Unremarkable Misgivings.

Excerpt:

“They threw plates at each other to pass the time. One egged the other on, while the other called the other’s bluff. It wasn’t always this way with his parents, at least as Virgil could remember. Or maybe it was. Things didn’t start off with shattered ceramic but they always somehow ended up that way. He would shout expletives, storm out, and get in his car and drive away. She would slam the door, stomp up the stairs, go into her room, and smoke cigarettes. Virgil and his sister would often huddle up in the corner of the room, in some mixed cacophony of fear, confusion, and sadness. This wasn’t the image of family life that was presented on television, romanticized in Elizabethan England, or advanced in Disney films. The gulf between appearance and reality was vast. It would all end in divorce, but no one knew exactly how or when it would happen. Robbie and Sonja did once love each other, but in the cold winter of late-nineties Illinois, they did everything in their power to avoid the void of love and intimacy, choosing instead to carry on in parallel tracks until conflagration erupted into something haunting and violent.”