Monday, February 25, 2008

Karen goes home to visit

This short story came out of a writing exercise at a writing conference in Zurich, before the Geneva Writer's Group started doing their conferences. The session was led by Jake Lamar http://www.jakelamar.com/ and he told us to write about the same person from different points of view...I deliberately didn't include Karen's point of view. I let all the other characters tell her story.
It won Honorable Mention Negative Capability Fiction Contest in 1997.



Anna, Karen's mother
Look at her sitting there, Miss-Butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth. And look at her father eat it up. We don't hear a word, not one single word from her for weeks and then she breezes in. Comes up behind me as I'm washing dishes. Gives me a big kiss. Bold as brass tacks. There are phones to warn a body, I told her that. And what did she do? All she did was laugh.

Does she come alone? No, drags a friend, so I didn't have a chance to make things clean and nice. What does she say for herself? Says Marie cares more for people then clean and nice. Mocks me, she does. My own daughter.

And just where were you, I ask. Paris she says. Painting on sidewalks. Is she joking? Is that anything for a forty-year old woman to be doing? At least we didn't get an operator asking, "Will you accept a collect call from Karen?" How many times have I heard that? Of course, I always say yes. What if she were hurt or in real trouble? You never know. There's so much danger in the world.

She should settle down. Haven't I been saying that for years? No one listens. Not one whit.

Poor Larry is talking to her just like he use to when they were in high school. She should never have married him. He still lights up when he sees her even if he has married again. Even her father, who thinks Karen tinkles liquid gold, never blamed poor Larry for the divorce.

When I asked her wasn't she ashamed to be the first divorced person in our family, she just looked at me like she couldn't understand the question. I don't care if everyone gets a divorce these days. I believe in commitments. She refused to cook, clean. All she wanted to do was paint. She said anyone smart enough to run a store was smart enough to wash his own jockey shorts. And her father just sat there nodding his head. Humph. He can't even put his underwear in the hamper. Leaves it on the floor wherever he undresses.

And what about Sandy? She needs a mother, although Lord knows Jeanne is good with the child. Poor Larry was really lucky to find Jeanne. They give my granddaughter the stability Karen never could. Karen may be my daughter and I love her, God knows, but she has been a disappointment from the day when she refused my to put on her pink ruffled dress. What was she? Two? Three?

Sam, Karen's father
It's great having her home. Who'd have thought a little girl from Rockport, Maine would have had the courage to go to Europe all by herself ...well Marie was with her...but two women on their own…

I'd never tell her, but I'd be scared to death. Mama and I did take that tour a couple of years back...a tour....nothing where we had to find stuff on our own. Good thing we did. Even with that ten-week French course at the adult education center...I didn't understand one word the Frenchies said. Nice looking young guide did it all...thank goodness. Mama...claimed she couldn't understand her accent ...jealous. Mama's always jealous...even resents Karen and Nancy....imagine...jealous of her own daughter and sister.

I knew right away we'd a tomboy on our hands...real dare devil she was. The time the fire department came to get her out of the tree... she was so angry. Said she'd have come down when she was good and ready...just wasn't ready then.

Sandy and Larry are here... Nice guy, Larry...never right for Karen. Yet when you see 'em all yacking together, you'd never know he had a wife waiting for him in the car. Boy will he get it, when he gets out there.


Jeanne, the second wife
What's keeping Larry? All he had to do was drop off Sandy, but no, he insisted on saying hello to his ex-in-laws. He sees them when they come into the store, he doesn't need to stop now. I know he really wanted to see what She looked like after being in Paris. I wish she'd just go away and never come back.

At least when she was away I had Sandy and Larry to myself. It use to take me days to get Sandy back to normal after she went to New York to visit her mother. She filled the child's head full of dreams but couldn't send her back with clean clothes. Probably thinks of me as nothing more than a laundress.

And she could have shown some appreciation for my picking up the shards of her life. Took me weeks to get that house clean after she walked out. Of course, if I hadn't Larry would never have thought of me as his wife. Made myself indispensable. He was so grateful everytime I cooked a meal. Spaghetti, lamb roast, pork pie. He really packed it away. Blueberry pie did it.

I had such a crush on him when we were in high school. But it was only her he was interested in. He hasn't forgotten her, but I'm the one who will be there for him, not her. Maybe I should go in and see what's keeping him. No, I'll wait. Won't give her the satisfaction.

Sandy, her daughter
Jeanne almost talked Dad into making me stay home tonight, but I won. She thinks Mum is a bad influence. I think Mum's a trip.

I hope Mum lets me go back to her loft in New York soon. It's neato, no furniture, and I can drop my clothes where I want. No prissy stuff anywhere. Last time I was there we got Chinese food from around the corner and ate it right out of the cartons with chopsticks. We sat on the floor, picnic-style. I'd like to live with Mom, but no way José. If I ever even thought of mentioning it, it would be explosion city. Dad and Jeanne would accuse me of being ungrateful. Anyway, I'm not sure Mum really wants me there fulltime. She gets so involved in her painting. Maybe when I graduate from high school, next year I can go to college in New York, stay with Mum and Marie.

Sometimes I think Dad still loves Mum a bit. He never looks at Jeanne like he's looking at Mum now, but if they're together too long they fight. Lots of times it's about me. I wonder if I hadn't been born if they'd have gotten a divorce. Mum says yes. The divorce is not my fault, she says and if I doubted it I should look at how they both live and see if the two life styles are compatible.

Larry, her ex-husband
Karen sure looks good. Paris must have agreed with her. Maybe a little too thin. She always ate like a pig and never put on a pound. No boobs still.

I'll never tell her, but she was right to leave. We never spoke the same language.

Jeanne is better for me. Loves to fritter around the house. If only Sandy wouldn't fight her so much. I suppose that's normal, stepmother and all. Too bad Jeanne wouldn't come in and say hello. She's always jealous of Karen. Thinks one never forgets their first love. She's right, but that doesn't mean you compound a mistake.

I need someone to help me in the store, run my house, keep Sandy in line not someone who always is in front of a canvas.

Hells bells, sometimes I'd come in at ten at night, dog tired, and find the breakfast dishes still in the sink, the baby fed from a can, and Karen would still be painting. Don't know if she's any good or not. Never did understand that stuff.

Something about Karen, is you are either enchanted by her or turned off. Her Dad, me and her Aunt Nancy were always in the first group.

Nancy, her aunt
I'm so proud of her. I know I made my sister mad the way I could get Karen to do things that she couldn't. Anna always confronted her head on. Me, I never let it get to that stage.

I remember when she was eight. Anna wanted her to wear that yellow dress to someone's birthday. I forget whose, now. They say the memory is the first to go. Ha Ha. What a tantrum that kid pulled. When she calmed down I looked at her and said, "You don't have to go, but the cake will be chocolate" or something like that. You could have ridden a bike around that lower lip. Then I added, "You can stay home. It's your choice." She got dressed real quick.

I drove her to the party. On the way she saw a snake at the side of the road. Loved snakes. Read everything she could on 'em.

"Stop, stop, Auntie Nancy," she cried.

I did. She hopped out and picked it up and was about to take it into the car. Now Anna would have made a big scene. I used a little psychology. "Can you imagine," I said, "The screams of all those sissy girls if you walked in with a snake." The snake flicked its tongue.

Her face lit up like a Christmas Tree. "Yeah," she said. Then she looked at me. "Not a good idea, hun?"

"Put it back and we'll stop after the party." Of course the snake was long gone when we stopped two hours later. Karen found it funny my walking through the woods calling, "Here snakey, snakey, snakey," like I called the cat. Boy, was Anna mad not only that were we late, but Karen's dress was torn and filthy from tramping through the woods.

That Marie seems like a nice girl. Helped set the table, chipped in without being asked. Polite. I wonder if... probably not... not that it matters.

Marie, her friend
I wish Karen would tell her parents about us. She never will. She says she's on her mother's shit list often enough without that. My mother loves Karen, says she opens the world to me, and she has.

God, Paris was wonderful. So was Provence. Six months. We both did some good work.

The Newbury Street gallery will take my work, and she's got a show in two months in Soho. It's finally coming together for us.

She complains a lot about her family, especially her mother, but I noticed she wanted to come up here and see everyone just a couple of weeks after we got back. She makes up such crazy stories to shock them. Painting on the sidewalk. My God.

I thought she was kidding when she told me that her family had baked beans and brown bread every Saturday night. But that's what we're eating. Her mother must be a little pleased we're here. Karen says the cole slaw is a special treat, and I never saw anyone throw an apple pie together so fast. Smells good.

Karen said she'd scratch her chin when she's ready to leave. She'll need to talk a lot. Glad we booked into a motel. It will be easier than staying here. I'll just sit here and wait.

Sounds

This story was inspired by a retarded woman who did deliver the mail and did have a crush on one of the managers where I worked many years ago. He was extremely kind to her, as was everyone, and she was probably one of the most caring employees who really worried that she wasn't doing her job well enough., but she was talked proudly of having her "career" just like her sister. I wanted to try capture the dignity and hopes of a person who does not quite fit into mainstream society, yet has to meet challenges and disappointments.

She collected sounds: not ordinary sounds like rain on a roof, but exotic sounds that most people wouldn't notice like the poff of a breaking pimple. Each sound had a code. She kept records in notebooks, hundreds of notebooks. They were all the same, black with white marbling and a printed label that said: "This notebook belongs to_______." On each of them she had printed Heather Davis and the dates she had started and finished. These were filed in chronological order on the bookshelves of her rented room. Each page's entries were perfectly aligned, each letter, each number exactly the right size.

She had started her collection when she was eighteen with ordinary sounds, a singing bird, the dishwasher filling with water. That wasn't too long before her parents had died. They'd gone to their graves convinced that she'd never be able to care for herself. Heather had proved them wrong.

She thought she had a wonderful job delivering mail at a bank, a few blocks from her room. It was more than a job, it was one of her careers. The creak of the left cart wheel that she used for the white external and brown internal envelopes was recorded in her 187th notebook. Her left wheel made a 6-E-Yellow but the right was 7-E-Yellow. Although she never did composite sounds the squeak of the two wheels together had been marked this way: 6-E-Yellow (7-E-Yellow)7-E-Yellow (6-E-Yellow).

Her favorite stop was the Mortgage Department. Allan, the manager, always smiled and thanked her as she placed his mail in his in-box. She thought she might be in love with him, but she knew he had a girl friend. He kept a picture of the woman on his desk. The same blond lady sometimes stopped at the bank to borrow the keys to his car, a red two-seater.

That car was the kind that made people turn their heads when he drove by. The sound of the engine turning over was coded as 17-J-Green. She'd rushed out one night to listen as Allan was leaving and had stood behind a large rock and heard first a click, 9-P-Purple, followed by a rev, 17-Q-Teal and the hum which was a 2-J-Aqua.

The same night when she entered her daily sounds, she pretended that some day she would ride in his car, a multi-colored scarf in her hand which she would hold out the window like she had seen the blond lady do.

Then she concentrated on the sounds of the day: five keys attached to a penguin key ring hitting a tile was 19-K-Blue, a fork scraping up the last mashed potatoes and gravy, 16-Z-White. She thought she had rated a lot of silverware over the years and they usually were in the 16-17, X-Y and some times a Z range, but always, always white.

Heather was tired. There had been three mail deliveries to sort instead of the usual two. She was late delivering the president's mail. His secretary had frowned at her. Then ten minutes before she was due to leave the heavens had opened up. Lightning. Thunder. She didn't chronicle those sounds any more, she'd heard them all, written them all. Her rain coat was back home. She started out on her three-block walk at a fast trot.

"Heather?"

She turned to see Allan, holding his car door open. Should she get in? Wet his upholstery?
"Hurry up. You're drenched and you'll catch cold," he said.

She didn't need another invitation. The interior was even more beautiful than she'd imagined. The dashboard was polished wood, the seats were butter-soft leather. She wasn't sure of the hue of the lilac.

"Do you live far?" he asked.

"Oak Street, number 22," she said.

The traffic was so heavy the car sat immobile, imprisoned between other cars. She didn't care because she was sitting next to him and she could pretend she was the blond lady. Heather wished she had a multi-colored scarf, but even if she had she didn't want to open the window and get the inside wetter than she already had.

The light changed, but Allan could only move the car three lengths before the signal returned to red. Even with the traffic, all too soon they pulled up in front of the house where she rented her room

"Do you want to come in? I just bought some Girl Scout cookies. Chocolate mint." If he said yes, she could show him her notebooks. She had never shown anyone. He probably had never guessed that she had outside interests beyond her banking career. Those notebooks were her legacy to humanity: a complete encylopedia of noise. But she couldn't say, "Do you want to see my legacy to humanity."

"I would really like to, but I'm already later. Daphne will kill me," he said. Then he looked at her face. "Perhaps if you've any left bring them to work. We can eat them at coffee break."

"Oh yes." Heather jumped from the car and forgot to thank him for the ride. Inside her room she tore some cling film, making a 6-K-Green sound. She wrapped eight cookies, then reopened the packet and made it 12. Allan was big, he could easily eat six or eight. She'd have whatever he left.

After she'd dried off, she took her notebook and her multi-colored felt tipped pen set and began writing down the day's sounds. Someday when was famous for having catagorized the most sounds, Allan might even forget Daphne. Tomorrow she would take the notebook, to show him when they ate their cookies. No, not the current notebook. Number 79. That was the one she had taken when she'd gone to the beach with the sounds of waves, the flap of blanket, the click of a sun umbrella being opened and charcoal hitting the barbecue. It was her favorite.

On her way to work the next day, she stopped to buy napkins at the paper store. They had yellow roses all over them. She saw a yellow round candle, but thought it might be too much for just a cookie break.

At ten she ran upstairs to his office with her cookies and napkins. Because he was with a client, she waited.

When he came out the door, he shook the man's hand. "Heather?" his voice sounded surprized.

"I bought the cookies." She held up the bag. "And these pretty napkins."

He looked confused and then glanced at his watch, "OK. We've time before my next appointment. I'll get my secretary to bring us some coffee."

Heather wanted to dance. "I'd rather have milk."

"Right." He ushered her in the office and picked up the phone. "Can you please bring me a coffee and get a milk, please."

Heather opened three napkins, one for him, one for herself and one in the middle, where she arranged the cookies in a circle. By the time the secretary arrived, Carol had everything perfect.

Never had cookies tasted so good. Within two days she had ridden in his car and now they were eating together. Maybe he'd forget Daphne. A knock on the door (9-K-Brown) not worth entering as she had knocks on wood, glass and metal already) interrupted her train of thought as she was trying to think of some way to tell Allan about her sound collection. The notebook stayed in the plastic bag that had held the cookies and napkins.

Daphne put her head in the door. "Hello Darling, I was down town and wanted to stop in to see if you'd be free to....Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know..."

He stood up and introduced them. Heather's mouth was stuffed with cookies and she mumbled, although she knew she shouldn't talk with her mouth full.

"Allan has told me about you," Daphne said, holding out her hand.

Heather felt all warm inside. He cared enough to mention her to others. She took the hand, although her fingers had chocolate on them. Daphne reached for a napkin. Heather grabbed it, upsetting the rest of her milk on Allan's papers. The sound of the glass hitting the desk was 14-U-Black.

"Oh, how clumsy," Daphne said.

"It's all right, Heather," Allan said grabbing a handful of the napkins and patting the milk. "Look, nothing has run."

"Your papers. They'll smell sour," Daphne said.

"I can photocopy them. No original signatures. Heather, if you had to spill the milk, you choose the best place."

She knew she was blushing from the heat on her cheeks. She backed out of the room. In the ladies room she washed her face which was blotched from crying.

Her supervisor came looking for her, "What's the matter, Heather?" she asked.

Heather shook her head.

"Well you better get going, you're behind," the supervisor said.

Heather never wanted to go back to the Mortgage Department, but then she remembered: her notebook was still there. She debated abandoning it, but the sounds were too special.

She put four interoffice envelopes in Paul Graves' basket exactly in the middle as always then passed Allan's secretary who was talking with Daphne.

"Really, he shouldn't encourage her, the poor thing," the secretary was saying. The milk-stained papers were in her wastebasket.

"Allan always takes in strays. Even his dog he found abandoned along the side of the road. At least he won't bring Heather home," she laughed. They both look up and saw her.

Am I a stray, Heather wondered. No. I have a home. She walked up to Allan's door and hesitated. How could she ask for the notebook? How could she give it up?

*****

Allan saw her through his window and came out. "I'm glad you're here. You forgot this." He handed her the black notebook.

His big smile didn't melt her this time. For some reason he was only nice to her because he felt sorry for her. He had no right. She was a good as he was. Better maybe. She had two careers, he only had one. She hugged the notebook to her chest. Nothing mattered. She had her life's work and when she was famous, she would show them all.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Tacky

There's nothing original in this story at all, but then if Shakespeare could use well-worn plots, why can't I...we won't compare talent levels. Anyway it was fun to play with this often repeated practical joke and hopefully make it just a tiny bit less of cliché-

Mumsie gave it to them for Christmas, her face alive with expectation as Louise unwrapped the three-foot ceramic gnome. Louise and Mitch swallowed. Most years she gave them a large check and a crate of oranges shipped from a stand near her Naples, Florida home.

Mumsie clapped her hands. "Usually I don't know what to get you, and settle for a check and fruit. But on my last visit I saw that gnome book in your bathroom." Louise didn't tell her mother-in-law the book, found at a flea market, was for short term reading, not a sign of gnome-love.

While Mitch and Louise wondered how to pay their car insurance without the check, Mumsie said, "The glaze didn't come out like I wanted it. The color is off."

Louise looked at the gnome. "The color is fine."


What to do with the gnome became a game the couple played with Ellen and David, their best friends and neighbors. Regifting was unacceptable, although everyone thought it.

While playing bridge one night Ellen said, "You could make a lamp out of it. One heart."

"Who needs a three-foot ceramic gnome lamp? One spade," David said. He pushed his white hair out of his eyes. As always, he was overdue for a haircut.

"The person who needs a three-foot gnome lamp is someone who has a three-foot gnome and doesn't know what to do with it," Mitch said. "One no."

The bidding ended at three no trump and a decision not to make a gnome lamp.

On the first spring day Mitch and David took the gnome to the backyard. After trying several locations, they settled it in front of the basket-weave fence bordering the patio.

"There." Mitch said, "We can tell Mumsie we put it here so we can see it when we eat outdoors."

"With our backs to it?" Louise asked.

Their daughter, Danielle, put her Betsy Wetsy doll in the gnome's arms. "He can babysit for me," she'd said.

Ellen and Louise were stretched out in deck chairs facing the "orchardette" as Mitch called the six apple trees. In spring the blossoms scented the air, in summer the trees provided a breeze. In winter Louise loved looking at the snow frosting the trees from her kitchen window as she washed dishes.

"And we can tell her we look at it out the windows," Mitch said.

"The gnome is invisible from any window in our house," Louise said.

"Precisely," Mitch said. He took a photo of the gnome with Danielle's doll, and mailed it to Mumsie. In her next letter she thanked them for the photos and reported how much her ceramics teacher liked the fence.

The gnome witnessed summer barbecues and Danielle splashing in her plastic pool. He went almost unnoticed until his Christmas when Mitch strung him with lights.

"Tacky," said Ellen as they went inside after looking at the gnome. Louise poured eggnog as Mitch and David struggled to put Danielle's toy kitchen set together. The directions were for another set.

"That gnome is definitely Tacky," said David holding the door of the refrigerator to the frame. The holes for the screws were mismatched.

"Tacky, tacky, tacky," said Louise. "At least this year, Mumsie sent a check."

"That's it. We'll call him Tacky!" Mitch smiled the smile that told Louise he was feeling self satisfied.

Decorating Tacky for holidays became a tradition. He held an Easter basket. He wore Danielle's discarded witch costume at Halloween. Always they took photos for Mumsie.

When Mumsie visited at some point during each stay she would say, "I'm so glad I made him. You children get such fun out of him." Mitch and Louise said nothing for Tacky had become the curse of the household.

"Have you seen my blue sock?"

"Tacky took it."

Even Danielle blamed Tacky for messy rooms, spilled milk and dirty hands.

When Louise gathered forsythia from the backyard, something felt wrong. Going into the kitchen, she climbed the stepladder to reach her pewter vase on top of her cabinets. A niggling grew as she arranged the flowers, but not until she stepped back to admire the yellow against the grey did it hit her.

"Shit!" She ran down the cellar stairs through the family room and out to the patio.

"Shit!" The empty space confirmed her niggling. "Tacky's gone."

After lunch she checked the tool shed, the car and attic to see if Mitch moved the gnome. Nothing. When she phoned him, she was told that he was in a meeting. She asked his secretary to pass him a note to call ASAP, something she'd done only once when Danielle had been rushed to the hospital with a temperature of 104°.

Mitch called within ten minutes. "Who'd steal him?" he asked.

"Someone with terrible taste. He's been gone at least since last night." Louise paced as much as the phone cord allowed. Usually when she talked on the telephone, she leaned against the wall.

"How do you know?"

"The ground was wet where he was. It rained last night. If he'd been there all night there'd be Tacky footprints where he'd been."

"Aren't you a little Jessica Fletcher," Mitch said. Thank God, Mumsie isn't due until late June."

"Maybe we can get a duplicate made," Louise said. "Then again, maybe not."

"Nothing else was taken." Louise told Ellen the next day as they shared a pot of tea celebrating Ellen and David's selection by their university to attend the Burkina Faso African Film Festival. "The snow blower and hedge clippers are more valuable. They were in the open tool shed," Louise said. She tapped her spoon on her cup.

"Maybe it was a joke." Ellen pulled the tea infuser from the pot.

Louise poured milk into her tea. "I think Mitch misses him. He couldn't find his car keys this morning and started to say, 'Tacky took them.' Then stopped. He had a funny look on his face." She shrugged. "He's going to the police tonight."

"Robberies are common. Recoveries aren't," the police chief said. The chief is Louise's uncle. Mitch pulled a photo of Tacky holding an American flag from his pocket. The chief fingered it. His desk was hidden under papers. An ash tray overflowed with half-smoked cigarettes. "Probably a kid," the chief said. He held the photo to the light. "Why do you want it back? It's kinda ugly."

"Mumsie made it," Mitch said He could call the gnome ugly, but he didn't like someone else doing it.

April showers gave way to May showers. Being cooped for several days of uninterrupted rain left Danielle cranky. Louise dressed her in a yellow slicker before shoving her outside to play.

Danielle waved to the postman, who was covered head to toe in a clear plastic poncho. His sack under the poncho made him look like a toadstool. He handed her the mail.

"Take this to your Mommy," he said. She waited for a drop of water to run off his nose. When it dropped, she carried the mail in to the house.

Louise bit her tongue rather than mention wet boots or clean floors. Instead she took the letters. The phone bill was drenched. Another envelope told her she was one of three lucky people who might have won $100,000. She hadn't.

The third, addressed to both her and Mitch, bore eight stamps with portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and a London postmark. The envelope was heavy. When Louise opened it, several photos and a letter fell out. The first picture was of Tacky next to Emmaline Pankhurst's statue. "I talked with a famous feminist" was written on the back in blue felt tip pen. It must have been shot from the ground. Tacky's head was very big. In the background Big Ben was very tiny. In the last photo Tacky stood on a bar with two men, each with an arm around him, "My mates and I had a jolly game of darts." Whoever wrote on the photos didn't wait for the ink to dry. Blue spots covered the gnome's face on one photo. The letter with the photo said:


Dear Louise and Mitch...
Have gone on vacation. Am having a wonderful
time, wish you were here. Don't worry. I'll be back.
Love to Danielle and Mumsie.
Tacky

Over the next few weeks photos chronicling Tacky's holiday arrived every few days. He ferried across a Norwegian fjord. He developed a taste for ompah-ompah music in Munich. Someone had loaned him a pair of lederhosen and a trumpet. A musician handed Tacky a beer. The froth was almost half the glass.

In France he took the night train from Paris to Nice and laid in his bunk under a green and red plaid SNCF blanket. A hand dangled from the upper bunk. Although Louise studied the hand with a magnifying glass, she couldn't recognise it.

Each envelope had at least one picture of a statue with whom Tacky claimed kinship as he oogled topless women in St. Tropez, but atoned for it at St. Peter's. A pigeon rested on his head. "Blessed by the bird but not the Pope," he wrote.

"That damned gnome is taking our dream vacation," Mitch said.

Mumsie arrived from Florida tanned and content to be back. She listened to the story of Tacky's disappearance. "I always wondered: why do you call him Tacky?"

"Because he's so taciturn," Louise said. Mitch flashed her a grateful smile.

"Maybe Ellen and David did it," Mumsie said.

"They're in Africa not Europe," Mitch said. "We got a letter last week."

Ellen and David returned the last week in August in time to plan a Labor Day barbecue in Mitch and Louise's backyard. It rained Saturday. It rained Sunday.

Ellen telephoned. "Think we'll be able to cook out?"

Louise was making potato salad, her eyes were wet from chopping onions. She cradled the phone between her shoulder and head. "We can always cook under the deck." She glanced at, Mitch dozing on the couch, the New York Times Book Review across his chest. Louise heard the steady putt putt of his snores.

Monday morning's sun dried some puddles, but not all. Mitch swept the rest of the water off the patio. The door to the tool shed was swollen from the rain. He moved the lawn mower to get to the barbecue. With its large wheels it rolled easily over the grass bumping over fallen apples. Half way back to the patio, he stopped. Tacky stood in his old place, a sign around his neck saying, "Hi!" He wore a child's pack back covered with travel stickers.

"Louise! Mumsie! Danielle! Tacky's back!" His women tumbled from the house.

"Tacky, Tacky," Danielle crooned hugging the statute. Mumsie caressed the gnome's cap.

"We heard Mitch hollering," Ellen said as she and David ran into the yard.

"Anything in the backpack?" David asked.

Louise opened the backpack. Four packages, each gift wrapped, had tags with each person's name. They took turns opening them, Christmas-morning style.

Tacky gave Mumsie a Royal Dalton cup and saucer. The box was stamped Windsor: a note in the cup read, "For your afternoon cup of tea."

"Well, whoever it was knows my habits," Mumsie said.

Louise and Mitch's gifts were matching champagne flutes with grape leaves and their names etched into the glass. Danielle opened a package of Gummy Bears.

After they'd eaten, after all the paper plates were thrown away and the grill left soaking in the sink, Ellen asked, "Want to see our African slides? David finished arranging them yesterday."

Mumsie tried to excused herself. "I'll just be the old lady tagging along."

David wouldn't hear of it. He put his arm around her. "Come on Lady." He never called her Mumsie, only Lady.

David opened beers. Ellen fiddled with the projector, shooting light against the bookcase until David pulled down the screen. Many of the pictures were of musical instruments. Ellen matched tapes to demonstrate the sound.

Another series showed women making beer. "Brewing beer is the way women get money. It gives them power within the tribe," Ellen said. "The next slide is of mud houses." When she clicked the clicker instead of an African mud house they saw David laying on the ground. Big Ben was in the background.

"Damn it! You guys!" Mitch said.

"David!" Ellen made it a four-syllable name. "We agreed never to tell them."

"It was too good a joke. I needed credit," David said.

"We kept telling people what we were doing." Ellen said. "There's nothing like having a three-foot gnome with you to get to know people."

Louise, who hadn't said anything, spoke. "But the letter in July from Africa..."

David grinned. "Easy. A friend from the embassy in Burkina mailed it."

Louise slipped into bed after taking her daughter a final, final, final glass of water. She wore a flannel nightgown for the first time since May.

Louise pecked Mitch on the cheek. "I'm glad he's back."

"Me too," Mitch says. "But he's still ugly."

Tina Turner is Liquid Sex

There is still a puritanical streak in some families, especially where daughters are concerned. And even the most modern mother may have trouble accepting a child's sexuality. This was published in a literary magazine in the mid 90s.


"Mum?" Whenever Jennifer turns a one-syllable word into four, Stephanie knows whatever comes next, she doesn't want to hear. The last time Jennifer did it, the next sentence tumbling out was, "I've been kicked out of school". Stephanie had been relieved to learn it was only for leading a demonstration against school policy in under-funding women's sports. School can't be the issue. Jennifer graduated two weeks ago.

"I know why Tina Turner is liquid sex," Jennifer says. She pops the top of a can of Coke.

Shit! My daughter has lost her virginity, Stephanie thinks. For a minute she hopes she's wrong. A glance at Jen's face makes her file the idea under Wishes, Impossible.

As one, mother and daughter sink onto the hall carpet, their backs to opposite walls. Marks on the wallpaper record where their heads have rested so often that Jennifer renamed the narrow corridor 'the conference room'.

The grandfather clock chimes 10:00 p.m. Stephanie, tired from a too-long day in court, wants to say, "Just once can't we hold a major conversation before ten at night?" She doesn't. It's this particular conversation she doesn't want to have. Jennifer reaches up to close her bedroom door, hiding the chaos inside.

Stephanie isn't thinking about the dust balls larger than the cat under Jennifer's bed. She imagines her daughter on the bed, her face washed in passion. The image fades, replaced quickly with a series of flashbacks: Jennifer's head pops up over the bumper guard in her crib; Jennifer scooches down to look at a toad; Jennifer, dressed as Goldilocks, strolls across a stage.

Memories melt into the present. "Be cool," Stephanie says to herself thinking – I want my little girl back.

Fresh from showers, the two women wear oversized T-shirts. Jennifer's came from the concert she'd gone to last Saturday with David. Stephanie's T-shirt reads "When I am old I will wear purple." It was purple, a 45th birthday gift from Barbara, the same friend who'd sat in Stephanie's kitchen six years before holding a conversation that elephant-memory Jennifer just referred to. Once again Jen has tested Stephanie's resolve to be a better mother than her own.

"You aren't saying anything." Jennifer crosses her legs Indian style and pushes her long hair, still damp from the shower, out of her eyes.

"We're not talking about an actual Tina Turner concert, are we?" Stephanie asks.

Jennifer blushes. "No. Well, yes. In a way. The one you and Barbara went to. When I was 12?"

Stephanie's remembers her college chum's visit. They sat in her kitchen. A bottle of Pinot Noir and several cheeses rested between them on the oak table salvaged from Goodwill.

Barbara had come for a conference. To thank Stephanie for saving her from a hotel, she'd produced two Tina Turner Concert tickets.

"Admit it. You came up here for the concert not the conference." Stephanie cut herself a piece of Roquefort and put it on a piece of her home-made, three-grain bread.

Barbara did her shrug, the one that Stephanie knew said, 'You caught me'. "Tina's incredible. I can't believe her energy. For two hours she never stopped moving."

"And she's older than we are," Stephanie had said.

"That woman is liquid sex." Barbara bit a piece of bread spread thickly with Boursin.

She picked up her glass, "Love red wine with cheese."

Jennifer sat in a chair in the family room part of the kitchen. Closing her book, Blubber, which she was reading for the fourth time, she asked, "Why is Tina Turner like liquid sex?"

"OOPS. Didn't know she was around," Barbara said. She wasn't the type to quote clichés about big ears and little pitchers. Neither was Stephanie, but her mother would have said that.

"Don't worry about it, Barb," Stephanie said. "Jen, we'll discuss it when you become sexually active." Stephanie had forgotten the conversation – until now.

The phone rings.

"Let the answering machine pick it up. Please!" Jennifer asks. They listen to it saying

"Meow. This is Caramel. My owners can't come to the phone 'cause they're doing some dumb people things, but if you leave a message I'll let 'em know you called. Tell 'em to give me some catnip when they do."

Jennifer, bored with the normal "no one can come to the phone right now..." had recorded the new message a week ago.

"Hello Jennifer. Tell your mother that is not a proper message for an attorney. Call Grammy back when you can. I want to take you shopping Saturday."

Stephanie tenses automatically, disliking herself for once again letting her mother's voice get to her. "I assume it was David," she asks.

"Of course." Jennifer looks at her mother sideways. "Last night."

Caramel ambles over placing himself between mother and daughter. Jennifer scoops him up. Purrs barely drown out Stephanie's racing heart.

Stephanie thinks how as she'd eaten dinner with her date, her daughter's hymen was disappearing. Floating in her brain is her annoyance that when her date had propositioned her, she'd said, "Let's-not-rush-it". Mother and daughter had started dating both males the same day. Her daughter had rushed it.

"This morning, you asked me if I got lucky." Stephanie reaches for the Coke and takes a long swig, knowing the caffeine won't keep her awake any more than Jennifer's revelation. "I said, 'What a question to ask your mother?' Now I wish I'd said, 'No, did you?'"

Jennifer looks at the cat. "David was worried you'd come home and find us."

Stephanie's eyes drifts to Jennifer's room where it happened. She wonders why she feels so uncomfortable. Hasn't she spent all Jen's life trying to develop an honest relationship? Then when Jennifer comes to her in the way Stephanie always wanted, all she wants to do is to cover her ears and say, "Not yet. Stay my little girl."

Jennifer stretches and turns. She lays on the rug putting her head in her mother's lap. The cat curls up in the hollow of Jennifer's tummy reminding Stephanie of Jennifer in a sleeping bag in a corner of the classroom where Stephanie plodded toward her law degree. Jennifer had a stuffed animal named Kitten Kat that she'd held the same way.

Jennifer takes the Coke from her mother. "Anyway I told him you'd be cool. He asked what I thought you'd say."

Just yesterday Stephanie told her secretary how much she liked David. That was before he deflowered her daughter. She pictures David sprawled on their worn couch saying how he wanted to open a clinic in his neighborhood after med school. David comes from a very poor area. His idealism reminded Stephanie of her first husband, Jennifer's father, whose hopes to help others ended with a Vietcong mine.

"What did you tell David I'd say?" Stephanie asks.

"I said you'd asked if we practised safe sex."

Stay cool, Stephanie thinks. "Did you?"

"Of course. I borrowed a condom from your dresser. Safe from babies, safe from AIDS."

"Good." Stephanie pictures Jennifer at five lying in the hospital after the car accident that made Stephanie a widow a second time. The image fades to her daughter starting school still on crutches.

She sees the two of them writing down Jen 's rules for the year each fall. The last one was always, "If you've done something wrong, tell your mother before she finds out." Sometimes Stephanie thought the last rule was a mistake, because Jen felt she could really mess up, then tell her.

The rules, posted on Jennifer's bedroom door, provoked a number of clucks from Stephanie's mother, who also clucked at the worn furniture, at Stephanie's insistence on getting her J.D., at Jennifer's unshined shoes, and at almost everything else Stephanie did.

Stephanie earned her mother's contempt because she never stayed home as a "proper mother" should. "I am teaching my daughter how to survive in the world," Stephanie hollered one night after her mother began her long list of charges.

"Spend the same energy in finding another husband," her mother said, "That's a lesson, too."

She and her mother will never agree. No common ground exists between them. There is no common ground between her and her secretary either. She'd found Maureen in the ladies room, her head on the sink, dissolved in tears, earlier that day.

"What's wrong?" She scooped Maureen into her arms.

"I found birth control pills in Mary-Catherine's school bag." Mary-Catherine is Maureen's 15-year old daughter.

"At least you don't have to worry about her getting pregnant," Stephanie said, thinking that Mary-Catherine had at least used some maturity.

When she regained some control, Maureen said, "It's a sin to practise birth control!" Stephanie had no answer for her secretary.

Jennifer's eyes meet Stephanie's. The desire for common ground with this person floods Stephanie floating.

"Mum?" Jennifer's voice catches. "You unhappy?"

"No honey, I'm not. " Stephanie strokes Jennifer's damp head resting heavily on her lap. Stephanie doesn't want to break the moment. The cat, thinking he will be left out of a good rub, pushes between mother and daughter.

"You always told me to make my first experience worthwhile. I did."

Stephanie laughs.

"What's funny?"

"I'm thinking of my best friend in high school," Stephanie says.

"Claire?"

"Yes. Like Grandma her father thought only bad girls had sex before marriage, but she was so in love she couldn't wait. Anyway, when her mother noticed her period was late, Claire confessed. Her mother took her to the doctor, but she wasn't pregnant."

"I don't see anything funny in that," Jennifer says. She rolls the Coke can back and forth on the floor. Caramel's paw shoots out to play with it.

"No, that part wasn't funny," Stephanie says. "But, on the way home Claire's mother said to her, 'Oh dear'. She started a lot of sentences with, 'Oh dear'. Then she said, 'I suppose now you've done it once you'll want to keep doing it.'"

"What would Grammy have done in the same situation?"

"Your grandmother talked a lot about keeping boys' respect despite all the talk about free love. Translate that as not letting them do IT. However, the night before I married your father she told me "If your husband respects you, he won't ask you very often."

"Did daddy respect you?"

Stephanie pushes Jen's head off her lap and stands up to stretch. Her legs are stiff.

"Thank God, no. And neither did your stepfather."

"Mum, I want to keep doing it: I don't want David to respect me that way, anyway."

"I want for you what you want." She means it more than anything she has ever said. The cat winds in and out between her legs.

Stephanie bends down to kiss her daughter's head. "If David wants to stay over, it' s OK."

Jennifer jumps up to hug her mother. She hovers a good five inches above the older woman. "Love you. I'm going to bed. I've got the early shift tomorrow." Jennifer works as a life guard at the Holiday Inn pool. Stephanie can't swim.

Jennifer puts her hand on the door knob to her room. "It was your last condom. I'll replace it tomorrow." She goes into her room. The door clicks shut ever so gently.

Stephanie looks at the closed door for a minute or so before crossing the hall to her own room. The cat has settled on her pillow seconds ahead of Stephanie's arrival. Caramel looks perturbed when Stephanie insists on making her own place.

Suddenly Stephanie feels very old, but it's all right. As she falls asleep she hears Tina Turner singing Simply the Best. The music comes from Jennifer's room.