The Evangeline

“The Evangeline” was published in Pipes & Timbrels in 2005, and reprinted in the Boomtown Anthology in 2011. 

This is how it happened. It was May 27th, 1940, early Monday morning, the blackout curtains snug against the window frame, the wireless on low in the kitchen. I’m getting ready to take the boat out myself, my husband’s back being no better and we need the catch. And I’m raised up fishing and it’s the war; we all do different now. I’d made myself a full breakfast: eggs, fried bread, and beans. Rationing is for city folks. I trade the good Dover sole from our nets for milk and eggs, so there I am at table, sopping up the last smear of runny yolk when the wireless changes. A posh voice from the Admiralty breaks into the marine weather report, (Channel calm, north wind rising to thirty knots by evening), and he says our soldiers are stranded at Dunkirk across the Channel in Belgium. The Germans backed our troops onto the beach and are picking them off by air. The British Admiralty calls on all motorboats, sailboats, launches, tugs, yachts, fishing smacks, all private vessels of pleasure and business to go rescue our boys. Admiralty fellow says smaller boats are crucial, as they can get in the narrow mouth of Dunkirk harbor. Every boat is wanted; every skipper is urged to join the flotilla:

I sip my tea, strong, sweet, the way I like it on a cool morning. My cup clinks on the saucer. We got a boat, The Evangeline. She’s not big, but she’s yare and I’m good as any man on the water. I’ve nobody in the war, but if we'd had a boy he might have been at Dunkirk, stuck on the beach while the German Stukas screech overhead like vultures.

I look at the wall clock. We bought that on our honeymoon, nigh twenty years ago. What we thought we'd do then. Well. It’s half past four, time to get going. I open the bedroom door, lifting the handle so the hinge won’t squeak. My husband grunts, rolls over and snores. I close the door quietly. Back in the kitchen I put the kettle on, write “Gone to Dunkirk” on the back of a petrol bill and prop it against the saltcellar. I cut bread and fill the big flask first with boiling water then hot tea, screwing the lid on tight. Good flask, that, keeps the tea nice for hours, and no telling how long this might take. I pull back the curtain and see grey light, stack my cup and plate in the sink. No time to redd up the kitchen, my husband can do that, it'll be his bit, time he learned.

From the cedar chest in the hall I fetch blankets and pull old sheets from the bottom of the pile. The sheets will do for bandages. I’m moving through the cottage as if this was an ordinary morning, not faster, nothing special, but my heart is racing. In the hall mirror I see a middle-aged woman, her arms full of bedding, getting ready to sail across fifty miles of rough water to rescue some lads she don’t even know. I don’t think about this long, but gather up oilskins, load the wheelbarrow and trundle down the rocky path to the dock. The white beach rose at our gate snags my jersey and as I unhook the thorns I take in a lungful of the early morning: tide flats, roses, diesel. The sun’s coming up.

The old salts too feeble to crew any more lean against the railing and watch me pass, looking at my load. No fishing gear; they know what I’m about. They stand up straighter, touch their caps and give me the short nod. I nod back, eyes on the path, guiding the barrow over the stones.

The wheelbarrow whumps and rattles down the planks of the dock to our slip where The Evangeline is moored. She’s a coastal trawler, thirty-two foot with a forward helm and rigged for rockfish. Her hull is blue, the helm white, and her brightwork gleams. Our cottage may need a new coat of paint but we keep our boat in trim.

Here I'd usually pick someone to crew while I fished, but not today. It’s a different bunch on the dock. The regulars, sure enough, but also youngsters who should be in school, not down here in the cold morning, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands to stay warm.

That's when I see Mattie, her red hair stuffed under a cap. She helps me load, carrying the blankets into the hold, stowing the sandwiches and flask, then setting the empty barrow upside down on the dock. While I’m starting the engine I tell her I’m going alone, that she’d take up space on the way back, that she’s too young, what will her mum say? But she gives me a long look and says her brother’s lost somewhere in France. While I’m deliberating, she casts off the bowline and jumps aboard. She’s quick on the water, that girl. Raised up to it she is, like me.

I adjust the throttle, engine steady, but a new sound, a low rumble that means she’ll need overhauling. All those years of good regular maintenance will have to hold her, no time now and parts hard to get. That’s the war; we make do. Pretty soon every blasted thing will be held together with spit and baling wire.

I ease the wheel starboard and The Evangeline pulls away from the dock. Mattie stands at the stern and looks over our wake. As we motor away her mum comes running down the jetty, stops at the end. If we’d been closer I think she’d have dove in, swum after us and towed Mattie home, but she stands there, a big woman, breathing hard. Mattie throws her arms up in the air and her mum stops and hugs herself as she would hug Mattie too. Those two tall women look like lighthouses, beacons signaling to each other. I turn back to the helm as we hit the first chop and Mattie stumbles, rights herself. I point to the chart and the maps and she searches them out as if she would read her future in the depth marks.

Going over to Dunkirk we make good time, wind at our back and the load light. We’re in a loose flotilla spread across the water. Big merchant vessels, fancy yachts, little runabouts that heave and jump in the swelling waves. A sleek racing sloop flying regatta pennants tacks and comes about and the captain and crew, all in regulation whites, salute and hoist their glasses to us. Mattie waves back. We’re a rum lot, no mistake, but game. Going over feels like a Sunday excursion but when we approach Dunkirk harbor the singing and shouting die down. We made the crossing in two hours; it’s eight in the morning. Usual day, I’d be pegging out the wash then ironing and listening to the wireless tell how bad we’re doing in the war, or if I was fishing, I’d be pulling in the first set, checking the nets to see what I’d caught.

As our squad nears the Dunkirk quay we separate. The big ships stay outside the harbor mouth. Some small boats will pick up soldiers and ferry them to the big ships, but Mattie and me aim to keep our boys; what we take we will bring home safe.

I weave The Evangeline into the passage between wrecked ships and floating debris. The sunken ships smell of burned wood and decay. Oil rainbows glint and reform as the water surface shifts. The current snaps us around and I’ve got all I can do to keep from running into some wreck. Once inside the harbor mouth I cut speed and let the wind push us near the beach. The Evangeline has a shallow draft for a trawler, so I can get her pretty near shore. Soldiers see us and swarm into the water, wading against the current, then swimming to us, towing the ones who can’t swim any more. I hold our position against the wind and current, running the throttle low and ragged, while Mattie runs from port to starboard helping the soldiers clamber aboard.

On the way over Mattie and me agreed that we could bring back ten soldiers, twelve at most, but we pull on twenty and it is hard to stop there, only we know The Evangeline can’t keep her own in the water with more. Fully loaded she's tender all right, the boat, she's a right round fishing smack, solid as they come and hard to fight, but she's got all she can do to keep up.

Going home we’re beating upwind, rolling and pitching and the boys green and over the rail. Mattie rips sheets for bandages and wraps blankets around the shivering ones. The lads stay quiet. Sometimes a hoarse thanks when she gives them bread and tea. I look hungrily on the charts at the shortest way home, but the minesweepers aren’t through clearing, so we will have to go back the way we came, the long way.

It’s after ten in the morning and we’re an hour from home when we hear the German Stukas overhead. We are so small, I think maybe they can't find us, but they buzz above and charges hit the water direct off starboard, then to port. Water rises up like a wall on either side and I ram the throttle forward. I can hear the engine and she’s open wide as hell. I do not know how the boat had more to give but we shot ahead, bucking the chop and there's spray all over and those who could pray probably did.

What remains of our flotilla comes into port around eleven and a ragged bunch we look, most missing something, mast, gunwale, some so low to the water that the nearby wake almost swamps them, the sailboats shipping green water as they tack and swoop, full to the rails, soldiers hanging onto the shrouds. The crowd on the dock cheers, the sound rising up like one voice. The Evangeline lists to starboard and I hear more throbbing at low rev than I like, but still she moves steady to my touch. At our slip Mattie throws the bowline to her mum, who snags it round a cleat and quickly pulls us close.

Mattie guides the soldiers from the boat to the dock and her mum stands by and lifts them up if they stumble. Mattie’s mum brought food and I ask if she could bring more, and blankets, as she lives nearby. Her face goes still as she realizes we mean to go back. She looks over at Mattie, hosing down the deck, and I see the look between them. Mattie’s mum turns slow and then gains speed running up the dock, and the planks bellow and squeak under her weight. She comes back with a stack of blankets and hands them across to Mattie as the wake from a passing launch makes The Evangeline bob at mooring. For a moment the bundle rocks between them like a baby in a cradle, both their hands under the pile of blankets, her mum looking at Mattie as if she would memorize her face. She watches us pull away to the petrol dock, where today I'm allowed to fill both tanks for free.

This second time crossing the channel Mattie and I are tired and we know what's ahead. So we sing out all we can. Hymns first, then Christmas carols when we run out of everything else we both know. We are hoarse and red-faced and it gives us a boost, those songs do. Mattie takes the wheel and I catch up on the ship’s log, noting down our times and that we brought twenty soldiers to safety.

We come up the harbor at Dunkirk around two in the afternoon. The passage is even worse. Boats that got hit by German sniper planes are sunk halfway into the sand, and the water is full of broken spars, masts, logs loose from a barge. Bloated corpses float by, the current tugging their torn uniforms so the shirts billow and lift. A wave rolls one over. His eyes are open; what have they seen? Mattie takes the boathook and pushes the dead bodies and flotsam out of our way.

I swing as near the beach as I can and the soldiers swim past their drowned comrades and swarm over the rails. The worst part is leaving when the ones still in the water scream for us to come back. If we take more we will all drown. Already the bilge is ankle deep in oily water and I’m trying not to listen to the engine any more. We head out the harbor mouth for home and fall in with a ketch, two tugs and an open skiff, all full to the scuppers with soldiers.

A squall smacks in from the north around four and I think at least it will cloud the skies and make it harder for the German Stukas to find us. I toss oilskins to the lads in the open skiff and they whoop as if I’d given them gold. The rain pelts down, then stops and a harsh wind rises.

That's when it happens. Mattie is on the forward deck and she takes off her cap and lets her hair fly free. It looks like a red sail, a flag. There is the noise of ratatattat and she's hit in the back. Blood spurts out as if her red hair were splashing the boat. I swerve The Evangeline sharp to starboard to keep Mattie’s body from toppling overboard. One of our soldiers catches her as she rises with the motion of the boat and she drapes across his arms like she's asleep. The damn gunner is still after us. Aint' he got something else to do? I dodge the lines of fire, working the boat like a snake and still we put on speed. The soldier sits on the deck with Mattie's body across his lap. No one cries out. No one weeps. We got no more tears, not now. Time for that later.

As we round the jetty at five in the evening I see Mattie's mum standing at our slip. Her gaze goes past me and settles on the soldier holding her daughter’s body. We dock. She takes Mattie in her arms as if the girl weighed a feather. Others help the rest of the boys out of the boat and bring food and hot tea, and I eat because I must.

Mattie's mum stares at The Evangeline. We list a bit but we can still carry a load. I nod and she knows I’m going back. She jerks her head at her husband and he takes Mattie from her, cradling the body like she was a little girl again and he found her asleep at a party and wanted to carry her quiet like to the car, so she will only wake up at home and in her own bed.

Mattie's mum watches her husband carry the body up the dock, the sound of his feet hollow on the planks. She throws her head back and I think she’s going to howl but she sucks in air, grabs the gunwale and jumps in the boat with me, neat like a cat. I didn't think a big woman could move so easy. I look at the barometer, dropping steady, more bad weather ahead. I ease the throttle forward, spin the wheel starboard, and The Evangeline pulls away from the dock. Mattie’s mum stands at the stern looking back over our wake, then comes to the helm, grabbing the rail to steady herself. The Evangeline breasts the waves and we head into open water.

Shamlet in the Park

“Shamlet in the Park” won the 2007 Crucible Fiction Prize, and was published in the Crucible magazine

Act I

Heat and worry made my brain swirl and my stomach slosh, so to steady myself I ran lines for the next scene under my breath and peered through the backstage peephole at the audience. They were lolling on the grass, drinking wine and shushing their children. I was playing Shamlet, Princess of Denmark and my task was to entertain them; this was no time to think about my own problems.

I took the damp rag from the back of my neck and straightened my bodice. Queen Gertrude, played by my dear friend Bobby, gave me a pat on the peplum and we strode onstage. Bobby played Gertrude in full drag, heels and all, and towered over us, even me, and I'm a tall girl. He swooped downstage swinging his skirts and flashing some hairy leg and the audience roared. King Plodius nattered on and LarryTease mugged for the crowd, making faces and then looking innocent when Plodius turned to him. No gag was too low for them. Truth be told, no gag was too low for any of us.

Plodius gestured at my all-black costume. “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”

“Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.” I squinted, fanned myself and got a decent laugh.

In the hot sunlight the audience shifted and heaved before me, but I let my eyes rest on the trees at the back of the park and my nausea receded. The scene continued and part of me was performing and part of me was watching, marveling that no matter how miserable I was, onstage I always felt better. I gave my asides in mangled Elizabethan dialect and the cast did the freeze frame. I liked to catch them mid-stride to see how long they could balance, arms windmilling, before they toppled. But mutiny simmered in my breast. I longed to let the real words ring out as they had on Shakespeare’s stage instead of hacking the immortal soliloquy for a cheap punchline.

“To be or not to be? Naw, forget it. Just let it be.”

The courtiers sang the chorus of “Let It Be” and the audience joined in, swaying and raising their beer cans. The scene ended with Horatio and the two guards aping the Three Stooges, fingers in eyes, head knuckling, whooping, and then we were off, making way for LarryTease and his brother I-Feel-Ya, who in our version does not drown but instead takes up scuba diving. That was our style. We called ourselves No Holds Bard, and we played big in college towns. Our mascot was the rubber chicken and we used it mightily.

I ran backstage, sat down and put my head between my knees. Ah, the glamour of theatre, the joy of performing in full Elizabethan dress on a hot day in the middle of summer. The heat always bothered me but today was worse than usual because this very afternoon I would know if my traitorous dreams had come true. For I, mainstay member of No Holds Bard, had auditioned last week for The Arden Shakespeare Festival. If word got out, I would be seen as a defector. Months ago we had lost a leading man to the legit stage and his name was still hissed at parties. We were like gypsies or gangsters, horrified when one of the family becomes a cop. If Arden wanted me I would leave tomorrow, but if not, I didn’t want the crew to know I had tried to jump ship. The actor who left had bragged about his new gig right before his final performance in King Beer and as a result his sword disappeared from the prop table before his fight scene, his setup lines were never delivered, and during his big death song, “Feel Like I’m Brewing to Die,” the cast did the orgy scene from Thirteenth Night of the Tempest. I shuddered at the memory.

"Here, Liz, you look like you need this." Bobby handed me a cold ginger ale.

The man was a saint as well as elegant and funny. All the things a girl dreams of, but he already had a beau, a nice man with a steady income who treated him like a prince.

“You are a scholar and a gentleman.” I saluted him with the ginger ale and drank. The cold bubbles sparkled down my throat and quieted my stomach.

“Do you think we’ll still be doing this in our dotage?” Bobby sat next to me, skirts rustling. “Maybe it’s an enchanted acting troupe, like Rip van Winkle. Join in your twenties and wake up to find you're retirement age. Of course, we won’t be able to retire. We’ll be doing dinner theatre in Florida for the old folks. Only we’ll be the old folks.”

“Shhh. What if somebody hears you? But thanks. That picture was so chilling my temperature dropped.”

“It's not going to happen to me,” he whispered, then slapped his thigh in a parody of manly behavior and left.

Was Bobby hinting about Arden? I hadn’t seen him at the tryouts, but I had slunk in the back way and hidden in the restroom until my time. Although we used to talk about moving on, ever since the auditions I had clammed up and so had he, until now. Rumor was, Arden plucked only a handful of actors from the yearly cattle call and cast most of the season from private auditions arranged by agents. I didn’t have an agent because to get one I needed roles on the legit stage. If Arden wanted me I would pack tonight and leave tomorrow. Although I would miss Bobby terribly, I couldn’t stay on his account. He wouldn’t stay here for me, would he? All this real emotion made my temples throb. I put the cold can of ginger ale to my forehead. Arden did everything the right way. Authenticators, dramaturges, dialect coaches, costumes of heavy silk that swirled like waves around the actors. Real plays, with real directors and real sets. And real money. Not that a year with The Arden Shakespeare Festival would mean a life of leisure and excess but at least I would have full medical and dental. After a few seasons I would be recognized as a classical actor; I could work anywhere. All through college and drama school my dream had been to speak the words of the Bard. I had memorized most of the sonnets as a kid; long before I knew what they meant I was captive to their melody. The plays cracked my heart open, their characters so passionate and complex I ached to be them. In drama school I had worked up Helena and Rosalind, the parts tall girls always play. For the Arden audition I had flung myself into Helena’s “Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?” I had done my best, but was it good enough?

The Felonius family trooped off so it was time to hoick myself up and get onstage to see the ghost, which in our production looked like Casper: white sheet, big head, painted eyes. The Three Stooges bumbled onstage, saw Casper, shrieked and ran. Casper rushed after them and they jumped off the stage and cowered behind the front row of picnickers, who put down their sandwiches, blushing at the attention.

"Swear by my sword!" I coaxed the Three Stooges back onstage and exhorted them to keep Casper secret. As they put their fingers tentatively on the blade, pretending to have been cut and swooning at the sight of blood, I thought about secrets. Was Bobby waiting to hear from Arden, too?

Act II

Backstage, I pulled my cell phone from my bra. I just had time before my next entrance to check for messages. I couldn’t wait until after the show because not knowing was making me dizzy and crazy, but I had to be careful because we were forbidden to phone anywhere near the set. I was turning to scout around when I bumped into Fiona McPhee, the scatty costumer and my former best friend. I dropped the phone into my bodice before she saw it. Fiona wore a filmy dress with fragments of lace sewn into the seams and in the light breeze she was blurry around the edges. She was bony with a long horsy face and she could drink the cast and crew under the table, draining a frosty stein like a Wedgwood teacup. We had been pals since I joined the company a year ago, and there was a lot we didn't need to talk about any more, like how we felt about Roger and Emily, the co-founders. We had both survived Roger's predations and Emily's suspicions. It’s impossible to tell a jealous wife that you are not the one screwing her husband; that it is someone else, younger and better looking.

I used to go out drinking with Fiona and the rest of the company until late one night in a dive with peanut shells crackling underfoot and the rest of the gang off slamming darts, I had confessed that I preferred real Shakespeare, and Fiona had called me a snob. A few weeks later, Bobby joined, and moved into an apartment in my building so we carpooled and I got into the habit of going straight home after rehearsals. He would knock on my door at dawn, hand me a steaming latte′ and coax me out for a run. Over breakfast we would talk about our dreams. Bobby hadn’t been to drama school and in his first fencing class he gulped hard at the price. When he wrote the check I knew he was serious. Stage combat and voice lessons might be new to him but he was a lightning study and keeping up with him kept my skills sharp.

Fiona said, "You're doing good work out there, Liz, in spite of the heat. Really funny."

"Why, thanks." I was touched. She didn't give compliments easily and any other time I would have been delighted to hear more. "Here, let me sew that on. Won't take a minute." She whipped out a needle from the wrist pack she wore like a tatty corsage and stitched down a loose strip of black ribbon on my sleeve. I couldn't move, I couldn't call, I couldn't get rid of her. I could only smile sweetly and listen for my setup line, “But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.”

The words rang out and Fiona finished the stitch, broke the thread with her teeth and ducked out of my way. I galloped to the stage, took the steps in a leap, and nipped onstage in time to be accosted by Felonius. The audience tittered and I realized some of them must have seen all of my frantic entrance.

This scene could be tricky. Felonius was played by Jack, the only single, straight man in the company who paid me any attention. I couldn’t take him seriously as a boyfriend because he was too short and too eager. Last night he had tried to kiss me. I had been kneeling on the ground repairing a flat, trying to keep the stretchers taut while I stapled the canvas. Jack had knelt down to help, reached over to position the corner, and our fingers met. As he leaned in our breathing had fallen into rhythm. His look had deepened, it had made me nervous and I had pulled away.

Now he leered up at me. “Do you know me, my lady?”

“Not in the Biblical sense and I aim to keep it that way. Excellent, Lord Felonius. You are a fishmonger. Go fish.”
He pulled a rubber trout out of his doublet.

I turned the pages of my invisible book. “What do you read, my lady?”

"Words, words, Wordsworth." I was poised to launch into a mutilated version of the daffodil poem, when my phone rang out, shrill, insistent, mesmerizing.

I could see Roger offstage left puffing up like a walrus, getting ready to double fine me, and probably making plans to have me keelhauled for good measure.

"Hello," I trilled into the phone, hoping my voice didn't sound too peculiar.

"I’m calling from The Arden Shakespeare Festival. Did I catch you at a bad time?" It was the assistant to the Director.

"No, no, not a bad time at all.”

Offstage, Fiona, Bobby and the rest were transfixed with horror or delight, depending on their opinion of me and my new probable lifespan.

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." Jack said and reached for my phone.

I'm a tall girl; I put five ten on my resume′ but really I'm six feet and Jack is so short he barely comes to my shoulder, so I held the phone up over my head. He jumped and snatched, and all the while the voice from Arden was still speaking but I couldn’t make out the words.

I brought the phone down to my ear and heard the assistant to the Director say, "Of course, I don't need to remind you…" when Jack grabbed the phone.

The audience murmured and I heard shuffling and beach chairs resettling. Maybe they suspected this was real life, not drama. I put my hand on the back of Jack’s head and jammed his face into my cleavage, took my phone and stepped away from him. He looked dazed.
"I am but mad north-north-west.” I held the phone upraised in my clenched fist, put my other hand on his shoulder, and marched him backwards. “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw."

"My lady, the actors are come hither." Jack whirled away.

I couldn’t tell if he was hurt or angry. Probably both. His line was the cue for the entire cast to bundle onstage and mill around, mugging at the audience and getting in each other’s way. It was delivered a little early but they were all backstage watching, so most of them made it in time.

"The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King." I said, and scooted offstage.

With everyone else onstage, I scampered behind the stage wall and called the director’s assistant. Of course, the line was busy. I set the phone on vibrate, put it back in my bra and exhaled slowly. If Arden took me, this would be an amusing escapade, something to entertain my new compadres with at the dinner table or over drinks. Maybe there would be a leading man who was single, straight, under forty and over six feet. A girl could dream.

Act III

I draped the damp rag over the back of my neck, sipped ginger ale, and began contemplating my sins. I had admitted to envy and ambition when it was time for my entrance. Gertrude and Plodius hid behind their rickety gilt thrones and I-Feel-Ya was stationed downstage as bait for me. While he waited, he smacked his palm with a rubber chicken. If he was in a bad mood I could be in trouble. I-Feel-Ya was six eight, built like a biker on steroids, and had a little problem with drinking. When he was on the wagon he was mean as sin. The rest of the time he was meaner. No other company would tolerate his boozing but he was a founding member and Roger was big on loyalty. I gulped the rest of the ginger ale and trotted onstage.

I-Feel-Ya advanced on me with the rubber chicken, trying to give it back as a memento of our romance gone sour. Of course in the original, Ophelia returns love letters to Hamlet. In our version, it’s a rubber chicken. Typical.

The "Get thee to a nunnery" lines went over well. We played them straight and then did a double take to the audience, letting the image of burly I-Feel-Ya in a convent sink into the audience’s imagination. But the ginger ale I had chugged gave me the burps. For a while I disguised them, until a big one came along on “If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry." I belched through the words like a frog. I-Feel-Ya staggered back as if repelled by my noxious breath. Then the phone vibrated. It buzzed under my boobs, and as I squirmed, it shifted into my armpit. The antenna tickled me and I smothered a giggle. "O, help him, you sweet heavens!" I-Feel-Ya shook his head in warning.

I lifted my arm to begin a hail and farewell speech and the phone dropped through my costume and bounced on the stage. I stepped forward and swept my skirts over it.

My onstage paramour dropped to the floor. "True to my name, I-Feel-Ya." He dove under my petticoat for the phone.

I was impressed he could think that fast; he must have been closer to sober than he appeared. I stomped on his beefy wrist, his fingers opened, and I wrenched the still vibrating phone away. "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!” He grabbed my ankle. “You'll not throw me over. I. Will. Not. Let. You. Go."

I staggered for the side exit, towing his bulk behind me, then I jerked my foot as if I was doing the hokey pokey, he let go, and I catapulted offstage. I kept going, past Roger who glowered at me, past Fiona, past Bobby, past all of them. Behind the stage wall I answered the phone, my heart pounding.

"Hello, I'd like to take a moment of your time to ask a few questions about your television viewing habits. Are you the lady of the house?"

My reply was not at all ladylike. I slammed the phone down next to my makeup box and powdered my sweaty face when Bobby came up. “I’d put that phone somewhere safe, if I were you. Of course, if I were you I would have dyed my hair red years ago." "Why?" I clutched the phone.

"With those green eyes of yours and that coloring?" "Bobby. What about my phone?"

"Bounty hunters. Roger is offering a hundred bucks to anyone who brings him your phone during the show. He's livid. Must sure be an important call you’re waiting for. Big date?”

I snorted.

“Okay, Liz. Enough.” He held my shoulder and whispered in my ear. “ I know what’s up with the phone. Do not shriek. Arden took me. I got the call early this morning and I wanted to tell you right away, but I felt funny, because we hadn’t talked about it. You absolutely cannot tell anyone. Swear.”

“Cross my heart and spit. Oh, Bobby, congratulations.” The world turned upside down, taking my stomach with it.

“Thanks, darling. You simply must get in too. I’d feel terrible about leaving you here.”

“Tall men have such an advantage.” There was a long pause while I heard how shallow and dreadful that sounded. “I’m sorry, I know you got in on merit. Guess I’m just a bad person.”

“No, you’re a good actor. I’m keeping you in my prayers.” “Thank you, Saint Gertrude. Hey, what about your boyfriend?” “C’est la guerre. He’s a great guy, but this is my career. Long distance relationships don’t work for me.” Bobby shrugged. I felt better; we were alike after all. He’d dump his boyfriend for a better gig.

“Here. Hand me your phone. I’ll run and lock it in the car.” I turned away. I didn’t want him to see how obsessed I was. His car was too far away; I’d never be able to check between scenes. But if I didn’t give him the phone, he might think I didn’t trust him not to sell it to Roger. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was being parted from the phone. The phone was my lifeline; separation would drive me crazy and it was a short drive.

“Okay. How about a compromise? Right next to my heart.” That I could do, and it would show I trusted him. I gave Bobby the phone and he tucked it in his bodice, nestling it down among the rolled-up socks he used to create Gertrude's swelling bosom.

"Jump up and down," I said.

"For joy?"

"To test it. Make sure it won't drop down the way it did with me." Bobby obediently jumped, his skirts flying and wig curls bouncing. The phone stayed put. Bobby would never sell my phone to Roger. He would just go to Arden and leave me here to rot. I wanted to drop to all fours and howl. Worse yet, my next scene was with Roger as the Player King, and he was furious with me. I went onstage like an early martyr preparing to face a particularly toothy lion.

Sometimes we skipped over Hamlet's advice to the players but right now I needed a Shakespeare fix, so I signaled by opening with the actual words. "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue."

"I'll trip your tongue all right. Give me advice, will you? Who do you think you are, Mrs. Shakespeare?" Roger grabbed my shoulders, pulled me close and peered down my cleavage, ostensibly looking for the phone.

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action." I shimmied to show that I had nothing up my sleeve, nothing down my dress.

"And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them."

We looked at the audience for a beat, as if considering this advice, then shook our heads in unison. Roger brained me with a rubber chicken and stumped offstage, cutting the scene short. Guess he wasn't in the mood for real Shakespeare. My noggin ached. He had really thwacked me.

King Plodius, Queen Gertrude, Felonius, LarryTease, I-Feel-Ya and the rest of the court came onstage to watch the play-within-a-play. I-Feel-Ya looked me up and down, scanning my costume for the phone, and when he cracked his knuckles I flinched.

Roger and Emily entered arm in arm as the Player King and Queen, then Roger stretched out on his side as if he were going to take a nap. Once he was snoring, the Player Queen smooched a bit with The Mailman, and then she mimed pouring poison into her husband’s ear. Roger liked to die onstage and as head of the company, he took his time. He rose, staggered, fell, raised himself up on one elbow, gasped, and finally rolled over with a grunt. The Player Queen and The Mailman hoisted him into a wheelbarrow and trundled off, followed by the rest of the players.

Plodius turned to Gertrude. “Whose idea was this farce?" "Not Shakespeare's," yelled a heckler.

Gertrude approached me. "Why can't you behave? When you were away at school, did you write, did you call? Your own mother and not a word, just a telegram for more black socks and more money. It's so hard, to write your mother once in a while?” His voice deepened. “It’s all about trust. And communication. Of course, I didn’t call you either." He looked sadly at me.

"Ma.” I kept my voice sullen, but my eyes said I forgave him. His look brightened. "And clean your room. Such a mess. Swords and skulls all over the floor, I can't see to sweep."

"Ma."

“We need to talk.” He patted his jutting bosom, swung his skirts around with a flourish and flounced offstage. "I will come to my mother by and by."

Did Bobby mean the phone had rung? Where was he? I rushed off, whirled behind the stage wall, and nearly ran into Fiona.

"Seen Bobby?"

"Back onstage with Felonius, you know that. Gee, you’re awfully wound up. What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine. Really.” I aimed for a normal tone, but it came out broken, with traces of hysteria.

“Liz, tell me. Are you pregnant?”

“Good grief! No, and if I were, it would be the virgin birth. C’mon, you know the extent of my love life: two Alan Rickman videos and a glass of cheap chardonnay. The heat upsets my stomach, that’s all.”

“I’m so relieved. But the phone. Roger is really angry. Is it your folks?”

“Oh, Fiona. No, everything is fine at home. I’m waiting to hear something important. And I’d better get ready for my entrance.” I edged away from her.

“Now I get it. I should have known.” She crossed her arms and looked at me as if I had already abandoned the family. “It’s that hoity-toity Shakespeare company, isn’t it?”

“Please, don’t tell anybody.” I put out my hand, but she shied away.

“Of course I’m not going to rat on you. I have my standards, even if I’m not good enough for you any more.” Her voice trembled. The day turned bleak and flat. Real life was so complicated. But once onstage I felt better, because this was the scene where I got to stab Felonius in the arras, right where he deserved. Gertrude checked his lipstick in a large compact, looking admiringly at himself and making outrageous faces. I went to him and we air-kissed back and forth, escalating, making louder and louder smacking sounds. Finally he took out a hanky, held it up to me, I spat on it, and he dabbed at my nose and chin, while I stood there like a rebellious teenager, muttering and shifting my weight. I tried to take the hanky from him, he waved it out of my reach, and I grabbed him by the shoulders.

"What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? What ho! Help!"
From behind the arras we heard Jack cry out but instead of staying put so I could pretend to stab him through the fabric, he went to the far end, peered around, said, “Peek-a-boo, I see you," and jumped back, letting the curtain cover him again.

I snaked up to where Jack had been and pulled the curtain aside. He wasn’t there. This could be a good bit, I thought, when I felt the unmistakable thwack of a rubber trout on my backside. It was war. Gertrude handed me a rubber chicken and Jack and I were en garde. Both of us had been fully trained in stage combat and we wielded our animals with élan. He advanced with the trout. I countered with the chicken. This breathless improvisation was what our fans came for and I could feel their excitement. Would I miss this if I got into Arden? I stepped forward in that bouncing way fencers have, keeping my body still and moving only my legs. Gertrude perched on his divan, pretending to eat popcorn and bobbing his head back and forth as if he were watching a ping-pong match. Jack and I bounded stage left, then right. Back and forth we went across the stage, darting forward and springing back in rhythm, the distance between us shrinking until it felt like we were dancing. I took him in my arms and, still holding the chicken and the trout, we tangoed downstage cheek to cheek. I was leading and when I twirled him out, the audience applauded. Jack spun, came back at me with his lips puckered up for a kiss and I coshed him on the head with the rubber chicken.

"O, I am slain. And by a beauteous maid." He dropped to his knees, I hammered him into the floor and he fell over, legs twitching.
Gertrude put away his popcorn, brushed his fingers and bustled downstage to us, making tut-tut noises and shaking his finger at me. "What have I told you about roughhousing inside the castle. But would you listen? No, and now look what you've done. You’ve gone and killed little Felonius that was such a nice man."

"You're a fine one to talk. Dad's dead two weeks and you've married his brother, that bum."

"He's not a bum. He's the man I love," Gertrude struck an attitude, back of one hand on his forehead and the other arm outstretched.

Jack stirred, but I tapped him with the chicken and he slumped. "Think you can mope around Elsinore forever?” Gertrude dropped his pose.“ Pick something, real estate, or taxidermy, or corporate malfeasance. Take charge of your life, whatever happens."

Easy for him to say, he was safely out of here. Jack roused himself and this time Gertrude took the chicken and bopped him back down. We continued like this, Gertrude scolding, Jack rising and getting thumped, moving upstage each time, until we were offstage.

Act IV

In the real Hamlet this is where Ophelia drowns, Fortinbras stops by, and we learn what creeps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, if we didn't know it already. But in the No Holds Bard version this is the scuba lesson. I-Feel-Ya goes mad, tromps down to the pond, and once there visits with the fishies, like the Little Mermaid on meds.

There had been no time to get the phone from Bobby, who was now onstage with I-Feel-Ya. I avoided Roger, Fiona, and anyone else whose eyes narrowed at me. Emily brushed past me and I jumped. She patted my arm absentmindedly and moved on, muttering to herself. She usually looked worried, because she paid the bills. I-Feel-Ya barked like a seal in the make-believe pool while Gertrude watched, towel over his shoulder like a good mother at swim meets. They had a discussion about synchronized swimming in the Olympics and some Esther Williams jokes that most of the younger audience didn't get.

I sat by myself, thinking that perhaps this was the last time I would be part of this company. I had joined right out of drama school and felt lucky to be asked. Tall women have a hard time getting leading roles in the legit theatre because most male leads are short. In No Holds Bard, not only did I play leads, Roger had mumbled something about letting me direct. Our paychecks were slim and we needed what we collected passing the hat, but I was making a living, however meager, doing what I loved. The company had taken me in and now I was trying to ditch them. I almost felt real tears but sucked them back. Not good for my makeup.

Bobby came offstage and grabbed me. "I think you got another call. Here." He looked around, fished the phone out of his bodice and slipped it to me. “I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed for you. Sure is hard to walk.”

He hugged me until I squeaked. He was a nicer person all around than I was. And probably a better actor. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the message now. I could wait until after the show, after striking the set and packing up, at least two more hours of solid torture. Sure. Like hell I could. I ran behind the stage wall. My fingers trembled as I punched in the code for messages. My stomach fluttered. But the roughhousing must have damaged the phone, for all I could hear were a few faint words. It was enough. I heard “regret… sorry… unable.” The elevator dropped to the basement, bounced, and settled. I promised myself a good cry when I got out of makeup. I gazed at the familiar backstage mess: boxes, bits of scenery, the prop table, water jug, recycling box, the trash bin. Welcome to my world. I wasn't good enough for Arden. I was a comic, not an actor. At least my queasiness was gone. I no longer felt light-headed. I was earthbound, leaden.

Bobby came behind the wall and nodded toward the stage, reminding me that my entrance was approaching. I went to him. The phone had no more magic; it was only a chunk of plastic and metal. I gave it back to him.

“We’ll talk later.” He gripped my hand.

When he left the misery came back. It was worse than the heat, and I had the final act of Shamlet before I could take off my makeup, go home, and cry. I turned around, and bumped into Fiona. She started to back away, but I grabbed her.

“You’re stuck with me. I didn’t get in. Fiona, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. Please forgive me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I remembered those late night gossip sessions, how we had laughed and commiserated. Tears welled up. I released her, and she watched me dab at my eyes with a tissue.

“Your makeup is fine,” she said wryly, and left.

I slumped onto the bench. Arden didn’t want me, Bobby was leaving, and Fiona might never forgive me. If Roger fired me I would have to temp or waitress while I made the rounds. I hugged myself and rocked. What did I have left? The same as always. Acting was my drug, and I needed it. Only one more act, and I would make the most of it. I stood up, shook out my skirts, took a deep, centering breath, and went onstage.

Act V

Trumpets blew, announcing the arrival of the court, and I hid downstage behind a pile of foam rocks. LarryTease made a stately entrance arm-in-arm with I-Feel-Ya, whose swim fins slapped the stage with each step. They processed slowly, followed by Plodius and Gertrude, the courtiers, the Player King and Queen and The Mailman. I watched Bobby, who was going to leave me here to rot while he did all of Shakespeare’s major roles. Abandoned, cast adrift in a sea of comedy, gloom washed over me. I tried to use it, remembering that the real Hamlet was darn depressed at this point in his short, suffering life.

Gertrude gestured to Plodius. "When the pond is landscaped we can invite the neighbors over, those nice Norwegians, the Fortitudes. And the Swedenborgians. We'll have pool parties. Little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Drinks with tiny umbrellas. Cabana boys in Speedos. It's time we had some fun."

"That's my mom. Life of the party," I said to the audience.

"And where have you been, young lady?” Gertrude spun, smote his bosom. “All this time and not one word. Your uncle and I were worried sick. Well, I was worried. Your uncle was just sick. He's always got a headache these days."

Gertrude leered at The Mailman, who leered back. Plodius looked glum.

"Thou villain! Thou hast slain my dear old dad.” LarryTease ran up to me. “I claim revenge.”

He lunged, but I dropped the fake rock pile in front of him, scurried away and hid behind Gertrude's skirts. LarryTease got free of the foam rocks and chased me around Gertrude, first one direction, then the other.

"Let's settle this the right way." King Plodius held us apart like prizefighters.

LarryTease said, "With rapier and dagger? Pistols at dawn? Switchblades at noon? Broadswords at teatime? Ax handles past my bedtime?"

At each suggestion Plodius thought for a moment and then shook his head.

"How about the usual?” I asked.

We got our weapons of choice, which were, of course, rubber chickens. The audience whistled and hooted. Really, the sadism of summer park audiences can hardly be underestimated. LarryTease and I lunged and retreated, shouting at each other.

"I cry fowl play."

"A poultry excuse."

"Have at you, and let's capon fighting."

Usually at this point the whole cast pulled rubber chickens from their doublets, coshed each other, we sang the closing song and the show was over, but this time I stood still. No one moved, waiting for my new gag. Instead, I delivered the first line from my favorite soliloquy: "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew." I-Feel-Ya flexed his biceps but I smacked him with the rubber chicken and glared at him. He looked stunned, like a playground bully brought low.

I let the rubber chicken drop and continued with the entire speech. I might not get another chance for a long time. The lines rolled out of me and the audience put down their rustling bags of potato chips. The gang onstage hushed. It seemed the very blades of grass in the squashed lawn listened. I had never sounded better.

Something came into my voice that day in the park, and I was Hamlet. I was no longer Liz, playing Shamlet, I was a Shakespearean actor, working out in the full sunlight, as they had done, playing for an unruly crowd, just as in Shakespeare’s time. I finished up with, "It is not, nor it cannot come to good,/But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue."

The audience whistled and clapped. Bobby wiped his eyes. Jack blew me a kiss. The rest of the cast looked as if I had suddenly shown myself to be of a different species, one they hoped was friendly. Roger grunted and we all grabbed hands and belted out "There's No Business Like Show Business," finished up with a group bow and then leapt into the audience to pass the hat. We had to get to their wallets before they started packing the picnic hampers. As I went among the crowd gathering their kudos and dollar bills, a young girl came up to me. She was coltish, perhaps twelve, almost tall as me. Although her eyes were bright, she had a plain face, not pretty enough to be model material. I remembered what that felt like. “How do I, like, get to be an actor? I think you are, like, awesome."

"Thanks, that’s really nice of you. My advice, for what that’s worth, is get involved, see a lot of plays, volunteer, take classes. That kind of thing. Good luck to you.”

Backstage, I got in line to use the dressing room. Bobby stood behind me, blowing on the back of my neck. I wiggled around to tickle him when I saw someone approaching. It was Ms. Selby Dapple, Director of the Arden Shakespeare Festival. She was short, but with an air of command as if she had just stepped off a battleship and had vanquished the enemy before lunch. Roger and Emily watched her advance. She nodded to Roger as if he were someone she had met long ago and tried to forget.

"Liz. Sorry I missed most of the show, but I did catch your splendid soliloquy at the end. I’m so looking forward to having you in the company. Did you get my message?”

Her gaze magnetized me and I nodded like a bobble-head doll. I felt like saluting and wondered what it would be like working for someone who ran such a tight ship. Maybe I’d actually miss the pirate looseness of No Holds Bard.

Ms. Dapple smiled at Bobby and he answered with enough wattage to light a village.

“Where’s Jack?”

“Here, milady.” He bowed.

Jack had auditioned too? We were all going to Arden?

“How wonderful and nurturing your company must be to have produced such marvelous actors.” Ms. Dapple swung around to Roger and Emily as if she recognized these were enemy waters and she needed to make a treaty. “You must be very proud of them.”

Roger sputtered, but Emily grabbed his arm. “Thank you so very much, Ms. Dapple. And if you ever need a comedy troupe for your Green Show, please consider us.” She held out her business card.

Epilogue

Before the main show No Holds Bard does a free performance on the lawn in front of the Elizabethan theatre. Everyone else in the Arden company thinks this is a great addition. If I am anywhere nearby, Roger bellows that I’m welcome to join them onstage, but I decline in iambic pentameter. Fiona is being wooed by a lawyer and I’ve seen her wearing tweed and buying arugula. Bobby is involved with one of the local moguls, but confides that he is tempted by Hollywood. Jack is canoodling with a shrimpy ingénue whose I.Q and bust size are the same.

My next stop? New York. The readiness is all.

I remember the look

 “I remember the look” was published in VerbSap in 2005 and reprinted for the Jack Straw Story Chairs project in 2013.

I remember the look between my father and a woman with upswept hair. My father and I sat on a black vinyl bench in the lobby of the Orpheum Theater. Mother was not with us; she must have been weeding the garden or resting on her white couch. I remember it was the middle of the week and that there were questions I did not ask my father. Why was he here with me instead of at work? Why did we sit in the lobby instead of going in to the matinee of Fantasia? It was enough to sit next to him. His tweed jacket smelled of tobacco and citrus aftershave.

The heavy door of the auditorium swung open and a woman walked past us, her high heels clicking on the tile. My father squeezed my hand and we stood up. From the back I could see that the woman was tall and her blond hair rose in a beehive. When she turned to face us, her skirt swished and rustled.

Now I bend my brain backward to scour the moments around the look. How did my father stand, were his hands outstretched, or at his sides? The woman’s face was not sad, but satisfied, as if she had just won a silent argument. She turned and left the lobby, her heels clicking again on the red tile. If she had looked back at us, would we have followed her out of the dusty movie theater, into the suburban air, the wet sidewalk shining in the afternoon? I remember my father took me for ice cream, and I tasted vanilla and salt.

The Sanfilippo Syndrome

“The Sanfilippo Syndrome” was published in Change Seven Magazine in 2015. 

Terese

Come right on in and close the door, quick before anyone sees you because I’m in time out again for bad words. Like I don’t have enough already to worry about. They really think this will stop me? A nice big Ha Ha. Don’t go away; it’s not like a cold, you have to be born with it and then you die. Unless of course you’re a carrier like a carrier bag or a carrier pigeon, and a pigeon is a rat with feathers and that’s us, the rat family: Mommy and Daddy Rat, Grammy and Grandpa Rat, Uncle Rat, Sister Rat (that’s me!) and of course, my little brothers, the rat boys, the lucky ones. My little brothers might actually get to grow up, but not me. I’m twelve and a half and I probably won’t make it to thirteen. Why, you ask? I’m glad you asked. Thanks for asking. Well, it’s like this: when a daddy loves a mommy in a very special way. Oh, wrong lecture, sorry. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it. Ready? My family is different. We have the Sanfilippo Syndrome, named after Dr. Sanfilippo, who I think must be dead or I would have been examined by him, but I bet he was a weirdo because why else would he want to study families like ours? I’d like to study him. I used to tell mom and dad I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, but I’ve pretty much stopped unless I really need to hurt them. I didn’t understand why they always started talking about something else but now I know. Hey, the joke’s on me, no growing up for this kid. My boobs are starting and when I get my first period, I’m toast.

And it’s not a pretty death. I got on mom’s computer and here’s what I have to look forward to: seizures, paralysis, facial coarsening, speech delay, vision impairment, loss of muscle coordination, and let’s not forget, ta da - dementia. Basically I’m going to be a cranky vegetable and then an ugly corpse. And there are, ahem, mood changes, possible rages. This is a surprise? I think doctors are the dumbest. I can see them in their white coats, studying some poor sucker like me, frowning, taping their clipboards, saying, “I don’t know, looks like this mood change might be one of the later symptoms.” I mean, come on, give me a break. Oh, and what the Sanfilippo site called “behavioral abnormalities” are common, also mental deterioration. Great. Can’t wait. Maybe it would have been better if I’d been stupid to begin with. I do the times tables in my head every morning and as long as I can get through the twelves, I figure I’m good for another day. So how come there are any of us at all? An excellent question, go to the head of the class. It’s because sometimes a daddy loves a mommy in that very special way and they don’t care that they are carriers like pigeons or bags or rats, they go right ahead and have more kids. For instance, even after mom and dad found out what was wrong with little ole’ me, they kept going and had my brothers, Erik and Sven.

I used to be an only child but when I turned six I got a surprise birthday present. Grammy had baked me a pink birthday cake and she told me to make a wish and blow out all the candles. I closed my eyes and wished that I could go to regular school instead of having to get on the short bus. Mom blew out the candles I missed and she said I was getting the best present of all, a baby brother to play with. I bounced so hard in my chair that I peed my pants and Grammy took me to the bathroom and no one scolded me. Now Erik is in first grade and he eats my dessert when I’ve been sent away from the table for talking back. Sven is still a baby and he holds up his arms for me to pick him up and cuddle, but I don’t want to any more.

The boys, my baby brothers, they might get to grow up and reproduce. Isn’t that great? Heartwarming. There’s some kind of fancy high-priced experimental treatment and my little brothers get to have it. But not me. I’ll tell you straight out that I am too damned old to have the damned gene therapy. So that’s my life. Mom says I’m supposed to be happy for everyone else, but I’m biding my time. I’ve got a little plan.

Bjorn, Terese’s father

I don’t like the way she looks at me lately. Sure, she’s my baby girl and she gets a raw deal and I’m cut up about it, but it’s God’s will and we have to make the best of it. It’s going to be hard on the whole family when she dies, our only daughter. Most of all I worry about Ingrid, my wife, how she’ll feel, what this could do to our marriage.

I love my wife. You gotta understand this. I first saw Ingrid at the summer gathering when we were ten. Typical Seattle picnic, rain drizzling, there I am in the buffet line under the awning, and on the other side of the long table dishing out pickled herring was a tall girl, my height and I was big even as a kid. She had yellow hair in braids, clear blue eyes, a serious expression. I swear I fell in love with her right then, holding out my paper plate. She spooned the slippery fish and onion so careful that no pickle juice splashed onto my blood pudding. We looked at each other and she handed the serving spoon to another girl and followed me to sit under a cedar tree away from the rest of the kids.

Even then Ingrid had this way of listening that made me feel like I was the best person alive on the planet and I never got that at home. Pop hardly ever said anything to anyone, and ma and my younger brother Leif mostly talked to each other. I knew the picnic was the last time I’d see Ingrid until the next summer so I asked for her address. She wrote it neatly on a paper napkin. I still have that paper napkin in my top drawer in a cigar box. The whole school year I wrote her, worked hard on those letters, didn’t want to sound like a dumb jock. See, I knew she was the one. But I kept it light, didn’t want to tip my hand. Heck, we weren’t even teenagers. I lived for the summer gatherings. When she turned fourteen she got kind of fat but that was good for me, meant the older boys weren’t buzzing around.

I slaved to get decent grades so my wrestling scholarship would kick in and I could get into State, and then she gets into that nice college with all those rich frat boys. She got good-looking right at the end of high school. Always was a big girl, but now she looked like a Valkyrie. Then in the fall of our freshman year in college she came to my wrestling meet. Surprised the heck out of me. I had won my match, a throwdown. She found me in the parking lot on my way back to the lockers. I was all sweaty but she didn’t seem to mind, stood real close. I leaned over and she leaned towards me and we kissed and we couldn’t stop and next thing you know we’re in the gym, because I have a key so I can go in early and work out, and we are doing it on the wrestling mats and then afterwards it hits me. What if she got pregnant? Maybe she’d marry me. So we did it again. And again.

A month or so later she tells me on the phone, all teary, that she was up the spout. I asked her to marry me and she said yes, but she had to be able to finish and go to law school, so I dropped out and went to work for Pop. We run a construction company, blasting mostly, whatever needs doing. Pop doesn’t hold with women working but for once ma was on my side. Ingrid took a quarter off from college for the baby to be born, then went right back. After law school she opened her own practice. Ma came over every day to take care of baby Terese, and then the boys when they came along. That’s the thing about family. We stick together. But I’m glad to be getting out of town with the boys for their treatment. I need a break from Terese. I love her and all that but inside I feel guilty because I keep waiting for her to die so we can be normal again. I feel awful about this but what can I do? Sometimes this happens and it must be God’s will.

Gustav, Terese’s grandfather

My granddaughter has got a way of looking sideways that raises my neck hairs. A girl like that isn’t natural. In the old country we did different, put them out of sight and got on with life and it was better for everyone. No good weeping and moaning. Talking never solved anything. And they shouldn’t be left around the other kids. Of course, my grandsons aren’t out of the woods yet, but that treatment is surely going to work and they are going to be fine. I need them boys to carry on the family name and the business, if it lasts after I’m dead because I know Bjorn will make a hash of it, got no more sense than a sheep. Wish I could leave the business to Leif, but he don’t like blasting. Leif always had the brains in the family, takes after his mamma. He looks like her too, more than me. Don’t want to think about that.

Me and Alma, we waited until we were married, not like Bjorn and that Ingrid. I respected my bride, and her father would like to have killed me if I’d not been taking her virgin up the aisle. For our wedding night the hotel was real nice and there was Alma in the bed, naked as a jaybird, pushing the sheet down with her feet. Left the lights on, to see me, she said. I wasn’t putting up with that nonsense. I turned out the lights and then we did it. She gave a little cry, just one. There was blood on the sheets, as there should be. Afterwards she lay there quiet. Maybe she was disappointed, felt she’d married the wrong man, but she stuck by me. I never raised a hand to her, not once in forty years of marriage. That’s a good husband. I put food on the table and I never touched her but once a week.

Alma, Terese’s grandmother

Family is all we got in this life. That Ingrid, I knew she had a bun in the oven but I didn’t let on, patted her shoulder and said it would turn out fine, she’d see. My Bjorn is a good boy and he did love that girl so. I saw it back at the summer gatherings when they were kids. He’d leave the games to go and sit with her and she was no prize then, hefty, though she turned out nice enough. I even hoped maybe Bjorn would hitch up with a girl outside the family, but anyways we can’t plan who we love and he takes after his father; his mind is set and there’s no changing it. So I wanted him and Ingrid to have a good marriage because it is for keeps. Maybe they’ll have the luck; sometimes the bad thing doesn’t happen. Gustav and me, we’re cousins and Bjorn is fine, never had no trouble. My youngest son Leif is fine too, but there’s another reason for that. And all the time I’m remembering the gatherings with those children that never had a chance to grow up. But I shut this out because what good can it do?

Right after Terese was born Ingrid said she was going on to law school. I ask you, isn’t she something, the first lady lawyer in our family. I was that proud. I could see Gustav didn’t hold with it, but he wanted grandkids as much as I did. I looked after the baby while Ingrid was studying. What a strange baby Terese was. Quiet and good for hours, then wail and there was no stopping her unless I bundled her into the pickup and rode out to the beach. The salt air calmed her, the waves would make her sit up and stop crying, but I could see she was hurting inside. Took her to the clinic but they never found anything. Until later, of course.

Even after what she did, I don’t hold with blaming her. She can’t help herself but she oughtn't to be with her brothers unless I’m there. I’m the one who caught her. She was standing between their cribs with a match, the blankets smoking and flames licking the rails. I didn’t think I still had running in me, but I swung those babies up and took off down the hall, set them in the playpen and ran back. Terese watched me pull the pin on the fire extinguisher and spray down the flames. The fire had burned off some of her pretty hair. Then we went to the boys, who were red with crying and Terese looked so sad. I know she’s sorry.

When Bjorn came home I told him and he grabbed Terese to spank her but I told him no, he mustn’t, and he went upstairs to the boys. He’s not one to ponder or forgive; he’s got his mind made up and sees no reason to change. Thick as a brick. Just like his dad.

Sometimes I wish I could run away. I’d have a little apartment all my own and the young mothers would come to me with their babies and I’d take care of them and they’d ask me for advice. I’d hold the babies, their sweet bodies heavy in my arms, and the mothers would bend forward to tell me their secrets and I’d nod, and then I’d tell them how to make their babies stop crying, settle down for sleep. Doesn't anyone want to hear all that I know?

I’ve put some by, escape money. It’s easy because I do the books and Gustav never was good with figures. I want to give the money to my younger son and tell him to leave and don’t look back though it’ll break my heart to lose him. Because now Leif, I think he’s met someone, though he hasn’t told me, and likely enough he’s afraid to marry her, doesn’t want to bring down ruin on her, doesn’t want more babies in the world like our little Terese. But he needn’t worry.

The only time I was ever on my own was thirty years ago when Gustav was laid up in the hospital with his back. No one watching me. I felt free and it must have showed, I must have looked specially good. Bjorn was in first grade and I decided that when he was through high school I was going to leave. The idea filled up me up, I was brimming with it. One afternoon I left my husband’s hospital room for a cup of coffee and in the cafeteria I felt that burning look and there was this man. I thought all that was behind me. But he found me fair, as it says in the Bible, and we knew each other. All my freedom went for that. If I had it do to again, I’d get on the next bus and go anywhere. I was a fool. Sometimes I think Gustav knows, and won’t let on just to torment me. But when I found out I was pregnant I knew it was my punishment. I had thought that when Bjorn was out of the house maybe I could go and get my own life, but the Good Lord had other plans and maybe the wages of sin are not death but another life to take care of. Shame on me for thinking that way. So I got Leif. Maybe I spoiled him a bit to make up for not wanting him in the beginning.

I’m going to tell Leif about his real father. I hope he’ll still love me but even if he doesn’t he can use the money to make his own life. I’m going to do this. But not yet. I need to work up to it. I know that I can’t leave. I have to stay and take care of Terese. That child worries me. Something’s not right. She could get dangerous. Sometimes these kids do, the ones with the problem.

I feel it rise up in me, the wanting to tell the truth, to break open the silence. I’d start with what it was like living with Gustav all these years, wanting something I don’t know what, but not this. Remembering what I had with Leif’s father and that wasn’t enough either. I thought it would heal me, make me who I am inside, but it only made me a mother again. Now I take care of Terese every day. I’ll be with her to the end

Terese

Here’s the deal. The night before mom and dad took my brothers away for the gene therapy we were all in the kitchen for supper. Mom had made meatloaf and corn on the cob, which is my favorite, but I couldn’t eat anything. You see, before dinner, when dad was outside playing catch with Erik and mom was putting Sven into his high chair, I snuck into mom and dad’s bathroom and counted her tampax. The count was the same as last month and the month before. Two months without a period; I knew what that meant. Then I heard her yell that dinner was ready.

I sat down and looked at my plate of meatloaf and the nice ear of corn. Dad motioned for me to pass the butter.

“Let’s play a game.” I said. “It’s called, I don’t give a fuck about genetic testing. Hey, you two win, hands down.”

Dad stood up so fast his chair fell over and I wondered if this time he was going to belt me but instead he slammed out the back door.

“Bad word, mommy, bad word,” Erik said.

Sven banged his spoon on his tray and mom didn’t even stop him. She looked at the church calendar where she crosses out each day and she kept on shoveling in the meatloaf and chewing. I folded my napkin and took my plate to the drainboard and went up to my room. Maybe mom was telling herself that she only had to make it through one more night with me and then she and dad and the boys would be away at the clinic for a whole week. Maybe she was thinking about the bills and if she was going to have to ask Grammy and Grandpa for money again, or maybe she was thinking about how much easier it will be when I’m dead. She came into my room later on and I pretended to be asleep. I’m so stupid I kept hoping she would kiss me or smooth the sheet or something, but she just stood there in the dark, and then she left and I heard the door click shut.

Ingrid, Terese's mother

I know I need to put Terese in care but it feels like ripping off my arm. However, it’s the hard things that tell us that we are doing our duty. I used to look into her eyes and see myself, but that’s gone. Her intelligence has been corrupted by her condition. That’s why they are sequestered, the children with the problem, so they can’t hurt the rest of us. Terese has crossed over and I can no longer reach her.

When my mother-in-law told me that Terese had tried to incinerate her brothers I was furious with myself. I can’t blame Alma; she’s no match for my daughter and there’s an odd pride in that. Even in her evil actions Terese takes after me. But once we get back from the clinic I’m going to put her away. She needs to be with her own kind and perhaps she will thank me for removing her from temptation. I will visit her as often as I can. So will Alma. I don’t know about the others. I think it will be best to tell her brothers that she has gone on a trip. Then later, when she has died we will all go to the funeral. Closed casket. I want her brothers to remember her as a good sister. I’ve told them that she saved them from crib fire. They are young enough that this will eventually become the family legend.

Each baby I carried I had such hopes for. Terese was so bright, my little star. I could see her as a doctor or an engineer or anything. My secret dream was that she’d want to follow me into the law and we’d set up a practice together, mother and daughter partners. But then the wailing started. Even before the lab results came back, I knew. So we had the boys because we are meant to be fruitful and multiply. Now there is this miracle, the new treatment. I ache for Terese. Her path is dark but soon she will be in the light; she will live on in the boys and the new baby. I must focus only on what is possible.

Terese

Today’s the big day. Mom and dad are bringing the boys home from the clinic. Grammy and Grandpa went to meet them but Uncle Leif stayed home with me because there would be photographers at the airport and I don’t look so good in photos any more. Deciding about my uncle was hard, because when people stare at me he makes faces as if they are staring at him, but then he told me he met someone. I asked him if he told his girlfriend about our problem and he said no. She wants a big family, he said. Then he let me stay up past my bedtime and watch scary movies until I fell asleep on the sofa. I woke up in my own bed so he must have carried me upstairs. I wish I’d been awake. Nobody else touches me anymore.

I don’t know how much longer I’ve got so whatever I do has to be soon, but I do know that burning is the way to go because flames purify everything and our souls go straight to Valhalla. It’s what our ancestors did. My first plan was to pour gasoline from the lawnmower all over the living room rug and then when they came back from the airport and were standing around, I’d light a match. But I worried they’d smell the gasoline when they came in the front door. So yesterday I tagged along with Grammy when she went to the shop to do the books and it was easy to boost fuses and a couple of fire sticks. I set up the blasting kit in the living room behind dad’s lounger because either I’m already completely nuts or I’m the only sane one in my family. Everything I do is wrong anyway, so how much more wrong can this be?

I hear the cars coming down our road, Grammy and Grandpa in the pickup and Dad driving the station wagon. The gravel churns as he takes the last turn a little too fast the way he always does. Mom is probably frowning at him. My little brothers are in the backseat. Maybe they aren’t going to get sick, but they can still pass on the bad gene to their kids. How come it’s up to me? I’m only a kid. What if I’m wrong and this isn’t the right thing to do? Now I hear them on the front steps. I have the book of matches open in my hand, but my fingers are so slow.

Police Story

“Police Story” was published in Pindeldyboz in 2006.

I get a call from dispatch that there's an incident, a kid left alone in a car seat in a minivan in downtown Menlo Park. We none of us like that beat, too dull, but it's mine and I take it. Of course, by the time I pull up there's no minivan with no kid in it. So I go to the Starbucks on Mercado for a latte, then on to Dolorosa, because there's nothing doing in East Palo Alto as long as Yoshi and Sue have it on their line. I'm hunkered down behind the shrubs at my favorite spot, waiting to catch somebody making an illegal left turn, when I see this kid lying on the ground. Juvenile Hispanic male eight or nine years of age. And boy, is he alone. Nobody called about this one. Dolorosa's different from Menlo. He's got me worried so I get on the horn and call up to home and get a squawk back that I can take it. That's when it happens.

Damn, I was one kind of fool, but at least I give the coordinates before I got out. I left the squad car parked a little way back, door open, engine running, and as I look up from the kid, who winks at me, the little bugger, I hear the sound I do not like. My squad car taking off without me. It's zooming away with two kids at the front seat. Juvenile Hispanic males, probably twelve or thirteen years of age.

Man, they are haulin' it down the street and I remember it is fully loaded. See, after that trouble in LA we don't carry shotguns; now we got these Colt 9 millimeter submachine guns because the bad guys were getting the good guys by being better armed. So these kids have got the car and a really good shooter can go a long way with the amount of ammo between what's in the clip and all. So I'm sweating. Of course right away I'm on the cell and my shoulder radio back to dispatch and then I look up and see Yoshi and Sue coming over the hill and it looks like they are gonna play chicken with the kids in my car.

I've got the first kid, the bait, cuffed, and I ask him nice and slow to tell me everything or there will be real trouble. But he don't know nothing. He's just the bait; somebody's little brother and they made him do it. Maybe.

Then the kids swerve by and as they pass Yoshi and Sue's car the kid riding shotgun hauls out the submachine gun and he's pointing it all around, swinging it at the trees and sky and right at Yoshi. I see his face, Yoshi's, and he's frozen.

Then the kid says to Yoshi, "Bang. You're dead." And the kids drive on.

Another squad car pulls up and I jump in and put my bait kid in the back and off we go. By the time we hit the freeway there are four cars in hot pursuit and I'm calling it. Yoshi and Sue, they've got all they can do to keep up with the stolen car. See, normally we wouldn't be allowed to go pursuit but on account of the kid waving the gun at Yoshi we can consider it real serious, intent to kill, and then we get jurisdiction to pursue. Those damn kids lead us up and down the peninsula, on and off the freeway, and every time they take an exit and squeal around in some quiet neighborhood my heart gives another lurch but I keep on calling it and then I hear Glen is hiding out for 'em, waiting pretty by the side of the freeway up to Woodside Road and I know we can get them now. We'll run them over to Glen and let him pick out their tires.

I never figured for it to end the way it did. We none of us did. But those kids when they see the squad car with Glen in it and they must know the ride's over, they gun it straight for him and he's got all he can do to fly out the other side and into the bushes before they slam into the side of his car.

So much blood. And all this time the kid in the back seat is quiet, until the crash. Then he screams, a little sound, more like the breath coming back inside his body instead of out. I take him to the hospital and on the way I take off the cuffs and I walk up nice and slow and when the nurses come I make sure he's not near the other boys, the ones from the crash. Soon everyone is there in the hospital. Yoshi looks at me and nods and I stay with the boy. See, he won't let go my hand.

It's ten years ago and we keep in touch. He's mostly out of prison; just does some light time now and then. I had real hopes for him. Still do. Yup. I still do.

A Nation (Imagined) by Natasha Kochicheril Moni

This review of A Nation (Imagined) by Natasha Kochicheril Moni was published at The Poetry Cafe in October 2019.
A Nation (Imagined)  by Natasha Kochicheril Moni
winner of the 2018 Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest    
Review by Linera Lucas   
A Nation (Imagined)  (Floating Bridge Press, 2018) is a lyric poem about love, grief, nature, and graceful endurance. The format is one long poem bookended by two short poems, and the story is a simple one: a man and a woman love one another, he goes off to war, she stays home, he dies and she continues to think of him. But the way Moni tells this story is anything but simple. Just because a book is short does not mean it is not profound.
The opening poem “And what if everything” makes it clear that this is going to be about death and memory. We are going back in time. First we are in a field of daffodils, and then we are in a minefield. The transition is brief and shocking, as if the reader is the one who is blown up. We start with sex and move to death where,
–the pause after love
before love which is–
now     You are in a field
of daffodils
– no –                                    
a field of living            mines 
If you bend left, death. If you bend right, memory. This is the prologue, the poem that teaches the reader how to read the rest of the work. Thank you, much appreciated. It’s good to have a guide, even if I’m not quite certain just how much I can trust the poet who is leading me onward. The long poem begins,
Remember the year you forgot to water my jade 
and ends with,
Do you remember this?
Next, we are going to have the catalogue of what happened, in poet time, in real time, and in a mix of the two. I feel as if I had been given the chance to open a secret box, to read letters I am not supposed to know about, and I feel a little guilty, but I don’t want to stop reading.
Now the poet writes to her lover, telling him what has happened since he left, how she wishes he would write to her, then I turn the page and she says a letter arrived three years too late, that their tree will be firewood,
 Tomorrow
 our madrona
 becomes a cord
what will keep
(our heat)     
And what will keep their passion alive, now that he is dead? This is a poem about coming to terms with grief, also about not coming to terms with grief. She wants to send him his chickens, tries not to weep, gives him a list of what she saw on her daily walk in the woods. She saved a wildflower from a young girl who wanted to cut and press it.
“They” (the ever present outside world), would like her to do various things, to be more like someone else, to behave in a recognizable manner, but she wants her lover to   “enter and with care //   strike the lantern” . . . taste the apricots,
 on your favorite plate              your favorite plate
the one                        chipped                        
from too much             loving.              
This might be my favorite passage in the whole book.
Then there is the bargain she wants to make at the end of this poem:  “unwind your voice / from my inner ear and I will”  not steam open the letter written to him, which started this whole story. What is in that letter? I am not going to find out, and I like that.
And now the final poem, the other bookend, “Letter to a Lover Whose Name Spells Dark Bird.” This is, of course, a letter to Corbin, the dead lover. Corbin is a variation on Corbie, which is another name for crow or raven, birds of intelligence connected with death and messages from the dead. This poem has the kind of bargaining that deep grief brings, past pleading and near madness, but such resigned madness. Here’s how it starts,
Look, when you call – bring the basket 
and here’s how it ends,
 Meet me and we
will forget our bodies were ever anything but
a little salt, water                                    
waiting to be stirred. 
and in between is,
 the year we spent a lifetime
 sailing in the boat of our bed. 
So that’s the last poem. I have read the story, and have been changed by it. What makes this chapbook so fulfilling is how real the grief and love are, how tender and fierce the poet narrator’s love for her dead Corbin, and then the ending, with the unopened letter. Because at the last, we never really know another person. We can guess at them, follow the clues from how their lives cross ours, but each person contains many mysteries.

Ruth Armitage: Color and Emotion

This interview with painter & teacher Ruth Armitage was published in Salem Monthly in 2008.

In a painting studio above the Columbia Gorge nine students, all women, work at tables in a semicircle. Large windows on three sides let in the late summer light and a slice of the river glimmers between the cedars. At first the only sound is the swish of brushes on thick paper, then music comes up, the soft jazzy singing of Norah Jones, chosen by watercolor instructor Ruth Armitage. Armitage has a pretty face, regular features, a strong body running not to fat but to lusciousness. Her laughter is quick and deep; life is to be relished.

Armitage’s table is raised up on blocks so that she can paint standing. She places a patterned stencil over a section of her painting, dips a large square brush into green, brushes the color over the stencil, then stands back, head cocked to one side. She puts the stencil down again and uses purple, then stops and looks around the room, checking to see if anyone needs help, gently chiding two students for chatting. Even in the midst of creating her own work, she is aware of everything going on in this room. She is a lioness, pushing her cubs out to the hunt, and cuffing them back into place in the lair.

A woman raises her hand, asking for a consult, and Armitage puts down her brush and goes to her. Together they look at the student’s painting. Armitage shows her how to scumble. She dries the thick brush on a piece of towel, works the brush into the paint in the palette well, hands the brush to student, and guides her, telling her when to use more pressure, less pressure, saying, “It’s hard on the brush, but that's not an expensive brush anyway.” The student stands over her paper, scumbling, and Armitage returns to her own table.

On the first day Armitage had explained that each student would pick a subject and produce at least six versions, using exercises in pattern, line, color, and changed shape. Then she demonstrated, using opaque paint to cover previous lines and shapes, talking, changing, explaining her process, showing the students that everything is correctable. At one point she paused, brush in hand, and looked up at the circle of women. “Or, you can always burn it. You don’t have to like everything you do.” A thrill of fear and horror and excitement ran through the group. Then they went to their own tables and started painting.

How do you keep motivated in the studio?

Deadlines. Deadlines are a big one.

I try to produce enough work that I have a selection. I don’t say “this painting is for this purpose.” I need enough to choose from, not that this particular painting has to be good. That way I remove the performance anxiety. If I have some to choose from then I feel better about putting the work out there.

Another way I motivate myself is with content. Content drives the painting. Finding content is sometimes a challenge and sometimes easy. There are times when the content just hits me and times when I struggle. I often work in a series, doing several paintings on the same subject so that one painting doesn’t have to tell the whole story. I find that the deeper I delve into a subject, the more often I paint it. Different things will come out, different ideas, different expressions. Sometimes I come closer to my goal of expression and other times I go past it and have to go back and say, the fourth painting was the best one.(She laughs).

I find that I am more productive and more focused on my work when I have a two- week stretch when I can paint for a few hours every day. If I have a week stretch I am okay productive. If I have only one day, and then the next day I have to run errands or go to the store, or volunteer at something, if I don’t get into the studio day by day by day, then I am less productive.

I’m like that in my home life. I don’t clean my house for a month and then one day I clean the whole house; I won’t read a book for two weeks and then in two days I’ll read the whole book; I didn’t paint for three weeks before I came and now I’ll paint this whole week and the next two weeks.

I tend to do what I feel like doing. I tend to work best if I can hyper-focus. They say that is sort of like ADD, (she laughs), almost obsessed or immersed in that particular thing I’m doing. That helps me be productive.

What is subjective color? Is this your own term? When did you start with this and why?

Choosing a color based on personal emotion or response to the subject rather than the local color. I don’t think it is my own term, I think I got it from a class I took from Skip Lawrence.
For instance, I did a painting of a woman I was very angry at and I made her skin green and her eyes red and her hair blue. (She laughs.) That would be subjective color.

Each color carries an emotional quality for different reasons for different people. Some people find red very happy, some find it very angry. Color can be a very expressive tool.

How long does it take for a major life event to show up in your work?

It comes out right away. Right away. Other people might not see it. I got a dog and right away I started having dogs in my paintings. (Again, her ripe laugh.) I think that’s actually when I started feeling most satisfaction in my work, when I started allowing that to happen.

After my dad died I got a whole bunch of family photographs from my grandmother’s estate. We dealt out the photographs like cards, randomly gave them out, as part of the grieving process. I just started thinking, because my dad was an only child, who is this, this guy from 1922? How does he connect to the rest of the family and where did they live at that time? I was thinking about these photographs and wanting to paint that.

What question have you always wanted to be asked?

Why do you chose color, why do you paint on the subject of family? What keeps you challenged? That’s an interesting question. For me, why I choose painting, I’m very interested in literature, in writing, but for me the excitement and the fascination about painting is that once a painting is finished it has a life of its own. One viewer can see this painting and it can be a happy painting; for another viewer it is more poignant. And that fascinates me. I like to see people’s reactions, to see what came out of me stimulating different feelings and ideas in people. That fascinates me. Also, I just like to play with color (she laughs) I like that process.

What is your favorite color?

Sky blue. The blue of my dad’s eyes.

What is the most surprising change your work has taken in the last five years?

I’m surprised to see more realism come into my work. I actually thought it would become more abstract. My work has tended to become more complex and I’m struggling against that. Seven or eight years ago my work was fairly simple and that’s what I think was successful about it. I’ve been adding more pattern and more line, and I think I do better when I limit myself to shape and color contrast.

If I look back over my work of the past ten years, the works that I feel are more successful are simple. That’s becoming a goal for me, to simplify more.

Has your work been accused of being pretty, and is there a stigma or would there be a stigma associated with being pretty? I don’t think that anyone has ever said that to me. Would there be a stigma? Hmm. No. I like things that are beautiful. And I don’t think that being beautiful minimizes the meaning. My concern with aesthetics would be more whether it is archaic or old-fashioned or whether it is contemporary.

I want it to be fresh, not stale, not just pretty, but to have meaning.

If you could sit down with anyone (past, present, future) who would it be and what would you talk about?

It would probably be somebody who is gone, who is dead. Who is close to me. Hard to pick one. (Her voice breaks.) Maybe my dad. Maybe my grandmother. You can tell I’m an emotional person.

What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

Make physical room in your home and go there. Make it a place where you would want to be. Study from a broad variety of sources: books, people, different instructors. Ask a lot of questions. Observe. Not just one way, as many different ways as you can before you really settle into your own.

I think the best advice I ever got as far as my artwork was “Don’t push the river.”

Your development as an artist will come when you are ready for it. You don’t push the river, it’s already flowing.

---

Ruth Armitage is a signature member of the National Watercolor Society and the Northwest Watercolor Society, and the past president of Watercolor Society of Oregon. She is represented by the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery in Salem and by the RiverSea Gallery in Astoria, Oregon. Her website is www.rutharmitage.com.

"James Brown is Alive and Doing Laundry in South Lake Tahoe”

by Stefanie Freele 

Reviewed by Linera Lucas 

This review of Stefanie Freele’s flash fiction was published in Five Star Literary Stories  in 2008.

Of course the title is catchy, but what grabs me is the strength of the opening two sentences: Stu is driving to South Lake Tahoe to take his post-partum-strained woman to the snow, to take his nine-week-old infant through a storm, to take his neglected dog in a five hour car ride, and to take himself into his woman’s good graces. And he’s hungry.

The pounding of that first long sentence, its four phrases, the repetition of “to take…” and then the punch of the short second sentence. And he’s hungry. Ah, my reader’s mind is calmed, I know that I’m in good hands with this writer, and I am going to enjoy myself. If the first two sentences don’t grab me and tell me that this is going to be fun, then buddy, I’m out of here. I have a busy life. There are errands I don’t want to run, dishes I don’t want to wash, phone calls and emails I need to avoid.

In the second paragraph I’m surprised by a POV switch from the husband to the wife. Then in the third paragraph to the baby, in the fourth to the dog. All these characters have been introduced in that first clear and lengthy sentence, so I’m prepared to go with each POV shift. I’m right there in the car with this troubled family, wondering what the heck is going to happen to all of us.

Paragraph five is back to the husband, (a quick sneak ahead and I see that the wife is going to be next.) so I’m ready for regular alternation of POV for the whole short piece. Which I’m enjoying. Because I’m there in this car in the snowstorm and I want to know who these folks are, and what they are thinking.