Prompt: A Hat (300 words or less)

It’s Sunday afternoon. A man and a woman, both in their late sixties, sit side by side on the cafeteria-style chairs. I watch them from a distance of two tables away. The man and the woman are husband and wife. They have been married for over forty years. The chairs are uncomfortable. So are the man and the woman. They don’t want to be here. They live in Queens. They don’t like to come into the city, which is what they call Manhattan, although there is nothing much Manhattan-like about this part of Manhattan. I’d never say that this couple looks younger than they are, because they don’t, but they seem to be from another time, like they’ve been jettisoned from the 1950s or ’60s to now, to the first days of 2009. It could be because of their hats. Despite the fact that it is warm, stuffy even, in this dining room, neither of them has yet to take off their coat or hat. They look as if they don’t plan to stay more than a couple of minutes. The woman has unbuttoned her coat, but the man has not. His coat is the kind often referred to as a car coat, which is something between a traditional coat and a jacket. It’s gray, not 100-percent wool, but a wool blend with pile lining and knit cuffs. His hands are jammed in the pockets and, although I can’t see them, I imagine they are balled into fists. The woman’s coat is her good coat, the one she wears on Sundays and special occasions. It’s navy blue. She got it on sale at Macy’s nine years before. Folded neatly in her pocketbook is her ivory-colored church veil, which is 100-percent polyester. Her pocketbook is on her lap, and she grips the strap with both hands. His hat a Donegal tweed flat cap, brown and beige, with a snap brim. It came from Ireland and cost a pretty penny. The man never would’ve spent that kind of money for a hat, but his brother, who might or might not be into something crooked, bought it for him at least twenty years ago. Although he has never said this to anyone, the man loves the hat and in the winter months, he rarely takes it off. In the summer, he keeps it on the top of his closet in a ziplock bag to prevent the moths from getting at it. The woman’s hat is hand-crocheted, a cross between a beret and a beanie, and the yarn is blue ombré, festooned with a pom-pom on top. She did not crochet the hat herself. She doesn’t have a knack for that sort of thing.

They want nothing to do with their daughter, but they felt obligated to visit because it’s her birthday. A drug addict. That’s what she is. A drug addict who twice now, twice, without repenting either time, tried to kill herself, as if she didn’t know that suicide is a mortal sin. Oh, she knew, but she didn’t give a good goddamn about anyone, not her parents, not the Church, nothing except some filthy cat. To think, she was once a nurse in this same hospital where she is now housed with drug-addicted mentally insane psychopaths and whatever else. “How the mighty have fallen,” her mother says to her.

Her father refuses to speak to her, not even to say hello. He takes off his hat and examines it, flicking away a speck of lint.

“Have you made any plans for when you get out of here?” her mother asks. “If they let you out, that is.”

“I’m going to get a cat,” the daughter tells her parents.

Her father’s face flushes a deep red, the result of a spike in his blood pressure. He stands up, puts his hat back on his head.

Her mother gets up, too. They’ve had enough. They’re leaving. Her father tells her, “You’ve brought us nothing but disgrace.” He adjusts the brim of his cap. His face is even redder than it was before.

She doesn’t know what to say, and then she does. She says, “I hope you stroke out, you fuck.”

 

*The truth is that this never happened. Her parents have never come to visit.