“Aging Out,” by Candace Walsh (Fiction ’19)

Fiction alum Candace Walsh was recently featured in the LEON Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “Aging Out” below:

Aging Out (an excerpt from the novel in progress Cleave)

Franks and beans, canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Tuna noodle casserole, served in a series of chipped plates and bowls. If she was the eldest child in a foster home, she cooked. If someone else was older than her, she didn’t have to, but would clear the table or sweep the floor. She noticed how lazy girls got the boot, unless they got by in other ways.

How many houses had she lived in before aging out? The thick file under her bed could tell her, but she let the onionskin paper, index cards, triplicate layers, scalloped letters, clippings, and charts seethe in silence. They didn’t reveal the details of her life before child protective services took her away on the grounds of neglect. 

Veronica’s body kept secrets from her mind, but sometimes dropped hints. She didn’t like to see electrical cords slithering around on the floor, preferring to coil and tuck them behind furniture. She startled easily, at worst emitting raw little shrieks that gave way to fury. She rarely experienced an emotional tie with another person without wanting to stickily garland it with sex. If friendship was a house, none of Veronica’s rooms had doors. Even…no, especially if it was inappropriate. She must have released some etheric semaphore the vulpine teachers and dads of high school friends used to pick up on. And now that she was well into her twenties, she ended up in bed with friends’ husbands. In confidence, over tea, her friends disclosed good and bad qualities, best and worst moments, raciest requests. They were vetted. Nose hairs trimmed. Underwear clean.

These husbands emitted an ursine domesticity she liked to banish, to remind them of what they really were. As good as their opportunities. Panting, filthy, potent. When her friends told her their husbands were suddenly so much better in bed, she felt a mix of benevolence and pride. She’d almost roll her eyes and say, “You’re welcome.”  And best of all, if they ever got crosswise with her, she could detonate the truth with a smile.

But now that she had been born again in Pastor Steve’s church, the mars in her virtue had been washed clean by the blood of the lamb.

Read this piece in its entirety here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/issue-11-candace-walsh/