The Current Arrangement

by Andrew Roe

Edward’s mother never cared for Charlene much, and so when she, Edward’s mother, thought her son’s single mother of two girlfriend (the kids lived elsewhere, in a different state) stole her electric toothbrush, well, that was it. She kicked Charlene out of the house. Because Charlene didn’t have any place to go, she started living in Edward’s truck, which was parked in the next door neighbor’s driveway, the house empty and vacated and foreclosed for some time now. When Edward’s mother was out running errands or playing bridge, Edward snuck Charlene into the house for showers, etc. And at night he smuggled her inside as well, thinking in the dark after she had fallen asleep how he was forty-one, and Charlene thirty-eight, and one of them had kids, was a parent, and somehow it had come to this. He knew that one day they’d get caught and then they’d have to figure something else out, the current arrangement was obviously flawed and wouldn’t last forever.

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Andrew Roe lives in Southern California. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and other places. Find out more (a little) here.