Framing

Here's a short drabble I wrote a while ago. Happy Holidays and have a great New Year!

The girl and her mother were setting up photos in the master bedroom. They had moved in nearly four years ago and had just now started to put up all the extra decorations they had left to collect dust in the basement or in boxes, almost forgotten. Now, with little else to do, they had decided to hang two wrought iron squares, and the master bathroom had fit their color scheme best. The girl thought she was of minimal use in the project, there mostly to serve as a second opinion and tool fetcher, but she enjoyed the position as it was a distraction from mandatory homework she loathed starting.

"A little bit to the side, I think," the younger woman stated, squinting. "Just a smidge. Other than that, the first one should be good."

"More to the left?" her mother repeated, sliding an almost unnoticeable amount. "Further?"

"Slightly, just a little . . . Yeah, there." Her mother nodded, making a small mark on the wall with a pencil.

"Measuring tape?" When the daughter looked back blankly, she sighed. "In the bag with the screwdriver, down the hall."

"With the screwdriver. I will . . ." she trailed off, brow pinched.

"In the office. In the bag, with the screwdriver."

"Right, right, sorry." With an actual location in mind as opposed to a blurry idea, the young woman found it easily and handed it up. "Here you go, sorry."

"Thank you," the mother hummed, measuring the distance between the epicenter and the new screw. They were framing both iron contraptions around a pre-existing picture, thus making the actual calculation aspect of the job more difficult. "Look about right to you?"

"Yes, it does. And between the two screws?"

"Wait, haven't gotten there yet." Face taunt with concentration, she measured and re-measured the distance between the two screws on the backside of the object, making another small mark on the wall. Soon she was screwing in the tiny strips of metal, sewing them to the drywall. With that complete, she slipped on the wrought iron with minor struggle, fixing it onto the screws and straightening it out by eye. "Hand me the leveler, would you?"

The girl got up and gave her the level, banging her knee in the process. This caused an uncomfortable land on her toe, which had had a plantar's wart for the past two months. No one quite knew how she got it, but it was still sore despite medication and several trips to the pediatrician's office. "Ouch," she said with a wince, though it came out as a yelp of resignation. She was used to injuring herself often, though she wasn't overly clumsy.

"Geez," her mother remarked with a raised eyebrow. "You really are a hypochondriac."

"I hate my toe," she replied instead. "It's a pain." This resulted in another sigh.

"Some things I'm just used to now, you know?" the woman commented, measuring for the wrought iron square on the other side. "Like your toe. I'm starting to think it will never get better. And your face." The girl sat up straighter.

"My face?"

"The acne. I used to think it was getting better, but now I don't know. I mean, maybe we should just go to the dermatologist. I don't want them to put you on oral medication, but something needs to give. I've tried all I can think to do."

"Dad had acne. Sometimes it's just hormonal, and there's nothing you can really do about it."

"Maybe the dermatologist could tell us that, then." The girl looked back at the wall. "Right?"

"Maybe a tiny bit."

"Alright." It inched forwards.

A silence ensued. And then: "You know, it's not that bad. Really. And it has nothing to do with my foot."

"Well I never had acne, and I think that if there's something wrong you should try to fix it. It's your body, and you don't want your face to scar up." The daughter didn't respond right away. "I think you could stand to have more ambition. I'm happy that you're devoted to your academics and that your grades are good -" All As, the girl thought, all As. "- but you need to strive for more than just school. Like fixing your face and helping out around the house. You bring up the laundry but you never sort it. Things like that."

"I'll sort the laundry from now on."

"That was just an example. There's a list of things you could be doing but haven't stepped up to do. You said once that you might start by making dinner once a week. I told you to pick a day. We never discussed it again."

"I don't know. I just . . ." She didn't know what to say. She often had so many things to say; with her mother, few things seemed good enough. "I'll try. I never knew what to make."

"It's just one thing. I'm not your father; he always picks one thing to talk about, one specific thing that you've done and he talks about working on that. I can't do it. I talk about everything all at once, touch all of it." The girl glanced at the nails on the counter, waiting to be placed and pressed. She wanted to squeeze one so badly it cut.

"Yes, you talk about everything. Everything I've ever done wrong or come up short on, not just whatever we were arguing about."

"What?" her mother asked, voice slightly harsher. "You make me sound like some sort of villain. My mom talks to me too, you know. She asks me why you kids aren't doing more chores or more sports. She said I should have been the one to teach you how to wash your face right and I should have lead by example. I get it from her, too."

"I know."

"I don't ever want you to look back at me and say that I didn't give you everything you needed to succeed. That I didn't offer to enroll you in dance lessons when you were younger or help with summer camp or call a dermatologist for your skin. I don't want you to think that, if you're ever disappointed when you're older, that I was the one to let you get that way. That I failed you. Because I only want the best for you, and I don't want you to blame me." She made another scribble on the wall, another dot for the screw.

"It's alright, I know."

"I just don't want you to regret anything. I don't want it to be my fault if you do."

"Who says I'd blame you?" the girl questioned, crossing her arms. "I've always taken responsibility for myself. Always. Why would I try to pin all my problems on you?"

Her mother waved it away. "It's not a personal comment on you or your personality. It's just the nature of the beast. So many people push their problems, their excuses for the way they are, onto their family. Take my brother, for example. He said it was our fault, so many times . . ." She frowned, erasing and rewriting the mark. "Nail?"

The daughter handed it over, frowning at the sharpened point as she did.

"Anyways. I just think you should consider things now instead of regretting them later. You're better than that. Smarter. And I'm sorry if that makes me the bad guy, because apparently all I do is remind you of all the things you did wrong."

"I didn't mean it like that. All I meant was, you bring in every argument we've ever had with similar points and condense them into a singular statement, regardless of what we're debating then and there. You make it impossible to win by citing all the times you've talked before. Dad just talks about whatever it is we're talking about. It was a comment on the way you argue, not a statement on who you are." She felt moisture on the corner of her lashes, and she swiped it away quickly, grateful that her mother was still turned the other way, inches from the paint. "It's different, is all."

"Different," she echoed. "I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but there's always something. You could stand to have clearer skin. And to help out more. You need to try more."

"For what?" The daughter's voice was hollowed out, scooped like it belonged to a shell of a person. A living marionette with drooping strings. Done.

"I don't know. You need to care more about something. You'll see that if you just work towards one thing, better yourself for a goal, and achieve that something, you'll have the motivation to do more in general. Like eating better. You said you'd do that, and you have begun a bit, but you've ate a slice of cheesecake after dinner the past few nights. There needs to be more follow-through."

"You bought cheesecake. I don't know, it was just there. I'll stop eating it." But it's not just cheesecake, is it? she commented wryly in her head. It's never just cheesecake. There's always going to be something. Something I did or did not sink my teeth into. Something I did or did not crave, or even that I just didn't crave enough. Enough, that's the caveat.

"You can say that all you want. It means nothing if you don't work for anything." The woman turned slower, now, frowning. She had been drilling the screw into the wall with a manual screwdriver and suddenly was meeting some resistance.

"What's wrong?" she asked, concerned. Asking if everybody else was fine was almost a knee jerk reaction. She cared too much, worried too much.

"Nothing, just hit a wooden baseboard. It's fine." Another twist. "The point is that you have to want for something. Anything. I know I could stand to loose some weight, but that means nothing if I've already accepted the situation. If I've just decided that I like cheesecake and don't care, I just want to sit here and eat cheesecake, that's that. Nothing will change. And yes, I could loose some weight, and I want to, but it won't scar my body if I don't. Acne will."

"I get it. I'll be better."

Better.

What an interesting word, better. It implied that you weren't enough, now, and she silently pondered if that was the case.

"It's fine. Just do something for once, okay?" She hung up the second wrought iron square, finally, and twisted it this way and that upon the screws. "Look good?"

"It could be a little lower, I think," the daughter remarked, cocking her head. "Just a bit." Her mother considered the suggestion for a moment.

"I think it's okay, actually. It doesn't have to be perfect." How funny, honestly.

She meant well. She always meant well. But why did that lesson only have to apply to frames?

Perhaps it was because frames did not have feelings. They did not possess the brains or the bleeding hearts with which to talk back, nor the desire to. Their one job was to look nice upon a painted surface, and beyond that all was void. They did not have to sit just right in order to be what they were. People, now they were something else.

"You know what, Mom?" the girl finally said. "I think it looks fine after all. Let's call it." The older woman nodded, satisfied with their handiwork.

"Yeah. We still have to hang the little pictures in the office, though. Do you want to get a head start on your homework before we go?" The homework didn't seem nearly so undesirable anymore. Seeing the shift in features, her mother frowned. "Are you okay? You seem . . . off. Is anything wrong?" The young woman put on her best smile.

"Yup. And homework sounds good. I think I better work on that before anything else." She sat up, adjusted her shorts, and put the level back on the counter. Strange - she hadn't realized she had been toying with it. As her mother left the room, putting the measuring tape and pencil on the desk a room away in order to begin their next project, the girl glanced back at the floor, curious if it would rise up to meet her. Then, like she often did, she shook her head and turned out the light, going back to her calculus.