Can you give me feedback on my short story.

By on August 23rd, 2010

I am in Year 11 and every writing task I get 9/15. I am determined to make this one different.
Please be critical and specific about what I need to change to get a better mark.

I am a pretty standard guy. Wife, two kids and a dog, the usual mix you know. Currently living in a pretty standard house, white fence, a veggie patch out the back, some of the doors don’t close properly but it doesn’t ’t really matter because we never stay in one place for too long.

The door squeaks as I shuffle through the frame, I shrug off my jacket and collapse into the worn couch, dust flies up and the smell of moths and old wine fill my nostrils. I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes. How should I tell her this time.

Moving house, really, is just humping your goods from one place to the next, like a tortoise. But for some reason she gets all emotional about this sort of thing. The gears in my mind refuse to formulate a line I haven’t used before. I sigh, better tell her now and get the waterworks over with, sooner I tell her, sooner they will be over and the sooner we can start packing.

“Doreen” I call, stretching the name out to three syllables as I trudge into the kitchen.
“Just a second Hamish.” She enters, wheezing under the weight of a moving box and exhales loudly as it hits the bench with a “ca-thump”.
She smiles up at me through her long hazel curls that shape her pink face.

When I first met Doreen I thought she was another one of those girls who sits up the back of the class, starring out the window because of her lack of interest in any subject matter that Was’t directly related to herself, Joan Jett or Vogue magazine. I was wrong, turned out she was three steps ahead of what the teacher was saying, uncommonly bright. Which is why her friends nearly choked on their cherry soda’s when she let me take her to the prom.

She still was slender and place, freckles scattered all over her perfect face, a bit tired round the eyes though. She has swapped the Vogue magazines for better homes and gardens magazines, but she still dottes her ‘i’s with hearts like she did 20 years ago.

Her energies augmented rather than diminished with the hours she spent in the garden, and re arranging the furniture until it fit with the walls to give enough space for the kids to run around.

She reaches into the box and starts unpacking the crockery. I grab her slender wrist, gently mind you, and she raises her eyes to mine, she wears a puzzled frown.
“Doreen, there is no need for that.Anymore” I say clearly and simply.

I watch at the face that stares back at me changes; surprise, realization, and the shaky bottom lip and she realizes that we have to pack again.
Her eyes turn pink and glassy and she swallows hard on the growing dry lump in her throat.

“Next place will have a bigger kitchen, maybe even a gas stove”

Now I love my wife, don’t get me wrong, but I can not fathom why she built up a deluded fantasy that ‘this’ place would be different. Does she think that if she changes enough photo’s on the wall, if she plants enough flowers in the backyard, fills the shelves, if she places a ‘home sweet home’ doormat on the porch, that if will be enough to make us stay.
Honestly, you think she would understand by now.

Doreen:
My throat tightens, my chest heaves in short breaths, and my eyes tingle with the bitter sting of tears. I place another ornament in the box with a foreign address scribbled in the front, surrendering all that I never got to cherish.