Beth Sherman
Suck It Up, Buttercup
My father broke it by accident. He was reaching for a can of sardines one shelf higher and his hand knocked into my mother’s favorite mug. She’d bought it at a flea market in Miami Beach on the day she graduated High School. One hundred and ninety ninth out of a class of 224. Voted “Most Likely to Win the Lottery and Lose the Ticket.” Went to prom with Philip Delvecchio, who founded a brokerage firm that made millions, and who she could have married and lived with in one of those pink stucco mansions overlooking Biscayne Bay, not in our two-bedroom apartment in Jupiter with no dishwasher and roaches racing each other around the kitchen sink. But she’d met my father by then, and they were in “love,” she said, using her fingers to trace quotes in the air.
My father could have said, “I’m sorry.”
Or “It was bound to break sooner or later.”
Or “I’ll get the gorilla glue and fix it.”
Even though this last was impossible. The mug had shattered into a billion pieces scattered like stars on the linoleum kitchen floor.
Instead, he opened the sardines and began making himself a sandwich on toasted rye, with plenty of mayonnaise.
“He acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong,” my mother said, shaking her head in dismay. “Like it never even happened.”
She was thinking she should have left him years ago when she was prettier and thinner. That having someone next to her at night, his arm cradling her belly, his breath tickling her ear, didn’t make her less lonely. That if she’d married Philip Delvecchio, someone would be serving her coffee this minute in a Wedgwood, gold rimmed cup.
I’m guessing those were her thoughts. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
The next day, an Amazon truck pulled up with a small brown box addressed to my mother. She opened it on the terrace, where she sat every morning and read The Miami Herald, drinking instant Sanka as hot as she could stand it. From there, she could see all the other buildings identical to hers, cars baking in the sun, a sliver of turquoise that passed for a pool.
It was a yellow mug. Not the same color as the one that broke. More of a lemon-y shade, paler, a little washed out. But close enough. It said Suck it Up, Buttercup. Just like the old one did. Though the font was smaller on the new mug. Black, not silver. And the handle didn’t have the same lilting curve.
She got up and went into the bathroom where my father was shaving. He’d been retired for 20 years, but he still shaved every day, put on a clean shirt and pressed slacks, like he had somewhere to go.
She set the mug on the sink next to the glass with their toothbrushes. She didn’t hug him, hadn’t done so in ages. But she leaned into him and they swayed like two lemons lifted by the same breeze until it was time for The Price is Right.
Ten PhD Defense Questions You’ll Probably Face
1) Describe your PhD in one sentence.
A study of female madness in the Victorian age.
2) What are the weaknesses of your work?
I don’t use enough five-dollar words like hegemonic, uncanonical, jape, and quotidian. Especially pedagogy.
3) What are you most proud of?
The Munch portrait of a woman covering her ears and screaming, with a torn sunset behind her. I capture that.
4) If you could redo your PhD, what would you do differently?
I would visit Scandinavia, eat pistachio gelato cake for breakfast, lie by a lake counting dragonflies, hike the Greenbelt Trail, love madwomen instead of dissecting them, hitch a ride on a cloud.
5) What did you learn while writing your dissertation?
That academia sucks up time, flattening it to dead paper, causing me to miss the pleasure of standing still.
6) How long until your research can be implemented in the real world?
Is this a jape?
7) Where will this research go next?
Wedged on my shelf between the Real Housewives Ultimate Trivia Book and a torn stuffed cow.
8) Your findings in Ch. 2 disagree with findings from Caminero-Santangelo in 2017. Can you explain why?
Caminero-Santangelo is a tenured professor at NYU with a research budget and a 1/1 course load. Winner!
9) Do you think this dissertation merits a PhD?
The last person who said no is now CEO of Nvidia.
10) What was the toughest part of your PhD?
Losing the sheen of words, the way they sweep and curl and meander then bite unexpectedly, their baby doll gloss tangerine crackle, how they start off on the sidewalk holding a briefcase and end up rambling through forbidden woods.
Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her stories have been published in Portland Review, Blue Mountain Review, Bending Genres Journal, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Full House Literary, Flash Boulevard, and elsewhere. Her work will be featured in The Best Microfictions 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached at @bsherm36 or https://www.bethsherman.site/
