A STORM COMING IN

A STORM COMING IN

Frank Daley

Published by Self-Knowledge College Press © Copyright: 2017

ISBN: 978-1-988277-16-5

A Storm Coming In is a short story. It is published by Self-Knowledge College Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted, in any way or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

NOTE: The standard paragraph above is partially waived in this case. You may give this e-book away to anyone, but you may not sell it or any part of it or employ it for anything other than your personal use. It is under copyright. Exceptions are made for journalistic purposes, quotations, and/or short excerpts in reviews, on blog posts, etc.

Self-Knowledge College Press is a division of Self-Knowledge College (SKC)

A STORM COMING IN

FRANK DALEY

After lunch on Friday, December the 18th, Donald Timson resolved to change his life.

The accidentals would not change. He would still be a partner in Salemart, a Toronto outfit that devised marketing plans for companies, but he had determined to alter the elements of his personal life.

He wanted to reduce his 65-hour workweek to 40. He did not want to work nights or weekends except in emergencies, which rarely occurred. He also decided to take some holidays.

He didn't know exactly how these changes would affect his life with his wife Elizabeth and his eleven-year-old son Brian, but he expected the changes to be several, various and for the better.

The elementals, however, would change. Donald wasn't yet sure what the elementals consisted of, but he knew there was something fundamentally wrong and either he had to make changes himself or his life would be irrevocably changed by circumstance for the worse.

No one thing had triggered this desire to change his life: ten-hour work days had been unnecessary for years. If asked, he would have said he was not detached from his wife and son at all, but maybe that was a matter of opinion, and his family's view was that he was an absent husband and father. He noticed they were reserved and distant but didn't associate that with his behavior and attitude. He didn't think about it at all, except dimly.

That dimness was beginning to lift; while there was nothing vivid in his awareness change, it was slowly getting to him. And it was cumulative, so that while the gradual awareness of the family rift was not perceptible before (to him, anyway), the perception now had tension and physical and psychological effects. He felt sick.

The guilt he felt when ignoring some domestic chore or obligation had not suddenly appeared, but it felt uncomfortable now whereas he rationalized it earlier. He had his job--bring in the money---and his family members each had theirs. His wife's job was to run the house, and Brian's job was to study and grow up.

He realized now that some of the times he pleaded the pressure of work to excuse his absence at home were lies; the real reason was that he felt out of place there. He had worked to make the business successful, and now that it was, he worked to keep it that way. But he felt out of place at home, and that had been the case for years.