"Ashes" by SB Pfeffer

“‘All I can give you is dreams Ashes,’ he said. ‘That’s much more than a thousand flashlight batteries.’”Susan Beth Pfeffer’s short story “Ashes” explores a family, particularly the teenage daughter Ashes, struggling with divorce. The story begins when Ashes goes over to her father’s house so he can take her out to dinner. On this dinner date, he asks Ashes to steal from her mom in order to pay off a mysterious debt he has. Ashes’s mother has $200 that she never uses, saved in a teapot. Pfeffer wants to tell the reader that the people who we think are perfect and that we look up to, like our parents, never really are perfect. She tells this story examining issues of morality an loyalty.

Ashes’s mother is a parent with flaws. She worries too much about the small things and is “penny wise, pound foolish”. In one instance she got in a heated argument about Ashes’s name with Ashes’s father. “‘But Ashes are cold, gray, dead things,’ Mom yelled. ‘You’re calling you’re daughter something dead!’” The name itself is relatively irrelevant and she is overreacting. She also saves an enormous amount of items (i.e. money) in case of an unexpected turn of events. She seems to over prepare and invests in the future more than the present.  Ashes’s mother is easily intimidated by small, meaningless things, which doesn’t make her an excellent parent.

Ashes’s father is another example of a parent with flaws. When he and Ashes sit down in the diner he took her out to he sits facing the door as if expecting someone. He says “They get itchy when you owe them money. And it’s not always comfortable to be where they can scratch you.” Ashes’s father is clearly in debt to someone. This debt was most likely acquired in a shameful manner, one that could expose many flaws. Ashes’s dad constantly tries to butter Ashes up to get her to steal some money for him. “‘Be a photographer instead, or a dress designer. You have flair, Ashes. Style…,’ Last week he’d told me to be an astronaut.” Ashes’s father clearly has no regard for Ashes’s talents and clearly just wants to use her. Ashes’s father is a flawed person.

Susan Beth Pfeffer’s “Ashes” shows a strong underlying theme of flaws in a parent. Ashes’s parents experience and possess such flaws.  Pfeffer uses them to help the characters come alive, because no one is perfect. By the way, Ashes’s father never gave her that dream he promised.