A Picket Fence and Iced Tea

Her head was tilted to one side when I saw her, reminding me of an upside-down rabbit I'd once owned. She'd escaped to the backyard one night and it rained on her (the rabbit, not the old woman in the flowered overalls), and she was never the same again. An inner ear infection, I think. She always had her head tilted upside down after that. Until her tragic death at the hands (or, more accurately, teeth) of the neighbor's Rottweiler. 

As I say, Tamara reminded me of that rabbit, the way her head almost rested on her left shoulder. She walked toward me down the garden path and stuck out her hand.

"Howdy, friend. Don't mind me, just trying to unstick a little earwax. Been bothering me for a week. My hearing isn't the best on a good day, but I'm half deaf now. Nothing a little hydrogen peroxide can't help. What can I do for you?"

An Audacious Plan

I heaved the laundry basket out of the way to check the dryer for loose socks. Those things went missing at an alarming rate. Aha! There it was, stuck to the side. A black crew-cut.

I overturning the basket on the bed and set to sorting, folding, stacking, and stashing. One more task checked off the list. One more mundane activity. One step closer to taking my shoes off and collapsing in front of Poirot reruns.

Photo by Shawn Harquail

Mondays made me fatalistic. This Monday was no different, as Steve had mentioned that we should plan our annual family vacation. Really? Did we have to discuss it? It would be Iowa. It was always Iowa. Cornstalks, flat fields, pigs, cornstalks, windmills, bad food, cornstalks, the occasional tulip, cornstalks. I questioned my choice of corn-on-the-cob for dinner.

Just because Steve had one million relatives who were still alive and begging to see him and I had no one besides two old uncles in Georgia, we were condemned to a lifetime of two-week expeditions to corn country. Every. Single. Year.

On my journey back toward the laundry closet, I glimpsed a purple-spotted heel peeking out from beneath the coffee table. Well, that was one sock that would have to wait until next week. I bent to pick it up and noticed it was acting as a bookmark in our picture book of Scotland. I opened it to the page on Inverness.

Gregory's Garden

Seeing Gregory was the highlight of Lisette's day. She always saw him in profile as he sat on his grandmother's porch swing—his messy dark bangs hanging over a large pair of glasses that kept slipping down his long nose that was always buried in a book.

But that's as far as it went. Seeing. And she couldn't look too long or he might notice the strange, freckle-faced girl next door staring at him and then she'd never be able to go outside the house ever again. It would be awkward to become a permanent hermit. She'd have to get her mom to go to the library for her, and the chances of traveling to Italy from inside her Minneapolis home were slim to none.

photo by Joe Kirschling

Over the last couple of years, Lisette had tried everything to get Gregory's attention. She'd "accidentally" thrown a piece of paper over his side of the fence and been forced to retrieve it, she'd managed to be outside nearly every time he came home on the bus, and she'd even gone so far as to wave hello on more than one occasion. Last spring she had taken up gardening just so that she'd have an excuse to spend hours in the front yard. She'd done everything but actually speak to him; that was something reserved for daydreams.

Homecoming

Stepping off the plane, I shouldered my carryon bag and quick-stepped down the jet bridge. It was the end of a very, very long day of travel, which had started in a sleepy English village that morning, continued through to the city of Manchester, over the ocean to Chicago O'Hare, and culminated here, over 4,000 miles away in rural Arkansas. One day, a car, a train, and two planes later, I was home. 

My brother ran towards the gate. Rumpled hair standing up in all directions, his backpack bouncing up and down, comfortable shoes skimming across the floor, he ran for all he was worth toward the end of the hall. I imagined the waiting area where our parents would be standing just across the line, craning their necks for a glimpse of us. I'd looked forward to this moment for nine long months.

But for some reason my feet would only movie sluggishly. The white tile floor felt like molasses dragging me down. Coming almost to a full stop, I made myself round the last corner. When I saw my family up ahead, their tear-streaked faces and wild smiles, I could only muster a tired grin.

Ice Walk

Finally getting up the courage to walk in the snow, I suit up, leaving behind the comfort of a squashy couch and radiant heat of a warm fire and stepping out into the elements. It’s refreshing, but painful. The cold immediately invades my body, stealing my breath, lancing my eyes, squirming under my hat into my ears, and shocking the tips of my fingers. A gust of wind picks up speed across the field and blows itself at me, hardening the flesh on my face.

Stalwart, unwavering, I put one sluggish foot before another and begin slogging in that monotonous rhythm of crunching and creaking boots on snow. Step after step breaks through the icy crust and compacts the fluffy layers beneath, and it’s the only sound I can hear from under my wooly earflaps. As I pass under trees, the warmth of the sun ebbs and flows, sometimes thawing my face for a moment before another wind hurries to attach icicles to my nose.

First Crush

We all gathered together, so many cats that our mothers had to herd. Beach towels, twisted goggles, foam noodles slapping each other in the face. They called it a "homeschool field trip," but I'm not sure what we were meant to learn. The doggie paddle, maybe.

Give me a break...in the pool, a photo by tom@hk | 湯米tomhk on Flickr.

We all crammed into our huge Suburban, Mom taking the wheel while I scrambled to sit between my two girlfriends. Miranda's hair had some real poof to it back then, and Lily looked 9 instead of 11.

The mothers must have been relieved when we piled out at the swimming pool. After we paid admission, we walked through the gates and my stomach dropped into my pool shoes with glee. There was the slide--the big, swirling, colorful water slide that I'd been watching from the road for years--now only a few yards away from me. I almost plunged into the deep end before Mom could grab me and slap some sunscreen on my freckled nose.

Author's Revenge

Photo by Luigi Morante

I wait. Sipping the latte, I feel cold foam bubbling over my lips, followed by a scalding wave of coffee. Thinking of an interesting metaphor, I jot something down on my notepad. And wait.

The sidewalk cafe is filled with regulars, just one face missing from the crowd. Maybe "novellover84" was put off by the message on her answering machine and decided to stay indoors today. Still, I sip. And wait.

Sydney's Fairies

"Did my fishies go to Heaven, Mommy?"

"Umm, well, I think they probably went to a giant fishbowl in the sky, dear."

"I hope they're happy there. I don't think there could be any yucky green stuff in the water there. And maybe they'll have wings. Do you think they could fly, Mommy?"

"Maybe, honey, maybe. Now get into bed."

"I don't want to go to bed. It's still bright outside. The fairies haven't come out yet."

"Oh, they haven't? What do you think a fairy looks like?"

"I don't think, Mommy. I've seen them. They're the little lights that fly over the stream in the back garden. Haven't you seen them?"

Murder Mystery

We stared at one another across the room, two of us in genuine shock, but one in mock horror. Somebody wasn't surprised. Somebody knew exactly what had happened.

The body of Jessica McCartney, the famous novelist, lay on the Persian rug in the room next door. One of the caterers had tripped over an arm sticking out from under the coffee table. That's how they found her.

The police hadn't arrived yet, but I already knew what they'd say. It had to be one of us. None of us had a sturdy alibi, and we all had a motive.

Pie Charts and Revenge: An Office Drama

Her work clothes were neither stylish, nor flattering. They had come off the sale rack at JC Penney's last year, casually grabbed off the hanger and piled into a scanty cart to be hauled away to a closet predominately stocked with sweat pants and oversize t-shirts. 

Regina was not cut out to be an office worker. She tended to do foolhardy things, like daydream while editing an expense record, or make friends with a particularly savage representative of the competition. Or scream and throw things at her coworkers.

"You're nothing but an arrogant pie chart. Get out of my way!"

"I am not a pie chart. If anything, I'm a bar graph."

"You're a soulless piece of corporate garbage."

"That's rather harsh."

"Dagnabit, move!"

Waiting for Britain

My practice from The Write Practice prompt: Write for fifteen minutes about a time of anticipation.

I stand still in the middle of my bedroom, looking at the piles of clothes without really seeing them, feeling a giddy, pleasant, but slightly sickening tremor in my heart. The empty red suitcase lays on my bed, and the embossed letters on a blue passport wink at me in the morning sunlight. I'm going to Britain. It's really happening. The trip of a lifetime--the one I'd been saving for since I was 11--is finally coming. Tomorrow I'll board a plane headed for Manchester, and the green fields of England will be waiting for me.

british_airways where do you want to..., a photo by bedharak on Flickr.

What will also be waiting for me is customs, that frightening ordeal that I've heard about but never experienced. I picture myself running a savage gauntlet with my luggage in tow, standing in a line three miles long before finally coming to a booth where a woman with a sour face and a strong German accent will interrogate me, stamping a big red "X" across my passport and shouting at me to go back to the States where I belong. Why she has a German accent I have no idea, but it does a good job of scaring the living daylights out of me.

Hairbrush. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Stick to the basics. Don't worry about what will happen on the other side.

I pick up a guidebook to England and flip through it for the thousandth time, relishing every photograph, underlining a few more things, making note of prices. 

T-shirts. Sweater. How many pairs of shoes? 

Wunderkammer

My practice from the Write Practice prompt: Take your character into a Wunderkammer and let him or her re-purpose an everyday item. 

We uncovered the first wall in our second week of excavation. For not knowing where we were supposed to dig, or even what we were digging up, that was a surprising stroke of luck. When Barnes made the discovery we all chugged down our morning coffee and grabbed our brushes and tweezers, driving out as fast as possible to the site.

It turned out to be a house, the foundation of which was barely visible after all these centuries. We discovered the outline of four walls. Some were remarkably long for the Entorian period. Could this be from an even earlier time? Possible. We kept searching as the weeks dragged on. Interior rooms came to light, along with bits of broken plastic and metal. Ramsey found a computer chip and we filed it away with the most valuable items.

33 days into the excavation Austin, yelled for me to "come see something." I abandoned my square foot of ground and went over to where he had just dislodged a strange object. "Is it metal?" I asked. He nodded, turning it over and over in his hands.

The shape was peculiar, a shallow basin several inches wide surmounted by a stumpy pedestal, with a much smaller and deeper basin on top of that. Coming off of the top basin was a slender loop that struck me as a handle of sorts. But a handle for what?

The Good Witch

The first time I saw her I got the impression of a good witch. Her fuzzy white ringlets of hair came just below my nose, almost hiding the rest of her, and I might have ignored her if someone hadn't made the introductions. Then I tried not to stare.

Kirk Smith Naja at Sunwest Silver , a photo by Gem Stories on Flickr.

A wrinkled woman with a strangely cone-shaped head that tilted up in the back (or perhaps her curls were just piled that high, it was hard to tell), her face was pleasantly wrinkled and very pale, with bright blue eyes and a thin pink mouth. Maybe it was her nose that made me think of a witch. It was a perfect hook, unlike any I'd ever seen on a real person. But she had to be a good witch. There was no menace in her, just kindliness. She dressed in rather flamboyant colors, and lots of turquoise. There was a squash blossom necklace hanging on her bosom, great chunks of blue-green stone and bold silver in designs that I was sure she could explain to me in detail.

I got the impression that this was a woman who knew herself. She was thoroughly capable, "on top of things," friendly, even interested in my dull history. But I couldn't help sneaking glances at her throughout the entire luncheon. The impression of the good witch was so strange that I thought I might look at her a third or fourth time and she would just be an average old lady with shellacked nails and quavering voice. No one else seemed to notice how different she was. Maybe I was imagining things. But the impression stuck.

How was I to know that she was going to die of a heart attack the next day? Should I have guessed? Perhaps her white hand fluttering over that squash blossom was a sign. Perhaps there was a quaver in her voice, a stiffness of movement--but I forgot about her almost as soon as I read the email. There was a memorial service at the next meeting with a candle and everything, and that was the end of the good witch.

Until I walked into the Wassapequa community library and looked straight ahead into the children's book section. There a little old woman sat reading aloud to an entranced half-moon of faces, and the first thing I noticed was the squash blossom necklace on her bright pink shirt. Next I noticed the nose.

A Preternatural Portrait

My practice from the Write Practice prompt: Naturally focus and practice for five minutes using preternatural often.

The curve of an arm, that inner curve where the forearm meets the bicep, the gentle, feminine join where the folds of fabric crease just so. That was where he had been working for three hours. This was only the rough first draft, the sketching, erasing, and resketching. Some people said he didn’t know when to stop. He had a preternatural obsession with grasping the perfect line, the exact replica of his niece’s inner elbow. Those few square inches of canvas maddened his dreams and kept him in a constant state of unrest.

Sonia sat perfectly still the whole time, looking out from her deep-set eyes with solid patience, not sighing or groaning under the weight of her perfect posture or that improbable fur stole. She knew that her uncle—no, not her uncle, the artist—cringed every time she moved. And so she sat in preternatural stillness.

When the painting was finished—weeks after he had expected to finish it, but delays were inevitable—the artist examined his work. There she was, Sonia, in all her quiet beauty. The canvas might as well have been a photographic plate, revealing the subject with a kind of preternatural reality beyond what was really real. 

Photo Credit: Portrait of Sonia by Henri Fantin-Latour, a photo by cliff1066™ on Flickr.

Pick up the Phone

My practice from the Write Practice prompt: Write for fifteen minutes in the second person point of view.

55.365_old_fashioned_phone, a photo by ToddMorris on Flickr.

You stare at the couch, at the piano, at the door. Anything but the phone. Your stomach was fine five minutes ago, but now hard little hands have taken hold of it and are twisting in opposite directions.

"It's no problem," you say. "I'll just pick up the phone, dial the number, and talk. I like to talk. This won't be a problem." Deep inside your head you say something else. "I'm terrible on phones. Always have been. I'll stutter, I'll sound weak, I'll get my words mixed up somehow and he'll know I'm just a stupid kid."

You double over in pain as your stomach squeezes and you think you're going to be sick. The little white telephone seems innocent enough, but when you pick it up your palms are slick with sweat. Desperate, you throw down the phone and run into your bedroom, switching on the light and hunting for something underneath piles of debris. Finally it's in your hands--the magazine.

Sweaty fingers flipping over the pages, you discover the photo you had in mind--a half-starved child from the streets of Accra. Right beside it is a collection of Haitian children, smiling and waving at you. "This is for them. I have to make the call for them." You look a little longer at the photos, and only when you put them down do you feel that your stomach has untangled itself, and the hard little hands are no longer twisting.

Pay Attention

My practice from the Write Practice prompt: Let those creative juices run wild and tell a stranger’s story.

Last station nursing home, a photo by ulrichkarljoho on Flickr.

Here it is: my little stretch of hall. Right by the nursing station, off to the side where my wheelchair isn't in the way and I can still see the television at an angle (I can't hear the show or tell what it is, but that doesn't seem to matter to anyone). Dinner means fish and French fries--the same every Friday. I remember how Vernon used to fry fish, fresh caught from the Great Lakes. He never cooked but when he cooked fish, and I always stood beside and smiled.

The food gets cold if I don't eat it right away, but it's usually cold by the time the nurse brings it out. I don't mind. I just watch the hallway. It's more interesting than eating or watching TV. Shelly and Wanda talk at the nursing station, loud, as though I can't hear them, and I enjoy listening. Old Mr. Franks wheels himself to the dining hall and tips me a wink on the way, the sisters hobble across on their walkers, and Genevieve Donohew squeals a few doors down.

And then a fresh face--one I've never seen. A girl in a blue coat walking down the hall. I have to say "hello." She smiles, and says "hello" back. Then she's gone.

Toxic

My practice from the Write Practice prompt: Write for five minutes, using the word “toxic” as frequently as you can. 

DSC09335, a photo by 3n on Flickr.

The green stuff oozed from underneath the principal's office door, and a cry came from the circle of teenagers.

"What do you think it is?" Said the black-haired Myra. "Some kind of toxic goo?"

"Don't be stupid." Tyler tried the door handle. "It's not locked! Let's see what he's been up to while we've been waiting out here for the past hour."

"Do you think it's safe?" But Lilly was too late--Tyler had already opened the door, scraping it against the thick green pool.

The sight that met their eyes was terrifying. Mr. Bertulli, collapsed in his swivel chair, phosphorescent drool crusted on his lips and a sickening dullness to his eyes. The girls screamed, Tyler took a half-step back, then slipped. The teenage boy fell smack into the goo, and immediately shrieked in pain. The toxic stuff was eating into his skin, turning it to an inflamed reddish scab, as the fabric of his hoodie disintegrated.

"Somebody call the police! There's been an accident!" Lilly was the only one who kept her head.

That was the beginning.