The following story was published in the Spring 2025 print edition of creative publication The Scribe at UMass Amherst.
Sugar Cubes
As I make my breakfast, I see my stepmother sitting in the brown leather chair in the corner of our sunroom, reading a book from the library down the road. This is a common occurrence.
She doesn’t talk much, especially in the mornings. Instead, she keeps her gaze down on the words in front of her, her reading glasses on the tip of her nose, occasionally looking up to sip on her Earl Grey. Sometimes, she picks up the notebook and pen that live on our coffee table, scribbling something before placing them down again.
When she first moved in, I was nine. We would barely speak a word to each other, as I held onto the years I had spent with only my father like water in my hands. But I would always watch her place the sugar cubes into her teacup, after my father had already gone to work. Sometimes, she would hand me the spoon and allow me to gently place the sugar cube into the cup myself, and I would try to stop my young hands from shaking to avoid spilling her tea. I eventually grew out of my fascination with watching the sugar dissolve, especially when I began to open our tea cabinet on a regular basis, gravitating towards the English Breakfast that otherwise remained untouched. But I still listen to her motion in the kitchen and the sound of the tea kettle from my bedroom. And before I walk downstairs, she places an extra teacup on our kitchen counter, next to the sugar and the salt.
This morning, hours before my father and I leave for vacation, I take the last two sugar cubes from their designated glass jar. We can’t go without sugar for very long in this household, and, anyways, an errand is quite nice in this town: there’s no need to borrow my father’s old car, and I can take the long way as an excuse to walk by the water. So I walk over the aging wood on our porch, each step of my shoe wearing down the chipping white paint. Through the driveway and past the sidewalk, I make my way through the nearby park and over the bridge, towards the part of town where the stone begins to turn into sand, a few grains on the pavement beginning to multiply as I draw closer to the waves.
We moved here because my father loves the water, and my mom was willing to tolerate it. I, on the other hand, used to scream every time they brought me anywhere near the ocean. I barely remember this - I was only three when my mother bought a house in the closest city she could find because she did not want to live her life in tolerance. But I can imagine myself in my father’s arms, too young to know how to calm myself down, looking out at something that extended further than I could understand. I like to think that I could not understand a lot of things, back then, because maybe oblivion is easier to handle.
I have never worked up the courage to go into the ocean. I can only listen to it, the sound filling my head to such a degree that I can barely tell how far I have walked and what part of town I have reached, the commotion of any visiting families or local songsters failing to reach my ears quite as strongly. My father can swim for hours, diving under the waves to reach the calmer section of the water, closing his eyes as he faces the sky and floats for a while.
He won’t ever say it, but I know that he always wonders why I’m not more like him.
Just as I arrive at the store, I get a call from my father.
“Hey, I’m picking up some sugar, do you need anything?”
“Oh, no, thank you.” He coughs after finishing his sentence, and I can see where this is going, realizing that he must have still been in his bedroom when I left. “I’ve been up all night. I think I’ve caught the flu.”
“That’s okay, Dad, we can reschedule-”
“None of it is refundable,” he tells me, his voice sounding quite off, either from the guilt or the sickness. “Is there anyone you’d want to bring?”
I think for a moment and shake my head, as if he could see this through the phone call. He gets his answer through my silence.
We take this trip to the mountains every year, my father and I. The tradition started when my mother left, and we’ve kept with it. Our town is filled with tourists in the summer, so it’s nice to isolate ourselves for a while. That’s the only time of year that he’ll take off from work, aside from my birthday. My stepmother never joined us, and I’m unsure if she prefers the time alone or if she simply is too scared to intrude. So my father’s next words take me by surprise.
“Clara said she’d love to take you.”
I hesitate, thinking it must be out of pity. It briefly crosses my mind that she could be envious of these getaways with my father, of the time we spend together without any of his usual distractions. But then I remember how much time she spends in our sunroom, reading in our chair, and I wonder if she’s simply more content at home.
“That sounds good, if you’re sure you’re okay with it,” I reply, hoping he did not pick up on my hesitation.
“I would rather you two have fun, and not lose all the money,” he tells me, and after I tell him to feel better, we hang up the phone.
I look down at the time and realize it’s close to ten, the time that my father had originally set for our departure. Clara does not seem like the type to mind whether or not we are on time; my father has a more temperamental nature, while the same calm expression always exists across Clara’s face. But I bolt home anyway, sugar in hand. I have been conditioned to arrive home fifteen minutes earlier than my father asks me to.
Through the window, I see her red hair move around our blue kitchen. I walk in to drop off the sugar before going upstairs to check on my father.
“Is that sugar?” Clara motions to the box in my hand as I walk into the kitchen, and I nod. “I forgot to grab more yesterday, thank you,” she says, reaching for the empty jar so she can refill it.
I say goodbye to my father, who seems content with watching golf in his bedroom, a box of tissues on his bedside table. At half-past ten, we get into Clara’s Volvo. We have four hours to fill, and she’s the first to speak.
“Summer going alright?” Clara clutches the steering wheel tightly. This is one of the few times she has driven with only me in the passenger seat.
“Yeah. A bit boring,” I reply, tapping my fingers on the center console.
“Sometimes that’s what you need.” She glances at me quickly, and back at the road again. “Did you bring any books for the trip?”
I tell her that there’s a few I need to read for school, but I don’t elaborate. I’m not as much of a reader. I envision her in the sunroom, with her book and her tea and her notebook, and I try to decide on a follow-up question.
“Can I ask what you write in your notebook?” It seems to take her by surprise, my question.
“Your father doesn’t have much time to read my favorite books, as I’m sure you can tell. But he wants to understand why I love them. So I take notes.”
“So it’s all for him?”
“It’s all for him. I give him each notebook when it’s full.”
I picture the stack of notebooks on my father’s dresser. Right under my nose, for years, and I never questioned this, never wondered.
We spend the last hour of the drive listening to the music that Clara lets me play on her car’s speakers. We’re both silent as we walk into the vacation rental, and although the sky is gray and covered in clouds, it’s difficult to keep our eyes away from the windows.
“I was sick of the sun,” Clara says, walking out of the bedroom where she placed her bags down. I nod my head. I’ve always wondered how she feels about our town, the sea breeze easing the humidity, the live music down the main streets in opposition to the quiet of our house. I ask a more pressing question instead.
“How come you’ve never joined us on this trip before?”
“You already let me live in your home,” she says. “I wanted to let you have this.”
I look at Clara, her light green eyes directed up towards the mountains instead of down at her book.
“You should join us next year,” I tell her, and she nods.
In the morning, at the kitchen table of the rental home, she lets me place a sugar cube in her teacup.