Body surfing, Santa Cruz 1965 I thought I would take a break from getting the word out on my new novel to share a summer memory. The steep, narrow dirt trail led from her family’s campsite in the woods at the top of the cliff. Where the trail ended, blackberry bushes lined the edge of the sandy beach. Their thorns grabbed at her ankles, but Lily shook them off. When she reached the beach, she kicked off her flip flops and curled her toes in the warm sand. Some days, she headed south, towards Sea Cliff, but usually she avoided the summer crowds, unimpressed by the prim line of trailers parked along at the more popular beach. She’d step over jelly fish and let the seafoam flirt with her toes and then dive right in, no more than a hundred feet from the end of the path. It would take five or ten minutes before her body adjusted to the icy shock of the ocean water. Her lips turned blue and goose pimples sprouted on her skinny legs, but that was a price she was willing to pay.
Once she had found her spot, she counted waves. Her brother, the future scientist, told her waves came in groups of thirteen, the thirteenth the largest and most powerful. She stood in water up to her waist and let the first twelve pass, jumping as they swept by. But for the thirteenth, she lay flat on her belly. The water ebbed beneath her, pulling her back towards the upcoming wave. When she had it right, the wave broke just as it lifted her off her feet. Its forward momentum propelled her all the way back to the sandy shore. She could do this for hours, her body numb, the undertow sucking her under the surface from time to time. She always fought her way back to the open sky, ready for that next wave, her hair slicked back out of her face, the salty tang of sea salt up her nose. When the sun reached the top of the sky, day trippers began to arrive at the beach, carting loads of umbrellas, carrying picnic baskets. They tuned their transistor radios to over excited rock stations. Dads kept hawk eyes on their children. Moms called out warnings and then lay back on over-sized beach towels. Soon she’d learn there were so many dangers out there. A girl left on her own. The powerful undertow. Jelly fish that stung, causing a blue line to climb up her leg, the ever-present danger of drowning. But what a luxury that summer day to be oblivious. To swim for hours, unsupervised and weightless, wiling away the summer days as if they could go on forever.
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Outtake #1 #1 I fumble for my alarm clock. Three a.m., it’s red lights flicker. I bury my head under the pillow, but I know she’s there. “Do you hear the drums?” Lucy asks. Muffled by the feathers, her voice is barely audible, but there is no hiding from her. She’s been here since the very first night I unpacked my suitcase. My computer was still in its case, and my phone uncharged, but she was sitting there waiting, kicking her heels in annoyance against the empty bureau drawers. I rented this Vermont cabin from a colleague at the University. A rustic vacation home at the end of a dirt road on the slopes of Vermont’s Green Mountains. I meant it to be a sabbatical retreat. A quiet retreat where I could spend six glorious months free of job obligations and family. I’d shake off the petty politics of academia, give psychedelics another try, spread my recently deceased mother’s ashes on the slope of one of Vermont’s rolling green mountains. My husband egged me on, “Go for it” he had said. “Have an adventure. You’ve earned it.” Instead, my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother greeted me on my arrival. I opened the cabin door and saw two bright lights on the other side of the room. At first, I mistook them for a router. Now, I know they were her eyes glowing like those of a hungry fox in the twilight. She was looking for an amanuensis. A ghost cruising for a writer. She’s been here ever since, appearing in the middle of the night. Disappearing when the sun rises. Tonight, like every night, she shakes me awake. Dressed as a miniature adult in a stiff cotton blue dress with a wide white collar, a hand-knit cardigan, and a starched white apron. A wimple covers her long dirty blond braid. Before she slides under my covers, she drops her heavy buckled shoes to the floor. “Do you hear the drums?” she asks. “I do,” I answer. Muffled by the pillow, my words sound as uncertain as a hesitant bride’s. “That’s Meuse,” she says. “The Indian boy who kidnapped my father.” I’ve heard her story before. The Mi’kmaq who once thrived in Canada’s maritime provinces believe that the actions of one generation determine the fate of the next seven. If they’re right, Lucy is the reason I’m here. So, I listen as she describes standing paralyzed while her colonist father chased a young Mi’kmaw off the land they had been granted by the Crown in Nova Scotia. According to her, this act set off a cascade of events that ends here, in my darkened bedroom. “I don’t know what you want of me.” Even I hear the whine in my voice. Seven generations came and went, and she should be dust by now. But instead, she hovers next to where I lie in my bed, insisting I’ve got to deal with the situation. She’s nothing if not persistent. I peek out from under the pillow. “Please, you are my flesh and blood,” she wheedles. With a sideways glance, she emerges from the covers and tiptoes over to the dresser. She pushes aside my sunglasses and perches next to the small brass urn where I’ve placed my mother’s ashes. Her white legs dangle below her ankle-length skirt. “Let’s make a deal.” She holds up the urn, threatening to spill it onto the polyurethane pine-plank floor. I leap out of bed and grab it out of her hands. There is only a trace of my mother in there. I have already spread her widely. In the surf at Half Moon Bay, in the Rocky Mountains, in Puget Sound, and under an apple tree in my Massachusetts backyard. Lucy holds all of her I have left. “It’s not that simple,” Lucy says. “We don’t go away that easily.” In the closet, I hear a man guffawing. “Don’t be alarmed” she says. “That’s Gehne, Meuse’s crazy uncle. “He’s harmless, but he comes in the package.” She’s trapped me now. Dropping crumbs of my family history, she asks me to follow her. I chew on the clues she provides. They taste familiar. At the open door of the closet, an elderly dark-skinned man appears in the darkness. His feet are bare, and as he crosses the room, his footsteps make no noise. He whispers in my ear, his breath hot and redolent of age. “Don’t listen to a word the girl says. Her father threatened my nephew Meuse with a fire stick.” His deep brown eyes dart in her direction. “Everything your ancestor tells you is fake news. Her story carries no more weight that a textbook printed in Texas.” “He’s crazy,” Lucy protests. Conveniently, tears spring to her eyes. “You must trust me. The Crown gave that land to my family. My father had only my family’s interests at heart.” The crazy uncle clucks his tongue. I twist my neck, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot get a clear look at his expression in the unlit room. I hand her a tissue. The same one I gave her last night and the night before. We go back and forth like this until the glowing red numbers on the clock click to seven. We travel from insult to injury. Injury to slaughter. Lucy may have been too young to know the fields her father plowed belonged to this man’s tribe, or belonged to no one, but that’s not the story she begs me to tell. Maybe it’s the melatonin I take before climbing into bed, hoping to get a good night’s sleep. Maybe it’s her youth or sincerity, but eventually I agree to write her story, even as I wait impatiently for dawn’s first light. We shake on it. The crazy uncle grouses with annoyance, mumbling in a language I cannot understand. But when I tell him he is welcome to offer a defense, he cocks his head like a bird, looks at her sideways, and agrees. Locking eyes with me, he puts two gnarled fingers in his mouth and whistles. In response to his call, a dozen faceless souls drift into the room. I know them by the sudden draft of cool air, the disconcerting smell of pipe smoke, and what sounds like the rustle of leaves in the fall. The wide sleeves of my robe, hanging from a hook next to the door of my closet, gain substance and wrap around an invisible body as if seeking warmth. In the crepuscular light, eyes peer back at me. Animals, spirits, or historical figures. Whatever they are, they make themselves comfortable. But when I turn on the room’s overhead light, angling for a better view, they slam the closet door shut. “Nmultoqsip,” the old man mumbles from the other side. Lucy shrugs her shoulders and slides her feet back into her heavy shoes. “We’ll talk about him later” she says. By then, the first rays of morning light snake around the blinds, casting the night’s events in a whole new light. I dress, pulling on yesterday’s jeans, not wanting to open the closet. As we pack up the house, I stumbled upon this essay I wrote about Belchertown. It was accepted by a literary magazine over a year ago, but never published. This seemed an appropriate time. 202 The stretch of Highway 202 from Athol south to my home in Belchertown, Massachusetts is heavily wooded. Between stands of red and white oak, white pine, birch, and red maple trees, drivers occasionally glimpse the sparkle of sunshine of water. Located on the watershed for the Quabbin Reservoir, a primary source of drinking water for the denizens of Boston, the two-lane highway snakes south along the Western side of the reservoir. Dramatic rises overlook the 38-square-mile body of crystal-clear water, one of the largest unfiltered reservoirs in the United States. It’s Christmas Day. My husband and I travel down the familiar highway after spending Christmas morning with our grandchildren, a chaotic, sugar-fuelled, magic-laced exchange of too many gifts from Santa amidst piles of discarded wrapping paper. Now we enjoy the bucolic drive, the back of our Nissan Rogue piled high with luggage and brown shopping bags packed with our gifts. Every mile or so, a gate marks the head of a trail descending to the reservoir. At most, two or three parked cars sit empty. The residents of Western Massachusetts are an outdoorsy, crunchy bunch, who snowshoe in the winter and hike on even the dreariest of days. This sunny but cold holiday is no exception. In 1938, to provide fresh water to Eastern Massachusetts, four towns were inundated with water from the Swift River, Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott. The Swift River Act gave the residents of the farming communities that once abutted this highway ten years to pack up their lives, moving entire neighborhoods and 7,613 residents from local cemeteries to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Residents received $108 per acre lost. On its last night, Enfield hosted a ball in its Town Hall. An overflow crowd danced on the Hall’s lawn. When the clock struck midnight, the town no longer legally existed. I drive with an eye on the shadows that dapple the shoulder of the road. Stories of moose-sightings on 202 are a Belchertown staple. My husband and I have yet to see a moose but have seen deer and bear, many varieties of hawks and bald eagles. The local newspaper regularly records accounts of cars veering off the road to avoid wildlife. The police log lists the animals vs. vehicle accidents which often result in the offending car being pulled from a ditch and carried off by a flatbed truck. But today the road is clear, traffic light. Our family interactions have been pleasant, and we are looking forward to arriving home and sharing a holiday glass of wine. We are almost home when out of nowhere an approaching car makes a left turn directly in front of us. I slam on the brakes. The Automatic Braking System kicks in, causing my car, seemingly in slow motion, to jerk as we plow into the side of the sedan with a sickening crunch. Thud. The crash, my heart. It’s Christmas. I pull over to the shoulder of the road, the front of my car compressed like an accordion. Fluids pool on the highway beneath its unzippered hood. Opposite me, on the side street, a furious woman lunges out of a crumpled sedan screaming: “I had the right of way.” I am shaking. I get out of the car without my jacket or gloves. Perhaps in response to the cold or from shock, tremors overtake me. Other cars pull over and sympathetic witnesses get out to assure us they saw the whole thing. They ask if we are alright. The passenger from the other car sits on the curb, crying, as speeding cars rush past. I stand in the scratchy grasses and melting snow at the side of the highway, disoriented. As accidents go, mine is not serious. Neither my husband nor I are injured. We stand for an hour in the freezing cold while a State Policewoman speaks to witnesses and writes up her report. Two flatbed trucks arrive to haul away our cars. I take a picture of my fractured car and send it to my son. The tow driver gives us a ride in the cab of his truck as he hauls our car to a small-town garage where it will sit among other casualties. He says the ambulance that carried away the passenger from the other car was a precaution. The other car was totaled, but ours, he assures us, is reparable. The driver, an old hand at calamity, says most of the cars he tows are damaged in moose/vehicle encounters. In those cases, he hauls the deceased animal to an unnamed gate where a Fish and Wildlife Official lets him in. They drive to an open field where they leave the carcass to be consumed by predators. The brochures call Quabbin an unintended wilderness. The lush woods and wildlife that surround us have been preserved “for the greater good.” I have hiked from gate 40 on the East side of the reservoir. After a 1.7-mile short ramble through damp, dark woods, I arrived at the footprint for the town of Dana. There, signs memorialize the Eagle Hotel, a blacksmith shop, foundations of old homes, and the outline of the town common. These images replay in my mind. These and the woman screaming “I had the right of way.” The man being escorted to the ambulance. She didn’t, I tell myself, and, the tow truck driver assures me, the man is okay. I call a good friend. Still in her jammies watching old movies on TV, she agrees to drive the fifteen miles north to pick us up and deliver us home. Waiting in the parking lot of the shuttered garage, chilled and still trembling, we empty the car of our luggage, gifts, and the usual flotsam that accumulates in a car (a small stuffed dog who resides on the dashboard, the ice scraper, my yoga mat). How insignificant our trauma considering the families who danced on the Enfield Town Hall lawn 80 years ago. How minor the damage to my car, abandoned in its shuttered small-town garage where it will languish until the holidays are over The Quabbin Reservoir is also the site of one of the state’s most successful Bald Eagle Restoration Projects. In 1982, MassWildlife and its partners brought two young eagles and raised them in cages overlooking the Quabbin. After fledging, the eagles settled around the reservoir and soon the population flourished. In 2016, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Matthew Beaton said: “I am so proud that our restoration program has brought these magnificent birds back to Massachusetts. After being absent from Massachusetts for over 80 years, today we find eagles soaring all over the Commonwealth, with nests in almost every county in the state.” 1 From the back seat of my friend’s car, I spot an eagle, circling in the bright blue sky above it all, the flourishing wilderness, the submerged towns, the carcasses of dead animals, the car veering out of its lane without warning. This year the reservoir is above capacity. Near the Dam Visitors Center, a large brick building with white trim serves as an interpretative center. Walkers cluster at the spillway where the frigid water thunders down, the spray freezing on the rock face, creating icy white clouds surrounded by rainbows. It was one of those post-snowstorm frigid January mornings in Manhattan where the curb at every intersection dammed an icy puddle of gray water and ice. Every few minutes, puddles forced me to choose between leaping two or three feet and landing on slick pavement only a foot away from speeding taxies or detouring to the middle of the block and jay walking where the puddles were marginally shallower. Ten degrees. A brisk wind ricocheting between tall buildings. The perfect day to wear a thick fur coat to protect me from the unforgiving elements. Except, of course, fur is evil. Cruelty in the service of ostentation. The coat I wore that day was massive, shin-length raccoon, one of those coats that was popular in the 1920s, especially at sporting events. It reached nearly to my ankles and closed with a series of metal hooks that required patience and dexterity. I hadn’t bought it. I would never buy a fur coat, and I hadn’t received it as a gift. Instead, when my sister-in-law and I divvied up my mother-in-law Mimi’s belongings after her death, I claimed it as my own. It was so not me. Hunters had probably slaughtered the poor raccoons before I was a born. Mimi, tall, svelte and attractive, had briefly worked as a fur model before she married my husband’s father. The coat was probably a gift from some smitten beau. By the time I knew her, she worked the window at OTB and cohabitated with a loan shark from the horse track. Among her belongings were freebies from their stays at the Atlantic City casinos and two sapphire and diamond rings he had given her after collecting them in settlement of debts. We split those—one to my niece and one I wore for years. Mimi had been flamboyant, flirting with young waiters even after her cancer diagnosis, bewitching her physicians. When the police summoned me to pick her up in the ER after a fall, she rattled off the details of her doctors’ romantic lives as if they were her sons. The belongings I inherited from her were things I never would never have owned any other way. Hidden pleasures, a taste of a more glamorous, if somewhat tawdry, life. My husband and I inaugurated the raccoon coat by spreading it on our living room floor, lighting a fire in the hearth, and making love on the plush, if somewhat scratchy, pelt. Still, I was uncomfortable wearing the coat in public. It was so politically incorrect. But that frigid morning, facing a walk to the bus stop in the bitter cold, a long bus ride, and then the trek across town to my office on the East Side, I couldn’t resist. On the New Jersey side of the commute, I avoided my fellow commuters’ eyes as I huddled inside the fur’s warmth. In Manhattan, I joined the wave of pedestrians leaping across puddles, my boots no match for the weather. My body warm, but my feet achingly cold, I was two blocks from the office, fixated on the imminence of hot coffee and a space heater, when I felt a tickle on my neck. “How could you?” a woman’s deep voice hissed in my ear. It could have been worse. She could have sprayed red paint or blood on my offending garment. But the shame I felt at that moment wouldn’t have been any greater. I wasn’t that woman. I couldn’t defend myself. The crowd swept my accuser away when the light changed, just another pedestrian navigating the puddles. When I got to the office, I hung my coat on a hanger on the back of my office door where no one would see it. I’ve never worn the coat since. Sometimes writing is a solitary art, but at other times it brings together like-minded people to form a community. For ten years now, I have written every Friday morning with a group of Amherst writers. Some are poets, some write memoir, and then there is me and my quirky fiction. We write together and then share what we have written. We discuss our writing, the world, and our lives. Last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a retreat for these writers in my Vermont cabin. Once again we wrote, but we also hiked, cooked, ate, drank a lot of tea and a little wine, practiced yoga, and played with Nicola's dog. It was wonderful. Epi sums it up: Some days the words flow out Paint a picture of this life Others they stay stuck inside We six women have gathered to write Some of us have published prose or lyric Others aspire Me, i write for the sheer joy of seeing the words flow Of painting a picture of one life We have journeyed to Vermont To a welcoming home with a fire burning We’d probably fit into other of our houses But the journey makes it special Epi Bodhi Real Estate
Kathryn Holzman. Propertius, $6.99 e-book (188p) ISBN 978-1-71646-618-2 Holzman’s accomplished prose propels her beleaguered characters through tragedies and watershed moments. There’s much to enjoy in this well-constructed sketch of people constrained by their family and their choices. -Publishers Weekly My most recent blog entry was inspired by yesterday’s Poets and Writers Fiction prompt. Anybody else give this one a try? In his iconic, postmodern short story “Borges and I,” Jorge Luis Borges recounts living alongside a second version of himself, to whom he is slowly “giving over everything.” The story is known for its brevity—at about one page long—and its sense of compression, as Borges describes this struggle between self and personaWrite a story about the push and pull between the self you present to the world and the self you know. Is there conflict or cooperation? My writing partner is very self-confident. She’s the kind of woman who looks in the mirror in the morning and practices her smile. When Barbara Kingsolver posts on Facebook that she just sent her latest manuscript off to her agent, my partner writes a comment on her feed, Congratulations. Five exclamation points.
“As if Barbara Kingsolver needs to be congratulated.” I think when I read over the comment. My eyes are bleary from too many rewrites. My characters have been waging a rebellion lately, screaming at me like adolescent daughters, “You don’t have any idea what I want! I hate you!” I read on one of the writer’s blogs that an author should have at least 1000 contacts by the time they release a book. I’m approaching 100, but every literary magazine that rejects my work adds me to theirs. Now, when I get up in the morning, I spend 15 minutes deleting all their excited announcements about authors whose work they found far better than mine. “But just having a mailing list isn’t enough,” my partner's on a role as we brainstorm our work in progress . You need to stay in constant contact with your readers. Say to them what you wish they would say to you. Imagine, she says, how you would feel if Barbara Kingsolver said congratulations to you! But until that happens, she continues to send out blog entries at least once a month, detailing her writing process, her progress on her upcoming debut novel. My debut novel, published during a lockdown, sits on bookstore shelves like an aspiring actress waiting to be discovered. My blog documents the effects of the lingering pandemic, zoom calls, downsized Thanksgiving, and, just to lighten things up, a letter of appreciation to my yoga instructor. But I’ve got to give my partner this. She's all in every step of the way. When I post on social media, because that’s what she tells me I’m supposed to do, she is the first to give me a thumbs up. “So good,” she comments and always five stars. In our writing group, she suggests a slight tweak at the end of the scene, a subtle tug on the reader’s heartstrings. All the while, my characters glare at me and grumble, “Why don’t you stand up to her. Tell her we don’t care if we’re sympathetic.” In an effort to placate them, I spend all morning strengthening their voices, giving them an opportunity to jump off the page and have their say. At the end of the day, my latest chapter is somewhat improved, although riddled with typos. They don’t thank me for my efforts. My partner has already planned a sequel since series are easier to sell. On Instagram, she posts photos of her work desk, her work in progress, the adorable puppy curled at her feet. The pictures all use a popular color palette that will linger in her followers’ memories. My characters wear black. They grumble in the background, waiting for me to come up with the word that will make them sound less like illiterate losers. In the end I type 8 X’s in the place where an effective word is lacking and hope the right expression will come to me another time. “All you ever do is look at pictures of other peoples’ books,” my characters complain. “If you cared about us at all, you would know what to say.” My partner is preparing for her book tour. She has her eye on bookstores in Nashville—she loves Ann Padgett—and the Midwest where readers eat-up feel-good literature, and like a good cry. She imagines her books like a one actress play and practices a unique accent for each of her characters. I gaze out at the icy covered terrain out my window. The dormant trees. The forbidding sky “I’m trying,” I assure my characters, knowing that won’t satisfy them. “But before you get all worked up, give me a minute to check my e-mail.” P.S. My writing partner just whispered in my ear. She says I should add here that, if you have read my book, I’d be most grateful for a review. Fridays, I write for fun. My long-time writing group has recently resumed in person get togethers. I use this time to put aside my ongoing projects and play. Often, I use the Poets and Writers weekly prompt, never knowing where it might head me.
This past week the prompt was: Write a story set during holiday festivities in which something unexpected occurs. Perhaps you might lean into elements of satire or the surreal to explore new dimensions of this familiar territory. This one stumped me. I stared at my open computer screen, staring out the window and tried to imagine the upcoming holidays. It’s been a long pandemic-filled year. Unexpected events occurred on a regular basis. It took me a while to wrap my wandering musing in response to the prompt, but when I did, what I wrote was not a fanciful story but a needed catharsis which I shared with my writing group, triggering heartfelt response from each of them. Together again, we were able to commiserate and share the impact of this year’s disconcerting events. This is what I wrote: I cut the last of the flowers in my garden this week. A few, I hung to dry. The rest fit into a small vase on my windowsill. Not an impressive haul. From my window, I watch colorful leaves parachute to the soggy ground where they land with a soft puff easily mistaken for the scabble of a small animal seeking shelter. Gimme shelter from the storm. Not a new sentiment, but a recurring one, especially this year. I am tired of talking about the pandemic. Pandemic or supply chain, whatever the excuse, life refuses to return to what we used to call normal. The grocery store shelves are sparsely stocked. It’s dark by dinner time and will be darker soon. My cats have taken their position in front of the fireplace, waiting for the warmth of a crackling fire even as the last days of Indian summer linger. The hummingbirds and butterflies have flown south. The squirrels are squirreling away their acorns. But the bats and owls who used flit in the night sky have been gone for several years now and are unlikely to return. And post pandemic, there are people who have disappeared from my life, either choosing to avoid crowds, or gone altogether, moving, dying, divorcing, changing jobs, leaving this neck of the woods, reevaluating their options. I have always appreciated the rhythm of the seasons changing. But more and more, it feels like a seismic shift is taking place, a redefinition of reality more profound than we can comprehend. Something new, if only we could understand it. Last Thanksgiving, we sat, just the two of us, at our less-than-festive Thanksgiving table. Angling the computer screen at our small turkey and chatting with our son over the internet, discussing pandemic statistics, the upcoming surge, the still pending vaccines. Now we are vaccinated, and the statistical curves seem to be heading in the right direction. We will gather with our son and his family this Thanksgiving, but with apprehension, the damage seemingly done. Over the past year, his family has taken a new shape. His home is a new house. Even as we admire the décor, we don’t trust that the virus is done with us. Every sniffle requires a test. Every trip inside, whether to a store or a restaurant or loved one’s house, is only safe behind a mask. A friend tells me NYC is back up and running. On the beaches of Florida, crowds eschew the restrictions that continue to hold me back. Unmasked, defiant, and unvaccinated, young people gather in large crowds demanding the right to live life as they please. Soon the holidays will arrive. The feasts and frantic shopping. The lights and carols and glare of department store neon lights beckoning late into the night. Will the holidays lure us, the hesitant ones, out of our shelters with the ringing of bells, the promises of an irresistible bargains? Will FedEx trucks, their driver’s in Santa suits, chug up my road stacked high with boxes of goodies, gifts we don’t need but want, want, want. Will we put on ten pounds and lift our champagne glasses, crow Happy New Year as we kiss our loved ones in the middle of one of the shortest nights’ of year? Why do I struggle to write this story? Why does satire seem inappropriate to this moment in time? Even surrealism seems insufficient, a disservice to any characters I might force to venture out with timid steps into this uncertain world. I fear for what they might find out there, as the countdown 10-9-8-7-6 -5-4-3-2…, as the crystal ball drops into a mash of inebriated celebrants and another year begins. The full link for the Poets and Writers prompt is: https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises. I’d love to see what it inspires you to write! |
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