The Eleventh & Three-Quarters Hour

Leslie What’s story this week contains an unexpectedly beautiful transformation, as many things fall apart, and others come together. ~ Julian and Fran, August 18, 2024.

This month’s stories are by authors A.R. Capetta, Lauren C. Teffeau, Leslie What, and David Bowles. The first story of the month is free to read, but it’s our paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week.

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The Eleventh & Three-Quarters Hour

by Leslie What

Shortly before her death, her mother had warned Gabby that most people began falling apart in their seventies. Gabby had ignored the old woman, as she most often did. Today was the morning that changed her mind. Better late than never. She perched atop the low wooden stool, knees jutting so far forward her bones crunched when she leaned in to deadhead her bluebells. The day was early enough that their fragrance was still dreaming, as her mother used to say. Their perfume would awaken soon, only to fade once Gabby added the dry blooms to the compost and earthier smells replaced the delicate scent, a garden’s version of ashes to ashes.

Gabby had followed her mother’s complicated directions for the garden’s care as best she could since inheriting the house. Sure, the gardenia leaves were a bit yellowed and the bushes had not flowered since her mother’s death, and okay, the basil had died before giving up any usable leaves. Too much water? Not enough sun? Or perhaps caterpillars chewed up the plants and pooped out green caterpillar pesto? Who knew? Every garden was a cozy mystery masquerading as a paragon of cause and effect.

Her mother, a judgmental woman whose superpower had been making Gabby feel inadequate, would at least have been pleased that Gabby kept the compost thriving. Gabby hadn’t done as good a job nurturing her son, but at least multiple generations of winged and wriggling creatures had not found her wanting.

A layer of marine fog seeped through the pores of her tracksuit; her hands cramped with chill. Moisture from the San Diego Bay sailed inland, as it did most August mornings. It would dissipate when its shift ended and the afternoon weather crew showed up to blanket Chula Vista with heat.

As she’d aged, Gabby’s mother had spouted off random proverbs and silly prophecies, things like, “Beware the Eleventh Hour, for once the clock is triggered, it can never be reset,” in a voice conjuring a Greek chorus and not that of an old woman sitting on a bedside commode. Her mother had tried to understand things any way they could make sense to her, even if they made no sense to others. They’d be picking up prescriptions at the Rite Aid on Telegraph Canyon Road and when the pharmacist would ask if her mother’s insurance had changed, the old woman would answer something like, “When the penis is erect, the mind is empty.” She would tip the Amazon driver a twenty and tell him, “You know that hot dogs get their taste from chopped earthworms,” information that he ignored because what mattered was the tip. In any case, people tended to ignore any women who had managed to survive past forty, especially when they seemed a little, or even a lot, crazy.

But now, as Gabby’s trowel slipped from her grasp, it carried her right thumb along for the ride. Gabby stared at the negative space where her thumb—the thumb formerly used for hitchhiking—used to be, and her mother’s warning about falling apart looped through her mind. Gabby hadn’t actually seen anyone near the end. Her father, her husband, her mother . . . they’d all died alone at the hospital. Until today, the falling-apart thing was only theoretical.