Sneak-Peek Saturdays: Excerpt Four

A NOTE BEFORE READING: I began sharing weekly excerpts from my novel, The Somebody Who, on June 26th. If you want to begin at the beginning, go here. If you want to read more sooner, head over to Amazon (there’s a button on the left that will take you there).

V

When Evelyn enters the large kitchen, Claudia is multitasking. Her back toward the center of the room, she is stirring a big pot of stew and engaged in a rapid-fire conversation on her cell phone. In Spanish. When she glances in Evelyn’s direction, Evelyn holds up the jar of pasta sauce. Claudia shrugs, and they exchange the raised-eyebrow, pursed-smirk glance that has become a code between them. The code says, “Look what I found and you’ll never guess where I found it.”

Davy is sitting on his stool at the kitchen’s center island. In front of him, on the counter, is the most recent issue of The New Yorker. He looks as if he is reading an article intently. But what Claudia knows, and what Evelyn suspects, is that he has had that page open for nearly two hours. And while he has not been sitting there the whole time (sitting still is no longer his strong suit), he always returns to the chair and the page, and he always looks as if there is something within its contents that will unlock the meaning of life.

Evelyn is relieved that Claudia and Davy are both occupied. She doesn’t have to stay in the kitchen. She can return to the study.

But first, she will make a detour into the dining room. And, if there is any wine left in the bottle she opened last night, she will pour herself a glass. What difference does it make what time it is, she thinks, approaching the dry bar and grateful for what she finds.

VI

“Goddamnit!” Evelyn fumes, as she hits the Stop button on the answering machine and again finds herself needing to push Fast Forward.

“Goddamnit!”

When she returned to the study to listen to the afternoon’s two remaining messages, she did not intend to backtrack so thoroughly. But, she hit the wrong button. She hit All rather than New. And perhaps because she was enjoying the feel of the Cabernet rolling about on her tongue, she failed to notice that the tape had gone into rewind mode.

Were it not so revelatory, this exercise in back-tracking and then fast-forwarding might not be bothering her so much. But, what she is quickly realizing is that Angie has been doing a lot of apologizing lately. “I am so sorry to do this, Ev—” Was that today? No. Fast forward. “Ev—it’s Ang, and I hate to do this to you.” Today? No, that was the lecture they had talked about going to. Fast forward. “My God, things are crazy!” That sure sounded like today’s message, but no…

Fast forward.

Finally, Evelyn hears the voice that confirms some sort of updatedness. It is the sound she refers to as “the little man who lives in my phone.” The timekeeper man. The man who says, with bizarre nasal-voiced inflection, “Friday. Two-thirty-two p.m.”

She hits the Stop button and sits back in the leather chair. She cradles the glass of Cabernet, stares at it and through it, and she wonders if Angie has simply grown tired of her.

“I found you!”

It is Davy, standing in the doorway of the study.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he adds.

He pads across the room, barefoot as always, leans over and kisses her forehead. Then, he stands back. “You’re wonderful!” he announces, his arms spread out.

“Thank you, honey,” Evelyn replies, her voice a monotone. “You’re wonderful, too.”

Then, as if he is drawn to a particular title on the bookshelves, Davy crosses behind Evelyn’s chair. He studies the spines of several books. “This is very interesting,” he says. “Very, very interesting.”

“That’s right, honey. It is.”

He pads back to a place directly in front of her. “Are you? Do you want me to--?” He holds out his hand to her wineglass. There are only a few sips left. She knows that he is offering to freshen her drink, but she cannot ask him to do that. God know what newfangled cocktail he might return with.

“I’m okay, honey. I’ll get up in a minute and get some more.”

“That’s very good, then. That’s exactly…” Davy nods. “That’s very good.”

Davy looks around the room, goes to the window and opens the curtains. “Okay,” he says, first perusing the side yard and then turning around to face Evelyn, “so now I’m going to do that thing. I’m going to do.”

“Okay, sweetie,” Evelyn smiles, “you do that thing.”

* * *

… to be continued on July 24th.

In the meantime, if you want to read a short piece about the back story, click here.

Tweetle-Dee-Dee

Last week, I was heading to my usual Thursday afternoon gig.

And I was taking my usual route: Hollywood Boulevard to Fairfax, at which point I’d head south and over to Sunset.

Within two miles from home, the traffic on the Boulevard slowed. Not an unexpected dynamic. After all, that’s where Grauman’s Chinese Theatre is. That’s where, on any given day, there are scads of day-players dressed as movie figures, cartoon characters, and assorted icons. They mill about and make an occasional buck by posing with tourists. Click, click. Another five dollars. (Or whatever they charge.)

But, on this particular day, the crowd was larger than usual, and the traffic was especially slow. As I inched ahead, I noticed a lot of cameras held up in the air. The tourists weren’t shooting their family members in one posed shot. They were shooting a moment.

Soon enough, I discovered what the moment was: Batman and Spiderman, in conference with two cops. Batman and Spiderman, both in handcuffs.

WHAT HAS THE WORLD COME TO?

And here’s the part that really blew me away. The first thing I thought was this: I’ve never wanted to tweet so badly.

Oh my God, am I really “going there?”

What might I have said, in 140 characters or less?

***Superpowers headed to jail! News at eleven.

***Be particularly vigilant, people. The protectors have been taken IN!

***Sorry, tourists. Your Grauman’s photo options have been depleted. Until further notice, it’s Marilyn or Homer Simpson.

… Maybe that’s why I’ve never been inclined to “tweet.” I fail to see a dynamic entry in the mix, and I am not even interested in continuing this exercise.

I don’t know; maybe, too, I’m just not a fan of little newsbytes. Maybe I’m also not convinced that the collective “we” should be encouraged to provide them and/or spend our time tracking them.

… A few days before the heroes’ arrest at Grauman’s, I watched a rerun of the Letterman show. Miley Cyrus was the guest, and boy, was she charming. That girl is smart and awesomely mature. I was surprisingly impressed, and I sensed that Dave was, too. At one point, he asked her if she twittered, adding that people have been telling him he needed to.

Miley disagreed. After stating that she hates twitter, she added, “You already have a show, so you don’t need a twitter.”

She also shared that she had tried it for a moment, but she felt stupid. One tweet: “I lost my lucky bracelet.” Subsequent tweet: “Woo-hoo. I found my lucky bracelet.”

Really? Do we need to know?

Miley doesn’t think so, and neither do I.

But here’s the more important question:

Do we care?

If we do, well… I pity us.

It’s sad enough that Batman and Spiderman are getting hauled off to the County Jail. Can we at least stop wasting our time with these quasi-updates?

Feel free to leave your comments, and please, don’t limit yourself to 140 characters.

Sneak-Peek Saturdays: Excerpt Three

A NOTE BEFORE READING: I began sharing weekly excerpts from my novel, The Somebody Who, on June 26th. If you want to begin at the beginning, go here. If you want to read more sooner, feel free to head over to Amazon (there’s a button on the left that will take you there).

III

Evelyn parks the car in the garage, but decides not to click it shut. She doesn’t feel like going in through the utility room. She doesn’t want to look at the mess in there.

She opens the trunk and pulls out the two bags that represent today’s acquisitions—a few pairs of knee-highs from Nordstroms and a book about quilting. Not bad, she thinks to herself. Not bad for a lady on the run.

Then, still wanting not to be home yet, she shuts the trunk ever so quietly, heads out to the driveway and wanders around the front yard.

The day is incredibly crisp, as late October always is in Westchester. The leaves are on their last days of luxuriant color. Soon, they’ll be making their slow, gliding dives into the yard. She will have to call a service. Pay someone to come out and help. Davy can't possible rake them. He has the strength to do so, but—the job would confuse him. Besides, she never feels comfortable when he goes outside without a companion.

“What are you doing?”

It is Davy. He probably saw her from the living room window, and now he has opened the front door.

“Oh. Hi.”

“What are you doing?” Davy asks again.

“Your clothes sort of match,” Evelyn comments, marveling somewhat at the fact that he’d found a striped shirt to wear with his striped shorts. (She has long since given up on suggesting that it is a little late in the year for summer clothes.)

“That’s what I mean,” says Davy, nodding.

She smiles at him and shakes her head ever so slightly. She notices that his beard is getting grayer.

“I don’t know where my friend is,” Davy states next.

“You mean Claudia?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s probably in the kitchen getting dinner ready.”

“I don’t know.”

I don’t either, Evelyn thinks.

IV

After yelling a “Hello” to Claudia, who is—as Evelyn had suspected—in the kitchen preparing their dinner, Evelyn puts her bags on the table in the hall and goes into the study. The answering machine is blinking, as she knew it would be. Three messages.

She presses the button marked New and waits as the tape rewinds. She puts her hands on her hips and stretches her back into an arch. It feels good to stretch.

“Ev—it’s Angie. Calling on Friday. I guess it’s about two. Anyway, I am so sorry to do this to you, but I can’t do the concert on Sunday. Ugh. God. The shit is just really hitting the fan for me these days. I won’t go into it. I’ll spare you. Anyway, I hope you can find someone to go with you. I’ll swing by tomorrow with my ticket. Probably won’t have time to visit. God, I’m sorry. Things just really need to slow down, if you know what I mean. Anyway, you don’t have to
call me back. I know that you have your hands full.”

Since Angie had hung up without saying “Goodbye,” Evelyn feels compelled to give the message closure. She hits the Off button on the machine. And she realizes that she isn’t surprised. Put off. Inconvenienced. But not surprised.

She looks toward the clock on the mantle to see if it is too early for a glass of wine. Then, her eye having been distracted by the appearance of something that is clearly not mantle-worthy, she shakes her head. And she feels, as she has come to feel a million times daily, the type of exasperation that churns in the soul when one is no longer shocked by nonsequitur. The mantle has a new decoration, placed there, no doubt, by Davy. It is between the clock and the brass candlesticks. It is a 16-ounce jar of pasta sauce.

Evelyn approaches the mantle and retrieves the sauce. She then moves the candlesticks a bit closer to the clock. Maybe if there is no empty space, she thinks.

* * *

... to be continued on July 17th.

In the meantime, if you want to read a short piece about the back story, click here.

Where Women Fall Short

Born in 1957, I was perhaps uniquely fortunate to be raised by a feminist. And what might surprise you is that, in making that statement, I am thinking about my father.

I can’t say exactly what informed my father’s perspective, but he clearly admired women and seemed most comfortable in their company. It is probably for this reason that he chose to teach at a women’s college. It also is probably for this reason that my memories of him at social gatherings place him more comfortably chatting among the women than the men. Dad was just never one of those “guy” types. He was entertaining, conversational (when he would acquiesce to my mother’s encouragement that they go to that evening’s party), artistic, and well – I think he just always had tremendous respect for women. He believed in our power and our minds. He never short-changed us as a collective group.

While this is a wonderful aspect of my upbringing, it’s made it a bit tough in the marriage and dating departments. I’ve done both, and at the moment, I’m doing neither. It could be that I’m at once too picky and too capable of being complete without the benefit of a partner. It could be that my father helped build my own sense of a woman’s tremendous worth. We are a remarkable gender. We can handle multiple tasks with intelligence and compassion. We don’t necessarily get caught up in – nor are we therefore thwarted by – oneupsmanship. We are damn good company, and our craving of damn good company makes our gatherings fun. Women rock.

But in my years of observing our behavior and of comparing it to the behavior of men, I have to say there is one area where we are absolutely stupid, and where men’s perspective, in comparison, is highly evolved.

Here’s where women fall short: We believe that we can change men.

And here’s where men shine: They don’t give a moment’s thought to believing that they can change women.

I’d be willing to bet on it: any woman who reviews the relationships she has had will remember times she thought that her man would change. Not only that, he’d change for her.

I doubt men entertain such futile musings.

… Several years ago, I was involved with a man who was remarkably good company until we hit the expiration date on our relationship. Which is to say, we had a great couple of years. I enjoyed what appeared to be his absolute respect for women. We were on the same page 99% of the time. In addition, because he was a movie enthusiast (and because his enthusiasm was contagious), I raced with him one afternoon so that we might get to the local theatre in time to see the very first screening of Kill Bill 2.

I had seen Kill Bill 1 on DVD a few weeks earlier, so I was up-to-speed. I also was excited to see how the story would play out. I was learning that Tarantino is clearly a force to be reckoned with.

I loved Kill Bill 2, and because I own a copy of the movie, I’ve seen it a few times. But even before I had the chance to absorb its story through subsequent viewings, the underlying message of the movie leapt out at me: None of that mayhem – none of those bloody, violent killings – would have occurred if the lead female character had understood that men don’t change for anyone. The entire plot of that two-part masterpiece revolves around the place where we women fall short.

In the final chapter of the Kill Bill series, after he has injected her with the truth serum and before she finally ends his life with Pai Mei’s Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, Beatrix Kiddo (aka The Bride) admits to Bill that, while she knew he was a killer, she never thought he would do it to her.

Guess again, sister.

For many of us women, the need for male companionship is basic and the rewards can be quite enjoyable. But: we need to let go of our belief that we are so special as to be given different treatment. We need to let go of thinking that “our man” will change simply because we’re in the room. We need to abandon what is perhaps a natural instinct to nurture (and therefore help grow/develop).

In its place, we just need to appreciate. Among other things, we should appreciate the fact that men never look at us and imagine who they might create from the assortment of characteristics we present. (Forget Henry Higgins, gals. He’s fictional.) Men don’t envision our potentials. They don’t hear of our past shortcomings and think, “Oh, she wouldn’t do that to me.”

Men see us for what we are and they take it or leave it.

They’re smart that way.

Sneak-Peek Saturdays: Excerpt Two

A NOTE BEFORE READING: I began sharing excerpts from my novel, The Somebody Who, on June 26th. If you want to begin at the beginning, go here. If you want to read more sooner, head over to Amazon (there’s a button on the left that will take you there).

II

Evelyn has always been a fool for routine. And less than a year ago, she quickly established a routine for her trips to the mall. For the first forty-five minutes or so, she is just impulsive, going into whatever large store or specialty boutique happens to intrigue her in that moment. She never has a shopping list in her hand or in her head. She just lets the chips fall where they may. Sometimes, she just browses. Sometimes, she buys more than a few things. Regardless,
after no more than an hour, she heads to the nearest large bookstore chain—whichever one has a coffee bar. Her legs growing tired at this point, she takes a basket, quickly fills it with five or six books of interest, and heads to the café. There, she orders a latte and a scone and ultimately finds a comfy seat where she will relax for as long as it takes.

Today is no different.

Although the café is quite crowded when she arrives—and still crowded once her order has been filled—she doesn’t have to wait long for a chair. And she thanks the young man who gives up his chair for her. The appreciative smile she shares with him belies the thought she was entertaining as she approached him—the thought that said, You seedy little bum! Why are you lounging around in the middle of the day! Who’s supporting you? Don’t you have a job? But Evelyn doesn’t say this. Instead, she just smiles and thanks him.

There is a table beside the comfy chair that the “seedy bum” just surrendered, and Evelyn places her cardboard tray there. Her precious latte. Her precious scone. Bending uneasily, she puts her basket of books down on the floor. And then she sits.

And her exhaustion sits with her. And so she exhales. And she closes her eyes for a nanosecond.

In that nanosecond, she hears the chorus of Strangers in the Night.

It is her cell phone.

Evelyn digs through her ridiculously large purse to reach the noise. Within moments, she retrieves the phone and reads the screen. It is Marilyn calling. And because Evelyn is a mother, she has no choice but to take the call.

“Hello, Marilyn,” she says lovingly enough, the phone cradled between her cheek and shoulder as she lifts the cap off her latte.

“Men are such fucking jerks,” is Marilyn’s salutation.

“Mmm…” Evelyn’s response might seem inappropriate, but it is also barely audible. She knows, because she knows Marilyn, that it isn’t necessary to respond. All she needs to do is continue with her process. So she reaches for the packet of pure raw sugar, opens it quietly and pours the contents into her latte. She slowly stirs the softly steaming brew, and she waits…

“Barry’s such an asshole!” Marilyn continues. “And I have tried so hard. But he’s still not ready to buy a house. It’s like he’s afraid or something. Sure, he hasn’t got the promotion that he thought he would get two fucking years ago, but still! And! He’s done nothing about it! He’s like a fucking wimp around his boss!”

Evelyn enjoys a sip of latte. Still a little too hot…

“And now,” chants Marilyn, “no thanks to him, Sara is having major problems in school. I don’t even know if she’s going anymore. And I have really tried with her, I swear. I just don’t know what to do!”

Evelyn breaks off a small piece of scone and lets it melt in her mouth.

Marilyn lets out a noise that might best be described as histrionic exhalation—the kind of respiratory gesture that could extinguish candles in other states. This is typical. This is the sign. Marilyn will now be moving on to cheerier topics.

Evelyn takes another sip of latte and anticipates the predictable.

And so it comes: “All I can say is thank God for Matthew!” Marilyn’s voice now adopts a tone that sounds maudlin in its effort to convey pride. “Oh, Mom, he did the sweetest thing the other day. Oh my God. He told me that they had a talk in class about heroes? And they were specifically talking about women heroes? God, I love that teacher of his! Really focuses on the women! Yea, teach! So, they were talking about what makes a hero and what defines a hero and, you know, all that shit, and Matthew said he raised his hand and said, ‘My mom is a hero!’”

Evelyn wants to ask Why?

“Isn’t that so sweet?”

Pause. Oops! Evelyn didn’t know, when she had taken that rather large chunk of scone and had begun letting it dance with her taste buds, that her turn was pending.

“Mom?”

“Mmm…” (gulp) “Sorry. I had something in my mouth.”

“Isn’t that sweet?”

“That’s sweet,” Evelyn says, reaching for another chunk of scone. “That’s very sweet.”

“Yeah, well. I should probably go now. I got a lot to do. I just wanted to fill you in.”

Evelyn has begun to eye the books in her basket, and she is anxious to open them. “I’m sure you’ll work things out,” she says to her daughter.

“Yeah, well. I’m a hero, right?”

“You’re a hero,” Evelyn says, in a flat, non-effusive tone that might be insulting to someone who is listening.

Their goodbyes exchanged, Evelyn turns off her phone. She doesn’t want any more interruptions. She wants to enjoy her latte and what is left of her scone. She wants to look through the books she brought with her to the coffee bar.

She has a few more hours of peace before she will have to go home.

* * *

… to be continued on July 10th.

In the meantime, if you want to read a short piece about the back story, click here.

In the Eleventh Hour

My tendency to interpret things literally was particularly pronounced when I was a kid. I wrote about it in a previous post, and I will write about it again. In the meantime and as an example, I’ll share one short anecdote: During my “Wonder Years,” I lived in a small Virginia town that was home to both a GE facility and a DuPont plant. Accordingly, many of my classmates’ fathers were engineers. But I didn’t understand the connection, and so I always felt baffled. With so many engineers, why were there so few trains?

When a five-year-old interprets something literally (based on the information she has), it’s pretty darn cute. When someone my age is incorrect in her literal interpretation, she just looks stupid. At the very least, she seems quite gullible.

I was reminded of this fact last week when, hearing news of an 11-hour Wimbledon match, I believed – quite sincerely – that the two players had actually played tennis nonstop that whole time.

What?

WHAT?

Okay, once I heard follow-up news and read follow-up copy, the reality made sense. The 11-hour match did not take place all at once. Rather, it was divided into a few sessions that were ridiculously long in their own right.

… Even the subsets of the full set would boggle the mind of some. But no, not me! I was willing to believe that the full match was played without a break!

Where the hell am I coming from?

Good question.

A part of where I’m coming from probably reflects my love of tennis. My parents played it a lot when they were in their late 30’s and early 40’s, and they encouraged my sister and me to play as well. My sister obliged their desires, which left me in the position of rebelling. Always and insistently the family’s “other member,” I wanted no part of the game.

So I stubbornly sat on the sidelines.

But I picked up a racket when I was 16 or so, and I enjoyed the opportunity to play at my prep school, where four or five tennis courts across the campus allowed pick-up games throughout the afternoon. Having learned just enough to understand scoring, I was ready to compete, and without a teacher telling me what I had done wrong… without a team on which I would have to do right, I hit those balls like nobody’s business. I came to love tennis, and had I not also become an urban-dweller, I probably would have continued to play for years on end. I’d probably still be playing. But, that’s not how things turned out. These days, the most access I have to tennis is through the television, where I can watch a tournament for hours, enchanted by the game’s powerful rhythms and possibilities, by its capacity to reveal individual strength and stamina.

What will seem unrelated to these musings on tennis is an observation my sister once shared – an observation that I cannot dispute: “You know,” she said, “I think it’s a good thing you never had kids, because everything you do, you do thoroughly.”

I get her point. And while I don’t think I would have become the type of mother whose intense approach to parenting is ultimately depicted in a movie-of-the-week about murder among cheerleaders, I believe that if I had had children, there would have been a death in the family. My own.

The fact of the matter is, I need complete and utter freedom to attack what I do.

When I’m focused, I want to stay focused.

Whether I'm making a bunch of long beaded necklaces or writing a novel, I attack. And I can stay in that mode for extremely long periods of time.

But what you also need to know is that, in spite of my using the word “attack,” those hours I put in are relaxing and magical. There is absolutely nothing aggressive in that time. It is natural, and it is beautiful.

Yet, I’ll admit, it takes a physical toll. Not so much on my stamina, but on my appearance.

… I remember – more than 30 years ago – back when I was waitressing at the Hungarian restaurant near Columbia on Manhattan’s upper west side, a woman came in to ask for a table. She was expecting a dinner companion who had not yet arrived. And because we were quiet that night, I was permitted to show her a table where she could wait for her friend.

None-too-busy myself, I was able to inquire about the woman’s friend. “What does she look like?” I asked, offering to keep an eye out.

“Oh,” the woman said, hanging her head a bit (some guilt, perhaps, having its way), “she’d probably hate me for saying this, but… she just looks… tired.”

I was too young then to appreciate what that woman had said, but today, I feel a special bond to the dinner partner who eventually showed up that night. Was she tired or simply an artist? And if the latter was true, was she perhaps an artist who had reached a menopausal plateau whereby the concept of bedtime is nonexistent and the idea of an 11-hour tennis match seems realistic?

I’ll never know.

But with any luck, I’ll sleep on it.

Sneak-Peek Saturdays: Excerpt One

A NOTE BEFORE READING: Beginning today, I am sharing short excerpts from my debut novel, The Somebody Who. Once a week, I will share a passage -- in order, beginning at the beginning. If you want to read more sooner, there’s a button over there on the left. It’ll take you directly to Amazon, no toll required. (For those outside the US, check your nearest Amazon site.)

**************

CHAPTER ONE

I

Evelyn is quiet as she gets ready to go out. Davy is asleep in the bed. He began his nap more than an hour ago, and though she knows he probably shouldn’t sleep so much, she also is hesitant to wake him.

She tries on a third pair of slacks. There had been nothing wrong with the first pair—or even the second. This is simply her routine. The third pair is always the right pair. That’s how it has been for the longest time. And that’s how it is today.

Her slacks selected, she slips on a pair of socks, some comfortable shoes, and then she tiptoes past the bed where Davy is sleeping. She enters the bathroom they share.

Evelyn looks into the mirror as she runs the brush through her hair. It amazes her that there are so few gray strands. How has she managed to avoid those? It amazes her that she can even look anymore—that she can look at this woman whose history seems to be unraveling so quickly. So quickly, so sadly, so relentlessly.

“What are you doing?”

It is Davy. Standing at the bathroom door, his hair slept on and awry, sleep in his eyes.

Part of Evelyn wants to ignore him.

“What are you doing?” he asks again.

“Thinking about mascara,” Evelyn replies, still confronting her own reflection.

“Is that good?”

“Mmm… Depends, I guess.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I’m going to the mall.”

“Am I going, too?”

“No, you’ll stay here.”

“But what will I do?” Davy’s tone is beginning to change, beginning to take on the whine that drives Evelyn up a wall.

She wants to say, I don’t care! I don’t care what you do! I don’t care!

But, with her reflection standing there—observing—she can’t possibly pull it off.

All she can say is, “You’ll be fine.” And she adds, “Claudia is here.”

“Who is she?” asks Davy.

“She’s your friend.”

“Do I know her?

“You see her everyday.”

“But I don’t know what—I don’t know—”

“You’ll be fine,” Evelyn says again. As if it were a mantra. As if it might really mean something.

The woman in the mirror looks back at her and shows no sign of support.

Davy has turned and is heading down the hall. He is looking for Claudia—this person he allegedly knows. This person who will take care of him that day—who will take him on a walk, see that he is fed, and see that he is safe. And Claudia, by taking care of Davy, will allow Evelyn to go to the mall.

* * *

… to be continued on July 3rd.

In the meantime, if you want to read a short piece about the back story, click here.