Sunday

The trigger came from A God of Small Things by the Indian writer Roy. I felt mine was a bit cliché and I really couldn't get going but my writing pal developed a wonderful grandfather who picked mint with his grandchild (great detail) and was reflexive in his answers. I wanted to meet that grandfather.

The afternoon was still and hot.

Marge and Betty sat on the front porch fanning themselves. In the yard, their five-year old kids, Tommy and Sarah, were running back and forth through the sprinkler, screaming.

It was Sunday. Neither had to work. Marge was a nurse and Betty was in billing at the same hospital. For both of them having a Sunday off together was a real treat. They had adjusted their schedules so normally it was Marge working at night so she could be home with the kids days while Betty was working, which made time together as a family together difficult.

“Should we take them for ice cream?” Marge asked.

Before Betty could answer, they heard a door slam on the house to their right. Mr. Harper stormed over. “Can’t you keep those kids quiet. It’s Sunday.”

We’ll do what we can,” Betty said, putting a hand on Marge’s knee that said, “Don’t say anything louder than if she’d yell.”

“Hey kids,” Marge hollered not quite loud enough to break glass but almost. “It’s Sunday. Keep it down.”

Janice, their neighbor on the other side stood up. They hadn’t noticed her planting flowers below the white picket fence separating their properties. “Don’t be such a grouch, Harper. They’re just kids.”

“It’s the Lord’s Day,” Harper said. He glared at them all and stomped back toward his house.

“And if the Lord were here, he’d probably be running through the sprinkler, too,” Janice said to his back just before he slammed his door. “Bigot,” she said to the two women. “I heard you suggest going for ice cream. I’ve an ice cream maker. “Want to come over later and John and I will get it out.”

“What flavor?” Sarah asked. No one had notice her come up to the porch.

"Whatever you want, and bring your moms."

 

Accepting Help

My writing pal and I won't be writing until a week from Tuesday, May 7 because of our schedules. I miss the exercises. When we discussed the trigger phrase, "he pressed his index finger over her mouth," we both wanted to do something positive and ruled out a domination scenario. The quote is from Beverly Barton's, Every move she makes.

He pressed his index finger over her mouth. “shh”

She wanted to say "but". He shook his head as soon as her lips parted. “I won’t hear another word about it.”

Then he went to his oak desk and took his check book. “Will $5,000 be enough?”

She fought with herself not to say “more than enough.” It would let her fix up the storefront she found and at least lease the oven and mixing equipping.

“You didn’t even look at my business plan.”

“I don’t have to. I’ve known you since you and Andrea nearly drove me crazy with your music.”

This had been her second home as a teenager. She and Andrea had been inseparable, and thanks to Skype she and her best friend were able to talk almost daily, even though Andrea now lived in Japan and Myra was in Boston.

Andrea had been her lifeline when Jack had walked out leaving her with a baby. It was Andrea who urged her to go to her father to ask for a loan to set up a business. “You can’t earn enough as a secretary to support you and the baby,” Andrea had said. “Put a business plan together. It will help you focus.”

So she had. The idea of a cupcake shop near a private school with good traffic harnessed her hobby. The area was trendy enough. She also had diabetic cupcakes and good to the earth cupcakes planned, things to make her different.

Banks almost laughed her out the door. Each time she checked her numbers and each time she was sure of her profit margins. Her ideas on offering her cupcakes for parties, not just kids, but to businesses as well, even if only half came to realization, made the bottom line seem reasonable.

She brushed away her tears of gratitude as she took the check to her future.

Misunderstood?

 

 We are back in touch. My writing Mate and I had made a number of Skype dates, but she never beeped in and then reported trouble with her Internet. All became clear when she realized that the connection had been pulled out of the wall by her cats as they played.

As always the first line is the trigger for our free-writing exercise. IT comes from the short story Country of the Blind H.G. Wells

Others also said things about him that he heard or understood imperfectly…

It wasn’t unusual for him to misunderstand. He often felt people were talking about him behind his back, and sometimes he was even right. 

He would round the corner approaching his office in the English Department and whoever was standing around, be it students or faculty, would suddenly be quiet.

His wife, when he complained, told him if it were true, which she didn’t believe for minute, it was his own fault. She encouraged him to be friendlier with his coworkers. “Eat with them,” she’d say.

“I prefer to work in the library with my sandwich,” he would tell her. Every day it was a cheese and pickle sandwich. She offered to make egg salad, or peanut butter and jelly but he always, said no he liked the cheese and pickle. One day when she was out of cheese she’d made a sliced turkey sandwich. It had been the Monday after Thanksgiving and she’d been trying to get rid of the leftovers as well as not shopping for his cheese.

When he complained, she told him to get over it.

His students probably talked about him too, although he knew he did have a reputation for being a fair professor and interesting. Even kids who didn’t like Shakespeare told him that for the first time, some of that language made sense.

His parents had questioned why he wanted to be a teacher when he never really enjoyed time with people. They also were surprised when he brought Angie home and introduced her as his fiancée.

He’d been a bit surprised too. Angie had been an English major and wanted to be a writer. His job let her stay at home to write, and she’d had moderate success: two books published, but modest sales. He believed in her and it suited him as part of their bargain to not have to deal with running a house, preparing meals.

Angie even took care of the lawn and had made a nice garden. Their deal worked.

He didn’t think himself odd, although that is what he thought other people said about him. He was just who he was. Maybe had he been a boy today they would assign some three letter syndrome to him. Maybe not. 

He was who he was and he could live with that.

The Kitten

Killing the Shadow

Val McDermid

Trigger sentence. "The theme music of the late evening news thundered out its familiar fanfare."

Jenna watched the news every night before turning off the lights, locking the doors and heading upstairs to bed. There she would decide what to wear to the office in the morning, bringing a suit from the closet finding the right blouse, making sure everything was ironed. She would get her underwear and put it on the shelf bra on top of the panties in the niche on the shelf where she kept her clothes.

The coffee pot had already been set so the coffee would be ready when she walked downstairs at 6:19 every morning.

This had been her routine for the past four years, three months and two days since she went to work for Abraham, Gold and Matthews as the fourth attorney in the company. They were not one of those huge law firms that had hundreds of big corporation clients, but handled the everyday business of people in the town where she’d grown up.

She worked at the law firm summers when she’d been in college and again when she was in law school. Jacob Abraham had been a friend of her father’s. Don Matthews his golf partner. It was natural that they would take her on when she graduated until she passed the bar. After she got her results Don had offered a full time place, but said he understood if she wanted something bigger and better.

She was content and had no desire to change.

In the middle of the night she awoke to a mewing coming through the open window, not a howl of a cat in heat. The clock read 2:26. Although she tried to go back to sleep, the mewing continued.

Damn, she thought and stomped downstairs where the mewing was outside her front door. Although her town had little crime, she didn’t like opening the door when it was dark, but she did anyway.

A strawberry coloured kitten, not much bigger than one of her hands a half sat on the doorstep. He strolled in, rubbed against her ankles and headed toward the kitchen.

She followed him. He sat down and looked at her.

I’m going to hate myself for this, she thought as she opened the refrigerator and found some tiny plastic containers with cream. She opened two and put them in a saucer. He made them disappear in seconds but rather than look for more he walked back into the living room.

Common sense told her to put him outside, but he was so tiny that maybe an owl would consider him dinner. Instead she found an old box and put some dirt in it from one of her plants that was not going to make it and sat it by the door.

The kitten watched.

“You can stay tonight. Tomorrow we find where you belong,” she said as he jumped up on her printer.

Upstairs she climbed back under the sheet. Within minutes she wasn’t alone. The purr reminded her of the theme music for the nightly news.