Random Tales

I Am Too Fat For My French Horn

2011-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

I am too fat for my French horn,
too burdened on the lungs
to inhale and exhale enough.
I breathe just enough
but want more, to breathe more.
I am too fat for the swings at the park
where I whirled with my girls
when they were younger.
I am too fat for my wedding dress
I wore when I was younger, too.
There were jeans I slid on day after day
but I am too fat for my old jeans.
They hung in my closet until dust caked the fold
and I gave them away,
bagged them with size eights
and tossed them straight in the bin.
I don’t ride the swings or wear the dress,
and the jeans went away with good will.
And I shrug.
I sit tight with my French horn
and breathe and breathe just enough.
I am too fat for my French horn,
and I want more, to breathe more.

Wait, Summer!

2011-09-11T15:59:00.001-07:00

I have always said this—
I love the change of seasons.
And I mean it.
But just now I am clinging to Summer
by its ankles as it pivots toward the door
and leaves the room.
Wait! Don't go yet!
I call as I tighten my grip around its shin bone,
and it pulls me across the floor,
bunching up the summer rug beneath me,
the green grass, snapdragons and sprawled out oregano now in folds.
It's about to drag me through
crunchy leaves and spiked acorns and withering herbs.
So I plant my feet flatly against the door frame,
knees locked and jaw set,
as Summer shrugs and shakes me off
with a fling of its foot.
And empty handed, I reach out with splayed fingers,
and I shout one last time,
Wait! Not yet!
Just one more day.

500 Words—Jean and the Cafe

2011-09-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Jean turned the corner and stepped down gingerly from the curb, letting his stronger knee bear the weight before allowing his age-worn one to manage the cobblestones. He winced in anticipation as he took the next step, but today seemed a good day, and he crossed the street to the café without any more strain than warranted a few winded groans.

It was early, and the shops were just opening. A few grazers cased the fruit stand, one or two aimed for the bread shop and Jean set his course for one of the empty tables on the sidewalk. He set his jacket down in an empty chair and eased into the one beside it, and he exhaled with the sound of a man with weary bones.

When the server delivered his croissant and coffee, he watched how adept she was at holding the silver tray with one hand, and how she kept it perfectly level without a sign of trembling. “I’d have that thing listing south like a steam ship,” he thought.

“Thank you, dear,” he said, and with a shaky hand, he dipped a knife in the jam and spread it on the bread. He dropped a rock of sugar into his cup, dribbled in some cream and stirred. The rattling the spoon made against the ceramic launched him backward to when his hand was as steady as the hand of any fresh-faced kid, when he was full of the future.

There was a time when Jean could stir cream into anything with the smoothness of light, and the custard he produced was the best of all the cafés on the block. He turned raw ingredients into delectable treats that people stood in line just to sample, and each bite was an indulgence.

Every single layer of his opera cake touched the tongue with pleasure. Each bite of his profiteroles melted as quickly as the cream inside them. And a taste of his apple tart was like home on a cold evening in February.

Jean ran a tight pastry kitchen, and he was proud of his craft. “You’re not making dessert here,” he’d say to his apprentices. “You’re forming bite-sized pieces of art, and if you form them well, you’ll have the entire village lining up at your door.” “People know the difference between a strawberry tart made with no feeling and one made with the art and soul of a craftsman,” he would say. And if a boy who didn’t mind his advice set emotionless tarts into the pastry case, Jean would ship him off to a competitor. “Go make your slop under someone else’s shop sign, then.”

Jean took a bite of the croissant and watched as just enough flaky crumbs fell to the plate. There was nothing worse than a croissant that collapsed like a paper crane, and this one was done well. He leaned back and slurped from his cup, and he let out a satisfied sigh. Art is a good croissant, he thought.

500 Words—Me and Lo

2011-05-19T05:54:00.001-07:00

I held onto Lorraine’s elbow to stable her as she gripped the top of the car and slid herself into the passenger seat. Lo slowly eased her legs into the car, which looked painful, tucked her cane at her side and held her elbows in as I closed the door for her.

“This is going to be one long trip,” I said to myself as I walked around to the driver’s side. I took in a big, slow breath of air before climbing in behind the wheel, half-thinking this might be the last breathing I’d do on the road and that I might be holding my breath for the next two days.

We drove in silence through town, passing the Krystal and the Piggly Wiggly, the competing Kroger across the street and the barbecue shack, maneuvering through intersections and light traffic. But once I pulled onto the highway, I let my shoulders relax, and I leaned back, and I looked over hoping to see Lo do the same, but that woman sat rigid. I asked her, “So, are you sure you’re up for two days in the car with your favorite daughter?”

Lo answered without expression. “I guess I can handle being in this hot car with my only daughter.” She bit on “only” and dragged it out as she slapped at the vents in front of her.

I adjusted the air conditioning and gripped the wheel, and I set my eyes on the steamy road ahead and aimed for Texas.

We weren’t far from the state line, and the highway would take us straight there, straight to Mom’s sister’s house, and Lo would stay for a month, and I would deposit her like I was boarding a cat. I would say “good bye” and turn around and drive back home with the radio on and the windows down. And I would sing out loud and stop for a beer when my eyes got tired, and I’d leave all the pent up tension behind with my mother’s suitcase. I would think of the easiness of the return trip when this westward leg would push my teeth together in a clench.

“I don’t know why you insist on making me fly home,” Lo said with her arms folded across her chest and her dissatisfied stare set on the blurred field brush in the distance.

“Because, Mother, as I’ve said before, I can’t get time off of work to come get you.”

Lo snorted through her nose, but I persisted. “I’ll be happy to pick you up at the airport, though, and I am happy to drive you out this one way because I know how much you hate flying.”

Lo sat quietly for a moment and almost whispered, “I thank you for that.” She relaxed her arms and let her hands rest in her lap and she asked would I mind stopping for a Coca Cola soon. I said I’d look for a place to get us out of the sun.

And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamour for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze.

500 Words—Lucho Makes A Friend

2011-05-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

Lucho Abril Marroquin settled onto the park bench, the one on the northeast side of the square that was shaded by oak trees. He opened his paper sack and pulled out a fresh blueberry muffin he’d bought at the bakery a block down the street. He set his cup of tea on the bench beside him, and he spread a paper napkin on his lap.

He looked just to his left and saw a woman sitting on the next bench. She was wrapped in a shawl and was wearing tight leather gloves, and she’d placed her purse and a cup of tea tidily beside her. She held a book in her lap, and she was looking up the street as two gentlemen bickered loudly over who would repair the fender the other had just damaged.

“Good morning,” Lucho said. “It’s a nice morning, isn’t it?”

“Oh, good morning. Yes. Yes, it’s a lovely morning. A little chilly but nice.”

She gathered her shawl tightly around her, and Lucho began peeling the wrapper from the muffin.

“I thought it might be quiet here?” he said, hoping she’d welcome conversation.

“Well, actually, it’s usually quiet here, and I come here quite often, but this morning there have been two accidents, one after the other.” She pointed up the street. “This one here and one before that.”

“That’s a shame,” Lucho said. “People are in such a hurry.”

“And they don’t stop to pay attention,” she said. “ You know, the first one was much worse, and the police were called to sweep up the broken glass. One car had to be towed away, it was so badly damaged.”

“Really. You must have been here for quite a while then to have witnessed all of that.”

“I do like to sit here in the mornings.” The woman took the lid off of her cup of tea and took a tiny sip. “I enjoy the birds and the activity. I don’t remember seeing you here before, though.”

“I usually sit at the park for my breakfast, but today I thought I’d try something new.”

The two sat quietly for a few moments, with each one thinking of something to say to the other. They sipped at their tea and followed passing cars with their eyes, and the woman pretended to read her book.

“My name is Marroquin,” Lucho finally said. “Lucho Abril Marroquin.”

The woman replied, “It’s nice to meet you Mr. Marroquin. I am Carmen Alvarez.”

“Would you like to share my bench with me, Miss Alvarez? And perhaps a bit of muffin with your tea?”

“I’d be delighted, Mr. Marroquin.”

Lucho scooted over on the bench to make room for what would surely make his remaining years full and happy.

But with the passage of the years Lucho Abril Marroquin was to tell himself that of all the instructive experiences of that morning the most unforgettable had not been either the first or the second accident but what happened afterwards.

500 Words—Undiscovered Genius

2011-05-19T05:50:00.001-07:00

When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it.

I stood with the wooden spoon in my hand, not quite ready to stir the custard for the Champagne torte, and wondered how best to use this gift I had developed, the seemingly magical ability to draw people in with my cooking skills.

Towns people would hear that I was planning a dinner party with roasted salmon and butternut squash and the creamiest risotto for miles around followed by a flourless chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream made with beans fresh from Madagascar, and they would hope to be one of the blessed few to be invited. They would sample my macaroons or lemon-glazed scones or blueberry tarts at the coffee shop counter and beg for more.

“Please, sir, tell us how to order more of these scrumptious morsels. We must have more. Our appetites have been wetted, and now we are insatiable.” And the coffee shop attendant would wave them away with a gesture of annoyance.

“Peasants,” he would say, “The culinary maestro can’t be bothered with your petty requests. Remove yourselves from my establishment.”

They would go away unsatisfied, and I would be left with the decision, now a moral one, to meet their common desires with my masterful creations or to leave them hungry. There will soon be a line outside my own personal door, and people will be waiting with money in hand, eyes closed and mouths salivating as they anticipate what wonders might emerge when I finally open my kitchen door. I will have a tray filled with small plates of the most deliriously appetizing delights—walnut cakes with caramelized apple compote, raspberry trifle with Grand Marnier cream, dark chocolate cups filled with silky mousse topped with edible gold shavings, generous slices of white chocolate cheesecake with sugar cookie crust and a modest drizzle of chocolate ganache.

The eager and impatient patrons will hold out their money with one hand and beg for samples with the other, and they will say in unison, “Aaahhh, look at the wonders she has made.”

As I peer into their adoring eyes, I will say, “My dears, no. Please put away your money. I couldn’t possibly take cash for what I am presenting to you. Take it. Please, with my good wishes.”

And in complete awe of my openhearted generosity, and with some amount of disbelief, they will put away their dirty cash and delicately select their favorites from the grand array. And they will thank me for making their otherwise gray and tasteless day one of bright colors and vibrant sensory satisfaction.

“Idiot line cook!” I hear bellowed from the swinging galley door. “Stop your daydreaming and stir the damned custard already. You’re going to curdle the eggs, for godsakes!”

I am shaken from my delirium, and I dip the wooden spoon into the custard. Minimum wage. Undiscovered genius. My talents are wasted.

500 Words—Bewitched

2011-05-19T05:48:00.001-07:00

She made that odd shape with her lips that women make when they put on their lipstick, and she leaned closer into the mirror. She followed the shape of her stretched mouth with the stick of crimson and pressed her lips together to set the color.

“There,” she said to her reflection. “That should last long enough.” She flipped off the bathroom light, grabbed her keys and slammed the door behind her as she hopped off the front stoop. She was going to set wrong things right, and that mission added speed to her step.

She had met him at the post office. He was the postman who manned the counter every day from 8:00 to 1:00 with a smoke break around 10:30. She was the office worker whose job it was to pick up the mail, and every day she stopped by the dock in the back of the post office to get the big, plastic bin and hoist it into her car.

The first time she saw him, he was squatting on an upturned bucket, watching her walk across the parking lot as he flicked ashes into the puddle in front of his feet. “Hey,” he said to her, and she turned and said “hey.”

The second time she saw him, he was standing on her front porch, leaning against her and pressing his smoky lips against hers. She liked the feel of his long hair that draped over her hands as she held his shoulders. And she liked that he made her feel the way she remembered feeling at seventeen, a little wild, disinterested in eating and unable to sleep at night.

He was so unlike the men she had dated since college, the men she chose because they were more like adults than they were like bad children. He was a bad child, and she resisted the urge to be a scold, to replace the mother he seemed to be missing. Her friends were perplexed and said he was bad for her. But she was helplessly bewitched, she told them. Bothered, bewildered.

That was before he found his feet and became the bewitched one, actually wanting her parenting and making her feel her age, or older. He cut his hair and threw out his Pall Malls and stopped squatting on an upturned bucket in front of the puddle in the parking lot.

With her flaming lips and the spell un-cast, she cut him down to size and told him plainly she was finished. He had put her on the blink once, but she was suddenly wise, and her eyes were fully opened. Romance finis, she said. Those ants that invaded her pants finis, she said. She turned on her heels and walked quickly home, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. Finally, she was convinced, she would sleep and eat and be herself again.

But witchcraft once started, as we all know, is virtually unstoppable.

500 Words—The Boy, The Shoes and the Parents

2011-05-18T11:26:00.001-07:00

THE BOY, THE SHOES, AND THE PARENTS,

He was wearing an old blue jersey and an old pair of pants and had on boxing shoes. The boy stopped in the hallway to take one last look at himself in the mirror. He lifted his chin and looked down his nose at his reflection, squinting his eyes and tugging at his shirt as if he were adjusting a suit coat. He felt tough.

Just as he spun on his heels to face the door, he caught a glimpse of his mother in the mirror, watching him from the living room. She had one hand wrapped around her waist and the other covering her mouth. The boy knew the look.

“I’ll be fine, Mom, really. I’m just going to work with a trainer. Think of it like I’m taking piano lessons, if that helps.”

“Do you want your father to go with you?” his mother asked. “Frank! Get in here and walk your son down to the gym!” She hollered down the hall for Frank who was in the kitchen. He was making a sandwich, but she thought he should help.

Frank came into the hall, wiping his hands on a towel. “You look good there,” he said as he patted the boy on the back. “Knock ’em dead.”

“Knock ’em dead?” the mother asked. “Knock ’em dead?” She repeated her question with a higher tone and a bite to the consonants. “Is that all you have to say? He’s going off to a gym, and not the kind with basketballs and nets. They’re going to teach our son to hit people and to take punches!”

She held her son’s jaw between her thumb and forefinger. “That sweet face, and he’s going to let people hit it. I just don’t understand.”

“Mom, please,” the boy pulled away and looked at his father for a little help. “Dad, tell her. I’m not going to get hurt. I’m going to box. It’s a sport. Would you tell her?”

Frank put his arm around his wife. “She knows. She just doesn’t like fighting.”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t understand why you can’t put all that energy into some kind of sport that isn’t about beating people up.”

The boy tilted his head, furrowed his brow, and exhaled through his nose. He made his way toward the front door, walking backwards to get there. “I’m going now, OK?”

“OK, fine,” his mother said, resigned to losing this one battle. “Be careful.”

“I will,” the boy said as he darted out the door, letting it slam shut just as his father yelled after him, “And have fun!”

He rolled up his sleeves as he took long strides down the sidewalk but then decided he’d look better with them just shoved up near his elbows. He had picked old clothes for his first time at the gym but wished his shoes didn’t look so obviously new. He dragged them in the dirt a little to seem like he’d been in the ring before.

500 Words—Miss Bernice Takes A Job

2011-05-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

This week's sentence was taken from E.M. Forster's 'A Room With A View'. It was: 'It tasted partly of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the great unknown.'
Miss Bernice Takes A Job

Miss Bernice sat with her feet pressed together and her knees spread apart, and her mint-green floral skirt draped in the gap like a swag. Her garters were slipping, so she tugged at them through the cotton fabric when she thought no one was looking. She adjusted in her seat, straightened her shoulders and held tightly to the purse on her lap.

She would wait for her name to be called and would prepare her answers quietly in her head. It was always a good rule to follow—be ready when called, and know what you want to say before you open your mouth to speak.

Bernice was good with children, she thought, because she’d raised five of them on her own. Pulled them up by the stems into adulthood—tall, stalky sunflowers. She understood the importance of discipline when teaching little people, but she knew they needed comfort even more. Her ample, soft lap was the perfect cushion for a frightened child; and her big, wide arms wrapped around them like wings.

“Bernice?” A young woman stood in the doorway with a clipboard, and she scanned the room looking for the next applicant on her list.

Bernice stood and marched over to the woman, reached out her hand for a shake and said, “That would be me, Miss Bernice. Bernice Haversham.”

“I am Claire, and I’ll be interviewing you today, Miss Haversham.”

“It’s Miss Bernice.”

The young woman led her into the small office and guided her to the chair beside the desk. “Have a seat, then, Miss Bernice, and let’s get to know each other. As you know, we’re looking for a morning aide for the preschool children. Our adult students upstairs bring their kids here while they are in class, and we need an extra hand to help us out. Tell me why you’d like this job.”

Bernice didn’t need the money like some of her widowed friends. She’d been wise with her spending for years and had plenty to live on. She wasn’t lonely or bored, and she had grandchildren who needed her doting and warm cookies. “I want to spend time with children,” she said, “children who don’t have many people being nice to them.”

She told Claire about her theories of how people need soothing and smiles and gifts handed to them when they are young because such things help mold empathetic and loving hearts. “I’m handy with arts and crafts, and I make candy in my own kitchen.” Bernice dug around in her purse as she spoke, fishing for a treasure she was sure was hiding at the bottom. She pulled out a piece of candy wrapped in waxed paper and handed it to Claire.

The woman took the candy, carefully unwrapped it and slowly put it in her mouth. It tasted partly of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair oil, partly of the great unknown. Suddenly delighted, she shook Bernice’s hand and hired her. Bernice would start tomorrow.

500 Words—A House for the Senses

2011-05-18T11:22:00.001-07:00

This week's sentence is from Little Women: "A pair of silk stockings, that pretty carved fan, and a lovely blue sash."

A House For the Senses

Maggie stood in what was once her grandmother’s bedroom, a time capsule that looked as if it had been decorated in 1927, and not one item had been moved from its intended place since.

She turned slowly in the room, taking in every corner and memorizing every shadow and layer. The gauzy lace curtains draped over the windows, the satin bed cover, the braided rug woven from scraps from every dress her mother wore as a child. On the dresser was a tarnished gold tray that held a small mirror, a comb with missing teeth and a hairbrush with most of its bristles worn away. Beside the set were once elegant perfume bottles, their contents evaporated into an amber syrup. And spread out behind it all like a backdrop was a fan carved from ivory and webbed with painted silk.

When Maggie was a little girl, she would visit her grandmother once a year, and she would wonder about this woman who rarely spoke to her except to offer her a peanut butter cookie or a piece of salt-water taffy she had made in her own kitchen. On those annual visits, the grown ups would sit on the front porch, swaying on the rusted glider pushed by the feet of the one with the longest legs, and mixing their soft voices with the steady and rhythmic squeak of the old springs.

They would drink sweet tea and watch the honeybees drain the begonias, and Maggie would slip off to explore the house that seemed so odd. The floors sloped downward, and the ceilings bowed in spots. The walls were covered with dark green paper like taffeta and dotted with framed pictures of ancestors who looked like silent film stars. Lace doilies covered every tabletop. And in the corner was a pump organ that no one had played in decades but that had once filled the house with “Beulah Land” and “My Blue Heaven.” When whippoorwills call and evening is nigh.

Some rooms smelled like talcum, and others smelled like anise. Some drawers were filled with saved greeting cards and school pictures, and others were filled with delicate stockings and linen handkerchiefs with embroidered edges. Eighty-five years worth of collected China and glass rattled when Maggie walked past the cabinet, but she dare not touch a single piece.

Her mother tapped on the door behind her. “Take what you want, Mag. The movers will be here in a minute, and we need to get going.”

Maggie took one last look at the rooms that had captivated her as a child. She examined her own reflection in the mirror that had lost its silver, hoping to see traces of her grandmother in her own features. She gathered a few things—a pair of silk stockings, that pretty carved fan, and a lovely blue sash—and she tucked them away in a small box.

As she walked down the front steps, Maggie pushed the old glider to hear the squeak one last time.

500 Words—Miss Bernice and the Newts

2011-05-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

This week's sentence is taken from Willa Cather's slow-burn masterpiece Death Comes For The Archbishop. It is: 'Muerto,' he whispered.
Miss Bernice and the Newts

Miss Bernice Haversham slapped her purse on top of the desk and unzipped it. She reached in and pulled out a bag of peanut butter cookies she had made, a full set of finger puppets she had once sewn together for her own children now grown and a bottle of hand sanitizer. She squeezed some out in the palm of one hand and coated herself against the germs she was about to contract.

As she began to steadily lower herself into the too-small chair beside the desk, she spotted a boy standing in the corner by the bucket of wooden blocks. He looked at her and then at her purse, and he looked down at the spot of floor in front of him. Miss Bernice remembered one more thing she had forgotten to retrieve from her purse, and she heaved herself back onto her feet with a groan.

She reached back into the bag as the little boy watched her movements, and she pulled out a small plastic bottle of newt food. She set it on the desk and smiled at the boy. “I think this might be something you need,” she said as she pushed it closer to the edge of the desk. He took a step toward her, and she said, “It’s OK, it’s food for the newts. Aren’t you the one who is taking care of them at home?”

The boy stopped and looked down at the floor again. “Or have I confused you with someone else?” Miss Bernice asked.

The boy shook his head without looking up, and Miss Bernice knew she was addressing Emiliano, the boy who had asked to take the newts home for the week. The students took turns taking care of the class pets, and the newts were favorites. They didn’t bite like the hamsters, and they weren’t noisy like the parakeet. They scurried around over the rocks on the floor of a ten-gallon fish tank, and all they wanted was food and clean water.

Miss Bernice reseated herself on the tiny chair again and motioned for Emiliano to join her. He took small steps until he reached the teacher’s aide, and he looked up at her, stuffing his hands in his pockets and pursing his lips as if he would not speak unless she pried open his mouth with a set of pliers.

Miss Bernice patted her lap and helped Emiliano climb up to sit with her. She put her big, wide arms around him, and so no one else in the room could hear, she asked softly, “Emiliano, has something happened to the newts?”

He put his face against her ear and cupped his hand over his mouth. “Muerto,” he whispered.

“I see,” she said softly, and she kissed the top of his head, his shiny black hair resting against her chin. “Well, those things happen. We’ll just have to get more newts, won’t we?” Emiliano grinned and slid off of her knees to go play with his favorite blocks.

Once Their Was A Spider

2008-12-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

Maddy pulled into the driveway that curved around the flowerbed where the lamppost was planted, and she turned off the car. Mrs. Henderson had not arrived yet, so she decided to sit and wait with the windows rolled down and with the chilly October breeze reaching into the front seat and making her wish she’d worn a warmer jacket.

Her mother, Marlene, knew Mrs. Henderson from the water aerobics class they both took at the Y. The two ladies were doing knee lifts in the pool one day, and Marlene mentioned that Maddy would be coming to town for a visit, that she was a writer who seemed unable to write lately, and Marlene was hoping to give her some room for inspiration. She called it “quiet time.” “I’d like to give her some space and some quiet time.”

Mrs. Henderson said that no one had used her lake house in weeks, or was it months, she couldn’t remember for sure. And she would be happy to let Maddy stay there for as long as she needed. It was as quiet as they come, she said, and it would be good for someone to be there to air out the place and run some water through the pipes. She said for Maddy to meet her there at 5:00, and she would give her the keys and give her a quick tour. Maddy was only a few minutes early.

She remembered what her mother said about this woman, that she was late to everything that was governed by a set time, and that she was usually the last one in the pool and always apologizing as if she were normally prompt. She would sidle out of the locker room looking like Tracy Lord and slip off her robe, drape it over the bleachers by the south wall, and snap on her swimming cap, careful to tuck in every loose strand of hair. Throughout the entire display, she would say how sorry she was for being late, and she just didn’t know how she could have misread the clock. The first couple of times, the other women in the class and their instructor would stop and listen and smile, but after it seemed Mrs. Henderson’s entrance was going to be a regular exhibition, they stopped paying attention and kept on with their jumping jacks while she gushed.

Having become impatient with waiting, Maddy got out of her car and decided to give herself a tour while she waited. The side yard was narrow and overhung with tree branches like a trellis, and she had to duck to get through the tunnel they made. At the other end was a wide-open back yard that extended down to the lake where there were benches and an empty dock. With the onset of fall, all the boats had been brought in for the season, and the only things still on the lake were the geese and ducks and sea gulls. The birds were taking turns circling overhead and honking, gathering the troops for the flight south.

Standing in the middle of the yard, Maddy turned back to see the house and was startled by its size. From the front, it was nothing but a simple ranch house, but from the back it had character and a rustic sense that made it blend in with the woods around it. It was built on a hill, so the back had an exposed basement that wasn’t seen from the front, revealing it to be a much bigger house than people expected when standing on the front porch.

To the right of the house was an inlet where local residents tied up their canoes during the summer months, but now there was nothing more than a ripple from the occasional duck turned upside down looking for fish. To the left, on the other side of the thick stand of trees were more and more trees growing out of a ravine too steep for hiking. Maddy stood on the edge where the ground began to slope, holding onto a slim tree trunk as she leaned forward for a better view and thinking she’d need something like a ski pole to navigate down to the bottom. It wasn’t too far of a drop, though, and she could see how the leaves on the forest floor gave way to mud from a recent rain.

Car tires crunched the gravel in the driveway, and Maddy made her way back through the wild trellis to meet Mrs. Henderson. A tall woman draped in a pashmina shawl made to look like leopard skin climbed out of a vintage Mercedes the color of steel. She flipped her shawl over her shoulder and extended a gloved hand to Maddy.

“You must be Marlene’s daughter. I’m Mrs. Henderson. Call me Janine.”

“Hi, I’m Maddy. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your letting me stay here for a few days. It’s so nice of you.” Maddy smiled as she pictured Mrs. Henderson in a one-piece and bathing cap doing water aerobics in a swimming pool at the Y.

Mrs. Henderson smiled back as she pictured herself as the benefactress of a struggling author. “My pleasure. Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you around. I see you’ve already had a look at the grounds.”

The two women stepped through the front door, and Maddy followed her host as she went from room to room. “There are just a few rooms to show you, dear,” Mrs. Henderson said as she turned the thermostat up a bit. “I’ll just show you around and leave you here to make yourself at home.”

They walked through the living room that combined with the kitchen, and they peeked in at the guest room and extra bath. There was a laundry room and door to the basement steps and an enclosed back porch with wicker chairs and rockers. On the other side of the house beside the inlet was the master suite. It was roomy but comfortable, and the bathroom was like something Maddy imagined finding in a spa, the kind of spa she could never afford.

Mrs. Henderson saw the look of delight on Maddy’s face at the sight of the round tub, a large window that opened out toward the inlet, and gold faucets that fed the marble sink. “It really is a lovely room, isn’t it?”

“It really is.” Maddy tried not to sound too eager.

“I’ll tell you a secret, though. One night I came in here to use the potty, and just as I sat down—pardon my frankness—I spotted a big, black spider on the rug right in front of the shower door. It was the kind you’d see outside in the woods and not like one I had ever seen inside before. I was so horrified that as soon as I had finished, I ran straight back to bed. And I’m ashamed to say I can hardly stand to use this bathroom anymore. I have not seen the nasty thing since, but it was enough to put me off of this gorgeous room for good, at least at night. Well, that’s my little secret. Feel free to use the master suite, dear. I just thought you should know.”

“I promise not to tell a soul,” comforted Maddy. She was trying so hard to appear cool in front of the woman with the cashmere wrap that must have cost her a month’s worth of Maddy’s rent that she didn’t have the courage to admit her own biggest fear—spiders. She was relieved to hear they were not typically found inside the house but would keep a wary eye toward the rug in front of the shower.

Mrs. Henderson left a set of keys and her phone number on the kitchen counter and left Maddy to find her inspiration in the hide-away house.

Maddy brought her small suitcase in from the car along with a few bags of groceries she had picked up on her way in from town. She unpacked her clothes and put them in the empty drawers set aside for guests. She put away the milk and juice and some things she had planned for simple meals, and she made a tuna sandwich and took it out to the back porch with a glass of bargain wine. In the morning she would attempt to write something or at least think about writing.

•••

It was the middle of the night, or what seemed like it, when Maddy woke up to find herself in the unfamiliar room in the strange house that creaked and rattled. A fierce wind circled around the house and through the woods and lapped water onto the rocks along the shoreline. It took Maddy a minute to recognize where she was and to realize a storm had blown in while she had slept.

She needed to use the toilet, but when she turned on the light in the master bathroom, she remembered Mrs. Henderson’s secret. Had she been fully awake, Maddy might have been clear-headed enough to squelch her fear of spiders, but the image of a threatening outside creature was still fresh in her head, and she decided to use the smaller guest bath on the other side of the house.

As she washed her hands in the tiny sink, a gust of wind blew through the trees and around the house, and the wood frame and cedar siding creaked under the pressure. Just as Maddy turned off the light, CRACK, a tree overhead snapped at its base and then, BOOM, it slammed into the roof and front wall just at the corner of the house, landing with full force into the guestroom and sending splinters of wood and bits of glass in all directions.

Startled and frozen in place, Maddy stood in the doorframe of the cramped bathroom unsure of what to do next. Once she caught her breath, she flipped the switch for the bathroom light back on to see just exactly what had happened and what damage had been done. The tree must have taken an electrical line down with it because the power had gone out even to the lamppost in the driveway.

In complete darkness, Maddy reached her hands out in front of her and slowly stepped forward. With half the roof and part of the front wall missing in the guestroom, the wind was blowing leaves into the house, making them swirl on the floor at her feet, and for a moment she wasn’t sure if she was outside or in. She stepped forward again but jumped when her foot landed on a piece of broken glass, and she rolled head first over the big tree trunk that now lay across the floor. And at the other end of the somersault, Maddy found herself sitting in the wet grass.

Feeling her way toward something solid to stand on or to hold onto, Maddy tried to make her way back into the house, but she stumbled on a fallen branch. She stumbled again and and again in a groggy panic until she made contact with a tree that seemed firmly planted, and she held on with both hands.

The rain had begun lightly just a few minutes before but was now in a full downpour, which made for some slippery traction in the fallen leaves and muddy patches. So, when Maddy, now drenched in her night shirt and flannel pants, turned to get her bearings, her feet went out from under her, and she slid down that ravine she had been marveling at in daylight, the one she knew to be too steep to manage without help.

She screamed on her way down and grabbed at small tree trunks and branches as she slid past them, scratching herself from head to toe. When she reached the sludgy mud, Maddy knew she had hit the bottom. She sat still just for a moment and then screamed for help some more, and she checked herself for broken bones.

Maddy appeared to be all in one piece, but she sat in the mud in the dark and wind and rain and thought through all of her options. There might be someone nearby to rescue her, but that would be unlikely on this remote road late at night where no one heard her scream. She could wait until dawn to try climbing out, but she was already wet and cold and had no idea what time it was. Every time a leaf moved or a tree limb brushed against her skin, Maddy remembered Mrs. Henderson’s description of the big, black spider, the one that you’d normally see outside, and she would shiver and brush phantom things from her arms.

If ever there was a perfect spot for spiders to dwell, Maddy thought, it would be the bottom of this dark and damp ravine. She decided to stand up and attempt the impossible climb back up to the house right then and there.

With firm steps and determined grip, pulling on this tree and that tree and working to hoist herself up one step at a time, she dug her bare feet into the mud. She would make progress, climbing up two or three feet and then slip down again, but she dug in that much deeper and pulled that much harder until she finally made it back up to the front lawn. Leaning forward with her hands on her knees as she gasped for air, cold rain pelting her back, Maddy remembered the emergency flashlight she kept in her glove box, and she limped her way through howling wind and flying debris to fetch it from the car. Now armed with a slight source of light, she climbed back over the tree that had slammed into the guestroom, and she gathered her purse, her insufficient jacket, and her shoes.

Safely back to her car, she left her quiet hide-away house leaving a spray of gravel behind her. She escaped what was supposed to be a few days filled with the promise of peace and productivity, the possibility of renewed energy and newfound clarity. She drove through the driving rain and whipping winds breathing hard like a marathon runner and thinking out loud about the unimaginable events that had led to this moment.

If only Mrs. Henderson had seen the creature in the guest bathroom instead of in that gaudy, self-indulgent luxury spa, or if only that woman had kept her damned secret to herself, Maddy was sure she would not be weaving down the isolated road back to town soaking wet and caked with mud, shivering, scratched and bloody. If only she’d been brave enough to use the toilet in that bathroom with the Italian marble and gold fixtures instead of using the one that was more like a closet, she would not be feeling so foolish.

With both hands gripping the wheel, Maddy was beginning to form the words in her head for the story she would tell her mother when she finally reached town. Slowly beginning to relax, she began to think in paragraphs with punctuation so she could present the tale in proper form to her editor. This had all happened because once there was a spider on the rug in front of the shower door.

A Magical Christmas

2008-11-30T16:05:00.001-08:00

My Memaw and Granddaddy didn’t bother with a Christmas tree for just the two of them. They had a potted palm in the living room, and sometimes Memaw would hang wrapped candy canes on its few stalky branches.

That palm was the one living thing in the house that served to filter the air while Granddaddy took drags from his unfiltered Pall Malls. He smoked them chainlike, lighting up one after another even though he never took more than a few puffs from any one cigarette.

He mostly smoked in the kitchen, a big room that was also a kind of family room. Besides the out-dated appliances, a metal kitchenette table, some matching chairs with red plastic seat bottoms, and some counter space stacked with old magazines and a checkerboard, there was a TV, Granddaddy’s Naugahyde recliner, and Memaw’s padded rocker with a matching footstool. After supper, my grandparents would put their feet up and watch Andy Griffith. That Gomer Pyle was a hoot.

On cold nights, they would close the two doors that led to the rest of the house and turn on the space heater. And Granddaddy would smoke, dropping ashes into an ashtray with a three-foot stand that was its own piece of furniture. You had to walk around it and respect its place in the floor plan.

Everything in the room was coated with a layer of yellow nicotine tar—you could use your fingernail to scratch things in the crud on the TV screen, things like your name or “wash me”—and that coating gave the room a certain glow. You know how the atmosphere outside changes colors sometimes before a storm? You look out a window or step out to get the mail from the box, and you’re startled by how yellow it all is. And you wonder what bad thing the weather is about to bring. In Memaw’s kitchen, the yellow glow wasn’t a sign of foreboding. It was just sticky residue from Granddaddy’s bad habit.

I’m not sure what year it was—I may have been eight or nine—when my mother decided we needed to make the twelve-hour drive from Indiana to Alabama as a Christmas surprise for Memaw and Granddaddy. Our annual visit was a June trip, so showing up in December would be unexpected.

We packed up the car with snacks and presents and comfort things like napping pillows and the canning jar that held some water and a washcloth. My mother prepared the jar before every trip just in case someone would become carsick on the road. You might not know it, but it’s nice to have your face and neck washed after vomiting in the ditch beside the highway. Mama kept the washcloth jar on the floorboard in front of her seat and held it upright between her feet.

We left the house at six in the morning before the sun came up, and we drove straight through to Hamburg, Kentucky. That was our planned lunch stop because we knew there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken just off the exit ramp. We stopped there for lunch on all of our June trips, and that was the only time I was allowed to have Kentucky Fried Chicken. That year, I got to have it twice, and I thought it was a sign this would certainly be a magical Christmas.

It was sometime in the early evening when we pulled into the driveway in front of the house. A stand of pine trees lined the right side of the property, and another large pine was the centerpiece of the front yard. Except for those rich, green trees, everything else had turned brown for the winter—the pastures to the left and right and the harvested cotton field out back had all lost their summer color.

There were no climbing roses on the fences or honeysuckle beside the house or grapevines on the arbor. I had never seen Alabama at Christmastime, but I ignored the sepia grass and bushes and scrambled up the front porch steps to stand behind my parents when they knocked on the door. I couldn’t wait to see Memaw’s face when she saw us there with our arms full of wrapped gifts. Memaw and Granddaddy opened the door and drawled, “Well, I’ll be!”

We all hugged one after the other, and Memaw wiped her eyes. She and Granddaddy had just been sitting in their chairs watching the Jim Nabors Christmas special, O Holy Night seeming a little jaundiced, and they were thinking they would have to spend Christmas alone.

We filed into the kitchen, shutting the doors behind us to keep in the heat. Memaw pulled leftovers from the refrigerator and dragged out pots and pans to warm things up. There was corn bread with honey and butter, green beans canned from the summer before, stewed chicken, and a chess pie just baked that afternoon.

“Cut you a piece of that pie,” Memaw sang as she stepped around us and made sure we were all fed and satisfied.

After supper, the men sighed and sat back to gnaw on toothpicks while the women cleared the table and filled the washtub to wash up the dishes. Memaw washed while Mama dried, and they talked about how we decided to make such an unexpected trip and how many days we would probably stay. They would call the aunts and uncles to try to get everybody together at least once.

I slipped out of the warm and hazy room through the side door into the living room and furrowed my brow at the potted palm by the fireplace, a handful of candy canes stuck here and there on it to make a sad Christmas tree disguise. I gathered the presents we had brought with us and arranged them around the plant. I stood the larger ones in the back, and I scattered the smaller ones toward the front in an avalanching display.

Memaw made our gifts every year because she couldn’t afford to go shopping. One year, we all got bars of soap stuck with colorful pins and artificial flowers so they looked like little baskets. She had learned to cut up dish soap bottles and crochet onto them to make purses, purses we would never use but loved for Memaw’s sake just the same. I put her gifts to us in the very front because we would open them first.

Memaw used to shred old clothes and braid them into colorful rugs to cover the cold floors in her unheated house. I scooted onto the big living room rug she had made from worn-out work shirts and house dresses. I held my legs to my chest and rested my chin on my knees, wishing I had colored lights and some gold garland to weave around the Christmas palm.

In the next room, the muted, lilting voices of my grandparents sang a song half giddy and half pitiful. First, they rose up: “We sure didn’t ever expect this. No, sir. We sure didn’t.” Then they descended: “We thought we’d spend Christmas alone, just the two of us.” And then up again: “And now look at y’all here. Have you some more pie.”

Well, I decided, tree lights or no tree lights, garland or no garland, the potted palm with the candy canes and the arrangement of presents would have to do. From my spot on the floor where I could listen to the family in the next room, full from Memaw’s cooking and warm from the big surprise, that Christmas seemed to have shaped up into something pretty magical.

On Her Way to the Square—Revised

2008-10-04T07:55:00.001-07:00

On Her Way to the Square

Kathryn pulled the door handle toward her and shook up the bells hanging from the coffee shop’s door. The regulars at the counter turned to see who was about to join them, and the old man sitting at the corner table looked up from his book about the history of the Roman Empire. He quickly returned to his reading, but the men at the counter casually waved at Kathryn as she made her way to the empty stool beside them.

Bob walked out from the kitchen, saw Kathryn straightening the bunched up rug that had nearly tripped her, and poured a cup of his strongest blend. He snapped on the plastic lid and said, “Here you go, Kathryn. Can I get you anything else?”

Bob knew his customers by name and knew what they wanted before they even sat down, which is why Kathryn liked his place better than any of the other shops in town. She needed only to appear at the counter, and a cup of just the right kind of coffee would be set down in front of her. Bob always asked if she needed anything else because that’s what he asked everyone, but Kathryn never wanted more than that one cup. Today, though, would be different. “Actually, I need another cup like this but with some room at the top. Julia’s meeting me here in a few minutes, and she likes a little cream.”

Julia had been Kathryn’s closest friend since they met in a knitting class where they each fumbled with the awkward needles and made an irreparable mess of a skein of yarn. When Kathryn’s husband left her, Julia listened to her cry. And when Julia opened up the town’s only bridal shop, Kathryn promised never to be a customer. They laughed at each other’s jokes, and they kept each other’s secrets.

Just the night before, Julia had confided that her husband was being transferred out of state, and she would have to close down her shop or sell it. She didn’t want to make an announcement so soon, though, and had asked Kathryn to keep this one last secret until she was ready.

Tom, the man beside Kathryn, folded the first section of the newspaper and set it down on the counter, picking up the sports section, which had been well read that morning but poorly reassembled. He sorted out the pages, rattling the paper and grumbling about inconsiderate readers. After a few minutes of organizing and careful creasing, he held the paper out at arms’ length and focused on the football schedule for the high school games that would be played on Friday.

“Are we gonna win this week, Don?”

Don was resting his elbows on the counter. His shoulders were hunched up around his thick neck, making him look even broader than when he stood upright with his hands in his pockets. He took a big sip of coffee, swished it around in his mouth before swallowing it hard, and ran his tongue over his teeth. After a sufficient pause, he answered, “I think we will, Tom. I think we will. I got a good bunch of boys this year, and they’ve been working pretty hard.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Tom said. “You’re doing a great job with that team.”

Don took another mouthful of coffee, swished, swallowed, and wiped his teeth, the way Kathryn’s father used to do when she was a little girl. She wondered why Don would make such a spectacle out of drinking a cup of coffee when a simple sip and quiet swallow would do. Must be something about aging men, she decided.

The bell rang, and they all looked at the door expecting to see Julia, but it was Daryl instead.

“Hey, Daryl,” Tom waved to the postman who was dropping off the morning’s mail. In exchange, Daryl picked up a ready cup of coffee with a few packs of sugar.

“Here you go, Daryl. Got time to sit for a while?” Bob handed him a wooden stick for stirring.

“I got a few minutes. Julia's shop is next on the route, but she hasn’t opened it yet.”

“She’s stopping here, first,” Kathryn offered. “Then we’re going to walk down to the square to watch the time capsule being buried. She won’t open the store for another hour at least, I’m guessing.”

“The time capsule,” Tom shouted, slapping the sports section down on the stack of papers. “I nearly forgot about that. I got something being buried in that thing, you know. Thanks for me reminding me.”

“What are you burying, Tom?” asked Bob.

“An auto insurance policy, void of course, and a personalized pen from my office. I thought it would be interesting to see how cars change in the next fifty years. And, well, you can’t exactly bury a car. I threw the pen in just in case I’m not around when they dig the thing up.”

“Where are you planning to be?”

“You never know. I might be in Florida, or I might be dead.”

There was a slight sound of clinking glass coming from behind the counter, as if bottles were being rattled and sorted. Kathryn could hear whispering mixed with the clinking and was curious enough to lean over the counter to see who was down on the floor, out of sight and being so hushed. No one else seemed concerned, but she had to know. She could just see the top of a little girl’s head, a girl who was kneeling on the floor rearranging empty soda bottles on the shelves.

“That’s Bob’s granddaughter,” Tom said without looking up from the paper. He had picked up the want ads, which he read every day just in case he should need a new job.

“She comes in here with me sometimes when my daughter has to work.” Bob held up a pot of fresh coffee and offered to top off Kathryn’s cup. “She plays with these bottles until I take them in for the deposit.” There was a drop-off station in the grocery store parking lot, and he liked to wait until he had a trunk full before bothering with the trip.

Kathryn took the lid off her cup to allow for more coffee. She smiled down at the little girl. “What are you doing with all of those bottles?”

The girl raised her head to see Kathryn peering over the counter, looking down at her and the empty bottles. “They’re just talking.”

“To who?”

“To each other. They have to go back for the deposit today, so they’re saying good bye’ in case they get separated.”

Before Kathryn could ask another question, Bob added, “She gives them all names, and they have a little family and a school and what not, and then when it’s time to return them for the deposit, they all say “good-bye” and wish each other well. My wife says someday her imagination will either earn her a million dollars or land her in prison.”

Kathryn sat back on her stool and listened to the whispered story of friends departing and their promises to keep in touch. She had lost so many friends of her own over the last few years as people moved on to other jobs and other homes, and she took comfort in this steady group of coffee shop pals. She had the sense that even if one or two of them were to move to Florida in their old age, most of them were there for the duration.

“So, what are you burying in that capsule, Daryl?” Tom put down the paper and tried to wipe the ink off his fingers.

Daryl had to think for a minute. It was at least a month ago when he dropped off a little box of things at the city hall. “Let me see. I threw in a few stamps, because you never know what the cost of mailing a letter will be in fifty years. And I got to thinking that we might not even be using stamps then. Who knows? I copied a few FBI Most Wanted sheets. Thought it might be interesting to see if they ever catch those folks. Oh, and an old rubber stamp. Everything’s printed electronically now, so we don’t really use that old thing anymore.”

Tom thought about the FBI posters. The oldest people in town liked to say the world was worse than it ever was when they were younger, and they were glad they wouldn’t be around to see it go to ruin. He wondered if that was really true and if the FBI would be looking for the same kind of criminals in fifty years or would they be looking for worse. “I wonder,” he said. “I wonder what kind of crime we’ll have in fifty years. Do you ever wonder about that Don? Ever wonder what this place will be like then or what kind of kids will be in school?”

“Nope. People are people. People were mean a thousand years ago, and people will be mean a thousand years from now, those who want to be. They may come up with new ways to prove it, but we’re all the same. Nothing ever changes.”

The old man in the corner cleared his throat, and everyone turned to acknowledge him. He held up his book and said, “The Appian Way.”

“That’s my point exactly,” Don said. “Crucify some 6,000 slaves along a road for miles and leave them there to rot. Now that was a rough time to live in. You can’t tell me we’re worse off now than those poor fools were way back then.”

“Huh.” Tom wasn’t sure. He would have to think about that for a while. He hoped he would be around when the time capsule was pulled out of the ground and opened up, and he would be the same old Tom, but he wasn’t sure what the rest of the world would look like. “I wonder,” he said, picking the paper back up and looking it over to see if he had missed a page. “How about you Kathryn? Did you give anything to the capsule?”

Kathryn was listening to the saga of the bottles, the departing sorrows and hopes for the future, and she was lost in sound of glass touching glass and plastic crates scooting on wooden shelves. She was suddenly aware that Tom was looking at her, as was Bob, waiting for an answer, but she hadn’t heard the question. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you gave anything to be buried in the capsule.”

“No, you know, I couldn’t think of anything I thought would be significant. I looked around the house but just couldn’t think of anything the town might care about.”

“Not a single thing?”

“I’m afraid not. I guess I should have put some more thought into it.”

The girl behind the counter stood up and brushed her hair away from her face. She reached down to the shelf below and pulled out a soda bottle, empty and rinsed and ready for recycling. She handed it to Kathryn and said, “You can take this if you want to. You can bury this.” She looked at her grandfather to see if it was OK to offer a bottle. Bob nodded.

Kathryn took it and thanked the girl. “Are you sure? You won’t miss this one?”

“No, it’s OK. I got a hundred of ’em.’”

“Well, then thank you. I’ll take this down to the square and hand it to the mayor. I’m sure he’ll be happy to add it to the collection.”

The brass bell rang, and everyone looked at the door in time to see Julia rush through. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she hurried to the counter and gave Kathryn a quick hug. I got caught up with something at home and just couldn’t get away.”

“That’s OK.” Kathryn held up the bottle. “We should hurry down to the square so we can make sure this gets put in the capsule before they seal it up.”

Julia looked puzzled, wondering why Kathryn would want to bury an old soda bottle.

“I’ll tell you about it on the way down,” Kathryn said as she grabbed her purse from the floor beneath her stool. Bob dumped out the cup he had set aside for Julia and poured her a fresh, hot cup, remembering to leave room for cream.

Julia handed Bob enough cash to cover her order and Kathryn’s and fixed her brew up just the way she liked it. Daryl pulled a bundle of mail from his heavy shoulder bag and handed it to her. “You might want this,” he said. “Mostly junk, I bet, but you never know.”

“Wait,” Don picked up the sports page and ripped out the article about the football team winning their most recent game. It was full of names of the boys he had worked with and had seen grow up to become young men. He thought that when that capsule would be opened up in fifty years, who ever lived in this town would need proof that not everyone was like a criminal on a poster from the post office. He handed the article to Kathryn. “Would you mind?”

She took the article and rolled it up carefully, sliding it into the bottle. “I’d be happy to include it, Don.”

She and Julia waved to the men at the counter and to the old man at the corner table. They walked out onto the street, letting the bell ring and the door shut behind them.

A minute or so later, they could hear the brass bell ringing as Don and Tom stepped out to go hear the mayor’s speech and to watch the commissioners bury a sealed box of what most of them thought was important and what they all hoped would represent them well for the next generation.

“Now, tell me about this bottle and why it’s so important we put it in a time capsule,” Julie asked as the two women started the three-block walk to the town square. They could see a small crowd gathered in the park on the corner where the flag pole stood surrounded by nearly a dozen trees that had been planted during the town’s centennial celebration a hundred years before.

Kathryn knew nothing could stay the same, with or without a time capsule or a few friends in a coffee shop or commemorative trees. She slipped her hand through the crook of Julia’s elbow and said, “It’s just a way to pretend something is permanent even when you know very little ever is.”

On Her Way to the Square--Short Story

2007-10-19T12:17:00.001-07:00

Kathryn pulled the door handle toward her; the movement of the hinges waking the brass bell of the coffee shop. The old man at the corner table and the regulars at the counter all turned in her direction. They couldn’t help themselves—the ringing bell signaled a new customer, and they all wanted to see who was about to join them for the first cup of the day.

Bob walked out from the kitchen, saw Kathryn straightening the bunched up rug that had nearly tripped her, and poured a cup of his strongest blend. Before she could get situated on a stool, Bob snapped on the plastic lid. “Here you go, Kathryn. Can I get you anything else?”

Bob knew his customers by name and knew what they liked, and that’s why Kathryn liked his place better than any of the others in town. She needed only to appear at the counter, and a cup of coffee would be set down in front of her. Bob always asked if she needed anything else because that’s what he asked everyone, but Kathryn never wanted more than that one cup. Today, though, would be different. “Actually, I need another cup like this but with a little room at the top. Julia’s meeting me here in a few minutes, and she likes a little cream.”

Bob poured another cup, and everyone in the shop waited for Julia to ring the bell.

Tom, the man beside Kathryn, folded the first section of the newspaper and set it down on the counter, picking up the sports section, which had been well-read that morning but poorly reassembled. He sorted out the pages, rattling the paper and grumbling about inconsiderate readers. After a few minutes of organizing and careful creasing, he held the paper out at arms’ length and focused on the football schedule for the high school games that would be played on Friday.

“Are we gonna win this week, Don?”

Don was resting his upper body on his elbows on the counter. His shoulders were hunched up around his thick neck, making him look even broader than when he stood upright with his hands in his pockets. He took a big sip of coffee, swished it around in his mouth before swallowing it hard, and ran his tongue over his teeth. After a sufficient pause, he answered, “I think we will, Tom. I think we will. I got a good bunch of boys this year, and they’ve been working pretty hard.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Tom said. “You’re doing a great job with that team.”

Don took another mouthful of coffee, swished, swallowed, and wiped his teeth, the way Kathryn’s father used to do when she was a little girl. She wondered why Don would make such a spectacle out of drinking a cup of coffee when a simple sip and quiet swallow would do. Must be something about aging men, she decided.

The bell rang, and they all looked at the door expecting to see Julia, but it was Daryl instead.

“Hey, Daryl,” Tom waved to the postman who was dropping off the morning’s mail. In exchange, Daryl picked up a ready cup of coffee with a few packs of sugar.

“Here you go, Daryl. Got time to sit for a while?” Bob handed him a wooden stick for stirring.

“I got a few minutes. Julia's shop is next on the route, but she hasn’t opened it yet.”

“She’s stopping here first,” Kathryn offered. “Then we’re going to walk down to the square to watch the time capsule being buried. She won’t open the store for another hour at least, I’m guessing.”

“The time capsule,” Tom shouted, slapping the sports section down on the stack of papers. “I nearly forgot about that. I got something being buried in that thing, you know. Thanks for reminding me.”

“What are you burying, Tom?” asked Bob.

“An auto insurance policy, void of course, and a personalized pen from my office. I thought it would be interesting to see how cars change in the next fifty years. And, well, you can’t exactly bury a car. I threw the pen in just in case I’m not around when they dig the thing up.”

“Where are you planning to be?”

“You never know. I might be in Florida, or I might be dead.”

There was a slight sound of clinking glass coming from behind the counter, as if bottles were being rattled and sorted. Kathryn could hear whispering mixed with the clinking and was curious enough to lean over the counter to see who was down on the floor, playing with bottles. No one else seemed concerned, but she had to know. She could just see the top of the little girl’s head, a girl who was kneeling on the floor rearranging empty soda bottles on the shelves.

“That’s Bob’s granddaughter,” Tom said without looking up from the paper. He had picked up the want ads, which he read every day just in case he should need a new job.

“She comes in here with me sometimes when my daughter has to work,” Bob held up a pot of fresh coffee and offered to top off Kathryn’s cup. “She plays with these bottles until it’s time to take them in for the deposit.”

Kathryn took the lid off her cup to allow for more coffee. She smiled down at the little girl. “What are all those bottles doing, hon?”

The girl raised her head to see Kathryn peering over the counter, looking down at her and the empty bottles. “They’re saying ‘good-bye.’”

“To who?”

“To each other. They have to go back today for the deposit.”

Before Kathryn could ask another question, Bob added, “She gives them all names, and they have a little family and a school and what not, and then when it’s time to return them for the deposit, they all say “good-bye” and wish each other well. My wife says someday her imagination will either earn her a million dollars or land her in prison.”

Kathryn sat back on her stool and listened to the whispered story of friends departing and their promises to keep in touch. She had lost so many friends of her own over the last few years as people moved on to other jobs and other homes, and she took comfort in this steady group of coffee shop pals. The bottles would go back for a deposit, but these people that surrounded her would remain.

“So, what are you burying in that capsule, Daryl?” Tom put down the paper and tried to wipe the ink off his fingers.

Daryl had to think for a minute. It was at least a month ago when he dropped off a little box of things at the city hall. “Let me see. I think I threw in a few stamps, because you never know what the cost of mailing a letter will be in fifty years. I copied a few FBI Most Wanted sheets. Thought it might be interesting to see if they ever catch those folks. Oh, and an old rubber stamp. Everything’s printed electronically now, so we don’t really use that old thing anymore.”

Tom thought about the FBI posters. The oldest people in town liked to say the world was worse than it ever was when they were younger, and they were glad they wouldn’t be around to see it go to ruin. He wondered if that was really true and if the FBI would be looking for the same kind of criminals in fifty years or would they be looking for worse. “I wonder,” he said. “I wonder what kind of crime we’ll have in fifty years. Do you ever wonder about that Don? Ever wonder what this place will be like then or what kind of kids will be in school?”

“Nope. People are people. People were mean a thousand years ago, and people will be mean a thousand years from now, those who want to be. They may come up with new ways to prove it, but we’re all the same. Nothing ever changes.”

“Huh.” Tom wasn’t sure. He would have to think about that for a while. He hoped he would be around when the time capsule was pulled out of the ground and opened up, and he would be the same old Tom, but he wasn’t sure what the rest of the world would look like. “I wonder,” he said, picking the paper back up and looking it over to see if he had missed a page. “How about you Kathryn? Did you give anything to the capsule?”

Kathryn was listening to the saga of the bottles, the departing sorrows and hopes for the future, and she was lost in sound of glass touching glass, plastic crates scooting on wooden shelves. She was suddenly aware that Tom was looking at her, as was Bob, waiting for an answer, but she hadn’t heard the question. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I asked if you gave anything to be buried in the capsule.”

“No, you know, I couldn’t think of anything I thought would be significant. I looked around the house but just couldn’t think of anything the town might care about.”

“Not a single thing?”

“I’m afraid not. I guess I should have put some more thought into it.”

The girl behind the counter stood up and brushed her hair away from her face. She reached down to the shelf below and pulled out a soda bottle, empty and rinsed and ready for recycling. She handed it to Kathryn and said, “You can take this if you want to. You can bury this.” She looked at her grandfather to see if it was OK to offer a bottle. Bob nodded.

Kathryn took it and thanked the girl. “Are you sure? You won’t miss this one?”

“No, it’s OK. They’ve already said ‘good-bye.’”

“Well, then thank you. I’ll take this down to the square and hand it to the mayor. I’m sure he’ll be happy to add it to the collection.”

The brass bell rang. Everyone looked at the door in time to see Julia rush through. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she hurried to the counter and gave Kathryn a quick hug. I got caught up with something at home and just couldn’t get away.”

“That’s OK.” Kathryn held up the bottle. “We should hurry down to the square so we can make sure this gets put in the capsule before they seal it up.”

Julia looked puzzled, wondering why Kathryn would want to bury an old soda bottle.

“I’ll tell you about it on the way down,” Kathryn said as she gathered up her purse and handed Julia her coffee.

“Wait,” Don picked up the sports page and ripped out the article about football team winning their most recent game. It was full of names of the boys he had worked with and had seen grow up to become young men. He thought that when that capsule would be opened up in fifty years, who ever lived in this town would need proof that not everyone was like a criminal on a poster from the post office. He handed the article to Kathryn. “Would you mind?”

She took the article and rolled it up carefully, sliding it into the bottle. “I’d be happy to include it, Don.”

She and Julia waved to the men at the counter and to the old man at the corner table. They walked out onto the street, letting the bell ring and the door shut behind them. As they headed down the sidewalk toward the square, Julia took Kathryn’s arm in hers.

Kathryn knew nothing could stay the same, with or without a time capsule. Eventually even this friend might move to start a new life in another town. But for now, she would hold tightly to the empty bottle in her hand and hope for something lasting.

I Am Template

2007-01-30T16:29:00.001-08:00

Fill in the blanks with your personal descriptives. My example follows the template:

I am from _______ (specific ordinary item), from _______ (product name) and _______.

I am from the _______ (home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the _______ (plant, flower, natural item), the _______ (plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from _______ (family tradition) and _______ (family trait), from _______ (name of family member) and _______ (another family name) and _______ (family name).

I am from the _______ (description of family tendency) and _______ (another one).
From _______ (something you were told as a child) and _______ (another).

I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

I'm from _______ (place of birth and family ancestry), _______ (two food items representing your family).

From the _______ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the _______ (another detail, and the _______ (another detail about another family member).

I am from _______ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

I AM

I am from Singer, from Butterick, and from bolts of fabric with spools of coordinating thread, bias tape, and 9-inch zippers. My mother sewed all of my clothes because they were cheaper than store bought. It was also a source of pride because the dresses and jumpers and skirts and pants were well made. She always said, “there’s a big difference between homemade and handmade, and your clothes are handmade.” They were quality.

I am from 17th Street and ranch houses with one-car garages attached at the sides. Our lots were freckled with crabgrass but were always trimmed close and tidy, and our yards were full of full-grown trees, the kind you could climb and swing from and hide things in when you needed a secret place to stash your treasures.

I am from the petunias that were brought home by the flat and planted in the flower beds that were sectioned off with old rail road ties. And I am from the redbud tree that bloomed in the spring in a way that made our yard look like something more than a quarter acre on a blue-collar street, like something more than the gravel driveway would lead you to expect.

I am from singing old gospel tunes around the piano in four-part harmony (I am an alto), and dice games on Sunday night when we bet with a jar full of pennies. And I am from Guiles Onie and Ruth Ola who gave the family Rook. “We’re set for sure.”

I am from deep-fried shrimp (pronounced “srimp”) and oysters every summer, and inviting the Southern folk over to share. The house smelled like hot oil and fried batter for days, and I would sniff the sleeve of my shirt to make sure I didn't smell, too.

I am from fear of the unknown and unusual, and from mistrust of the one who signs the paycheck.

I am from the First Baptist Church, where we claimed our own pew in the back on the right side. It was where we were baptized and where we sang and where we wished we went somewhere else for church. It was where our father’s initials were carved in the basement cement because he helped to pour the foundation.

I am from the American South and from fried corn and fried okra and fried chicken and sweet tea. My sisters were from squirrel, but I am from government cheese.

I am from a mother who passed a typing test and was invited to work in Washington D.C. as a secretary. She stayed home in Alabama instead because “I honored my father and mother. Not like it is today.” And she regretted it for years and years and years. I am from a father who fought extra-long in WW2 and drove a tank in North Africa. He made it back home to the States because his number came up while he was stationed in Tunisia. Kind of like winning the lottery only better.

I am from my mother’s cedar chest that stands at the foot of her bed. It’s a treasure trove full of old pictures and autographs and broken eye glasses. It’s full of a scratchy gray and maroon blanket I used to touch when I was a kid, and I wondered why anyone would knit something out of yarn so uncomfortable. And it's full of baby shoes and pink beaded hospital bracelets because I was born a girl.

The Book

2006-12-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

I filled out the order form at amazon.com, confirming the shipping address and making sure I had ordered the right book, A Painted House.

“If you like A Painted House you might also like Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” the site suggested in its masterful marketing ploy.

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. What does that have to do with a John Grisham novel? Why would I automatically like one because I like the other? And, how did they know I was paralyzed with fear in every part of my daily life? I quickly scanned the screen to see if I’d filled out a questionnaire at some point and had answered the questions too thoroughly.
Are you between the ages of 35-50?
Do you own your own home?
Do you have a computer?
Does your stomach quake when you’re asked to speak in front of more than three people?
Does your husband have to pry your white-knuckled fingers off of the kitchen counter before every band performance, just to get you in the car?

There was no such questionnaire, so I shrugged and ordered the suggested self-help book. It had been my opinion that self-help books were usually filled with a few bits of helpful information sandwiched between paragraph after paragraph of unnecessary anecdotes and verbiage. Blah. Blah. Blah. If they were edited for efficiency, most of them would make fine magazine articles. I would see if Dr. Jeffers book was fluff or worthwhile.

Within a couple of days, my shipment arrived. I set the Grisham novel aside and went for the Fear book. I didn’t even bother to read up on Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.’s credentials. I decided to take her word for it.

Right there on the first page:

“We fear beginnings; we fear endings. We fear changing; we fear ‘staying stuck.’ We fear success; we fear failure. We fear living; we fear dying.”

Like Lucy’s diagnosis of Charlie Brown at the 5¢ psychiatrist stand, I yelled, “That’s it. I’m afraid of everything.” The doctor went on to promise that her book would give me the tools to harness my fears and use them for good. I was about to learn how to let go of negative programming, how to say “yes,” how to raise my self-esteem, how to see myself as having purpose, how to. . . .

I wasn’t sure how the doctor was going help me help myself to erase decades of negative programming. My formative years were punctuated with key phrases: you’ll never amount to anything. You’re not worth a dime. You’re not worth a plug nickel. Don’t be stupid. Why do you want to look like that when you could look pretty? All of those choice words were being catapulted from the outside, but I kept them going throughout my adult years from within. The doctor called it negative chatter. Chatter? I had my own internal ticker tape of self-deprecating phrases.

“For the love of God, you can’t do that? You didn’t go to school for that? You’re too old to start that now? Almost anybody could do that better than you could. You’re just average at everything.”

When I was ten or so, I went to church camp for a week. The camp was situated on the banks of Crystal Lake, but the camp maintained a sewage ditch that ran right into it. Not very Crystal. One afternoon, the counselors divided all of the kids into two groups and separated us in a big field. They went down the row and wrote a letter on the bottom of each right foot. They took stock of the campers and gave each of us a descriptive letter. If a kid had freckles, his letter was F. If a kid had pigtails, her letter was P. When the counselor came to me with her marker, she stood back, looked me up and down, and said, “Hmmm. A for average.” When the whistle blew, we all ran down the hill toward the other group, looking for someone with our matching letter. I charged, looking for the other unremarkable camper, someone with no distinguishing features and no immediately recognizable character traits. The other lumpy Average kid. I don’t recall who my match was, except that he was somebody I hadn’t noticed before.

That afternoon would serve to define me for years to come, but here I was on the threshold of help—self-help. I would learn to stop “the chatter” that was making me a victim, according to Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., and replace it with “a loving voice.” It was a daunting task but not as difficult as it would be if I hadn’t been able to wash off that big, red A from the bottom of my right foot.

Wishful Thinking

2006-11-21T13:17:00.000-08:00

Sam and Bob headed home with a tired, good-day's-work feeling. It had snowed earlier, and freezing rain coated the roads with a sheet of ice. Skidding and fish-tailing through a stop sign and red light, Sam hit a camouflaged pot hole dead center. He heard his right fender jar loose with a thump.

"Shoot," he mumbled.

"Well, Sam," Bob said. "Your old car has about had it, don't you think? You're gonna have to get a new one pretty soon."

"What? Old Blue? Why, she could take you home without me drivin'. She never misses a day, and she'd beat any foreign piece of shit you drive."

Bob knew better than to push it any further. Sam had an attachment to that car as if they had grown up together. He'd put thousands of miles on Old Blue without any trouble and had no intentions of trading her in for some car with no sense of loyalty.

He tried to drive more carefully, slowing down just a little and pumping the brake instead of stomping it. He was thinking more of Old Blue's safety than of his own or his passenger's because Old Blue had to be driven with care. It had been through a lot--the frame was rusted, and chunks of it fell off with each car wash. Sam's daughter had sprayed the interior with cheap perfume that had settled into the upholstery. And the body was repainted a beaming blue that gave the car notoriety throughout Hebron.

As they turned onto Bob's street, Bob gathered up his tool box and thermos. "Well, Sam, I thank you for the ride. It's been a pleasure, and maybe tomorrow the weather will be more obliging."

Sam stopped in front of a small square house, similar to those around it. Bob stepped out of Old blue and said "good-bye" to Sam.

"Yeah, good-bye."

"Well, Old Blue," Sam said as he fish-tailed away from Bob's house. "I guess as long as you're mine and you get me where I need to go, I don't have to stick up for you. You maybe look a little beat up on the outside, but you got the best engine in this whole derned country. And that's good enough for me."

Sam pulled onto the highway that led to his town. Squinting through the slush that speeding trucks tossed onto his windshield, he wished he lived someplace where it never snowed. He remembered a stone house he and his wife once had in Tennessee. It was in the hills of Sequatchie Valley where the Women's Missionary Fellowship of the Baptist church had quilting circles, and all the men fished on Saturdays from just before dawn until noon.

"Sure, they had snow in Tennessee," he mumbled to himself, "but never like this. I could fish pretty much anytime I wanted, except when it got too cold. It did get cold down there, but it didn't snow, not like this. Nope, not like this." His voice trailed off as he held both hands on the wheel to keep his car from skidding.

It had begun to snow again--big flakes that hit like raindrops. Sam passed the sign that read "Hebron, 3 Miles." He eased into the right-hand lane to make the exit just ahead. He passed the sign reading "Hebron, This Exit," and when he saw the exit ramp and flipped on his turn signal out of habit, he passed the ramp, too.

"Oh, shoot," he said patting Old Blue's steering wheel. "I missed my turn-off all because I was thinkin' about fishin' in Tennessee. You know, though, there's a fishin' hole not too far from here. Could be that it's just off that crumbling road past that bridge up there."

As he drove under the bridge, Sam eased the wheel to the right onto the next exit ramp, and with one more turn, he put Old Blue on a rough and curving gravel road. They bounced from bump to rut and back to bump, slowly making their way to Sam's remembered fishing hole.

Sam steered the wheel with the control of a master driver, making every slight curve and sharp twist in the seldom-traveled road. He found where the pond should have been, but blowing snow and growing drifts kept him from seeing clearly.

He thought better of staying on that deserted road and turned back toward the highway. The Mrs. would have last night's leftovers warming in the oven with some corn bread, so he had to stop day-dreaming and head home.

Once he entered the highway, he thought again about Tennessee. He saw himself standing on the grassy bank of a smooth and quiet pond. A few trees grew behind him, and more shaded the banks of the other side. He had his strongest pole and line anticipating a struggle with some 12-pound wiggling trout. Chirping crickets and chunks of cheddar cheese were his bait, and a can of worms lay nearby in case the fish weren't biting for his regular bait.

Securing a piece of the cheese on his hook, Sam held his pole out to the side and flicked it toward the middle of the pond. The line hummed as it grew, and the red and white bobber hit with a plop, rippling the water's surface all the way back to Sam's rubber boots.

Cast after cast, cheese after cricket, Sam reeled in shining trout. With each catch he ran the stringer through the fish's gills and tied it to a dangling branch, letting it flop and splash in the water as a warning to the other fish.

As Sam drove down his street, he grinned, steering Old Blue into his driveway. He picked up his lunchbox in one hand, and kept the other behind his back as he walked through the back door and into the kitchen. He greeted his wife with a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the bottom, and she giggled softly and told him that dinner was warming in the oven. She'd made a fresh pan of corn bread to go with the leftovers.

"What you got in your hand there?" she furrowed her brow as she wiped her hands on her apron. Sam brought his hidden hand out in plain sight, and in it he held a stringer full of fish. "Where in God's name did you get those in the middle of winter, in the middle of this snow storm?" She cautiously took the fish and put them in the sink, watching Sam as he walked toward the bathroom to clean up for dinner.

Old blue sat resting in the driveway, popping as her over-worked engine cooled with the wind and snow. She wished she could see the Mrs.' face, but she would wait for Sam to tell her all about it in the morning.

A Full Bowl

2006-11-14T04:54:00.001-08:00

I wrapped my wet hair in the big green towel and twirled it up into a spiral turban. I pulled the shower curtain closed as I walked passed the tub on the way to the door. That’s when I saw it, a brown spider the size of Nebraska just above the doorframe. Maybe Nebraska is overstating its actual size, but this was certainly larger than the average house spider. I jumped back, and the spider skittered to the right, then to the left, then down to the top of the door.

I had done this dance before. Something about the bathroom drew spiders and centipedes up from the basement, either to explore the walls and mirrors or to throw a shindig in the tub. I leaned forward and yanked the door open to let the spider drop a few inches with the removal of its resting place. The thing swayed from its instant strand of web until it could wrap its legs around the tether and climb back up to solid ground. I waited until the spider was back up on the wall before jumping from my spot on the rug out into the hallway. I brushed off my shoulders, shivering involuntarily from the top of my head down to my feet, jumping in place like Red Skelton.

“Hey, Rob, come in here for a minute,” I heard Mama’s thin, pinched voice coming from the family room. It wasn’t actually a family room. It was a bedroom that had been converted into a family room after my sisters had moved out. Not even that, really. It was called the “TV room” because it held a couch, two chairs, the sewing machine, and the console TV. The only thing the family ever did in that room was watch prime time night after night.

“What,” I said as I stuck my head in the door.

“Don’t say ‘what’ to me like I’m some stranger. Talk to me with a little respect.”

Here we go, I thought. “‘What did you want,’ I meant.”

“I want to know why you need to take twenty-minute showers and run up the water bill every night.”

“I didn’t take a twenty minute shower. I wasn’t even in the bathroom for twenty minutes. The water couldn’t have been running for more than ten.”

“We timed you,” she said, as if my father were a partner in setting the trap.

Daddy sat silently in his chair, eyes aimed directly ahead at a rerun of Dallas. Playbacks, he called them.

“You timed me taking a shower?” I could feel my neck become tense and hid my hands outside in the hall so I could turn them into fists undetected. “Well, I timed myself. It was 9:20 when I went in to take a shower, and now it’s 9:37. I’ve been dodging a spider for the last five minutes, so there is no way I could have had the water running for a full twenty minutes.” I couldn’t believe I was reduced to having to defend myself in this situation. Archie Bunker wouldn’t have even had this conversation. Well, maybe he would have tried, but the audience would have been there to laugh at his absurdity, and Gloria would have triumphed. If I just had somebody to witness this, a studio audience, I’d be able to breath steadier, and I wouldn’t have to stand here with my hands clinched, I thought.

With a sigh, I said, “Tomorrow I’ll make sure my shower is only ten minutes, but you’ll have to help me. Maybe you can set the timer over the stove.”

“Don’t get smart with me. I know what I know.”

Daddy chuckled as he watched J. R. swindle another would-be partner out of his fortune and his wife. He mumbled something about that old J. R. being a low-down skunk as he smoothed the top of his hairless head and worked on a wad of Skoal.

She timed my shower, I repeated in my head as I backed away from the door and hurried into my room as if it were home base, and I would be safe if I could just get inside. Can’t tag me in here. I closed the door and unwrapped the damp towel from around my head. Leaning on my dresser with my arms straightened on both sides, I pressed toward the mirror and stared at my reflection, reviewing the familiar brown hair and dark brown eyes of an average looking adolescent girl. I leaned closer to look for a mark on my lip left by my mouthpiece—I hadn’t played my horn since the day before, but my mother often told me that I had a permanent mouthpiece ring from playing too much. I couldn’t see one, but then I always tried hard not to see the things Mama was so quick to point out. I didn’t want to believe that I had so many flaws—bad skin, bad teeth, stringy hair, sloppy jeans—and a mouthpiece ring.

I won’t always live here, I told myself. I’ll graduate in May, and I’m going to the Purdue branch next year, but as soon as I can, I’m leaving for college with a campus, and just like all of my sisters, I’ll only come back for Christmas. I had three sisters, each much older than I, and as they each left for college, I became increasingly unsettled about being the only one left at home, the only one left to have my showers timed and my cat thrown down the basement stairs and my music criticized.

“Music without words doesn’t mean anything,” Daddy said when I played my Chopin album on the console stereo.

Winston, my Himalayan cat who would rather pee in the living room than in his litter box that was kept in my room, stretched and rolled on my bedspread. Winston was the one in the family who I could go to when I needed a shoulder or just a place to rest my head. I had written a Christmas poem about him when he was a kitten.

Little baby Winston, how sweet you used to be.
Oh to see you fast asleep beneath the Christmas tree.
Ripping up the curtains, marking up the walls,
Playing little kitten games and chasing foil balls.
But oh the day you faulted and went behind the chair.
You gave our house that awful smell, too much for us to bear.
Some threatened you with beatings, others used starvation,
I just sat and looked at you with worry and frustration.
Little baby Winston, how sweet you used to be.
Oh to see you fast asleep, as long as you’re with me.

I stretched out next to him, looked him in the eyes, and recited the verses. “I wish I were a cat,” I told him. “I wish I could sleep in the window and play with foil and eat from a bowl that was always full.” Winston rubbed his head against my arm, and I wondered if the sound and pattern of my voice was to him what the rhythm of his purring was to me, a sound that provided a steady background and a reward for attention. He interrupted the rumbling of his purring by licking the top of his front paws and straightening a misaligned patch of fur on his side.

I remembered that when I was younger, maybe ten or eleven, I discovered a little plug of wood in the front of my dresser that I could pull out with a straight pin. It was the size of a small dowel rod and about one inch long. I had made a miniature scroll out of my mother’s adding machine tape, and on it I wrote, “August 1980.” It represented the year I hoped I would be moving out of the house for college, away from my parents and their pinched up voices and their pinched up approach to living that seemed to be patterned after network programming. I rolled the paper into a tube the size of the plughole and kept it hidden behind the piece of wood. I would pull it out and look at it whenever I needed a little sign of hope, but I had forgotten about it until now.

After digging around in my top drawer for a straight pin, I finally found one and stuck it into the wood plug to pull it out, revealing the small roll of hopeful paper behind it. Wow, I thought, it’s been at least a year since I’ve even thought about this thing. I pulled it out and slowly unrolled it. Running my fingers over the pencil-lead handwriting of a middle school girl caught up in a moment of melodrama and sadness, I sighed. August 1980 was not going to provide an escape route, but maybe August 1981 would be the month of liberation. I rolled the paper back up and carefully stowed it back into its hiding place, a miniature time capsule.

The phone rang, a welcomed distraction, and I ran down the hall to answer it. Our only telephone was a rotary model that was mounted on the wall in the dining room.

“Hello.”

“Hi Robyn. It’s Karen.” Karen MacCauley was my closest friend, and one or the other of us called about the same time almost every evening. We met in marching band when our director, Mr. Hattendorf had agreed to let us play the cymbals. Karen played the viola in the orchestra, and I was a failed trumpet student. Our first day on the field was the start of our friendship, and we had been together ever since. I had decided that our relationship was more important to me than to her because she had a gaggle of friends, all of them honor students, excellent musicians, and gregarious. My grades were average, I clanged the cymbals in the band, and I was quiet and often alone, with the exception of a few rag-tag friends here and there.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I just got out of the shower, and I was thinking about going to bed early.” I thought about telling her what my parents had said about the length of time I had supposedly spent in the shower and how I had found the rolled up piece of paper I had hidden when I was a child, but I was embarrassed. Karen seemed to come from such a well-adjusted family. I didn’t think she would understand. “What are you doing?” I asked without revealing the evening’s events.

“Nothing. Just thought I’d call and say ‘hi.’ I didn’t get to talk to you today at school. Did you do your accounting homework?”

“No,” I responded with disgust. “I’m not going to do that stuff until Sunday night. Isn’t it due Monday morning?”

“Monday or Tuesday. You know how Mr. Lohse is. You never really get a solid answer when you ask a question.”

“I know. ‘Mr. Lohse, how many days do we have until the test?’ ‘Oh, six or ten.’ What kind of answer is ‘six or ten?’ Why isn’t it six or seven or nine or ten? Nobody says ‘six or ten.’”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing,” I answered, thinking about how much I hated Saturdays at my house. “I’ll probably just hang around the house and play the piano or something. What are you doing?”

“Sean and I are going to see a movie in Michigan City. Chrissy might go with us.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Robyn, that’s long enough to be on the phone,” I heard my mother yell from the TV room as Daddy spit out a wad of tobacco and its juice and shot it into his peach can with a phlegmy hack.

With a cringe, I had to say, “I gotta go. Have fun tomorrow. See you Monday.”

Saturday morning after I made my bed and added my dirty clothes to the laundry piles, Daddy asked for some help. “Hey Rob. Get in here and help me move this air conditioner. I want to put it in the bedroom window.”

“No you don’t,” Mama protested. “You can’t work that girl like she’s a man. You wait until Mel and Joe come next weekend and get Joe to help you do that.” Melanie was my sister. She had married an Italian named Joe who said once that he didn’t know he was Italian until he married into our family, with a father who carried with him all of the slanderous racial slurs he picked up as a soldier in World War II.

Sometimes Mama exercised an exact authority over Daddy like Margaret Houlihan over Frank Burns, and she spoke with the same shrill voice that Houlihan used when she caught Frank rifling through her lingerie. But sometimes Mama was more like Ellie Ewing, and spoke with a quiet and determined tone to Daddy as if he were Jacque and he had just undercut one of his children in an oil deal. Today, she was Hot Lips, and she was not about to let me haul a huge window air conditioner from the garage to the back of the house.

Last summer, while Mama was at work and Daddy was between jobs as a carpenter, Daddy decided to change couches in the TV room. The one in the room was old and worn, and the one he wanted was in the garage. Both were too long to go through doors, down the narrow hall, and around tight corners, but Daddy had an idea—he strapped on his tool belt, complete with hammers, ten-penny nails, and a crowbar. He banged and pried and pulled. He spit and swore and perspired. Within half an hour, he had removed the entire window from what used to be my bedroom, frame and all. With the whole thing spread out in the front yard, he called me in to help pull out the sagging sofa. We got it halfway through the window, and while Daddy held on to one end, I ran out through the front door and helped to balance the couch on the window opening. After a good deal of maneuvering, we pulled and pushed it through the hole in the side of the house and carried it out to the garage. Then with the new used couch with wooden sides and gold plaid upholstery, we reversed actions, pulling and pushing it through the wall and into the TV room. I was relieved that the neighbors had steady jobs and were all at work at that hour of the day.

“Now get the heck out of the way while I put this window back in before your mama comes home from work,” Daddy said, out of breath from the hard work and from the tension caused by possibly being caught making me “work like a man.” I knew to keep my mouth shut, and when Mama came home and asked what I had done all day, I would say, “Not much.”

I was willing to carry one side of the air conditioner, a little proud that Daddy would ask for my help as if he was sure I was able to carry my end of the load, but I stayed out of the way and wasted another Saturday. That night, I was careful to take a very short shower and to point out that it was short before I went to bed.

Sunday morning was spent rushing around getting ready for church, where I would sit quietly and fantasize about something or other. Sometimes I imagined myself as a cast member of Fame, and I could play the piano like the sulky guy with curly, black hair. I would initiate a spontaneous break out of dancing and singing in the cafeteria while I performed my flawless swing number. Sometimes I dreamed I was riding a horse from Chesterton, Indiana down I-65 all the way to Decatur, Alabama to visit my Grandfather. It was an odd fantasy, and even more odd when you considered I’d never ridden a horse in my life. Finally, the pastor would pray his benediction, and I would snap back to reality, and think about lunch.

Mama was stirring the beans with bacon and Daddy was setting the table when the phone rang. I ran to get it, saying “hello” and hoping it would be an invitation to go somewhere or do something that afternoon. Or at least it would be Karen telling me about the movie she had seen with Sean.

Instead, it was Jackie Gondeck, a clarinet player I knew from band who had graduated the year before. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.

“Hi, Jackie. What’s up?”

Jackie spoke, and suddenly, all of my dreams, my fantasies, my dissatisfaction with my adolescent stage of life, disappeared. I couldn’t remember what I had been doing before the phone rang, and I couldn’t see beyond the rotary dial.

I hung up the phone and stared blankly into the kitchen where my parents stood, wondering why I was mute. Finally, I pushed the words out, “Karen is dead.”

“What,” Mama said with intensity.

I thought for a split second that she might think I meant my sister Karen, so I quickly said, “Karen MacCauley. She’s dead.” I had always made a point of not letting my mother see me cry, not to let her see that she could effect me, but I could feel tears escape the corners of my eyes, and I didn’t try to pull them back.

I ran outside the screen door and squeezed between the evergreens where Winston was crouched, waiting for a running squirrel. I grabbed my cat and held on as tight as I could, like he was a life jacket, and without him I would sink to the bottom. Mama ran out the door after me and stood on the front porch, trying to hold onto me and console me, but all I wanted was Winston. I was accustomed to his mammal comfort, and holding him was all I knew to do. Mama pulled me into the house, both of us crying, and she sat me down on the couch. As Daddy watched helpless, I told her what Jackie had said. Karen, her sometimes boyfriend Sean, and our friend Chrissy Forchetti were on their way home from Michigan City, only about twenty minutes from Chesterton, when something happened to the car—a blown out tire or a rough spot in the road. The car rolled several times, and Karen, not wearing a seat belt, went through the open sunroof and died immediately of severe head injuries. Sean and Chrissy where thrown around the car but survived.

My friend, sometimes my only friend, I thought. We were going to talk at school tomorrow. We were going to sit by each other in accounting. We were going to meet at her locker that she let me share because mine was out of the way. We were going to pass notes to each other in the hall. We were going to wonder if either one of us would be invited to the prom next month. And we were going to remain friends beyond our youthful bond of marching band and orchestra and accounting and the people we knew.

I called Sean because I couldn’t believe it was true. He would reveal that it was a dream, like Bobby Ewing’s season-long absence, and I would find Karen at her locker on Monday, like Pam found Bobby in the shower. Someone else answered the phone, one of the boys from the percussion section, and he told me what I didn’t want to hear. Sean was resting and didn’t want to talk to anyone, but everyone would be going to his house later that night to be together. No one knew what to think or do on their own, but we all hoped just being in the same room together would help draw out clear thoughts and some kind of understanding. I would lay on my bed with Winston stretched out beside me until that time when I could see Sean’s face and know what happened last night.

Sean was sunken into a big chair like he was part of the fabric. He, and everyone around him, was watching All in the Family, an episode after Edith had died and Archie was left with the foster girl and they spent most of their time in the bar down the street. At least a dozen of us were squeezed into Sean’s family room, and although we were not given answers to the death of our friend, we were at least given a corporate comfort to this surreal situation. He had been driving the car when it flipped and rolled, but he didn’t have answers, not for us, for his parents, or for Karen’s parents. He couldn’t say why he lost control. He couldn’t say if a tire had blown out. And no one would ask out loud if he had been drinking. Karen and Chrissy didn’t drink or use drugs, so if Sean had been under some outside influence, he would have drunk or smoked or snorted before he picked them up.

___

On Monday morning, I woke up at the usual time, got dressed, ate my Pop Tart, grabbed my books and my horn and waited on the couch for my ride to school. It seemed distant, the death of Karen, like it hadn’t happened, or like it happened so long ago. Mama and Daddy watched to make sure I would be OK. They offered to let me stay home for the day, but we all knew it would be best for me to be at school with distractions and other friends.

I made it through my first class, sitting as still and as unresponsive as I knew to be. I knew that if I felt anything at all, I wouldn’t be able to stop crying, and the impending feeling of being lost and not knowing which direction to head for home would be too much to sort through in school hallways. During the next class, a study hall, I worked at memorizing Puck’s final appeal from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the only book I had with me, not wanting to go to the locker I had shared with Karen. The kids in the carousels next to mine speculated on the cause of the accident. They didn’t know about my ties to Karen, so their discussion seemed heartless and insensitive. They wondered if Sean was high.

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended.”

They wondered and actually asked out loud if Karen had been decapitated.

“That you have slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding than a dream.”

They talked about how Chrissy had been thrown around but was only bruised and how lucky she and Sean were to be alive.

“Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend.”

The discussion was more than I could stand to listen to, as they batted around cold facts as if they were talking about an episode of CHIPS. I grabbed my book and folders and ran out the door, down the hall, down the stairs, around the corner to the drinking fountain across from the bandroom. I had spent hours in that room, a sanctuary where I could read, talk to friends, play the piano in one of the practice rooms. Like my bedroom at home, it was home base, and I wanted to run inside and not be tagged.

I pushed open the double doors and stood on the landing, leaning on the rail and looking down into the empty room full of chairs and music stands. Everything was new and clean, unlike the bandroom at the other end of the school, the one the orchestra used, with its old green walls and green tiled floors. I began to cry as hard as I had the day before with my cat and my mother, and I held onto the rail trying to breath and trying not to draw attention from the music secretary in the office. I heard the doors open, and as I turned to see who was coming through them, Mr. Hattendorf walked in. He saw me standing there, saw me crying and alone and needing help, but he would not offer comfort. He quickly walked past me and into the office.

At that moment, I was embarrassed for choosing this room to hide in and for making eye contact with this teacher who didn’t want to be needed that day. I quietly opened the doors, slipped through, and headed for my next class.

So the day went, with me and with Karen’s other friends wandering from room to room in the school looking for a place, a safe room or a quiet room or a room that didn’t remind us of our missing friend. For our final class, we gathered in the old green band room for wind ensemble, sitting in our chairs with our instruments in our laps, and looking at Mr. Hattendorf as we waited for instructions.

___

Mr. Hattendorf was a young band teacher who looked intelligent by adolescent standards. He wore suits and had a go-tee. He used unusual words like “behoove,” and gave vocabulary tips with different compositions. “It would behoove you to watch me as I direct you through this difficult section of Saint Saens. It would also behoove you to learn the meaning of ‘behoove’ and use the word as opportunities arise.”

On this afternoon, when we were stunned and quiet and hoping that our teacher who had always commanded such respect would provide some kind of answer to all of our unspoken questions, Mr. Hattendorf offered no answers.

“We are all very sad today, and we are all feeling a little lost. I don’t know what to say to you to help you through this, but I hope you’ll talk to your parents and your clergymen and to each other.”

He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes that had begun to glisten. “Karen’s parents have asked that the orchestra perform at her funeral, which will be held on Wednesday, and they have asked that boys from the marching band, six of you, be the pall bearers. See me after band to volunteer. For those of you in the orchestra, we will play the piece we have been working on for regional contest. We will not meet to rehearse it before Wednesday, so make sure you look it over at home and be ready.”

I could never remember the name of the piece we were getting ready for contest, but the melody was haunting. After school, when I would walk the mile to my house, I would sometimes pick a rock near the gym and kick it all the way home, humming that song out loud with every step and with every launch of the rock. It was the kind of tune that would drift into your head and stay there, making you hum almost involuntarily until you could replace it with a less haunting melody. This piece, whatever it was called, had a horn part that seemed remote enough, until the third part, my part, reached an eight-count high D, with nothing but the violins playing underneath. I would hold the D, move up to an E, then an F, slowly and steadily. Mr. Hattendorf would shout out, “Sing, Robyn. Sing.” It was meant to encourage me, but it usually just reminded me that I was on my own in the brass section and had no room for error. At the end of this exposure, I would drop down to a middle F, which I would sometimes hit. Sometimes, however, I would land on another note, and I had trouble finding the secret to consistency, even though it was a simple octave interval. It was this piece that I would have to play at the funeral of my closest friend.

Karen’s family had arranged for two nights of calling hours at a local funeral home, and for many of us, it would be our first funeral. I had been to my grandmother’s funeral a few years before. Her casket was open, and we stood beside it to see how the morticians had done her hair and her makeup to make her look as alive as possible. An odd custom, I thought then, to dress up a body and primp it so the survivors could say how nice it looked. “She looks so natural, doesn’t she?” people would say to Granddaddy as they filed passed, but the entire process seemed very unnatural to me. How would Karen be presented, I wondered.

Because of her injuries, Karen’s casket was closed, and her school pictures, from kindergarten on, were displayed on top with a dozen red roses. Mrs. MacCauley stood by the casket, looking very tired and wearing a long, black, wool coat. She smiled at every one and held their hands to thank them for coming. I was nervous as I approached her in line because I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss” didn’t seem like enough. “I’m sorry my only real friend is dead. I’m sorry that I will be spending the rest of my senior year in high school alone. I’m sorry that I can’t see her in this box and that I’m left to imagine how horrific the accident must have been and what she must have been thinking in those few seconds before her heart stopped beating. I’m sorry that all of my focus is on how I am effected, and not how you must feel at losing your daughter.” The things I felt were not things I could say to a grieving mother.

Mrs. MacCauley knew how much I loved her daughter and how alone I would be from now on. She hugged me in her wool coat and told me how important I was to Karen. She knew that I didn’t need to say anything and that being there was enough.

On the day of the funeral, every one in the orchestra dressed in our “Sunday clothes” and were dismissed from school early. A bus took us from the school to St. Patrick’s, the catholic church in town. We filed in, adjusted music stands in front of our chairs, readied our instruments, and sat still waiting for our part of the service. It was all very much like a ceremony, like the Veteran’s Day service at the park each year when the band played while men from the VFW carried the flag. I thought that if I could think of this performance in such benign terms, I would get through the afternoon without crying. Wiping away tears during a funeral was perfectly acceptable, I knew, but if I had to play my horn in this situation, I thought I would need to keep my sorrow inside, keep it rolled up on a little piece of paper that I could take out later when not so much was expected of me.

The service began, and six boys carried Karen’s casket through the doors and down the center isle of the church, wearing their marching band uniforms at the request of the family. As I saw my classmates as pall bearers, it was clear that I would need some other distraction besides pretending this was a civil ceremony at the park. I looked down at my shoes and reached down to rub off a scuff mark.

The priest stood at the podium and gave his eulogy, offering his most comforting words to the family. He turned his attention to the dozens of kids in the church, including the orchestra, and said kind words to us as well. I looked around at the stained glass windows and ornate statues in the church trying to decide if Catholics were as deceived as my Baptist pastor had suggested.

My gaze shifted to Mr. Hattendorf, who was sitting on the platform behind the priest. He had been sitting quietly in his chair, but at some point, he had gotten down on his knees, buried his face in his hands, and shook with his crying and praying. Here was a man who was always in control, who demanded attention and obedience, and who often frightened me with his harsh tone and piercing eyes. I had always been afraid of Mr. Hattendorf, but here he was, a heartbroken teacher who had finished the required training for teaching music, but who had not been prepared to bury his students. With a big gulp of air, I shot my gaze back to the stained glass window that showed a haloed Jesus holding a lamb. I could look steadily at this image for a few moments, but soon I would have to raise my horn and follow the conductor’s baton. How could I look at a sobbing man, my teacher, and play my part as if I weren’t heartbroken myself? I practiced breathing deeply and hoped the oxygen would clear my head.

At the appointed time, Mr. Hattendorf left his spot on the platform and joined us in the makeshift orchestra pit. He picked his baton up from his music stand and slowly counted out the beat for us. We all played as if we really were in the park, and I managed not to look my teacher directly in the eye. I can do this, I thought. I can play this piece with the rest of the group for the next several minutes and remain in control of my emotions as long as I don’t look him in the eyes. With that slight encouragement, I played my long exposed D, the E, the F. As I looked up to see if Mr. Hattendorf had noticed the completed phrase, I made the mistake of looking straight at his face, seeing his swollen eyes, his trembling lip, and I cried. When I should have dropped down an octave, I simply pulled my horn from my mouth and stopped all together.

I wasn’t sure if my teacher would be understanding, but at that moment I didn’t care. I was suddenly angry for being put in this position, for being expected to perform a beautiful piece of music at the funeral of a child. When the family asked if we would play, Mr. Hattendorf should have said no. He should have offered his condolences but explained that we were too young and too inexperienced to have to do such a thing. And maybe he should have said that he himself was too young and too inexperienced to have to do this as well. Children were not meant to bury children, I thought as the group finished the piece. I saw my teacher and the kids around me let their shoulders drop as if they had all been holding themselves up for just enough time to get the job done. I wished I could have held up, that I would have had enough strength to play to the end.

After the funeral, the family went to the grave site, and the students were excused, either to go back to school or to go home. Karen’s friends had decided that to go home would be anticlimactic and that spending just a few more hours together would help us end the day a little less painfully. The April sun was deceiving on the chilly day, but with no clouds in sight, we went straight for the nearest park, a playground attached to an elementary school. Like eight-year-olds, we played on the slides, the swings, the teeter-totters. We squealed and laughed and talked about boys. We let out all of the suppressed energy that had had no outlet over the previous days but needed expressing, despite the death of a girl, despite the permanent loss to a family, despite the denting and bruising we had all suffered. After being played out and finally exhausted, we left one at a time, and my mother took me home. The last several days had been surreal ones, days that could not have been compared to any I had known, could not have been mirrored by any television show I had seen, could not have been predicted.

I changed out of my velvet skirt and brown silk blouse and exchanged them for jeans and a T-shirt. I sat on my bed to pet Winston, scratching his ears and stroking him from his neck to the tip of his tail.

“So, good night unto you all,” I recited to him. “Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.” If ever I wanted to be a cat, I thought. If ever I wanted to know that my bowl would always be full and that my bed would always be soft and that my companion would always come home at the end of the day.

The familiar theme to Jeopardy jingled from the TV across the hall, interrupting my almost numb mumbling, and made me want to be in that TV room, the one I had rolled my eyes at for so long, the one where my parents were sitting with their newspapers and toothpicks and knitting needles and foul-smelling peach can full of tobacco juice. I grabbed a pair of socks and joined my parents, finding a spot on the gold-plaid couch to watch a night of television. Winston found his way to my lap and curled up with me, patting down imaginary leaves on my thighs to make his bed more suitable. Someday, maybe in August of 1981, I would have a different room with different people surrounding me, but for now, this was my home base, the place where I could not be tagged. This was my full bowl of provision and safe-keeping, and until the next time that I would need to look at my rolled up piece of paper tucked in a secret place in my dresser, I would hold on tight.