Tiny Worlds • Quarterly 01

From The Good Egg by Sean Thomas McDonnell — 

There is a taste to this memory, and a texture, so vivid that to call it false would be to put at risk every memory I’ve ever had. To call it untrue would be to call my life nothing more than fiction, and I will not be a lie—I will not swallow lies. So, when the detective asks me why I’m acting defensive, insinuating deceit, I nearly throw him out, but what would that look like? So, instead, I play host.

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Detective?”

“No, thank you. Let’s talk about the bird and the…what was it again?”

“Snake,” I say.

I tell him how my mother never forgave me, called me rotten, and sent me to live with Grandpa Joe. He was meant to be the father figure I’d been lacking, to mold me into a man as if I were a piece of warm clay, and through his actions, I suppose he did mold me. He taught me what the world wanted of men: to be volatile, cruel, and prideful keepers who value money above all else.

“Luckily, I’m a poor student,” I tell the detective. “Not that I don’t enjoy the finer things, but I’d rather have friendship, and trust. I need trust, but don’t we all?”

He scribbles down my words in a small black book, occasionally glancing up, watching me watch him.

“A few years later,” I say, taking a sip of my milk, “Mother died of heart failure. She couldn’t handle the loss of her son. But here I am, still breathing.” I smile, but when the detective doesn’t return one in kind, I continue, “But Grandpa Joe did do me one kindness; he died. I was seventeen, still plotting my escape when he went. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t glad to see him in the grave.”

The detective looks up at me in surprise, as if he’s caught me in some sort of confession.