Gravediggers (3 A.M., #162)

Note: NaNoWriMo begins in several weeks, so I am using my exercises as an opportunity to develop a character/story idea I'm working on.

                  “Go sulk somewhere else,” my Grandfather says through a mouthful of mash potatoes.  “Your Gam works hard on these dinners and I’d like to enjoy mine without having to look at your pitiful face.”

                “Oh, Hank, let her be, I don’t mind.” Gam says.  “She’s got to eat something, she’s all bones.”

                “I didn’t say she couldn’t eat, I told her to go somewhere else.  She can take her plate with her.  Go sit in front of the TV and eat like most people your age.”

                “Enough,” says my Gam.  “Wren, don’t pick.  Eat.”

                I shovel a heaping spoonful of mash potatoes, dripping with gravy, into my mouth.

                “MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm, tho ood.”  I say.

                My Grandfather just stares at me.  Finally he says, “You don’t like your job, go out and get a new one.  No one wants you working in that dump anyway, it isn’t safe.”

                I swallow down the thick mass of potato.   “It pays the bills.”

                “Macy’s is not a bill, it’s an addiction.  Michael Kors, meth—they’re the same.”  He stands his fork straight up in his pile of potatoes, and then extends his wagging finger.  “You can sit around commiserating about all the missed opportunities in your life, or you can go out looking for new ones.  I say with all those new shoes you’ve never worn, it’d be more economical to go out.”

                My Grandfather—always weighing life’s metaphorical costs while reminding you of the literal ones.

                “No one is hiring,” I sigh.  “Besides, hardly anyone comes in anyway, so I have lots of time to study.”

                “So it’s a choice, then.  You aren’t stuck.  Stop the sulking.”

                “I do it for you.  If I didn’t sulk, you would have nobody to give all your unwanted Family Ties advice to.”

                “I said ENOUGH.” Gam is angry now.  She gets up from the table, takes my plate and then a TV tray from the space between the fridge and the kitchen counter, and marches into the living room.  “Wren!  Your smartass mouth can eat in the living room from now on!” she yells.

                I’ve been living with my grandparents for a year, ever since my mom was raped and killed in our home while I was at a night class.  Never once had she yelled at me.  She’d never even raised her voice.  My Grandfather and I pushed each other’s buttons and argued at the very least, ten times a day.

                Gam comes back into the kitchen.  “Go before I carry you in there by your ponytail.”

                I stand up, push in my chair, but I don’t go into the living room.  I walk over to the coatrack by the back door and take my parka.  My purse and keys are on table next to the rack, and I take those, too.  I open the door and walk out into the cold, night air.  I don’t slam the door.  I don’t even close it.  I just walk out to my car, start it up, and head to my job an hour early.

                When I get to the Qwikmart on Jessop Street, I park under the only working streetlamp.  I crack the window and take a box of cigarettes from my purse.  I light one up and smoke it slowly as I watch Carol, a 36-year-old single mother of two, do her shift change routine.  Even though she thinks she has the radio low, I can hear “Don’t Stop Believin’” from my spot across from the store.

                My second soul jumped into Carol once.   It stayed long enough to get her clean and give her the confidence to go back to school to become a nurse.  I babysit for her on my nights off sometimes.  Anything to get me out of my grandparents’ house.

Wallace & Gromit (4 A.M., #147)

                He  thinks I’m retarded.

                “Since when do you care what people think,” Grover said.

                I don’t.  I just wanted you to be aware.  Don’t get angry at him.  It doesn’t bother me.

                “Then why even bring it up,” Grover said.

                Augie crumpled the cocktail napkin and tucked his pen back into the breast pocket of his shirt.  He leaned back and settled his shoulders into the hard wicker chair, and wondered why the Tooley’s, with all their millions, didn’t invest in some nice padding for their lawn furniture.

                “Augie’s not retarded,” Grover told Mr. Tooley matter-of-factly when he stepped back onto the patio carrying a platter of assorted cheeses.

                No chair pads and no hired help, Augie thought to himself.  Some millionaire.

                Mr. Tooley cleared his throat.  “I never—well, gee, Mr. Peterson, I didn’t…”

                “I’m just letting you know before you get such an idea in your head,” Grover said, in that same “it-is-what-it-is” tone of voice.  “He hasn’t spoken since the war.  He wasn’t hit in the head or anything.   Some people just come back like that.  If you saw what we saw over there, you’d understand. “

                “With all do respect, Mr. Peterson, my father served this country in that same war—“

                “Is he retarded?”

                “What?  No—“

                “Well, neither is Augie.”

                “Mr. Peterson, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.  I asked you and Mr. Colwell here today—“

                “I know why you asked us here, Mr. Tooley.  I’m not retarded, either.”

                Augie was sorry he had ever written down the word retarded.  It was the offensive words that Grover seemed to cling to in conversation.  Augie should have known better.

                “Fair enough, Mr. Peterson.  Why don’t we just talk about the photograph shall we?”

                “It’s not for sale.”

                “So you’ve said, but I think if you knew why it is so important to me—“

                “For the same reason the Heart of the Ocean was so important to Brock Lovett, Mr. Tooley,” Grover said.

                “Excuse me?”

                Augie sighed and started to reach for his pen again.  Grover waved his hand dismissively in Augie’s direction.   Augie knew that if he didn’t intervene, Grover could easily get carried away with his movie references—especially when it came to Titanic, Grover’s favorite film.  Augie took the waving of his hand to mean Grover would move on.

                “For you, Mr. Tooley, it’s all about money, power, and fame.  You could give a rat’s ass about the history.  Tell me, do you have any idea what the coat Lucy’s wearing in that picture smelled like?  Or what the note said that Franklin, that dog, slipped in the pocket of her coat that day?  You just want to disgrace her.”

                “I’m not as interested in Lucy Mercer as I am—“

                “Oh, I have not a problem with you hanging that dog out to dry,” Grover spat.  “But it will hurt Lucy.  It will hurt her family, and I can’t have that.”

                “What about you, Mr. Peterson?  What about the hurt Ms. Mercer caused you?  Doesn’t that count for anything?”

                Augie tried to catch Mr. Tooley’s eye—to send him some sort of warning not to go down that road.  Augie had been down it many, many of times.  Augie had read all of the letters Lucy Mercer had sent Grover when he was out on the front lines.  Letters that expressed a yearning and desire for his company, his hand, his warm embrace.  Letters that described long hours spent curled in an arm chair staring aimlessly out the front window, consumed with too much pain and worry to move from that spot until she saw her Grover walk safely up their front steps, breeze in, and whisk her up the stairs to their bedroom where she imagined he would spend many more long hours healing her broken heart.

                Letters full of lies.  Because while Grover was away, fighting for his country, his lovely wife Lucy Mercer was spending long hours in bed with—

                “Mr. Colwell, it was your wife who took the photograph, is that right?” Mr. Tooley was asking.

                “He doesn’t talk.  I’m beginning to think you’re the retarded one.”

                “Now Mr. Peterson, there is no need to be rude.”

                After a long pause, Grover sighed.  “Yes,  it was Mr. Colwell’s wife who took the photograph.  She sent it to Augie.  He waited to give it to me until the war ended and we were on our way home.”

                Augie felt a pang in his jaw, right in the spot where Grover had punched him that day.  Augie didn’t swing back.  Not once did he put up his arms to block the blows that continued to come.  Augie let his best friend of 22 years hit him in the face, the chest, and then the stomach until Grover was too tired to do anything but sink his knees in the dirt and sob.

                Because Augie had just survived a war.  What were a few angry punches compared to bombs and bullets?

Evil ( 3 A.M., #29)

            Lewis Pagano opens his small, leather journal to a crisp, clean page.  He pulls a tiny golf pencil from the breast pocket of his thin, white linen shirt and makes a tally mark on the page.  It is the one-hundred-and-thirty-sixth tally mark he has made in the journal.  It is the one-hundred-and-thirty-sixth day he has managed to evade the Ramsey PD.

            Of course, the Ramsey PD has no idea it is Lewis Pagano they are looking for.

            Lewis tucks the golf pencil back into his breast pocket and lays the journal down on the Formica countertop, which is splattered with bits of congealed grease and black coffee, and goes back to eating his bacon and avocado eggs benedict.

            “Louie,” the waitress behind the counter says as she brings over his second glass of orange juice.  “Sammy has a math test on Friday.  He could use an hour or two of tutorin’ if you’re free this afternoon.”

            “No problem, Ms. Saldarini,” Louie replies.  “I have to take my Ma to her appointment, but I’ll stop by after.”

            “You’re a good boy, Louie,” Ms. Saldarini says.  “I wish Sammy was a good boy like you.  This morning he told me he hated my guts.  Can you believe that?  I bet you would never say something like that to your Ma.”

            Before Louie can answer, Ms. Saldarini shuffles over to two old timers at the far end of the counter and tops off their coffees.  Louie wonders if she sensed that he was about to tell her that in fact he had said worse.

            That he had done worse.

            Louie thinks back one-hundred-and-thirty-six days.  He had walked into the bank where his mother worked, shot and killed the security guard and three tellers’ right in front of her, then held a gun to her head and demanded she open the safe.  Each time she fidgeted, he called her a worthless cunt and a dried up whore.  When she finally got him in, Louie filled a gunnysack with as many bundles of cash as he could fit, then ran out.

            His mother had no idea the man in the Nixon mask was her son.  Her son was at his 9 a.m. creative writing class at Brown.

            Louie got a call from his Ma that afternoon.  He took it on his cellphone in the bathroom of the casino where he had gone to exchange the cash for chips.  He pretended to get online to book a flight home.  “I won’t be in until late, Ma,” he said.  “Try to get some rest.”

            He had three jack and cokes at the bar, then exchanged the chips for cash.

            He had dinner at a McDonalds nearby and reread the worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye that he never took out of his backpack.

            When he arrived home late, just as he said he would, his mother was at the kitchen table, her face pale and her eyes rimmed in red.

            “The cameras were still down,” she said.  “That lazy bastard Manny never got them fixed.  The police have nothin’ to go on.”

            Louie already knew this.  His mother always complained about that lazy bastard Manny, which was how he’d known the cameras were down in the first place.  He had taken it as a sign from God.

            God wanted Louie to rob the bank to get the money they needed to pay for his Ma’s chemotherapy.

            “You should have been out of there weeks ago, but you don’t listen,” Louie had told her.  “You’re too sick to still be working.”

            “Can’t pay for treatment with shells and beans, kiddo,” was always her reply. “Manny moved me to the window closet to the bathroom.  He lets me take as many breaks as I need.”

            The ongoing fight over whether Louie could take a semester off at Brown until his Ma got better ended that night at the kitchen table.  Ma was too shaken up over watching three of her friends die in front of her to argue with him.

            The question over how they would continue to pay for the chemotherapy hung thick in the air, but neither mentioned it.

            The next morning, a letter arrived in the mail from a book publisher in New York.

            “They liked the first chapter of my book, Ma!” Louie said.  “They are wiring me an advance so I can finish it.”

            “My son, a bestselling author!” his Ma beamed.

            Only Louie knew there was no book.  He had typed the letter himself and sent it to the house three days before.

            Louie mops up the last bit of hollandaise sauce with his last bite of English muffin.  When he is through, he pushes the plate aside and reaches into his backpack for the worn copy of The Catcher in the Rye.  He reads a few chapters as he sips from his second glass of orange juice.  He takes solace in knowing that Holden would have done any and everything if it meant his sister, Phoebe, could live.

           

Rusty

It has been a very long time.  Too long.

I'm committing myself to one exercise a day.  It won't be from Method and Madness, because I had to return it to a friend and have yet to buy a copy for myself.  So I'll work from 3 A.M. and 4 A.M. until I decide to shell out the $42.55 Amazon is asking.  (And, when the time comes, I fully intend to start the process over... as when so much time goes by one tends to change and approach things differently. Yay growth!)

So for those of you still reading, be warned that what comes out of me these first days back will probably be garbage.

Because I'm rusty. Really, really rusty.

But at least I'm giving it a go.