Nora’s finger stopped on a name amid the filled M pages of her little address book. The gray lines of the entry were scuffed. Particles of graphite spread out sideways like shadows under each letter.
The address was for a tiny studio apartment on the ground level of a building that no longer existed. They pinned a sheet over the window so that no one could look in from across the alley at the twin bed in the corner.
Nora placed the little white book on her lap. She leaned away from the couch cushion and put her elbows on each page and her face in her hands. Headlights peeked through the venetian blinds over the window as a car passed by. Lines of light ran across the room for a moment. Between her hands, Nora could just make out the writing under the shadow of her arm.
The letters were written in cursive. Nora had fallen in love with her own peculiar loops and lines one summer. She said her hand danced across the page. She liked the feel of it. She had applied for her marriage license in cursive. She was asked to fill out the forms again in print.
Nora looked up at the picture frames above the fireplace of her parents and friends. She leaned back against the couch. She picked up the book. Her fingers tightened around the cover.
Taped on the studio wall was a string of photo booth pictures. Her hand had trembled in the air. She tried several times to get her nail under the tape to peel it from the wall. She placed the pictures in the little book. They must have slipped out on the bus.
Nora freed one hand from the book. She picked up the napkin where Marshall had scribbled his number. After dinner they had walked around. They passed an empty lot.
“Are you alright?” Marshall asked.
“Fine” she said. She looked down at the sidewalk.
Marshall was a nice man. He had a good job. He had his own house. He was sweet. And he liked her. And many people liked him.
At her door, she tiptoed to kiss him, stretching more than she needed. She opened her eyes and found herself above his eye level. She lowered her heels to the ground.
Nora pressed the napkin to the page of the book with her thumb. Another car drove by. The lines of light moved across the walls and ceiling. She closed her eyes. The studio’s ceiling leaked. When it rained, the water would seep through to every floor and form cracks in the paint and drip into mugs and jars they had placed around the room. But they didn’t care. They lay in bed and watched the water flow through different lines to converge at a point and drip to the floor.
She picked up a pencil from the couch. She turned it upside down and pressed it to the page. She scratched it side to side and brushed away the eraser dust with the side of her palm.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Porcelain Fish
This is something I wrote for my workshop class. It's the unedited version that I submitted. I may post the new version later.
There was this porcelain fish that sat on a metal stand on the top shelf of the china cabinet in the dining room. Blue details were hand painted across its white body. I think it was a gift from Aunt Janet. Cara said it must have been because it was utterly useless, just there to be admired and guard over the fancy plates and serving trays we never used.
I was really little at the time, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to feel whether the scales were imprinted or just painted on. I dragged a chair from the dining table and stepped up on the plastic covered cushion. I looked at it from eye level. Its eyes were surprised circles and its mouth was gaping open like it was gasping for air. I lifted it from the stand with both hands. I let go of my right hand to stroke the raised edges of the scales.
“Charlene,” my mother’s voice said behind me.
I turned around. My hand recoiled from my grip on the fish. It landed on the armrest of the chair and broke into a good number of pieces that scattered around my feet and the floor.
I looked at my mother and held my breath.
“Don’t move,” she yelled.
She went to the closet, took out her shoes, and put them on. Then she walked over to me. I had lost track of my limbs. My arms were still in the position they were in when I held the fish.
My mother stepped over the porcelain fragments. When she got to the side of the chair, she picked me up and carried me to the hallway.
“Don’t go over there,” she ordered.
She went to the closet again to take out a broom and dustpan. She walked back to the mess. She sighed a forceful breath and started gathering the shards.
I hurried off to my room. I jumped into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I began to cry about nothing particular, at least nothing I could put into words at the time. I felt this pressure at the bottom of my stomach that made me want to yell, though I knew it wouldn’t make the feeling go away.
When my mom called me for lunch I sat down at the kitchen table while she put away the dishes in the dishwasher. I couldn’t help dropping a few tears over my peanut butter and banana sandwich.
“What were you doing?” she asked, drying off a dish with a towel, “You should know better than to touch those things.”
I swallowed some sandwich. “I don’t know,” I told her. I started to cry again, trying to make as little noise as I could.
She put a dish in the cupboard. She walked over and rubbed my back with her palm in two circles. She went back to the sink and dried another plate.
“I told you you’d break it,” Cara said when she came home from piano lessons. “You’re in trouble” she teased, “Mom said that grandma gave it to her.”
My mother’s mother was the only person I knew that had died. There weren’t many of her things left because there had been a fire that almost burnt her house down.
Cara went back to doing her homework on the coffee table. I tried to ignore her with the TV.
When grandma died, it was the first time I had seen my mother cry. I peeked into her room when I couldn’t go back to sleep early one morning. She was sitting on the bed, hunched over, with her face in her hands. She would breathe in two quick breaths and let out a sound I had never heard come out of an adult. I went back to my room and lay in bed and still couldn’t sleep.
“Can you turn that off?” said Cara, “I’m trying to study for Algebra.”
The next Sunday was grandma’s death anniversary. We went to church and visited the cemetery. The sky was clear. The sun made the grass look too green.
My grandmother’s marker was a metal plate lying flat on the ground. My mother stared at it for a while. Cara looked around at the grand headstones that had angelic carvings and statues. I listened to the birds whistle to each other and waited.
My mom bent down and placed something beside the vase of flowers we had brought. When she turned to leave I saw that it was a broken piece of porcelain painted with a few blue scales. I stared out the window on the way home and ignored the tugging at my stomach.
That evening, I laid in bed and couldn’t sleep. I got up and walked down the hall to my mother’s door. It was slightly open. I could see her on her bed, propped up by a stack of pillows. Her hand was on her face. She sniffled and wiped tears off her cheek one side at a time.
I stepped back on one foot, a quarter turn away from the door. Then I stepped forward, bringing my feet back together. I put my hand flat on the door and gave it a gentle push.
My mother looked up at me for a moment. She put her arms out to me. I climbed over the foot of the bed. She wrapped her arms around me, only letting go of one arm to wipe her hand across her eyes and placing it back around me.
Before school the next morning, I stopped in the dining room on the way to the kitchen. The fish was back on the top shelf of the cabinet. I dragged a chair over to examine it, but I didn’t touch it. It was the same fish only there was a hole in its side.
“I managed to glue it back together,” my mother said behind me, “except for that one piece. I couldn’t get it to fit back in.”
The fish was missing a piece and you could see the cracks where it was glued, but it was back where it belonged, watching over the plates.
There was this porcelain fish that sat on a metal stand on the top shelf of the china cabinet in the dining room. Blue details were hand painted across its white body. I think it was a gift from Aunt Janet. Cara said it must have been because it was utterly useless, just there to be admired and guard over the fancy plates and serving trays we never used.
I was really little at the time, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to feel whether the scales were imprinted or just painted on. I dragged a chair from the dining table and stepped up on the plastic covered cushion. I looked at it from eye level. Its eyes were surprised circles and its mouth was gaping open like it was gasping for air. I lifted it from the stand with both hands. I let go of my right hand to stroke the raised edges of the scales.
“Charlene,” my mother’s voice said behind me.
I turned around. My hand recoiled from my grip on the fish. It landed on the armrest of the chair and broke into a good number of pieces that scattered around my feet and the floor.
I looked at my mother and held my breath.
“Don’t move,” she yelled.
She went to the closet, took out her shoes, and put them on. Then she walked over to me. I had lost track of my limbs. My arms were still in the position they were in when I held the fish.
My mother stepped over the porcelain fragments. When she got to the side of the chair, she picked me up and carried me to the hallway.
“Don’t go over there,” she ordered.
She went to the closet again to take out a broom and dustpan. She walked back to the mess. She sighed a forceful breath and started gathering the shards.
I hurried off to my room. I jumped into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I began to cry about nothing particular, at least nothing I could put into words at the time. I felt this pressure at the bottom of my stomach that made me want to yell, though I knew it wouldn’t make the feeling go away.
When my mom called me for lunch I sat down at the kitchen table while she put away the dishes in the dishwasher. I couldn’t help dropping a few tears over my peanut butter and banana sandwich.
“What were you doing?” she asked, drying off a dish with a towel, “You should know better than to touch those things.”
I swallowed some sandwich. “I don’t know,” I told her. I started to cry again, trying to make as little noise as I could.
She put a dish in the cupboard. She walked over and rubbed my back with her palm in two circles. She went back to the sink and dried another plate.
“I told you you’d break it,” Cara said when she came home from piano lessons. “You’re in trouble” she teased, “Mom said that grandma gave it to her.”
My mother’s mother was the only person I knew that had died. There weren’t many of her things left because there had been a fire that almost burnt her house down.
Cara went back to doing her homework on the coffee table. I tried to ignore her with the TV.
When grandma died, it was the first time I had seen my mother cry. I peeked into her room when I couldn’t go back to sleep early one morning. She was sitting on the bed, hunched over, with her face in her hands. She would breathe in two quick breaths and let out a sound I had never heard come out of an adult. I went back to my room and lay in bed and still couldn’t sleep.
“Can you turn that off?” said Cara, “I’m trying to study for Algebra.”
The next Sunday was grandma’s death anniversary. We went to church and visited the cemetery. The sky was clear. The sun made the grass look too green.
My grandmother’s marker was a metal plate lying flat on the ground. My mother stared at it for a while. Cara looked around at the grand headstones that had angelic carvings and statues. I listened to the birds whistle to each other and waited.
My mom bent down and placed something beside the vase of flowers we had brought. When she turned to leave I saw that it was a broken piece of porcelain painted with a few blue scales. I stared out the window on the way home and ignored the tugging at my stomach.
That evening, I laid in bed and couldn’t sleep. I got up and walked down the hall to my mother’s door. It was slightly open. I could see her on her bed, propped up by a stack of pillows. Her hand was on her face. She sniffled and wiped tears off her cheek one side at a time.
I stepped back on one foot, a quarter turn away from the door. Then I stepped forward, bringing my feet back together. I put my hand flat on the door and gave it a gentle push.
My mother looked up at me for a moment. She put her arms out to me. I climbed over the foot of the bed. She wrapped her arms around me, only letting go of one arm to wipe her hand across her eyes and placing it back around me.
Before school the next morning, I stopped in the dining room on the way to the kitchen. The fish was back on the top shelf of the cabinet. I dragged a chair over to examine it, but I didn’t touch it. It was the same fish only there was a hole in its side.
“I managed to glue it back together,” my mother said behind me, “except for that one piece. I couldn’t get it to fit back in.”
The fish was missing a piece and you could see the cracks where it was glued, but it was back where it belonged, watching over the plates.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Your Watch
You were seen running into the station where you must have boarded the first car you came across. The car was empty except for an old woman with two brown grocery bags and a man in a suit. The woman looked at you sideways from her seat. You took a seat at the other end of the car.
The train pulled into the station, the end of the line. You exited the station and walked up the steps to the street. The street, once filled with shoppers, was growing bare and dark and cold. You put your hands in the pockets of you jacket to hide from the cold. In your pocket you feel the watch. The metal on the watch is cold and it grows warm in your hands.
The metal reflected the lights of the shop where you first saw it. It had reminded you of the watch your father had and pawned away years ago. Your father left it to you when he died, but you were so cold and desperate, and hungry.
When you saw the watch in the window, hungry for the memories of your father, you went inside. You stood inside unnoticed. The owner stood to the side helping a customer. So you must have helped yourself. You must have run then, but you were seen. Someone saw you and you won’t get away. Because no matter how much you missed your father, no matter how hungry you were, no matter how much you wanted it, you’ll never get to keep the watch. You gave your watch away. You can never get it back.
You hear sirens. They see you.
The train pulled into the station, the end of the line. You exited the station and walked up the steps to the street. The street, once filled with shoppers, was growing bare and dark and cold. You put your hands in the pockets of you jacket to hide from the cold. In your pocket you feel the watch. The metal on the watch is cold and it grows warm in your hands.
The metal reflected the lights of the shop where you first saw it. It had reminded you of the watch your father had and pawned away years ago. Your father left it to you when he died, but you were so cold and desperate, and hungry.
When you saw the watch in the window, hungry for the memories of your father, you went inside. You stood inside unnoticed. The owner stood to the side helping a customer. So you must have helped yourself. You must have run then, but you were seen. Someone saw you and you won’t get away. Because no matter how much you missed your father, no matter how hungry you were, no matter how much you wanted it, you’ll never get to keep the watch. You gave your watch away. You can never get it back.
You hear sirens. They see you.
Sleep
When thoughts go to sleep, when you sit out in the world and think of sleeping, of your dark room, the silence, the warm comfort of soft cloth and the heat generated by your own body trapped against your skin, it makes the outside world a haze, a fuzzy feeling of detachment like you’ve been dipped into brownish tea and float across what you should be seeing and hearing but can’t quite make out, in the sense that your legs carry you home, to your room, to your bed, and you taste nothing sweet or bitter, but you imagine the sound of the back of your hand sliding across cotton thread and you lay down your head with your cheek nestled into an impression on your pillow, sweeping your hair out of your face so you can breathe clear and deep, and you sleep, you just sleep.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Grandfather Clock
This is a very rough draft. I haven't even taken it through a second edit, but since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I'd give it a shot. Please be kind.
Imagine a grandfather clock standing in an abandoned house, too big to bother to move, telling time to no one. It ticks a hollow sound that reverberated through its wooden box of a body. While dust collects on its face and its hands move round in useless circles, it would wonder what will become of it, if a clock did wonder. A clock stands and waits for the time to pass by. It chimes and echoes through the empty house.
Now imagine a wedding which no one attends. The in-laws argue in the front pew of the church while their children conspire in the vestibule.
“This was genius,” said Vanessa, finishing a twirl in her little white dress.
“When I saw the size of that guest list, I had to do something,” said Aaron. He encircled his arms around his new wife and kissed her as though she were the only other person on earth.
The wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson was to be the social event of the season, uniting two prominent families of a tight knit community. If only Mr. Aaron Thompson had put down the correct time of the actual ceremony on the invitations as his parents had dictated.
As they waltzed in front of 200 unhappy guests, a chime among the pile of presents sounds above the music and through a large piece of wrapping paper.
Imagine an antique shop where several clocks hang on the wall. Their ticking is a swarm of metal and wooden clicks out of sync but still in rhythm. The noise would drive anyone else insane, but the shopkeeper finds the rhythm comforting. He dusts all the shelves and vases and tables and chairs daily. He polishes fragile pieces with care and repairs scratched and nicks with a steady hand all to the rhythm of his ticking symphony.
“How much can I get for this?” asked a man rolling in a dolly.
The shopkeeper turned from his dusting and observed the clock being wheeled into his shop. The clock chimed.
Imagine a grandfather clock standing in an abandoned house, too big to bother to move, telling time to no one. It ticks a hollow sound that reverberated through its wooden box of a body. While dust collects on its face and its hands move round in useless circles, it would wonder what will become of it, if a clock did wonder. A clock stands and waits for the time to pass by. It chimes and echoes through the empty house.
Now imagine a wedding which no one attends. The in-laws argue in the front pew of the church while their children conspire in the vestibule.
“This was genius,” said Vanessa, finishing a twirl in her little white dress.
“When I saw the size of that guest list, I had to do something,” said Aaron. He encircled his arms around his new wife and kissed her as though she were the only other person on earth.
The wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson was to be the social event of the season, uniting two prominent families of a tight knit community. If only Mr. Aaron Thompson had put down the correct time of the actual ceremony on the invitations as his parents had dictated.
As they waltzed in front of 200 unhappy guests, a chime among the pile of presents sounds above the music and through a large piece of wrapping paper.
Imagine an antique shop where several clocks hang on the wall. Their ticking is a swarm of metal and wooden clicks out of sync but still in rhythm. The noise would drive anyone else insane, but the shopkeeper finds the rhythm comforting. He dusts all the shelves and vases and tables and chairs daily. He polishes fragile pieces with care and repairs scratched and nicks with a steady hand all to the rhythm of his ticking symphony.
“How much can I get for this?” asked a man rolling in a dolly.
The shopkeeper turned from his dusting and observed the clock being wheeled into his shop. The clock chimed.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
White Tile
This is a scene that I wrote out in the middle of the night a few years ago and to this day I have no idea what to do with it. I've tried several contexts, but none of them seemed to work so I'll just have to give you the fragment. Sorry it ends at just the right spot.
The cool smooth hard tiles were a comfort against her skin. She was flush, almost feverish, and a sheen of perspiration still tingled with each stroke of breath. Her nausea was appeased for now, but a hint of it in the pit of her churning stomach produced enough fear of moving to be content to lie upon the soothing floor for just a bit longer. She lay on her side leaving her limbs sprawled out in whatever position they had fallen and her head half on the base of the toilet and half on the floor so that the right side of her face was tilted in a way that allowed the tile to make contact with the entire length of her cheek.
She closed her eyes and regretted coming across such a lethal combination. The evening had been one part gin and one part vodka and several parts she couldn’t remember. Then moments began to step into her mind and they were met with a physical response similar to nausea; her stomach began to flood with bits of embarrassment with each recollection.
The bass pulsed through the floor though there was no noise. They danced in twos and circles and by now the floor was sticky and scraped and scarred. She had danced until she couldn’t tell if she was moving anymore, until she couldn’t stop moving.
She said something she knew to be painful and, in a normal state of mind, would horrify her to say and thus had never said it until this strange and regretful moment.
The cool smooth hard tiles were a comfort against her skin. She was flush, almost feverish, and a sheen of perspiration still tingled with each stroke of breath. Her nausea was appeased for now, but a hint of it in the pit of her churning stomach produced enough fear of moving to be content to lie upon the soothing floor for just a bit longer. She lay on her side leaving her limbs sprawled out in whatever position they had fallen and her head half on the base of the toilet and half on the floor so that the right side of her face was tilted in a way that allowed the tile to make contact with the entire length of her cheek.
She closed her eyes and regretted coming across such a lethal combination. The evening had been one part gin and one part vodka and several parts she couldn’t remember. Then moments began to step into her mind and they were met with a physical response similar to nausea; her stomach began to flood with bits of embarrassment with each recollection.
The bass pulsed through the floor though there was no noise. They danced in twos and circles and by now the floor was sticky and scraped and scarred. She had danced until she couldn’t tell if she was moving anymore, until she couldn’t stop moving.
She said something she knew to be painful and, in a normal state of mind, would horrify her to say and thus had never said it until this strange and regretful moment.
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