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Self indulgent

When my best friend in high school and I were bored in class, we would write soap operas for each other. We did it with the sole intent of making the other laugh so hard she would pee her pants a little. Or get in trouble. Preferably both.

With Greener Grass, I'm penning my own trashy mini-series as if I'm suffering through a lecture about Trojan wars. Or whatever. 

Prodded by your comments and the feedback of some real life friends, I'm just continuing. I'm writing with no idea how long this story might turn out to be. So, if you're tired of this, please tell me and I'll wrap it up. Otherwise, I think I'd like to see where Tamara wants to go. The sad little hussy.

If you're new to this and are interested in reading the first part of the story, it's in the right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

An engine rumbled in the distance, cresting a nearby hill and coming closer. Tamara dove behind a dogwood and crouched there until the car passed. It hadn't been Dave. Of course it hadn't been Dave. He was in front of the TV with a beer by now. He probably thought she'd run to the grocery store for more milk or detergent. He'd never notice the missing photo of her mother. Or the candle.

Her absence wouldn't even sink in, not really, until the next morning when the kids leapt from bed and started thundering around the house.

She brushed herself off and looked around, wondering where to go, wondering why she hadn't stayed on the bus until she'd hit a business district.

"Dumb ass," she hissed. "Dumb-fucking-ass."

She shoved the candle in 9874's mailbox. A copper deal atop a black metal post. She thought of her own mailbox, a rusty silver tube bashed in on one side where some punks had hit it with a baseball bat. How lame, anyway, to grab the candle. She should've taken pictures of the kids. She should've at least gone in their rooms and nuzzled them before she left. Then she'd have their fresh cottony scents in her nostrils, the memory of their soft skin on her lips.

Not that she wouldn't see them again. Soon. She would.

It was then that she heard a voice behind her. "You look a little lost."

Tamara turned and faced a woman in a bathrobe. Between 55 and 60 with bright blond hair pulled into a ponytail and glossy lip balm smeared over and around her lips. The woman wiped at it self-consciously.

"I am," Tamara said, "a little lost."

"You live around here?"

"On Houston. Houston and 48th," she said.

"That's only a few blocks away." The woman squinted up the street. "Hey, I think I've seen you. Walking with your kids."

"Yeah," Tamara said. "Probably."

Then silence descended, so complete that she could hear the woman's sticky lips part when she said, "Do you need help of some sort?"

Tamara nodded, horrified as tears began to slip down her cheeks.

The woman put her arm around Tamara's shoulders and said, "C'mon in. I'll make you some nice chai."

Her house wasn't cutesy like Tamara realized she'd expected. No figurines or framed needlepoint in sight. Instead, there were board games. Over the fireplace was a canvas onto which hundreds of Scrabble tiles were glued. Tamara made out the words, Spectacle and Wings. On the west wall a Monopoly board hung, dotted with several wads of crumpled fake money. On top of a side table, was a framed card from Pit. The Flax.

"What's with the games?" Tamara asked.

The woman said, "My husband. He loved board games. This artwork was all his."

"Was?"

"He died. Two or three years ago now." The woman bustled into the kitchen.

"Two or three? You don't remember?" Tamara called, shifting her weight, considering asking if the chai would be decaf.

"Let's see," the woman said, counting months aloud. "Okay, yes. It was two years and seven months ago. He was taken out by the flu. Can you believe that? Influenza."

There was the sound of a microwave door slamming shut, a few beeps, the whir of the chai heating.

"Jeez," Tamara said. She'd have to remind herself to get the kids flu shots in October.

When the woman came from the kitchen carrying two mugs that looked homemade, Tamara said, "Does this have caffeine?"

"Well, yes. Is that a problem?"

Tamara had avoided caffeine as if it were cyanide during her other pregnancies. But then, who knew where this pregnancy was going. "No," she said. "Not a problem."

They sipped quietly for a few minutes, Tamara studying red dice suspended within a paperweight and the woman staring into the middle distance, still with the Vaseline slick around her mouth. "So," the woman said. "Where were you off to on this beautiful summer evening?"

It came to Tamara before she had time to think about it. "New York."

Word swoon

Last week I went to a coffee shop in Queen Anne (the same one where Bossy and I met with Paul Nyhan from the P-I almost a year ago.). On the walls of this particular coffee shop was artwork that I fell madly in love with on sight.

Hung throughout the narrow space of Café Ladro were photos of words. Small chunks from books and dictionaries. And the photographer (or the photoshopper) had focused on a couple lines of text, making them so much more significant than when you see the whole page.

I had to try it myself.

Okay, my gaussian blur is pretty sloppy.

How about this one?

No Photoshopping involved.

This one is probably my favorite...

Yeah, I'll keep practicing. 

Regularly scheduled angst

As a handful of you may have noticed, I didn't post a cat video this Friday. I love a good cat video as much as the next girl. More, probably. 

But I'm dropping it as a weekly feature (nevermind that it was my ONLY weekly feature). The cat video quality out there is just...lacking. Sure, there's a hit once a month or so. Mostly, though, it's chortling, amateur videographers focused on their felines who bat disinterestedly at a pom-pom. For three straight minutes.

So, if I find an especially good one, I'll show you. Otherwise, it's back to my regularly scheduled angst.

Here's more of Greener Grass.

The first part is over there in the right sidebar, under I Like To Write.

*****

When she staggered off the bus at Hartman road, Tamara left the picture on the seat. 

She glanced up and down the sidewalk. She decided to head west. Or was it Northwest?

The evening was balmy. 

Nothing was sexier, Tamara thought, than a warm breeze. A warm breeze that spiraled up your bare arms and legs, that gently blew back your hair, the way a man's fingers might, if the man cared enough to touch you.

She remembered a trip to Key West with Dave. Pre-kids. Where they laid on the beach during the day and spent evenings in a waterfront bar, sipping fruity drinks and Coronas. The warm breeze and steel drums were their foreplay.

Dave.

She thought about him too much. His needs. His annoying idiosyncrasies. His absences. But she didn't think much about the man anymore. About what he felt or why she'd been convinced, once upon a time, that he was such a great catch.

She walked faster. Screw Dave. His wan hugs. His motherfucking mail. His ESPN and his job.

One night, after an argument over an all day golf game, he'd told her, flat out, that he didn't have enough for her. That he couldn't do his job, provide for the family, be a dad and be the husband she wanted. He needed downtime, he said. And Tamara was not downtime. She was more like work.

"Screw Dave," she muttered out loud.

She stumbled then, on a crack in the sidewalk or a stone or whatever. And she stopped and gasped. It was a sign, her stumble. Wasn't it?

When she was a girl–young, around four or five–she had a recurring dream. In her dream, she crept slowly from her warm bed and tiptoed out to the living room of the apartment she lived in with her parents and younger brother. She sensed a presence around her, but knew her family was sleeping.

She knew the presence to be a monster, one of those vague, hairy monsters like the one in Bugs Bunny with the heart-shaped head and the white sneakers. But she couldn't see him. So she roared, to summon him forth. And he appeared and chased her in circles around the living room until she woke up, weeping.

She yelled now, "Screw Dave! Screw Craig! Screw it all!"

No monsters appeared. Though someone did peak through their blinds.

Tamara whipped around and stared at the window where the blinds had rippled. "Screw you, too, 9874 Hartman Avenue!"

What was going on behind those dusty Venetians? Hissing arguments and desires the family members hid from each other and diarrhea-inducing fear and lust. Always the lust.

Possibly, though, a woman lived there alone. Watching whatever she wanted to watch on TV, eating tuna on bagels and oreos for every meal, desiring whoever she wanted to desire.

But no, the lawn was too perfect. Like Craig's, it was a thick carpet of green. 

So Tamara knew there were the fights and fear and secret lust.

...

The giant in me

There's this girl. She goes to Fruit Bat's school. She's in second grade, I think, but looks like she's in fourth. She's tall for her age. Tall like I was. She's big boned too.

A few days ago we passed her on the playground. Her arms were linked through the arms of a few friends'.

I heard her say, evenly, "I'm not a giant."

And as we walked by, my heart pulled in tight and held there. 

She spoke as if being called a Giant didn't hurt. But I wasn't fooled.

Now that I'm 40 (gulp), height questions and observations and jabs don't bother me much. But they used to. When I was in eighth grade, I was 5'11" and weighed 95 pounds.

And my skin, thin as curling jasmine leaves, rippled with every thoughtless comment.

I know we all suffered in junior high (not to mention before and after). I know our hair wasn't right and our clothes were all wrong and we said stupid things, things that made us want to crawl into lockers and hide under bleachers.

But when you tower so, you cannot fit in lockers or under bleachers. You cannot hide. You cannot hope to blend, even for a moment, with kids your own age.

Kitty Cat, who is three until March, is constantly mistaken for a kindergartner. She's going to get it too: The "How's the Weather up there?" and the boys standing conspicuously on tiptoe as she walks by and the stupid, unoriginal questions. 

I can only hope she finds it tedious rather than painful. I can only build her up now, tout the benefits of extreme height (you can reach things! you can see at concerts! when it comes time for dating, your being just shy of six-three separates the boys from the men quickly! there's no wasted time! you'll see! It's great!)

I have to believe this girl at Fruit Bat's school has a woman in her life who understands. Who can talk to her. Who will convince her that she's strong and capable and lovely.

Otherwise I may just have to pull her aside and do it myself.

He's got the whole world in his hands

Here's Ani Difranco singing her new song November 4, 2008.

Goosebumps all around.

Greener Grass Again

Here's the fifth part of Greener Grass. We're getting close to the end, I promise. Er, I think.

You can read the first part of the story over in the right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

She left the SUV in the garage, in case Dave needed to drive the kids somewhere.

She walked the curving streets of her subdivision, carrying the photo and the candle. The roads were different by foot. Endless. A winding labyrinth going nowhere. Or so it seemed.

Tamara finally came to the place where her neighborhood dumped onto Marymoor Avenue. 

She knew the bus stop, had cruised past it three or four times a day, wondering about the people waiting there in work clothes, arms wrapped around their middles, laptop cases dangling from their shoulders. Sometimes, when Dave's car was in the shop, he'd be there too.

Would Tamara want to insert herself into that workaday march again? She'd done it before. For seven or eight years before having Caitlyn. She'd sold ads for  Midwest Airlines' inflight magazine. She'd made good money too. Had comped lots of dinners out, taken clients to Brewers games, worn nice clothes.

She thought again about the other her, in one of the big coastal cities. She thought about her boyfriend there. He was sweet and attentive, but not overly committal. They saw each other twice a week. Once for an expensive night downtown and one weekend morning, when they'd read the paper together in a coffee shop. He had salt and pepper hair and wore a navy blue pea coat.

A bus pulled up. Number 17. She didn't know where it would go. She had no money. She shrugged at the driver and he rolled his eyes, gestured for her to get the hell into a seat.

The nausea resurfaced. She closed her eyes, swallowed and thought about lemon drops. Lemon drops were what soothed her stomach for each of her three pregnancies.

Pregnancies. Fuck. Fuck.

The bus droned down the road. Small lights flickered on along the ceiling. The smell of exhaust filtered in from somewhere.

Pregnant. Craig's. Fuck. But maybe Dave's. She needed to stop saying fuck. A fourth kid. Dave. He'd shit. He'd SHIT. He'd leave her with four kids. They'd have to move away from Craig and his wife. Live where? Didn't want four fucking kids. Couldn't handle three. Abortion. Inhale. Abortion. She couldn't. What if was another Caitlyn or Josh or Eli? She couldn't. Josh's red curls. Caitlyn's single, smiling dimple. Eli's embarrassed squint when she wiped his ass. Her kids. She'd just left them. She was having another.

She looked into the disappointed eyes of her mother, pressed the picture frame to her forehead and groaned.

January / Ballard Ave.

Here in Seattle we saw approximately 3 minutes and 5 seconds of sun today. It was better than nothing. But also not enough.

I walked around Ballard with my new Rebel xsi, taking terribly wan, gray photos.

Bleak, but also pretty, in its own way.

Yet you can't stop

You work for ten years on one idea. You revise, restructure, rewrite. You go through days when you're excited about what you're typing into your laptop. You have days when you hate every sentence your brain puts together. People tell you that what you're writing is eloquent and lyrical and absorbing. People tell you what you're writing is crap.

You sense other's confusion as to why you spend so much time composing stories. Alone. As to why you have to.

You finally decide it's time to release your idea, like a scrubby little fledgling that will hopefully find wings.

Form rejections come in the mail. Photocopied. Cold. Rejections come that are encouraging, yet apologetic. Someone expresses interest and asks that you send your entire manuscript. Someone else does the same. Emails pop up saying your writing style is good, but that the story is not for them.

Another photocopied rejection.

You walk through the hushed neighborhood bookstore, your footfalls loud on the creaky wooden floor. You see so many books. So many that look good. That could derail you with your inferiority, if you let them. You see some you know are thrown together quickly. Nothing thoughtful or lovely about them. But they will sell.

You wonder if you're deluding yourself with this stupid dream. If your need to create is a waste of everyone's time. Time you could spend interacting with your children, cleaning closets or handing out blankets to homeless people.

You wonder if, when you're dying, you'll remember having had your own novel on the shelves of your neighborhood bookstore, with its high ceiling and charming kids' corner. Or if you'll shake your head and think, Not that dream. Couldn't quite fit the pieces together.

You want to make money, want to prove to everyone that all the time you've spent writing has been worthwhile. You want to feel justified in doing what you have to do anyway.

So you keep working. And you wait.

Greener Grass--Installment #4

For any of you following my short story Greener Grass, here is another installment. This is a work in progress. I'm open to any suggestions you'd like to make. Especially if they are presented in a kind and constructive way. The beginning of the story can be found over in the right sidebar under I Like to Write.

*****

Dave was due home in an hour. 

The kids had been tucked conveniently into bed. Swedish meatballs simmered on the stove. The house looked relatively picked up.

Tamara paced from the living room to the kitchen and back again. Every third time she would stop at the large window overlooking their backyard, dim in the twilit evening.

Where their lawn butted up against Craig's, she could see a distinct demarcation. Bright, shimmering turf against Tamara and Dave's brownish tufts. 

Craig's sprinkler tick, tick, ticked in circles. Across the way, she could see into Angel's yard. There were no sprinklers there. No potted flowers. No faded plastic toys upended or wading pools half filled with water and leaves.

God, Tamara thought. God, for just one day.

But that wasn't possible. You couldn't Freaky Friday someone and pop into their life for 24 hours. As much as you might will it to be true.

Perhaps in a parallel universe. Tamara thought a lot about parallel universes (probably because of Dave's job) and wondered what her alter ego was up to.

She was pretty sure one of her lived in Manhattan or San Francisco, that she edited books or sold high end real estate. That she lived in a tall building prohibiting pets and children, and that didn't have so much as a balcony to contend with.

The key rattled in the door and Tamara jumped. She ran, inexplicably, to the meatballs and gave them a stir. She checked her reflection in the stainless steel toaster, smoothed a hand over her still poochy stomach and glided into the foyer.

"Hey," she said, opening her arms for a hug.

Dave stepped into her embrace, gave her a quick squeeze and pulled away. He snatched the mail from the entry way table and dropped onto the couch, began flipping through bills and grocery store flyers. "Smells good in here," he mumbled.

"Meatballs!" Tamara said brightly. Then she blanched. What was she? Some man-pleasing housewife who planned all day what to make for dinner? Who twisted her kids' schedules to include too much exercise and no naps so they'd collapse at night, affording a quiet house for Dave? Who ran to Bath and Body Works during her one free hour so she could buy some sort of lotion that would smell good and make her face look radiant?

All that was missing were the pearls and heels.

"Fuck this," she said, looking around, hands on her hips.

"Huh?" Dave mumbled, ripping open their property tax bill.

"Fuck. This." Tamara went into their bedroom (the quilt neatly pleated at the corners, the dressers tidied and the adjoining bathroom smelling of lime). She glanced around wildly. She should've been thinking, Suitcase, suitcase, suitcase. But instead, all that came to mind was that she wanted the picture of her mother in the distressed, white painted frame and the brown sugar and fig candle she'd just bought at Bath and Body Works.

She grabbed both things and strode toward the front door. Over her shoulder, she called out, "There's yogurt and granola for the kids' breakfasts!"