sugar addicts

a short story about growing up in a household where even as a child, you can tell things aren’t quite right

Mommy and Daddy were sugar addicts.

“Just like you!” Mommy giggled once, ballerina wine twirling in its glass. “Don’t act like I can’t hear you and your brother sneaking my sweets in the middle of the night.”

She was right. Always seemed to be. Vinny liked to knock on my door after dark, after Daddy told him football players didn’t need desserts after dinner.

He would hold a finger to his lips, shushing me with that cheesy grin on his face. With cheeks so red like the Lollipop Guild, he’d reach for my hand and lead us both downstairs.

Mommy always had a stash of sweets, just above the cans of beans and corn in our pantry. With attentive ears, Vinny and I would work together to push the closest chair towards the shelves, one of us keeping watch as the other selected from the stash.

Chocolates. Candy bars. Cupcakes. Cookies!

Mommy had it all. Never wanting to share, never caring what we took. Sometimes, she’d confused me. “Decisions aren’t my strong suit,” she liked to say.

Daddy hid sugar too, but more secretive than Mommy. He was a business man, a serious one. I only ever saw him smile when the sugar helped him.

Sometimes I think Mommy and Daddy loved sugar more than each other. They don’t talk to each other anymore, and only ever sat in the same room at bed time. Even then, sometimes Daddy liked his office more than his and Mommy’s room. While I held Vinny’s chair late at night in the kitchen, sometimes I’d hear Daddy on the phone with his boss, the shadow of his footsteps pacing back and forth through the bottom crack of his office door.

Mommy hid her favorite sweets in the bathroom mirror. They didn’t look very good, but she ate some every time she woke up, every time she returned home from errands, every time she drank her ballerina wine, until she’d fall asleep.

She never had a sugar rush like Daddy would, though.

Daddy liked to hide his sweets in his brief case. It held a little pack of sugar he liked to keep around during his work hours. “Strictly off limits!” he would bark before nudging me out his office, closing the door in my face. I’d turn around, an ache in my chest, before my ears quickly perked up to the sound of sniffling. The type of sniffling I was allowed to stay home from school for. Daddy got colds a lot, but they never seemed to make him tired.

Mommy was tired all the time, but at least she was happy. Her eyes always held wrinkles around them when she’d tell long stories all about college and her adventures. Her paintings that won all types of awards, she’d describe while staring at the ceiling, wine dancing. The friends she traveled with to paint the world!

“Why don’t you paint anymore?” I had asked.

The ballerina wine stopped twirling, and her wrinkles disappeared. “The world became too gray to paint, I guess.”

Sometimes at night, I’d wake up to the sounds of doors slamming, like the one in Daddy’s office. I would hear Mommy saying she didn’t like the kind of sugar Daddy ate. Daddy said hers made her sloppy. I just think it’s unfair that they didn’t share.

Vinny would wake up too, and immediately come to my door. In fact, we most often went on our sugar adventures when Mommy and Daddy woke us up.

“When we’re older,” Vinny said, taking the last cookie from Mommy’s pantry, “I won’t get mad at you, no matter what kind of sugar you eat.”

I just lay awake after, wondering if sweets would ever taste gray when I got older too.

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If you’ve come across this, you’ve just read my first ever Substack publication! Thank you so much for reading, as I hope that my work can touch the hearts and souls of many. Keep a look-out for more short stories, poetry, blogs, and op-eds!