 5 months. How many hours do you sleep at night? You may estimate.
4. The distance between your home and your new job is 17 miles. You stop to get the good coffee that costs $3.45. Your youngest son is 11, your middle son plays soccer, your oldest has 0 friends. Your wife works 20 hours a week at a school library in another town and you use 5% of the money she makes on a 4-hour monthly date. The rest goes into the college funds. How old do you think the girl with the curly hair who sits in the cube by the window is and what time do you get home in the evenings?
5. You retire after putting 2 of your sons through college and paying 1/2 of the 3rd one’s rent for 1 year. You sell the house and 8-seat van, downsize to 1/4 the space in a small town. You are 0.4 miles from the water. You get your 3rd and final rescue dog. When your sons visit, your grocery bills triple. If you buy the boat you first liked at 35 and take it out on the water twice a week, if your wife can’t sleep and is quiet during breakfast, if the economy recovers, if you sometimes feel short of breath, how far will the horizon be on a mild winter night?
Patricia Fuentes Burns has published fiction in TriQuarterly, Quarter After Eight, Fictive Dream, Jellyfish Review, and Quarterly West, among other journals. Her work has been anthologized in Grace in Darkness, Shut Down Strangers & Hot Rod Angels, Grit & Gravity, and America's Future. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband and three daughters.
