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.