A Deciduous Life

"A Deciduous Life" is a story that I wrote quickly one day when I was really depressed. I haven't written a story in this manner since I was in high school. It was peculiarly comforting and fun. My usual method these days is a slow and laborious process in which I ruin whatever good mood I started in by convincing myself that no word I ever write will be perfect, and so there is no point in ever writing a word.

So, perhaps appropriately, this story is about being terrified of nothing in particular, and of everything all at once. It is a story about living in trees and being frightened of growing old. If I am remembering correctly, it was a story about a kangaroo before it was a story about anything else. And now it is a story published on the sneaky and radiant Fiction at Work. (There isn't a direct link--click the link and then search for my name.)

Zamala

The following short story was originally published in Pank Magazine. It was inspired by a dream I had. I don't remember the dream now. I guess it wasn't very good.

Here also is an interview that corresponds with the story.

I didn’t want to take the lion because he’s scary. I mean, he’s a lion. Three-inch canines and all that. They don’t let pets in the dorms anyway.

Take the lion, Mom said. We were packing my things into the car. Her offer surprised me because she and Dad love the lion. They take him for walks along the forest trails and read him stories about zebras and wildebeest.

You should take the lion, Dad said, taking his trunk of fake thumb tips and scarves from the back seat to make room for my beanbag chair.

I’m frightened of the lion, I said.

Dad dropped his trunk, it almost fell on his toes, then he took off his top hat, wiped sweat from his brow. Yep, he said, replacing the hat. The lion will be good for you.

Luckily there wasn’t enough room in the car for a lion’s cage, and I thought Mom and Dad forgot about the whole thing. They didn’t mention it during the drive to campus, and we unloaded all of my things in the dorm without incident.

Look at our Kayla, Mom said while she watched me stack textbooks on my new desk. She’s becoming more of a real person every day.

Yep. Dad surveyed the room, peeking in drawers, under the bed. I guess I’ll go double-check we got everything from the car. He moved swiftly from the room, he wasn’t wearing a cape but he might as well have been, the air danced and swooshed behind him. For a moment I thought, I will miss him, I will miss Mom. Above the dresser I hung a framed photo of our family.

Five minutes later Dad came back and asked me where I wanted to put the lion’s cage.

The lion lives in my closet. I have been at school for two months and haven’t checked on him once. The closet door remains closed at all times. Mostly the lion is quiet, but sometimes he growls, and when he does I envision him pacing in his cage, scheming to break through the bars and devour me. I don’t get much sleep.

I am studying physics when Dori, my roommate, comes in and sits on my bed. She doesn’t say anything for some time, and then a low growl permeates the room.

Maybe you should check on the lion, she says. I mean, you don’t feed him. Maybe he’s dying.

Dori is less frightened of the lion than I am, maybe because she isn’t in the room much and doesn’t have to deal with his constant threat. She sleeps and studies at her boyfriend’s apartment. She only comes to the dorm when we have fake IDs to make. It’s an easy and economical venture. We bought a kit for seventy bucks, and we sell the IDs for fifty. We buy Teslin in bulk. We got a good deal on a printer at a pawn shop.

Why don’t you check on the lion, I ask.

Dori walks to her desk and pulls the card template and perforator from a drawer. He’s not my lion, she says.

Well, he’s not mine, either.

My parents are always trying to pass things off on me. They are much more interested in making things disappear than they are in forming lasting relationships. Their first great success was our Chihuahua, Chi Chi. We had a picnic in the park, ate on a white blanket speckled with pink bunnies, and Chi Chi watched from under a nearby tree. When we finished eating Mom said, Look, Kayla, we can make Chi Chi disappear. And then they threw the blanket over the dog, Dad mumbled an incantation, and when they lifted the blanket Chi Chi was gone. I asked them to bring her back, but they were already on to the next trick.

My sister was born a year later. When she was four they took her on a road trip. A week later they came back without Trisha, and I asked where she was.

I guess she’s with Chi Chi now, Mom said.

But two days later I was sitting on the porch, playing with rocks, when Trisha came up the driveway. Her yellow corduroy jumper was dirty and she looked tired and hungry. Her eyes were red and droopy.

Where’ve you been? I asked.

Trisha sat next to me and picked up a rock. I was disappeared, she said, and banged the rock against the concrete. But now I am back.

Mom and Dad were upset that Trisha had returned, and they spent the next decade trying to figure out how the trick went wrong. So it was up to me to take care of my sister. When it was time for dinner, Mom and Dad were in the garage, testing out the potency of words like zamala and pippereedoo. When it was time to go to school, they were busy drawing diagrams of the North Pole and the nuclei of solar isotopes. So it was up to me. All of it.

Trisha is coming for her ID, I tell Dori. My sister is taking the train into the city without telling my parents. It is easy to do because they don’t pay much attention to her.

I know, Dori says. We just have to finish laminating hers. I need to start on this one for this kid Chuck in my psych class. Look at the picture he gave me.

And I look at the picture, he looks like a thin Marlon Brando with the intelligent grin of Paul Newman, and we laugh, we always laugh, it’s amazing how beautiful people look in their fake IDs.

Ggggrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

We stop laughing. This growl is bigger than average. Not louder. There just seems to be more of it.

I think that was his stomach, Dori says, but I shrug it off and get back to my physics.

Trisha comes later than I expect, just before I am about to leave for the dining hall. She is fourteen but you wouldn’t guess it. She still looks like she is disappeared. Her eyes are sad and her body is bony.

Hey Girl, Dori says when Trisha walks in. Here you go.

Trisha takes the ID. She looks unhappy. She flips it over several times with her trembling fingers.

What? I ask. Does it not look real enough?

No, Trisha says. It looks great. It’s just, there are some dudes in suits down in the lobby, talking to campus security. And…

And what? I fold my arms across my chest.

I thought I heard them say your guys’ names.

The feds are after us? Dori shouts, and Trisha slowly nods.

One thing I never forget, not more than for a few minutes at a time, is that a lion is starving to death in my closet. I haven’t fed him, I haven’t let him see the light of day in eight weeks. We have to hide the lion from the feds. I have violated many animal cruelty laws, I am a horrible person, and we have to get rid of the lion. I entreat Trisha and Dori for help.

How are we supposed to get rid of the lion? Trisha asks.

I look to Dori, she is rather creative, but she is too busy running fake IDs through our industrial shredder to worry about the lion. I stand before the closet and stare at the knob and run my fingers through my hair. He is probably weak, I say. Maybe we could just carry him to the bathroom and hide him in the shower for now?

That sounds good, Trisha says, and Dori agrees, but several moments pass without anything happening. We stare at the closet door. Dori stops shredding, and we listen. The lion is quiet. I think about the feds coming up the elevator, and I take a deep breath and open the door.

The lion is sleeping, and he is not in his cage. He is curled up on the beanbag chair. He doesn’t look like a lion. He looks like a Great Dane wearing a lion costume. His skin hangs from his bones, his fur is grayish, his mane lowly and matted. Each breath he takes rattles his body. It’s painful to look at him, but he is still a lion, and I am still terrified. None of us can move.

Someone pounds on the door. FBI, open up.

Trisha ducks into the closet with the lion and closes the door. Dori jumps out onto the fire escape. I can’t do anything, I am so confused, and the door crashes open. Two men fall into the room. They’re holding guns and one handcuffs me to the bed. They begin snooping through the room and quickly find the closet and open it.

The lion is awake. His head hangs low and he growls at the agents. I can’t see Trisha, she’s maybe hiding behind the beanbag chair, or maybe the lion has eaten her.

Easy, boy, one of the agents says, and this seems to piss off the lion, he opens his jaws and roars, I have never heard him roar before, it is ridiculously scary, and the agents bolt from the room.

The lion doesn’t chase after them. He slowly walks to the threshold, sniffs it, then sits on top of the broken door and looks at me. A low persistent snarl comes from the back of his throat. His eyes glisten. Perhaps he’s been crying, but it doesn’t bother me, I want him dead and I see in his eyes that he wants the same for me. I crawl away from him, as best I can while tethered by the handcuffs. The lion takes a few steps forward. I pee my pants. He puts his front paws on the edge of the bed. Then I see Trisha slowly unfold herself from behind the beanbag chair. She puts her finger to her lips and walks forward gingerly like she has something planned, and the lion doesn’t realize she is there. Naturally he doesn’t, he only has eyes for me. Finally I can’t keep it in any longer, I scream so hard my throat hurts, and the lion lunges forward and devours me.

I am inside the lion. I am nudged against something and can’t climb up or down. It smells like toenails and rotting fruit in here. It is completely dark, but I don’t think there is anything to see anyway. The lion is empty. All I can do is think. What I am thinking about is how I hate him. I hate the lion. I don’t feel bad for letting him starve. He deserved it. He is a big bully, a monstrous creature with no conscience who has eaten me. How long will I nourish him? I don’t know. Not very long, and soon the feds will come back with animal control and kill the lion, hopefully before he can digest me and shit me out.

I hear muffled voices. Suddenly things grow brighter, and I look up and see that I am in the lion’s throat, I am looking out through the inside of his mouth, and Dad has pried open the lion’s jaws and is smiling.

Relax, Honey. We’ll take care of you.

He is wearing his top hat.

Behind him I see Mom, and she looks confused, her eyes dart from me to something she holds in her hands. Do you think it will work this way? She asks Dad quietly.

He turns to her and snaps, Yes, now get on with it. I can’t keep his mouth open forever. Then he turns back to me and smiles.

I don’t see Trisha. I ask where she is, but I am ignored.

Here, Honey, Dad says. We’re going to give you this blanket to keep you warm.

It’s actually pretty hot in here, I say.

Yes, but this will be a traumatic process, and you may go into shock.

They stuff the blanket into the lion’s mouth, and I wrap it around me like they say. At this point the best thing to do is trust them, because they’re my parents and know more about things than I do. The blanket is the one with the pink bunnies. It is old and frayed and I don’t know how it will keep me warm. I curl up, try not to think what could possibly be happening, and brace myself for confusion and loss of blood.

You under there? Dad asks. Nice and tight?

Yes, I say. Now please get me out of here.

Of course, Honey, and he flashes me another smile, even adds a tip of his top hat, and then he releases his grip and the lion’s jaws snap shut. It is entirely dark once more. The lion is gurgling. I think I hear more mumbling outside of him, but I can’t exactly tell what is being said. It sounds like addabo, zamala, pippereedoo.

The Living Sisters Venus web feature

Throughout the ages poets and philosophers have tried to capture the essence of music and its effects upon the human spirit. Plato claimed that music “gives soul to the universe”; Thomas Carlyle called it the “speech of angels.” In more modern times, music was Jimi Hendrix’s religion and Maya Angelou’s refuge. While these descriptors have their merit, their intangibility makes music no less elusive to our mortal brains. Fortunately, we have Becky Stark, one-third of the vocal group The Living Sisters, to give us a corporeal description that is perhaps a bit more, er, digestible.

“It’s like eating kale.”

Stark, best known for her work in the folk group Lavender Diamond, is speaking specifically of singing harmony, which she does in The Living Sisters with singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell and Inara George of The Bird and the Bee. “Our music embraces the nutritive aspect of music,” she says. All three women attest to this nourishing power, and now they’re capturing their harmonious rapture in the form of Love to Live, the first Living Sisters album.

The group was sparked by a mutual desire between Stark and Mandell. “We both independently were yearning for more harmony in our lives,” says Stark, recalling the meeting she and Mandell had in 2005. A year later they met George who enthusiastically joined, and the women began performing when they could find time between their numerous projects and touring. Due to their busy schedules, The Living Sisters was just something the women did for fun. “Doing a record wasn’t in the forefront of our minds,” Mandell admits. Yet they were happily surprised when after years of continual interruptions the group was still thriving. “The Living Sisters just kept trekking along and never went away,” says Mandell.

A feature I wrote for Venus Zine. Read the full article here.

Laura Barrett Venus web feature

Many people are finding romance online these days, and Laura Barrett is no different. What makes her ordinary love story extraordinary, however, is that she wasn't even looking for love, yet she found it in the form of a wooden box and metal tines: the kalimba.

Barrett, a pianist, was searching online for an instrument that was a little handier than the ivories, "something portable, potentially a pocket synthesizer or a roll-up piano...something digital that allowed me to write music on the fly," she says. But instead of a modern gadget she stumbled across the primitive kalimba, a thumb piano modeled after an African percussion instrument.

Barrett is a member of several groups, including Hidden Cameras, but it is her solo work that makes her stand out. While her instrument of choice is not terribly rare (the thumb piano has been somewhat of a novelty in the West since the 1960s), her ability to use it as a conveyor of pop melody is exceptionally rare. Most musicians have fun breaking out the kalimba once in awhile, but no one really seems to know how to sustain music-making with it. Barrett sees this problem as a matter of perception. "It's not being treated as an instrument in its own right," she notes. "And obviously if you don't treat it like an instrument, then you're not going to develop melodies on it."

A feature I wrote for Venus Zine. Read the full article here.

My Life in Offices by Garder Streetwise

Part I

Doctor’s Office
18 months
Pneumonia
Back again and again. And then to the hospital: one giant office. Clipboards, dry-erase boards, beds like boards, white things, square things, bad carpet. Eighteen Months? I was a year and a half. I was? I was. Why didn’t I die? Can’t die in an office. Too boring. Too many calendars. Too many things to do another day.

Part II

William Able’s office, though more a studio.
Every day, pretty much, first five years
Fun

Still, everything in its place. Bins for brushes, bins for paints, bins for pastels, bins for bins that might one day hold something that could be glued to a canvas and called po-mo magnificent. Animals all over the office. Live cats, live turtles, decoupage deer, watercolor condor. Difference between an office and a studio? The floor. Bad carpet, speckled cement.

Part III

Dentist
Every six months for sixteen years
Hell

Haven’t been in a few. Too expensive. Too terrifying. Drills to teeth and conversations with your mouth clamped open.

Part IV

Post Office
Every holiday season
Stupid traditions

Mailing packages to aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas who lived far away. Other cities. Other countries. No more. They’re all dead.

Part V

Dad’s office (not the one here but the one at the University where he used to work a long time ago)
Occasionally while seven—before they married
Needed watching

A professor’s office a special office because a fake office. Dad doesn’t want to be there, he said. He said he hates office hours. Students love office hours. Should be a student office where they can pretend to be tidy adults. Nice desk. Large oak with cubbies. Clean life in sections. Four comfy chairs. Dad in one, me another, coloring book the third, crayons the fourth. Not a bad office, except the stranger, and it smells like vanilla.

Part VI

The Shrink’s office
So, so many times
I need it, they say

Ramble, ramble, ramble.

Almanac

one

Fingers fell flat, five little sausages draped in sweat-clung soil. Bones that should have known better tried lifting flesh and skin and fat, set against themselves in twitching protest and dug deeper into the soft dirt spread in circular mounds around freshly planted seedlings. Grow, Little One, he said and chuckled at himself. The soft green head of a tomato vine and all he could do was wait.

Coughed silently as his shoulder managed to work itself around, a single bent knuckle casually tracing the arc of a gardener’s rake and then stopping. Mud eats tomato slices with cottage cheese. Mud eats cherry tomatoes out the carton, maybe dips them in sugar. Bites it in half, dips it in sugar, sucks out the juice. Gooey seeds ran down her cheeks. He wiped them off, even now. You ain’t changed, Mud. A little girl makin a mess of yourself.

I ain’t got pigtails no more. I can wipe my own face. And she grabs the paper towel out of his hand. It rips in two and she speeds away. He’s left holding the frayed edge of the towel, and he twists it around his fingers tight until it hurts. This happens at the last family reunion, and no one sees the resemblance. She is her mother’s daughter. One day in the high chair, Mud beating the table with her little plastic spoon and her mother yelling at him, rah war rah, don’t do your thing, and Mud beats in rhythm and screams and thinks boy, will he do me wrong.

two

The sunken cushion took him with a wheeze. He leaned forward, ran his tongue along the back of his teeth and down the roof of his mouth, slowly pushed air through the thin, tight gap of his lips. He opened the scrap of paper, squeezed his left eye shut and watched as the numbers broke apart and danced across the surface. He ran the fracture along each digit individually, turning them to jumbled shapes he could never hope to understand, folded the paper again, lifted the edge of the telephone, and slid it back underneath.

I’d like to call my son. Been two years and
the car’d be long gone in normal circumstances
by now. Fallin apart to begin with. I’d like to
call my boy. He’d take Mud by the hand and she’d
squeeze him tight and together they rigid like a
pile of cinder blocks. Stone cold eyes. Who you
callin daddy. Why you gonna hurt Mud like this.
She still misses Mama.

He called his son and it rang six times and then clicked to a machine. Well, uh, he said, this is your father. Just wantin to know how things been. He hung up and ate a pizza covered in hot peppers and sausage and he ate it slow like his life depended on it. And then he called Mud and it rang six times and then clicked to a machine. Well, uh, he says, this is your father. Just wantin to know how things been. Called your brother but no answer. I want to right things between us. So I called him. I’m going to apologize to him. Make things right. He hung up and drank some bourbon and then it was time for bed. Thought through the window he could see the tomatoes shimmer in the moonlight but of course this couldn’t be true.

three

Mud nowhere for seventeen days. Where could she have been. She could have been home but not answering his calls. So he went on the train to her home and would maybe call up her brother on speaker phone while he was there and things would be right. Halfway there and the pain. Inched away from the woman beside him. On a train, and she slight, skirt, long dark hair. Eyes across the rain-splattered window. Who she was missing. The man who caressed her sides and married her in a courthouse. The man she never really loved, but he was hers the same and she did not same him. He elsewhere. The same wife of someone new. Look at this, he was dying, and this woman was smooth syrupy thighs leading to what he knows he eats and smells and swims inside. His arm is frozen, and his body is soaked, and he doesn’t want this woman to help him.

four

He fixed himself against the shelves, his palm numb along cold steel, brittle nails tapping feverishly against the cellophane wrapped noodles by his side. He closed his right eye, counted ten small square tiles at his feet, took comfort in this reliability, counted ten more, and dodged a woman pushing her young daughter by. Her arm darted past his head and came back with a package of ravioli, her face shrunken by the smell coming from this crumpled nuisance of a man. His gaze met the confused stare of the child pulling away from him. He felt his mouth open, and he was almost sure words spilled out.

I had a heart attack. I almost died.
As a matter of fact, I did die. But
I had a spiritual rebirth. I woke up
in a hospital, and I was alone, and
I thought, what sort of man am I that
I can wake up alone and almost dead.
A dead man, that’s who. My daughter
came by later, see, I have one daughter,
her mama died a long time ago. She
wanted to see my will. See, there were
two things. I was smoking—no, there were
three things. I was smoking, I was
drinking, and I was having a fun time
with a lot of women. This was my second
chance to get it right. Now, my daughter
been living with this for some time. She
seen me drinking, she seen me come home
with these women. What kind of home did
I make for her? Now she’s older and ain’t
got no job. She gets some money from her
boyfriend, but she always needs money
from me. And of course I ain’t got much.
And I said to my daughter in the hospital,
Mud, I can’t see you, You’re all blurry.
And I thought about crying. A grown man
crying because he can’t find his glasses.
But this was my state. I almost died. Now,
Mud, I says, you treat people irresponsible,
they’ll be irresponsible. I’ve been irresponsible
by you. Your mama’s gone, and I have those other
women, and your brother don’t trust me since
the thing with his car. You’re gonna have to
trust me. I’m gonna give you 100 percent of
my love. Sometimes I only gave you 70-30.
Sometimes I’m sure it was only 60-40. But now
it’s gonna be 100-0. And she came up close to
me, so I can see her—I can see things right
up close. She has her mama’s eyes—boy. Big and
soul and they cut right through you. She says,
Daddy, you gotta save some love for yourself.
I don’t want 100-0. You gotta save some love for yourself.

five

The girl didn’t care about nothing, but the mother, he was a poor forgotten man and she’s finder’s keepers, eh? She invited him over to dinner and he brought a salad and vinaigrette. She makes a good lasagna and the wine was red and fruity. He don’t drink wine but he did tonight and the woman took him to his bed and he knew that little girl was up there sleeping but does it matter that she was sleeping. Mud never slept. After he was in the bed with this woman he got out of it and he called his son and there was no answer, but it was 2 in the morning.

Mud, he calls Mud, he calls her and says Mud I do have love for myself but it is really for you it is not meant for me and please take it I can’t it will do me no good and these women think it will be for them and it will do them no good and Mud says come home and I’ll come home and we’ll talk about this and they go home and the sun is rising and dew on the cherry tomatoes. They pick the tomatoes with the sun creeping up over the roof and they are silent except when they go for the same tomato and their fingers touch. He squeezes her hand and she squeezes the tomato and it bursts in her hand and she scrunches up her face and thinks oh that’s gross and he laughs and runs the hose over her hand only she never picked up the phone.

This was a joint writing experiment I did with Bill last summer.

Novel Outtake #1

She is so young, and her father is dead, he has been dead for two years, a heart attack maybe, she is seven and doesn’t understand exactly such things, like what causes death, what causes seasons to change. What causes. Gardner likes to color pictures, she doesn’t know why, she likes pictures and she carries a little satchel to the office, and the only thing in the satchel is a coloring book, a pad of paper, and seven crayons.

She will be in the office all afternoon, it is the office of a man Mom knows. Mommy’s friend, he will take care of you this afternoon. Lineer. You know Lineer. Mommy’s wants you to be friends.

The office is at a big school, a university Mom says, Lineer teaches there. He is very smart. Gardner does not trust people who are very smart, though, she is very smart and she doesn’t trust other people who are also. They play tricks, probably. Tricks because who doesn’t like to make others feel dumb, even smart people. Especially.

Terrified, actually. Gardner is terrified of people. Not just the smart ones. There was her father, and there was Mom, and now there was just Mom. Mom drives to the university, it has lots of twisty roads and trees, and Gardner likes both things, she wonders if maybe this will be okay.

But the office is in a boxy building, it looks like her crayon box, only it is not bright yellow it is poopy brown, and they go inside the building, and everyone loves Gardner. They ask her her name.

Tell her your name, Mom says.

The woman she is supposed to tell has long blonde hair and skin so light you can see through it.
Gardner shakes her head, she won’t say her name. She pulls the little satchel—it is a denim satchel decorated with flower patches—she pulls it around her body and holds it up in front of her face.

Her name is Gardner, Mom says.

What a pretty name.

Gardner wants to crawl into her satchel and die. And then the crayons fall out of it, and she is too embarrassed to cry.

They go down a little hall, and at the end of the hall is a little room. It is not very bright, and Lineer is there, he sits behind a desk, and on the wall in front of the desk are three chairs that do not look very comfortable. He has deep dark skin and deep dark eyes that always surprise Gardner, she has seen him a few times before, and no wonder Mom hugs him, Gardner thinks. He looks very sad always with his deep dark eyes.

She looks around the office. The little room is so sad, the little chairs with their beige plastic seats, one with a little rip, the little rip is so sad, Gardner wants to crawl under it and keep it company.

Instead she sits on it, Mom tells her to sit, so she sits and sticks her finger in the rip, and the inside is hard and fuzzy, she doesn’t like how it feels, so she quickly pulls her finger out. But then she thinks about it some more, and Mom and Lineer talk, and the more she thinks about it the more she liked how it felt to put her finger inside of the rip, and so she sticks her finger inside of it again, and yes, she likes it, and she keeps it there for some time.

Gardner, you haven’t said Hello to Lineer.

Hello, Gardner. Lineer leans over and holds out his hand and Gardner won’t shake, of course she won’t, she’s terrified of people and to touch them, forget it, that would be painful, she touches Mom but that is it.

She is too shy.

Soon Mom leaves and Gardner is too scared to think about what that means. She takes out her crayons and the coloring book and she colors. Lineer doesn’t say anything to her, but one time he clears his throat, and it is a loud sound, like an elephant perhaps, it is a loud sound that makes Gardner jump, and that’s when she sees that on his desk is a picture of Mom. It is in a black frame, and she looks very happy in the picture.

Your mom wants us to get to know each other, he says then. She thinks we’ll become fast friends.

Gardner doesn’t look at him, she is coloring a bicycle, she wants stripes on it, and doing the stripes in crayon is difficult, but really that’s not why she doesn’t look at him, but that’s what she pretends.

Lineer gets up and sits next to Gardner. He asks what she is coloring, and she moves her arm, just a little, so he can see. He says it is a sharp-looking bike. Gardner doesn’t disagree. Of course, she doesn’t agree either, she does nothing.

Your mom wants us to be friends because we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. You see, we love each other, and we’re going to get married.

Gardner doesn’t look up from her bicycle and she doesn’t understand what he is saying, she knows what getting married means but she doesn’t understand how that could happen when Mom is married to her father. Her father is her father, even though he is dead. He is her father and that was that.

I want to give you something, Lineer says, and he reaches in his pocket and pulls something out, and it is a necklace, and he holds it out in his palm and Gardner can’t help but look, and it is a pretty necklace, it has a red flower on it and it is pretty and she doesn’t believe he is giving it to her.

Let me tell you about this. See this flower? This is a pomegranate blossom.

Gardner has never heard of such a thing, it seems like a thing for grownups, it is nothing she thinks seems right for her.

The pomegranate is a symbol of death and obstacles, Lineer says. But it is also a symbol of knowledge and time. My dad gave this necklace to my mother.

He leans forward in the seat and holds the locket out closer to Gardner, and it is shiny red, and there are pearls in the center, and it is so pretty but Gardner is afraid to touch it.

See, she wanted real bad to have a child, but she couldn’t. They tried for years and years, and they couldn’t. So my dad gave this to her. He thought it would keep her hopeful. And you know what? It did. She kept trying. And eventually, they had me.

He smiles brightly, and he looks closely at the necklace, and Gardner looks closer, and then Lineer presses a little button on the side of it and it springs open.

And now I would like to give it to you. It’s a locket. He holds it over Gardner’s hand. Here, take it.

And now it is easier to take it than to not take it, and so she takes the locket and she peers closely inside, and there are two tiny images, and one image is of Lineer, and the other image is of William Able, her father.

Your mom gave me that picture, he says. I just thought, I’m not replacing your daddy. I’ll be like a second daddy. He’ll watch over you from where he is, and I’ll watch over you from here.

And maybe Gardner likes the idea of that, she looks at the picture of her father, and it is tiny and black and white but he still looks handsome in it, she recognizes the picture, it was one taken on his birthday, and he had been happy because Gardner tickled him.

Is he happy now, she wonders, can you be happy when you’re away from everyone and everything you know and love. Her father was a painter, and did he paint above, he wouldn’t be happy if he didn’t paint. Is he really watching her? Maybe he is. Maybe he is painting her picture, and maybe he is happy.

Would you like me to help you put it on?

Gardner nods, and Lineer has big fingers but it seems easy for him to help clasp the locket around her neck.

It looks beautiful on you, he says, and he smiles, and his deep dark eyes look so sad, and she doesn’t know why she does it, she would never do it, but she does it now, she reaches out and tickles the sides of this new Dad, this one-time stranger.





Gardner is one of the main charcters in a series of young adult novels I am currently writing. These outtakes are bits and pieces about the novels' characters and world. Most of these are free-writes or else background scenes and information that I wrote mostly for myself. But I thought it would be nice to share them here.

Mom

When I was seven years old, I was fat. When I was ten years old, I weighed more than what I do now at twenty-eight. But it started when I was seven. When before I was chubby, now I was fat. Just like my mother. Just like most of the other women in my family. Fat, we were all fat.

About this time in Hobart, there was a Katie’s Potato Chips. In the strip mall by Paragon Family Restaurant. At least I think this is where it was, in my memory it was, and so in this story there it is. My mother and I were in this strip mall, and I was whining, probably because I wanted candy. I was throwing a tantrum. I don’t remember any of my other sisters being there. This makes me think that maybe I wasn’t seven. Maybe I was five. Maybe this was before I started kindergarten, and it was just the two of us, me and mom. Just the two of us out running the errands that a mother needs to run, and she would rather not run them with her five-year-old daughter who was becoming fat.

So we were out on the sidewalk of the strip mall, and I was throwing a temper tantrum. Maybe Pop Rocks. Let’s say that I wanted Pop Rocks. I want Pop Rocks Pop Rocks Pop Rocks. We were probably just coming out of Save More. The grocery store. I want Pop Rocks Pop Rocks Pop Rocks. She wouldn’t let me have any, for whatever reason. Probably too much sugar. Maybe because I had horrible teeth as a child, she didn’t like the idea of me chewing on some Pop Rocks. Of course, this is all speculation, because it probably wasn’t Pop Rocks that I wanted. I’m just using them as a placeholder.

But I wanted something, and I wanted it bad. We were on the sidewalk of the strip mall, and I was throwing a fit, and all the housewives of Hobart were staring.

My mom tried to compromise. I wonder how many compromises she had to make with four daughters. I imagine she was wearing a threadbare lavender shirt, and her hair was messily pulled back. And she was fat, and we would all be fat with four daughters.

She tried to compromise. "How about we go to Katie’s and get some potato chips?" She grabbed my hand and we walked that way, and I dragged my feet and whimpered, “I don’t like potato chips.” I was probably wearing Velcro shoes. Cotton shorts that rode up my chunky little thighs.

Of course I liked potato chips. But I didn’t like to compromise. I was seven, I was five, I was a bratty little kid who had a mother worn down by three older children, a mother who was mid-thirties and whose huge spirit was hidden by her huge body and huge pain of all that had not gone right.

So I said, “I don’t like potato chips.”

My mother yanked my arm in the other direction, into the parking lot towards the station wagon. “Fine,” she said, her tone tired and angry. “Then you won’t get anything.”

I got nothing. That’s what I remember. The nothing that I got. I also remember that as soon as my mom yanked my arm, as soon as that tone made its way to my understanding, I felt like a horrible person. I was seven, I was five, but I understood that I had made my mother sad, that she was trying to be nice, that she was trying to be generous, but I was being a brat, I was being ungrateful, I was being a hurter of feelings.

This is my earliest memory I have of my mother. I have a poor memory, but I remember this. It was the first time I realized that I had the ability to cause pain.