Setting the Family Free by Eric D. Goodman

Hubert was proud to receive the certificate-and Mom was proud of him too. Hubert was nineteen when his public school graduated him with a participation certificate. “Of course you are,” she’d said with a peaceful smile, but it was the kind of smile she used when she was saying one thing and meaning another. He remembered, and his chin bobbed as he said, “She’s gone.”įor as long as Hubert could remember, Mom had worried about him. He refocused his attention from the distant hills to his own reflection and saw the joy vanishing from his face like the fading vibrations of a cartoon bell. He wondered if she’d play with him at his new home. He could see the little houses with their smoking chimneys through the wooden skeletons the leaves had left behind. The leaves had fallen off the trees and the ground looked like it was covered with an orange-brown carpet. Hubert’s reflection disappeared as he returned his attention to the next set of hills. Hubert didn’t know where Dad was now, but he remembered what Dad had looked like then, like the reflection in the window: shiny, bald head rimmed with a crown of reddish hair, drooping eyes, a plump nose, chubby cheeks, and a chin that hung beneath his head like the ball from the bottom of a train’s bell. He was nearly bald now-it ran in the family-and he looked a lot like Dad had before Dad left him and Mom some thirty years ago. His reflection surrounded the houses on the hill, coming back to him in the window like a ghost in a movie with bad special effects. “Maybe I can get mine,” he said out loud.

He wondered whether there would be a train set where he was going. Hubert had taken the little green houses and red hotels and put them around his train set. When he and Mom played alone, they usually both won. Once, he’d even played with Mom, Uncle Ned, and Aunt Clara all at once-a big game that lasted a long time. Little houses decorated the distant hills, like the ones in the Monopoly game he and Mom sometimes played. He let out another, quieter laugh and mumbled, “You bet they are!” He looked out the window. Hubert relaxed his oversized smile, sensing Uncle Ned’s irritation. Uncle Ned’s straight face curved into a smile in response, but quickly straightened again, like a line of railroad track bending around a hill, then going as the crow flies once more. Real trains were more fun than make-believe ones. He even had a train set at home that he played with from time to time.

He was just a kid when he and Mom had gone to visit Granny and PapPap. He’d been on a train before, years ago, with Mom. Hubert laughed out loud, the motion of the train amusing him.

Setting the Family Free by Eric D. Goodman