My Cousin In Autumn

My Cousin

This morning I read, "God gives us memories so we may have roses in December." -- James M. Barrie.

We would have forced a get-together somehow. A football game usually, or dinner at your place -- something. Telephone calls weren't great. What went on between us wasn't built on words. It was time together.

Fall brings us back.

It's like you're waiting outside and I'm in the house, assuring my wife that we're going to be fine at the game as she looks on skeptically. We sometimes weren't, but you know that.

I took my assigned job making sub sandwiches seriously, and you never failed to compliment. The long rides in the car added rich presence that I did not grasp, but knew mattered. I know now how much. We sat in silence or talked family and politics. Self-assured, we discussed behaviors we hadn't a clue about.

Our seats were usually in the nose-bleeds in the September sun. In Ocotber and November we basked in the gorgeous weather, or huddled in the wind, or soaked in the rain. The December cold left us chattering and loud with complaint.

You'd elbow me when your guys scored, or mutter, "Heh, heh, heh," when my man dropped a pass. I pretended to ignore you as I roiled. On the long walks from the stadium to the car when my guys lost (often) you never needled me. You knew I loathed trash talk. When your guys lost (rarely) I smiled and you reminded me not to get my hopes up: "You're going nowhere this year. They'll break your heart!"
 
One year I could barely walk, but we went. Another time you rested too often so you might catch your breath and I worried. Still we went and didn't speak of impediments.

What I took from you over time was brotherly love, and more; we were boyhood chums. I knew it was your gift to me, as it was mine to you. We didn't talk about that either.

I'm convinced that you return each fall to remind me. But these days I can't touch the sensory experiences with you gone--the aromas, tastes, sights, presence -- like roses without scent. Love's still there. But memory enables enough remembrance as you continue to own me in autumn.

La Villa Pelizari

La Villa Pelizari

05 agosto 1525

Cicadas raising riot the previous day had gone quiet. Dry winds, rising from hills in the valley below, carried amber dust in their folds. The currents moaned like death rattles. Piero’s skin soaked the stillness.

He had been more than a week at the Pelizari villa as he stood in dry clay, worn to powder by hooves and carriage wheels. The dust covered his boots, seeping into seams and leather cracks to his feet. Dirt blew low to the ground across the villa courtyard, blanketing manure deposits and dried carcasses of small creatures.

He had seen no one at the villa for days. He was sick of the oppressive heat, and the silence. And as sick as he was of them, it was the insolence of the missing servants that angered him most.

A splinter break at a beam-post cracked the quiet. He watched a rat slouch toward the open well in the courtyard center.

He thought of the red-haired man in Rome, clutching his chest. He remembered the filthy air along the Tiber, the dust of onionskins rising from barge decks choking the fellow as he fell forward. How surprised he appeared—terrified—as he saw that his life was ending. He was all movement one moment, and then still, eyes wide, hushed, and dead.

The baths on the terrazzo will soothe, he thought. I’ll rest and decide what’s next. Perhaps Marino will return.  Maybe he’s taken the servants for provisions.

He climbed a flight of narrow steps at the outer wall, near the kitchen. Clearing chalk dust from his throat, he stopped at the entrance to his room, removed his breeches, tossed his blouse onto a chest, and moved onto the terrazzo.

A mountain spring gurgled from a cluster of overhanging bryony. The water tumbled into a sculpted culvert and collected in a terra cotta bowl, then spilled into a stone vessel that fed larger baths.

Easing under water, onto a wooden bench, he pressed his back against the marble and settled his buttocks on wood slats. An ache began at the base of his spine; it moved to his shoulders. As it increased, something deep stirred in him. Stretching his short legs to take in the heat, he tried willing it away.

He thought, where has Marino gone? I’m not to be left. He will hear from me. I’m owed. I kept the merchants in line. None of them dared hold back. The old man needs me; it’s time I collected. When he hears of Fregosi’s severed head father will realize. He will want the proceeds from the ships and payments from his other business fools in Lombardy. He will rely on me now—he has to—and if not . . . but I can’t kill him too. Not yet.

The ache softened. He lowered his face to the water and breathed a perfumed smell like heated amyris, or the fragrance of a brothel. He thought of the aromas of nights in Alexandria and Iskenderun.

Who was that odd little man on the morning near the monastery? Stench of piss about him. So eager to serve. Where does father find such dolts? No idea he was done. Had the Virgin interceded we would have killed hime.  Why wasn’t I rewarded? It was my work and father kept it all. I’m done with them; settled with Fregosi for sure.

He cupped his testicles, allowing the heat and his need to draw him into a trance. The steam rose to his beard, soaking the oily ends of its thick black hairs. His head dropped to his chest.

A single cry, the anguished howl of a far away dog, rose from the valley. The wail shook him. It broke the gentle murmur of the pool’s undulations on his skin. His neck muscles tightened.

He heard the noises of the carriage first—loud rattling—like chains aboard ship. He thought to hide, but realized that the sound was harness under strain and the slap of reins on a trotting team. Voices of men, carriage drivers, shouted at the horses to slow.

He raced to his room, picking up clothing, urging a foot inside a legging, leaning to fetch a blouse. He stumbled and fell, and sat to catch his breath. Tugging his breeches over his thighs, he placed his head into the shirt, letting the tails fall below his waist. As sweat and water beads stained his clothing, he flattened his soaked hair and thought, Marino must be back.

On the villa mezzanine, he gazed from the edge of a stucco wall, as Marino left the coach. The drivers were at work unhitching the team. The drays were kept in harness. He watched as the horses were led to a trough near the stable doors. They lowered their faces to a trough filled with mud brown liquid, and lapped.

“Piero, are you hiding?”  Marino called, his hands on his hips, glints of sun shining at the flat of his nose, his olive-skin appeared as though he had just woken from sleep.  Piero stepped from the middle roof overhang into the sun.

“I’m making due without your help. Where are my servants?”

“I brought them back to Pelizari. Left two days ago while you slept, brother.”

“Why did you take them?”

“To bring more efficient ones. I got rid of the others for your sake.”

The wet ends of his hair, pasted to the nape of Piero’s neck, irritated him. What trickery is he about?  He thought.

Marino smiled.

“Before we left, I told the idiots to be sure you had enough food and linen. You found these, didn’t you?”

Piero stared at the coach. Arched wooden spines, visible beneath the cover, hung loose, bulged outward, heaved in the warm wind. The wheels were rimmed in iron casings with gold painted spokes. The hubs were decorated with a coat of arms he did not recognize.

“This carriage isn’t meant for provisions,” Piero said.

“No, but there was space aboard for goods, and there is an additional servants’ cart arriving soon with the rest of what we decided you would need. We have not abandoned you, good friend.”

As he passed Marino, the Paduan reached to embrace him, but Piero pushed by. He heard murmurings, and a rustle of movement, within the coach.

 “I’m sorry we left you, but I received a message from Grigia late at night, from Pelizari. The package you insisted on was ready to be delivered and I saw a chance to freshen your provisions,” Marino protested.

“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”

“You were asleep. I thought it best not to disturb you and I knew that I would be back soon enough. I left a message near the hearth. You clearly did not find it. If you go there now you’ll see.”

He is lying. What is he up to?

“And I brought you a guest,” Marino added.

The nose appeared, sharp as a dagger. Piero saw the beak, before the man. Fingers like gryphon talons drew aside the carriage curtain. Head bowed, the Abbot’s cap perched precisely at the crown of his balding pate; his aspect was like an Apennine wolf among guileless lambs. Piero stepped back, fear roiling in him.

The liveryman laid a stepstool at the carriage footplate. The Abbot descended. He cast his eyes about the courtyard. Barely audible, he complimented a lush growth of azure gentian on the villa wall, above the portico. He looked everywhere but at his son. Piero’s back straightened.

“Does this place suit you, young man?” He asked. His gaze kept wandering.

Speechless, Piero felt his legs weaken.

“Are you comfortable?” The Abbot asked again.

“He wasn’t expecting your visit, Excellency,” Marino said. “He only now understands why he’s been alone. Perhaps we might . . .”

“I’m interested in Piero’s thoughts,” The Abbot said, staring into his son’s eyes.

“I’m comfortable enough,” Piero muttered.

His chest felt hollow. He had forgotten how menacing his father’s mien could be: cadaverous cheeks, hair thin lips and ferret-like ears, bristling with thick bush black hairs.

“Would your Excellency care to freshen?” Marino asked.

Piero stepped back.

“Why have you come here?” he braved.

“You’re too shrewd a young man. You’re not going to believe that I longed to see you.”

“What is your purpose?” Piero said again.

“In time, but for now we are ready to rest. Marino, have the servants follow with my things.”

His gaze tilted toward the plantings over the portico. The Abbot followed his aide to the villa. Piero stood, shoulders drooped, his arms slack by his sides. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throttle his father, and slit Marino’s throat, but both would have to wait.

A bell chimed in the great hall. The night had a cool feel, and for the first time since arriving Piero thought that the air might not suffocate him. Having discovered a new shirt and trousers, a pair of leather shoes, and a brocade cotton sash, among Pelizari’s clothes, he dressed for dinner. He draped a gold silk wrap about his neck, fastening it with a red-jeweled pin. He examined himself—his coat, leggings, and shoes.

The dining hall table was set for two. Hurrying to and from the kitchen, heads bowed, Servants carried plates and utensils from station nooks along the gray walls, their faces all but hidden.

As Piero entered, the Abbot nodded. Its juices oozing, a large roasted pig, dominated the center of a golden-oak table. Wine decanters rested at each setting. Piero sat, his hands placed palms down.

The subject of Fregosi is sure to come up, he thought. Father surely knows by now. His thigh muscles twitched like insects flitting about beneath his skin. 

“Son, why haven’t you contacted me?”

“I think the question is better asked of you.”

The stillness expanded. The Abbot stared at a cup of wine. He breathed deeply and lifted his face.

“What could have enraged you?”

“Loss of freedom on that piss bucket for one, and the demands, worthy of swine, that were made of me. I knew that there was to be no end to any of it. Reason enough, I thought.”

“But, Fregosi?”

“IT was he who imprisoned me and made it his business to see I stayed jailed. So long as he lived I was destined for that ship. I did nothing to deserve such treatment.  I decided to be free of him and wanted it done quickly. I wanted my freedom.”

“Your behavior in Genoa placed fortunes at risk. Fregosi rescued you from execution after the incident with that drab and her client in the streets. He could have seen that you were dealt with more harshly. He might have let you rot in a Genoese dungeon, or winked as they cut you into small pieces and tossed your remains to dogs. Why did you not you reach out to me?”

Piero glared at the Abbot. Reach out to him? Can he possibly believe me such a fool? He thought.

 “I was told you were busy. I was shown letters that made it clear you had no wish to hear anything about me.”

 “Were these in my hand?”

“Yes!”

“You were certain they hadn’t been forged? You did nothing to disabuse yourself of this notion?”

A doubt cut.  Piero’s throat dried, and his stomach churned. He thought of the day, as a young boy, when his father took him to St. Peter’s Basilica, allowing him to assist Mass at a side altar. He thought of the time in young manhood, when his father invited him to dinner with Bishops and Cardinals, at the Castel Sant’Angelo, before the Papal Coronation of Pius III. He remembered how the Abbott doted on him then and longed for the feel of that favor. He reached for a goblet, as the havoc he had wreaked since he left the Lamellina lost its surety. Lives wasted came alive. Images of the candle-lit face of his terrorized prey returned. 

The Abbot pushed back from the table, clasping his hands as if in prayer, closing his eyes. He shook his head.

“And what will you do now?” He asked.

“I mean to take what money you allow me and go north.”

“North to what—where?”

“Cologne, the Hapsburgs. I don’t care where. Just away!”

The Abbot brushed at his cassock, flecking specks of bread from its immaculate finish. His face formed a broad half-grin, as he set his wine aside.

“You must have papers,” he said. “Traveling with money and gems, you’re sure to be a target. Fregosi has friends and they’re furious. Word has spread to every ship leaving Genoa. You will be watched for everywhere in the Mediterranean and Adriatic.”

“I plan to keep clear of ports,” Piero said.

“Will you also keep clear of people who pass through ports? No, this is not acceptable. You will need protection. We have contacts in the north. We will see to it that you are safe. It is time you rested from your work.”

A door closed softly at the rear of the dining hall. The Abbot’s eyes shifted at the sound.

“We have brought you Pelizari’s jewels, and enough florins to keep you well. Whatever else you require you can send word. There is an estate near Vienna. An associate there has agreed to issue conducts—these will ensure your safe passage and protect you on his estates. You may take several of my guards with you. I am told that Austria will suit your tastes.”  

The Abbot motioned, as if to stand; Piero rose before him.

“I am grateful. I will . . .”

“Say nothing more. What I began is my responsibility to complete. I will not rest until you are conducted to places God wishes for you, my son. I’ve ignored you far too long.”

Piero stared at his father’s eyes, struck by their rheumy fullness and the dull white sclera surrounding his pupils.

The old man might have considered these measures years ago and lessened my burdens, he thought. Yet, this is better than nothing, and more generous than I expected.

A black shadow passed before him, flitting noiselessly as a granule of dust in the fluid of his eye.

He felt a blunt force at the small of his back that he knew as a knee. His body driven forward, a thin slice creased his neck. He choked for air, but none came. The blood pulsing at his temples slackened. His eyes pressed outward as though they might launch from his head. He flailed, his body shaking madly. He crooked an arm and reached behind, trying to strike at whoever had him in their grip.

Before him he saw the Abbot, unsmiling, staring at a place somewhere above. Piero’s body lifted from the floor; his back, braced flat against the feel of a man’s chest. Shrieks, like buzzards in a feeding frenzy at a fresh carcass, pierced his ears. Blood trickled and then flowed from his nose. It poured over his lips and into his mouth.

His father’s image wilted, absorbed in the shadowy surroundings. Semblances that had been clear thoughts only seconds earlier returned, massed in confusion.

He remembered the dead man on the barge: flared nostrils, thick red beard, eyes wide and vacant, stunned in disbelief, as his life ebbed. 

©  This manuscript is protected by International Copyright Law from reproduction or any other use by others without express permission of the author.

A Writing Year

A Writing Year

November 1^st proved a celebration of sorts for me.

Last year on that day I began a process of writing a novel that thirty-one days later resulted in completion of the first full novel draft I’ve ever completed.

I’ve been writing since age ten, but over that long period I’d not put together a coherent story of any substantial length or a collection of poetry that felt comfortably ready for a committed revision effort. This after countless writing work-shops, visits to various writing centers, on-line fiction courses, and successful completion of a three-year university level MFA program.

I’ve written a lot but haven’t brought anything I considered worthwhile to a point where I believed it was ready to polish for prime time.

All that changed on November 30, 2012 with the arrival of that First Draft of “my” Novel. Laying the keel for that manuscript began on November 1^st when I participated in NaNoWriMo.

Here’s the link to NaNoWriMo for those who aren’t familiar and may wish to participate at some point. 

http://nanowrimo.org/about

This year, on the eve of NaNoWriMo 2013, I was less fearful then last year and more aware of the writing muscle that was going to be required for the month. I knew that Id have to place myself each day in my writer’s chair and hit keys that tell a story. I’d have to set word targets and trust that as I wrote the story in my head would take form on the page.

Looking back over the year since my first NaNo effort it became clear why last year’s experience was so critical to my overall work as a writer. In explaining why that’s so it’s probably best to lay out the schedule of events—happenings that took place after November 31, 2012.

Mid-December 2012: I picked up my completed novel draft for the first full read-through I had deliberately avoided any back reading in November as the days progressed and the word count grew over the month. Each day when I reached my word count quota I left the work behind. I returned to my non-writing life and tried hard to forget the day’s experience. It took some doing and I wasn’t adept at detaching for about a week or longer, but once I learned, that sense of freedom and enthusiasm for the next days’ effort increased and was intoxicating.

The Mid-December read-through made clear that significant change needed to take place, but the manuscript had a story that I liked, and the story had a beginning, middle and an end. There was tension on the pages and the two main characters had won me over completely. The sense of a whole was real, and I felt proud.

Mid-January 2013 through Summer2013: At Grub Street Writing Center in Boston a colleague convinced me to play with another genre (I’m a fiction writer) for a break from the work of November and together we joined an Introduction to Screenwriting course. I chose to adapt my NaNo novel—such as it was then—as a course project.

The script results over the next 10 weeks (and a follow-up 10 weeks of Advanced Screenwriting) resulted in a burgeoning (read, very fat,) but incomplete script.

In mid-summer I spent two weeks in Western Mass at ‘the’ perfect Writers’ retreat in an atmosphere of quiet and monk-like living circumstances. Other writers nearby were as committed to completing works as I was, but social interactions were minimal. The countryside was lovely; silences had great quality and time passed slowly. I wrote, adding to the work of the two ten week screenwriting courses.

Following that experience I consulted with a Grub St. Counselor and received more input on the work. Additionally, several of my Grub St. colleagues gathered informally for several weeks to review and critique each other’s scripts.

The script, now waiting further revision, involves some cutting trimming. It is as whole today as is the novel draft. More important, my screenwriting work exposed flaws in character development in the story and saw the emergence of a powerful female character as a major force in the novel and the script.

During the year I had medical issues that resulted in a number of surgeries. Though the recovery periods cut into writing time with medications fogging my thinking and physical therapy aggravating my solitude-obsessed need, I did not lose hope that I’d get back to work. Eventually I returned to the screenplay and in addition I dusted off a short story I’d written years ago and that I’ve loved since.

In autumn my daughter married and though that event proved joyous, it was time consuming. The wedding couple and my spouse performed the lion’s share of the work required and I was able to write more than I expected.

In autumn I worked with an editor I respect and have total confidence in and I have revised that short story I love. The experience was rewarding and I’m confident that the revision and editing still waiting for me (after NaNo II) will result in a work I’ll be happy to share with others.

Today I’m immersed in my second NaNoWriMo experience. The experience has been as magical and time-consuming as last year’s. A story is taking shape where none existed on October 30^th. Though it’s tough to say exactly where that story is in terms of completion I’m confident that I will have a first draft novel (again) on November 30 of this year.

So, as I look back, I see an amazing year of collaboration, of solitary writing experience, of writing milestones aimed at and reached, and a growing confidence in myself with the craft that I love.

I’ve had lots of help along the way –NaNoWriMo buddies, my colleagues and professional help at Grub St., Screenwriting formal (and informal) friends and colleagues, editors, guides, and amazing writer friends. My family has given me nice space and excused my absences as well.

I’m looking back at a year of writing accomplishments; had someone pointed out all that would occur since I sat down at that first NaNo blank page – how much I would grow – I  would have scratched my head in disbelief.

I’m grateful.

Keep writing!

ps: I’ve got to get back to my NaNoWriMo novel draft.

Artemisia Gentileschi: Summer Discovery in Florence

Years back, wandering the center of Florence on a warm July evening, I went into the English Book store on the Piazza della Repubblica and discovered there a biographical novel titled "Artemisia". The author’s name is Anna Banti.

The novel tells the story of a resident of Florence, a woman writer during the latter stages of World War II. In a parallel rendering it echoes the experiences of a painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, who lived hundreds of years earlier. The book cover, violent and explicit, displayed one of Gentileschi’s great paintings, “Judith and Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes”. I grabbed the paperback and smitten, I spent the rest of the day reading. The story sent me into research for the novel I was working at the time and deep into the world of Artemisia Gentileschi.

The discovery of the book in Florence was serendipitous, but what followed for me was immense. The very late Renaissance Gentileschi influenced characters and the atmosphere in my work. I used the book cover rendering as inspiration for the work of violent justice required of my own female protagonists. I explored everywhere for further examples of her works and read as many biographies as I could find. I began to feel the presence of female characters in my writing from perspectives I’d not imagined.

If you aren't familiar with Gentileschi you may find that her paintings have the capacity to excite. I believe she is the equal of Caravaggio and to my eye she creates with a similar attention to color and sensory appeal in her subjects—she’s vivid and shocking. As testament to the rich aspects of her brush, there is a shade of yellow that's named after her. When you encounter it you won’t have to be told that you’re looking at Artemisia yellow; it will shout at you.

Gentileschi’s courage in the men’s world of her time has captivated artists and historians since. There is too much to relate of her many perils, setbacks and successes to place in this small space but I suggest that you read about her life and her work.

Anna Banti's novel uses the lush background of Gentileschi’s challenges to tell the wrenching story of a woman's deprivations, betrayals, and her strengths in the protagonists circumstances as the Nazis withdrew from Florence in WWII and subjected the citizens of Florence to their fear, anger, and brutality, in the process. This is a personal account of an extremely vulnerable citizen inside fierce military actions and how powerless such people are in the face of the overwhelming forces of organized war.

When I think of that afternoon in the Book Store on the Florentine piazza, it occurs to me that there's a lot more than museums, monuments, cuisine, and churches, in Italy. Art remains alive there and it continues to change those simply fortunate enough to pass by over the millennia.

Writing Process Questions For Writers

“How does a book or piece of writing begin to take shape in your imagination?
How do you work – do you plan carefully or explore in the dark, trusting the process?
Do writers have any moral responsibility in their work, wider than fidelity to their personal vision?”

I was recently invited by a friend and colleague to respond to questions about the writing process. As I worked through my answers to ten questions I found that the responses engaged me in a way I had not expected and opened me to some fundamentals about ‘my’ process that I enjoyed and that surprised me. The questions and answers follow an attribution to the source (ARVON and The Write Factor) of the exercise. – Robert Donohue

“ARVON, A place where people come together as a community of Writers” 

Arvon is a UK creative writing charity http://www.arvonwritingroom.org/admin/

which in partnership with The Write Factor - http://www.thewritefactor.co.uk/ - have issued an invitation to writers to respond to questions that get to important elements of the writing process.

Those ARVON questions and my responses follow - 

1. How does a book or piece of writing begin to take shape in your imagination? Do you feel your writing is a process of inventing or discovering?

Response - Personal recollections spur me to write; incidents in which I have had some strong feeling form the core of that encouragement. When I’m able organize a rough outline or some meaningful value to my remembrance and can follow events from beginning to end, with a measure of tension or colorful images of place, either intact or concocted, I am moved at the prospect and start building the set into a piece. Discovery is the larger part at the beginning of the process but in the end the early bits and pieces fall away and invention takes over. Sometimes as I invent, the origin of the original event will resurface to challenge what I’m building or to correct it with a more significant truth; I will respect that discovery and bring it into the invention.

2. What things trigger your imaginative process (for example, significant personal experiences, particular people, places, objects, dream imagery, myths, history, etc)?

Response - Historic events and personal stories stir my imagination. A photograph from an American Civil War battlefield, followed by a visit to that place, followed by an anecdote I heard of General Ulysses Grant and his young son upon their arrival in Washington D.C., followed by a dream image in which I saw myself as a subordinate of a leader in a hopeless situation, combined over a long period of four years to help form the foundation of a novel (that’s yet to be written) of the personal history and observations of a fictional character during the final thirteen months of the American Civil War. 

It was dream imagery, involving a monk in Renaissance Italy, and my personal experiences as a member of a religious community in my youth, and the birthing labor of a loved niece that began imaginings for the work of my first attempt at writing a novel. As mentioned in my response to the first question, the specifics of these elements fell away quickly once the form of the story’s beginning, middle, and vague end developed, and the work of invention took over. 

There has been an opaque image of my father in the late 1920’s standing outside a building in New York City late in the evening, waiting for my mother, as he smokes a cigarette and considers something (no idea at present what’s in his head) that has been agitating for more than five years as the foundation of another novel. Like most people, my parents’ early relationship mystifies me and I am excited at the thought of re-imagining them under those tense and wonderfully revealing pressures of their separate and combined psyches. New York City of the 1920’s and early “30’s provides a rich noir background and I feel very comfortable with the atmospheric intricacies of that place and time.

3. How do you work - do you plan carefully or explore in the dark, trusting the process?

Response - I trust the process. I place a spade into the earth and dig until my arms are tired or the hole feels deep enough. Then I stop and read what’s on the page after several hours and a few thousand words. I ask if what I’m looking at meets my criteria for where I believe I wish to be in the story. I prefer that my stories have short beginnings and long middles in which characters are fleshed and plot loops take place and which have tumbling endings where I’m able to feel the movement toward climax and denouement. 

I have tried to meticulously plan my work but I don’t like the act of writing and when I’ve planned to the point that I sort of know where things are to be going my distaste grows even as I put words on the page and I feel a pressure to get up and make myself a sandwich. 

When I stick to the general feel for where I am in the overall concept the sense of mystery and invention keep me comfortable enough to keep digging and piling results into heaps along the trench that I can then sort afterward.

4. Do you feel in control of your writing or are you responsive to the requirements of the work as it unfolds?

Response - I sort of feel in control when editing/cutting. Cutting always feels like pulling a trigger or plunging a knife somewhere: it’s about death and in that sense it’s clean. I feel I’m dreaming when I’m discovering or inventing. Like most fiction writers, I suspect, I have spent long writing periods having fun and believing I was developing something that would work to my wonderment and the appreciation of others and then set that work aside as either something for a later incarnation or an infatuation that I lovingly must leave. I fear control. My experience with it has been that it provides me more often than not with the illusion of certainty but that I usually discover that my idea of control extracts a price I don’t wish to pay in that the work is too often not original or takes a direction that supports something in my ego and not truth.

5. Do you write a first draft quickly and then revise it, or build carefully from the start?

Response - Quick first drafts work well at the scene level and sometimes at the chapter level. I cannot imagine completing a quick first draft for a novel. I wouldn’t recognize anything past the first chapter and by the time I’d completed the full first draft of the novel I wouldn’t recall what I actually had in mind in the early chapters. I do build scenes carefully, working to be sure that the scene serves to move and that the characters are as clear as possible about what they want and that all decisions as to who and what will be satisfied and why have been made and either delivered or held back deliberately. I trust that what I don’t know about the story will be revealed as I move forward and try not to worry when that revelation will occur.

6. How do you deal with blocks in the writing process?

Response - I abandon aspiration to create and let the moment have its way. This assumes a short block of time of course. When I’m unable to work for extended periods, i.e. several days, I sometimes resort to research for existing narrative or edit a short story or write poetry or I read challenging fiction. There is something about being at work on writing that gives me confidence that the desire will return and the action of putting new words to the page will pick up. I sometimes have experienced very long periods where I was unable to do new work. At these times I will look for a writing workshop or tutorial and will sit with other writers offering my work for critique or participating in writing prompts or listening to experienced writers talk about craft.

7. Do you write in service of any particular values?

Response - I value the idea of the story as a dream and am less interested in relating facts or fixed objects and firm story elements than I am of establishing place and rendering character interiors in that space.

I hold to the idea of authenticity and don’t feel comfortable mimicking or copying. I’m sure that I’m guilty of doing just that but I try to clean my prose and my narrative of anything resembling other writers’ work. An exception to my 'mimicry' rule has to do with Anton Chekhov: I was gobsmacked at the magic in the air about Chekhov’s characters, the electric sense of tension that crackled when lovers met or friends fell out or observers, witnessing the grotesque became what they witnessed. I aspire to infuse some of this kind of feel in the atmospheres I write.

8. What have you learned from the practice of your craft?

Response - I have discovered that it is more often the case that I feel separated from stories I write than I feel connected to them. It’s clear that I have put the words on the page that appear there but once I’m done with the work I don’t recognize them as coming from me. I’ve also learned that my work needs to be protected from other eyes during the birthing period and that I’m never quite sure when that period ends. This dilemma can be catastrophic if I move too early. I am constitutionally incapable of being honest about myself by myself and there are aspects of my work that don’t belong on the page. I need criticism. But I’m also unable to hear valid criticism when my work hasn’t developed sufficient breath and voice to dialog with me such that honesty and authenticity are assured/safe. I have missed brilliant input to my work because I hadn’t settled my mind and my acceptance into my work sufficiently to listen from a safe distance; this is also tragic. Picking the right moment to hear and respecting the work as sturdy enough to survive always challenges me.

9. What is the relationship between the writer's imagination and that of the reader?

Response - The writer has prepared an invitation for the reader to attend the retelling of a dream sequence or an event of some importance or interest, i.e. to take a trip with the writer. The fiction reader owes little or nothing to the writer other than to open him or her self a smidgeon to the suspension of disbelief. The writer operates the throttles and steers; he stokes the engine with coal and warns of hazards ahead. The reader rides. The writer has a profound responsibility to tell a story with impeccable truth. Accuracy isn’t the aim; truth is. With or without the reader in mind the writer ought to carry the responsibility of truth to the story’s purpose and respect for the reader’s time and effort (and cost/expense) in mind at all times.

10. Do writers have any moral responsibility in their work, wider than fidelity to their personal vision?

Response – The only moral responsibility I consider in my work is that I must not lie. My personal vision isn’t sufficient if it conflicts with a truth that I am aware of and recognize that by pursuing a particular vision I might create an intellectual hazard for some readers. An extreme example might be if I were to portray a character as credible – e.g. an authority on European Fascism in the 20^th Century – and supplied him with irrefutable evidence that the Holocaust had not taken place. If I did this without somehow discrediting the information or the character I could not proceed with the story as I envisioned it. Beyond that I don’t feel there is a moral standard for others and believe every writer needs to develop their own.

Sadness and The Teacher

Early one morning last Summer I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

As I walked from room to room, examining testimony, gazing at artifacts and watching film of witnesses and participants to the horror and history that this poignant memorial portrays, the overwhelming sense I felt was sadness. I felt sad for the world of the sisters, Anne and Margot Frank, trapped in innocence and powerless at the hand dealt them in a time and place in which louts terrorized unchecked. 

As I climbed steps and walked narrow hallways of the dark interiors that served as prison, brief haven and finally as a place of capture I thought of my own sisters and imagined them when they were young. 

How different my two younger sisters’ childhood had been. How, though at times they chafed in their dealings, they loved each other deeply and how freely they trusted that love. I was unable to imagine, had they been forced to endure what Margot and Anne had experienced, how my sisters would not have been destroyed. I shook at the prospect.

The magnitude of the Holocaust is beyond my ability to grasp--so inhumane that I can’t take it in and sort it other than with horror and disorientation. But thinking of Margot and Anne I am able to impose images of my sisters and a measure of the brutality experienced here takes faint form. And so my young sisters accompanied me on that day in July and the memory of them made it possible to feel, in my way, a tragedy that no one should be permitted to ignore or deny.

And yet, life proceeds even when we all are exposed to the horrors of our pasts. 

I sat beneath a tree near the entrance to the seminary I attended in Baltimore in 1959, reading a copy of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. I was filled with a sense of  sophistication at the thought that I was reading a book that was popular and dealt with meaningful issues that extended beyond parochial interests of my Catholic religion and the narrowness of a provincial Irish-Catholic life I knew growing up in my New York City neighborhood.

A priest, the President of the college I attended, approached me as I sat reading and asked that I hand him the book. As I gave it to him I felt a pride that I had taken the initiative to move beyond the few novels that made up my classroom requirements and had reached into the secular world for something of intellect beyond catechism.

“Who approved this reading?” he asked.

It had not occurred to me that anyone would need to approve anything I read since I wasn’t about to bring works that were  banned by the Church or on lists distributed by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith onto the campus of a Catholic seminary.

I stammered that I could not recall. Something I’m sure grew from my surprise at the question and my quick awareness that my reading preferences were clearly not mine to treat willy-nilly. My answer, as I think of it now, was more no answer at all.

“You don’t need to be reading this Jew propaganda,” the priest said. 

He held the book firmly—closed—in his hand, took a full draw on his cigarette and blowing smoke from his mouth and nose, he stared at me with clear objection. He took long deliberate strides  away from me--he was a little man with a massive head that made me think ‘dwarf’ whenever I wasn’t otherwise terrified of him--and toward the priests and seminarians walking in small groups along the school’s circular driveway. 

What I remember most of that exchange was the immediate conviction that settled inside me: I would not be stopped from reading that book or any other that I saw fit to read. I don;t know where the knowledge came from but I was startled at the  awareness. I had never held a rebellious thought toward my religion, toward a member of the clergy or to any statement by any member of the clergy, until that moment. 

Since then I have held thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of such thoughts. That priest's boorish act set me free: he showed me an interior path of examination that opened me to truths and understandings I cannot imagine would have happened had he not behaved as he had. In that sense, I suppose, he was my teacher.

Post Christmas 2011 - Incident in Amsterdam

Seated in The Amsterdam City Museum cafeteria, waiting to order lunch. The WC attendant, a kind looking elderly woman, is seated to our left about ten feet away. She begins shouting; gesturing at a man who appears to be pushing past her toward the cafeteria exit. I'm rattled: is he a druggie or has he stolen something? 


A cafe chef  or manager rushes from the kitchen toward the incident. The woman turns to us, exposing a large swell, a raised red blotch, across the right side of her face. Several restaurant employees converge, blocking the man from escaping. 


I'm still rattled-worried-but can't figure why. How much concern must I give this: what's reasonable? Am I called to act or is this an episode that  rules of a culture not mine are prepared to manage? 


Employees press the offender against a wall and he will not get away. The chef/manager lectures him. The atmosphere remains animated and harsh words fill the air--all of them loud and regressive. The sounds are a mix of Dutch & English but similar in that they both convey the distress and the confusion. The manager uses his cell and announces that he is calling the police. 


We learn from a young woman--a waitress--that this very average looking man refused to pay a 50 cents toilet charge. When the woman insisted that he pay or leave the cafe he struck her with enough force to raise the wound. 


The police arrive and lead the culprit away. The man has quieted and almost seems remorseful. He is accompanied by--and why this is surprising I still don't understand--a very bourgeois-looking woman. She is carrying shopping bags from several local chic  shops as though the two had been out on a very normal adventure in the city center. She looks to be the man's significant other. My partner and best friend Barbara says, "I'm  afraid for that woman he's with. If he's willing to hit a stranger what must life be like in their privacy for her?" The remark is of course the proper sentiment and it makes me wonder even more. 


I remain fearful and believe it's because the incident doesn't fit the expanse of my ethical range, however broad or confined that may be. Is this a darkness that all of us share? Is such striking out common? Is the well-dressed stranger a monster or a reflection of what anyone is capable of?  


I cannot accept moving about with comfort in a world where a man will hit a woman--or anyone-- because he doesn't choose to come up with the cost  that he clearly owes and that she is clearly entitled to.

too long, too far away

I am traveling. I left home more than two weeks ago and have been visiting relatives and driving coastline, hills and the valley roads of California.

Escape from the New England winter is a privilege I permit myself as often as the chance offers itself and my pocket allows.

My current escape has been especially rich. The look and feel of California is different than my home in New Hampshire. It is exciting and in many ways it entices me to remain.

My western hosts have treated me with care and kindness and if they are experiencing discomfort at my intrusion or at witnessing the routine of their daily ways they hide it well. I feel welcomed and warm among them. Their home is a haven; their company a gift.

Whenever I arrive at vacation places, and however improbable it still seems to me, as I drive down highways, catching sight of farms, homes, sand dunes, rivers, ocean, crops in fields, small cities, or town centers, I find myself thinking, I could live in this place.

I imagine a daily routine and see me driving to the general store for a coffee and newspaper or walking along a city street in a friendly light rain to gather groceries; then brining my loot to a plant-bedecked apartment with a narrow minimalist kitchen and natural wood floors, high ceilings with painted metal ceiling borders and spare Danish or Mission living room and bedroom furniture.

I wonder at the means of public transport in places I travel. Would this town have street cars or a subway system? Do busses and trains run on time? Would I need a car here and would parking spaces be abundant or rare? I see myself racing out at 8:00am on alternate weekdays to move my SmartCar from one side of a narrow street to the other. How about the movies: are there many theaters and how easy are they to get to? Are there booksellers and are they local or national retailers? I wander aisles of books and imagine customers looking very much like the relaxed reader I consider myself.

I worry at the sense of isolation I might feel living out in the country in a house miles from neighbors.

I conjure friends and always see myself succeeding—happy—at my life wherever I look. Only in extremes do I stop these reveries with a definite “No way!”

I’m a dreamer. I’m a romantic. The practical doesn’t hold great allure for me and I love stories, especially ones that include me.

But there is a point when I am on the road that a tipping point of sorts occurs and the excitement—the sizzle—of away diminishes. A sorrowful sense of disloyalty may ensue: familiarities of home force themselves and the moment feels awkward and the dreamy state that the visited place brings on loses its luster.

When the tipping happens I see my cat on his windowsill perch, asleep in the blazing low-hanging winter sun of an afternoon, his soft orange fur warm to the touch as I scratch behind his ears and he stretches, drawing his body to a taut line, then bending his head forward with a relaxed fierceness, reminding me of a savannah lion. My cat is comfortable with me as he is with almost no one else and that comfort pleases me. He feels entitled and I feel privileged to be part of his ease.

I think of the fullness of the light in my sunroom—my work area—allowing me to read and write without a lamp for as long as the sun remains above the horizon. My Windsor chair and its partner, comfortable hassock, come to mind and I think of the years each has been part of my life, how they’ve held me through all sorts of effort and relaxation and how confident I would feel were I with them.

In New Hampshire I relish the feel of mornings in my home as they move slowly by without drama. I know when to expect the woman who delivers the mail and I have a good sense of when UPS may show up. My refrigerator and cupboards hold few mysteries and I’ve grown used to the ways of keeping energy costs down and where I’m likely to find whatever it is I put down somewhere with the thought that I will remember where it was left. I am wise to the tilt of every stair runner and I know where the soft cloths for buffing my shoes are located. There are few surprises waiting for me where I spend my days.

Most of all though, as I travel, the thought of people who are my committed relationship partners work themselves to my awareness and I realize that my need to be understood as I am is the main cause for my sense of feeling too long, too far away and has always been my only actual reason for wanting to go home.

cardinal

What of the winter lives of birds? We’ve become neighborly with a pair who have selected our feeder as their regular morning hangout. We take pains to make certain the feeder is filled and accessible each day.

Rich red male and smoke tan cardinals. They arrive together or separately and perch on aluminum wires attached to the store-bought feeder on our deck railing. The bird feeder was a purchase we made; the choice arrived at after research and discussion of the hazards of putting food out for birds only to have it eaten by squirrels and other small rodents.

We made an attempt with another device, watching frustrated as bushy tailed thieves gorged themselves and made a mess of the deck planking with remains of food they’d discarded in a rush to devour everything. Later, large birds left droppings along the flooring as they fed on squirrel castoffs. Preparing meals outdoors became a walk in an excrement minefield—meals seated at our deck furniture unthinkable. But the current device is a success and the unwanted have sought other decks and easier prey.

Beauty survives the coldest that New Hampshire delivers. Often, as one visitor perches to feed, the other waits in small trees nearby—spindly winter limbs naked of leaves—the male spells the female and she flies off, assuming her partner’s place among the saplings.

We sit and watch as Cardinals feed, before the sun rises and the horizon glow washes the white landscape with sufficient light to distinguish color and shape. Like shadows the birds slowly reveal unspeakable brilliance and the morning sky moves on.

I suspect the pair see that we’re here, sipping coffee, separated, on my blue chair and your sofa space, alien if familiar forms, part of their survival ritual. The quiet feels intimate.

Snows arrived in late December, layering lawns, roofs, and meadows, then stayed through January and into February such that frozen white has become a set style of the neighborhood.

Some mornings the skies take on a strong pearl pink luminescence that I believe is a byproduct of this permanent snow cover.

I stare at the female cardinal, her beak an unblemished, orange, the color of a not quite ripe pumpkin. Her head bobs as she pecks at seed. Her partner’s solid red feathers and streaks of black paint across his head and along his wings give him the look of a tribal witch doctor or a warrior-dancer gearing for battle.

Then I think of the punishment the cold and the winds mete from late December until those days in mid April when the threat of Canadian highs meeting lows out of the south abate and the earth becomes friendlier. Does the winter always kill or will the predators of spring and summer have at this pair rather than the cold? And as they now find safety beneath eaves or under decks and at the crooks of barn beams, what happens when shelter isn’t enough? And in all of this, which is likely to die first and what of the other?

In the mornings—for years—I’ve prepared coffee for us. I don’t know when the practice began. I think it settled as an easy way to please and surprised me that I could do it without complaint or expectation of reward. You remind me often that you enjoy it and in truth it isn’t a bother. More than that, it’s a task that I enjoy for the rare selfless sense it leaves me with.

Oh, I get annoyed at times when my pudgy fingers struggle to separate the filters from one another. There are times when a bend or seam clogs the hot water egress and the reservoir fills with soaked grounds, overflowing onto the kitchen counter and dripping onto our hardwood floors. I feel the heat at the back of my neck and curse the machine, forgetting each time that I secured the filter to the holder and smoothed it against the walls. But frustrations pass like mini storms and don’t diminish the lovely confidence I feel in the chore; they don’t take away from the pleasure you seem to get so many mornings, having your coffee ready as you wake and wander groggy-eyed into our kitchen.

The Kennedy Inaugural Snowstorm

 

The recent 50^th anniversary of John Kennedy’s inauguration and the sunny aftermath of the huge snowstorms that pummeled the northeast states over the past few weeks have me thinking of a winter day years ago.

It was January 1961. JFK was to take the oath of office in Washington DC on Friday the 20^th.

I lived in Northern New Jersey, having moved with my large family from Manhattan the prior summer and having already suffered the first semester of junior year of High School among people I knew little of and cared little for—then.

We left New York because my father had taken a job at a small manufacturing plant in Englewood and was forced, because he did not have a car, to subway it from northern Manhattan to 179^th Street and Broadway and then bus to a lonely spot on NJ Highway Route 4. My Dad walked the final two miles to work. His shift began at eleven at night, finishing at seven the following morning. He cleaned offices and mopped plant lavatories.

He had been a shipping clerk for fourteen years at Stern Brothers Department store, working at a warehouse in Astoria Queens. He lost his job because union managers became enraged by his dissident activities. I had imagined that he would remain at Stern’s forever but that wasn’t to be and he was let go at age fifty, an incredibly old man for that time.

For a summer he worked at a hot dog stand in an amusement park and in the autumn found nighttime work at the manufacturing plant in Jersey.

My father was unhappy cooking hot dogs and cleaning toilets but felt fortunate to be working any job and able to support his six children. My mother’s sister lived in a small town on the Jersey side of the Hudson River; she and my mother were locked-at-the-hip close. They alternately fought and leaned on one another. Fiercely loyal when challenged by opinions of others, they were not above spill over molten sibling rivalry.

Although it was given as the sole reason that our move to New Jersey was to improve my father’s commute, the closeness of these sisters was also clear incentive for us to leave the only home my brothers and sisters (and I) had known.

I hated New Jersey and the obsession of young people there with cars; people went nowhere without them and the few guys I met talked endlessly about them. Some worked on them, fixing up or adding touches like muffler pipes, chopped windshields and leather covers for steering wheels or removing rusted panels on classics, reshaping and applying mountains of Bondo plastic

Talk was always of last year’s car models and prospects for next year’s. What you drove was who you were. Were Chevys badder than Fords? Would a girl even look at a Plymouth? No one thought of dating without considering what kind of car would be involved. I knew little of the nuance of any of it and it angered me that this knowledge was necessary to enter anything like friendship among peers. Mostly I was jealous of skills I never thought I’d acquire and didn’t feel I wanted to have.

There was little about NJ that appealed to me. I left friends in New York I’d known since I was a child. I loved our neighborhood in Manhattan, had been comfortable with the expanse of public parks near our apartment house. There were athletic courts and baseball/football fields galore. The Hudson River formed the West bank of the neighborhood. The park, from the river to the apartment houses, covered more than a square mile of natural forest and was longer than a mile in length, filled with winding walking paths up and down modest to steep hills. The buildings and paths were constructed by WPA workers during the Depression of the “30’s.

There were animals in the woods, Native American, Indian, caves that invited exploration; the confluence of the Hudson River Barge Canal and the Hudson River that bordered the park invited my friends and I to swim from Spring through Summer. The river and the canal were polluted for most of my youth, polio being a real threat, but we were oblivious to the danger and without sharing our whereabouts with parents or any authority we went routinely to the river to swim.

The remainder of the northern tip of Manhattan was occupied by bridges and apartment buildings, athletic facilities and a football stadium for Columbia University students and fans; there were a half dozen public and parochial schools in an area about one Mile Square. Very little manufacturing took place here but there was a large NY City Transit system train storage yard and a bus garage and still larger Sanitation Department garage.

Some apartment buildings were connected to one another and often a builder would ring a center courtyard with five or six identical buildings the center of which contained a small plaza with plantings and a fountain and a look of formality meant to make apartment renters feel they were every bit as sophisticated as their downtown betters. But truth was Inwood wasn’t an elegant neighborhood.

Neither was it a poor neighborhood. Families who made up the bulk of Inwood’s residents were middle-class, working class people. There was an ethnic centric feel to the place. Jews from Germany had moved to Inwood upon arrival in the 1930’s. Irish from the lower West Side of Manhattan (Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, and Vinegar Hill) had moved in as well when the neighborhood first began taking shape. There were to be sure other ethnic groups in Inwood—a few Puerto Rican families and fewer African Americans, some Italians, Greeks, and other eastern European peoples—however it was largely an Irish-Catholic and Jewish enclave.

In Jersey, the presence of single family and two family homes that predominated put me off. My parents were never to have finances enough to afford such circumstances and I was sure we would live in an one of the five story apartment houses that each Jersey town at the time seemed to have one or two of.

We settled in a two-bedroom apartment in the same building as my Aunt and Uncle and their five children.

When snow fell on January 19^th I thought of getting hold of a shovel from the apartment building superintendant and using it to clear driveways and walks for the homeowners in the single and double units homes nearby. I loved the idea of making cash and I considered snowfalls of any significance goldmines.

I’d agree a price and then work as quickly as I could and behave as friendly as I could to ingratiate myself to the homeowner/customer and try to work my way to a large tip. I succeeded fairly often. People loved the idea of not having to lift all that heavy white stuff from walkways and being able to drive cars out of garages easily or seeing the results of street plows that had dumped mountains of packed ice and snow at the end of their driveways simply disappear.

One of my cousins was married to a guy whose father was a superintendant at the New York City Sanitation Department facility in Inwood. My aunt received a phone call from him on the afternoon of the Jan 19^th snowfall to ask if her son or cousins wished to work on a Sanitation snow removal project in the Bronx.

When word of the offer got to me I leapt from my socks. I pleaded with my mother to allow me to take the bus to the city and she agreed if my cousin, who was 20 months older than I was planned to go. I was sixteen years old and my cousin was eighteen. I was sure he wanted in since he was legal drinking age in New York. His sister was our key to getting the work, since it was her husband with the connection, and without my cousin being present it wasn’t likely that I would be invited.

A friend of my aunt’s offered to put her son up for the nights on the weekend that we’d be working on the snow crews. The friend did not have room for me and so I was left to find somewhere to stay.

Fortunately, my sister remained friends with a girlhood friend of hers who was married and had two small children. There was room on her couch, she said, and I was happy to take her up on the offer.

My cousin and I woke on the morning of Jan 20^th and took the earliest bus from Jersey to New York and made our way by subway to the Sanitation Department garage on 218^th Street and Broadway.

We’d been told nothing of the work requirements. It was tough imagining how an organization like sanitation might trust a sixteen-year-old kid at work in any capacity. When we arrived at the city garage in the Bronx a small army of workers stood about or climbed aboard large flatbed trucks. Most of the men who worked the trucks wore gray uniforms and canvass-type gray winter coats with large blue NYC insignias. The men who stood about, as though waiting for instructions, were dressed in civilian-like winter clothes, some of them shabbily dressed, as though they had been recruited from a temporary work services agency. Most of the stand-by workers were in fact unemployed.

Immense plow-fitted trucks idled in the parking areas as other construction gear was being readied inside the garage bays. Large bays were packed with gray trucks, smoke pouring from their exhausts, dozens of men in gray uniforms working over them like military flight deck crews on an aircraft carrier preparing for battle.

Our ‘connection’ met us at the garage and assigned each of us to a driver manning a garbage truck equipped with a snowplow. My job was described quickly by the driver I was assigned: ride shotgun and make certain that as he moved along the narrower side streets in the Bronx that the plow did not strike parked cars or other protruding objects. My driver’s name was Gary. There were many cars snowed- virtually everywhere we rode but Gary was expert and I was left to sitting and watching as he navigated within about ten inches, never closer, to the parked cars.

The work proved little work at all. I sat and listened to the radio, which broadcast news mostly of the inauguration ceremonies taking place in Washington.

My family, being very Irish-Catholic and being members of labor unions and being long time Democratic Party members (my great grandfather was a Tammany Hall leader and my relatives were friendly still with the current head of the New York State Democratic Party) we felt invested in Kennedy’s election victory. At home in New Jersey my parents would be watching proceedings on television but I was off to make my fortune; the prospect of cash meant more than any presidential oath or the success of any Irish Catholic icon for that matter.

I recall Gary’s appearance as hulking. He was a friendly man; had a Mediterranean look about him; kept calling me “kid”. We were assigned a section of the Bronx known as Riverdale. He told me straight away that the neighborhood was his regular garbage pickup route and that he knew it well.

The streets of Riverdale are impossibly narrow under the best circumstances and the heavy snowfall made the streets near impassable. Gary seemed unconcerned. “I know this place: back of my hand… back of my hand!” he said several times as the truck wove in and out of streets banked by small Tudor homes and square ranch houses.

“Kid, this is where I do my regular pickups,” he said. “I know the people … know my route; know the people… get lots of gifts at Christmas… every once in a while, like on a hot summer day, these folks come out with beers that I share with my crew. It’s a friendly place.”

We drove what seemed aimlessly into the early afternoon and as we headed up a street so narrow I first believed we’d have to back up, he said, “Hey, kid, would you like a hot chocolate? I got to make a stop. This house up here is one of my regulars… thinking about having a cup a coffee just ahead… real nice folks. I’m sure they’ll have a hot chocolate for you.”

The house was more elegant than I’d expected he’d feel comfortable stopping at: posh. It had trim white wood plank siding and was built on a fieldstone foundation rising about four feet from the ground. There were many leafless spindly trees planted on the ample property and high snow covered bushes that all but hid the windows on one full side of the house. A driveway twisted down, sharply to the right from the street, ending at a garage door that was not visible when we first approached. Two fire hydrants stood at the sides of the driveway making for about forty feet of car free sidewalk and more than enough room for the truck, with its plow, to pull into and not block passing cars.

As we angled into the curb Gary shut the engine down and jumped from his cab. I sat, nervously, waiting for instructions. He walked up the front walk and rang the doorbell. Seconds passed before the door opened slightly and he quickly stepped inside. More seconds passed and he reappeared and motioned for me to join him.

“Should I lock the truck? I shouted as I got out of the cab. He placed his index finger over his mouth—shushing me—and waved me toward the house.

Once inside I saw a woman in a housecoat, her hair loose—tasseled—as though she hadn’t quite finished preparing herself for the day.

She placed her hand on Gary’s arm and ushered him aside as she approached. “Hi there, young fellow. Welcome from the cold. I hope Gary, here, isn’t working you too hard. Can I get you some chocolate?” she asked.

“There’s s television in the kitchen; you can watch whatever you like. I’ve been looking at the Kennedy thing. He’s the new President today so the news has him on. They keep repeating this part where he says “ask not” or something. It’s getting boring for me but maybe if you haven’t seen it… You can watch that or anything else you want. Change the channel if you like, too, though there isn’t much else I’ve seen on.”

WTF were we doing here? I thought. Nice lady but we were supposed to be plowing roads; it’s a long time until dinner or to the 4:30 work cut-off time.

I lay my jacket on the back of a kitchen chair and sat waiting for the chocolate. Gary made no move to make any of this any clearer for met. Actually, he stood fidgeting with the zipper to his canvass jacket, looking down at the floor and away from me as he did and then he was soon out of sight—gone from the kitchen to someplace unknown.

What impressed me, or actually worried me, more was the silent way he disappeared. Later I would learn the word ‘dissolve’ – it applied to Gary’s exit. He’d been a loud presence all afternoon and now not a peep. His large boots that had made loud crunching noises on the walkway and on the snow went silent.

The woman brushed long locks of hair from her eyes and forehead with her fingers wide as she reached into cabinets, removing a large mug, a box of chocolate powder and a bowl of sugar. She heated milk in an open tin pan and stood by as it warmed, humming a tune I couldn’t make sense of. Every few seconds she turned from the gas range and looked at me, her hand on one hip the other at the break in her housecoat at her chest, clutching her lapels, and smiling.

“You working with Gary first time?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m here for the snowstorm—that’s it. Working for the weekend to help clear the streets. I go to school, otherwise.”

Why am I so nervous? I thought.

I felt a tremor in my voice. If I speak my voice is going to crack. I felt like an ass. I became very aware of pimples at the cleft of my chin and on the left cheek of my face. The woman was someone’s wife or mother or sister. The home was obviously her domain; she was in charge and why was she wearing a bathrobe in the afternoon?

I was used to many more people occupying a smaller home space as this. I had known masses of extended family members in tiny apartments and kept expecting a kid or a husband or someone to burst into the kitchen and make demands that would take her attention from heating milk, talking nicely to a teenager and mostly from giving a shit about me. I was also very aware of Gary’s disappearance.

She pointed me toward a kitchen chair closer to the television and placed the mug of chocolate before me.

“You sit here and the view will be better,” she said.

She lowered a pair of venetian blinds about halfway on both kitchen casement windows. Even so, the brilliant sun poured into the room from the west and I could see that had I sat anywhere other than where she assigned me the screen would have been impossible to view.

What troubled me more though was: the door to the entrance where we had come in as well as to the hallway and whatever lay to my back, i.e. the rest of the home, was not visible. Gary wasn’t making noises and I thought maybe he was in the bathroom; he was gone a long time at this point. The woman leaned forward and placed her mouth near my ear.

“Call, if you need anything but try to stay here until either Gary or me comes to get you,” she whispered.

Her breath smelled sweet and sour—a little like someone’s breath after drinking sherry—and her hair smelled like it had just been washed although it looked like she had recently slept on it. I wasn’t used to older women, not from my family, being so close.

This was mystery; the effect she was having on me, though I couldn’t fathom why either feeling was happening. I felt guilty and excited and my interest in her lifted as my wish that she would move away from me increased. She patted the back of my neck.

“Sweet boy,” she said. And she was gone.

I saw Robert Frost on the TV screen. His hair blew in the cold January wind of Washington and he looked like he was fighting to hold onto pieces of paper he had in his hands. I sipped the chocolate and it wasn’t even warm. I couldn’t hear what Frost was saying but he looked old and I knew he was important and I couldn’t think whether I should be listening to him or finding Gary or going outside to the truck or just sit still and drink my chocolate.

I drank.

I emptied the cup and sat for fifteen more minutes that felt like fifteen hundred. I wanted to look around but some part of me said I shouldn’t. I think I heard a rustling, a cooing sound or a chair leg scraping on wood or a doll’s voice squealing or maybe I heard nothing.

Something was afoot. I screwed my courage and bent down as though to tie my shoe and then looked behind me—upside down—along the hallway that the woman had gone. There was a very white   bolt of cloth protruding from a darker lump of cloth at what appeared to be an entrance to a room against a side of the hallway wall. A pair of pants! A pair of pants and a pair of white men’s underwear lay on the floor at the room entrance.

I neglected to mention that when we moved to New Jersey I was less than six months from having left a Catholic Boy’s Seminary in Baltimore Maryland after nearly two years of prayers and devotions and pursuit of the vocation to be a priest. What I did not know about the world of desire could fill libraries.

I could not take my eyes from the underwear and the pants. I was transfixed by the way the leather belt looped through the holds at the waist. What the hell are they doing there?

Holy shit, she’s killed him, I thought. Why that thought and no other I can’t say except that it was my first thought. And I could not raise my head nor stop looking at the pants in the hallway. It also didn’t occur to me that if she killed him why would she remove his pants. The murderous thought was soon followed by the awareness that cooing or creaking or squealing sound and an understanding that something was happening that my life to that point hadn’t prepared me for.

I turned to the television and watched as someone reached for Robert Frost’s papers.