Fathoming

This trigger is from Copper Beech. The opening line, was “Boys were hard to fathom.”

Boys were hard to fathom. Ellen had come a family of five girls. Her parents had wanted only two children, a boy and a girl. As it turned out their father would have kept trying for his son until her mother said, “No. Enough is enough.” To make her point, she’d had her tubes tied.

At the time Ellen hadn’t understood till her GYN pulled little Daniel from her body a few hours before. Jason and Brett would be thrilled to have a little brother.

She wanted a daughter. She understood girls. They didn’t turn furniture into forts, or push each other in greeting. None of her sisters had ever held a miniature car in their hands and as they swooped it through the air, yelled, “Vroom, vroom, vroom.”

Boys clothes were boring and during this pregnancy she’d looked longingly at little dresses.

The doctor could have told her after the sonogram, but she wanted to hang on to her hopes for a daughter as long as possible.

She looked up from her hospital bed to see her father beaming, “Good on you, girl.” She resisted turning her back to him. He was a great grandpa, doing things with her boys, that he said he couldn’t do with the girls, whom he claimed not to understand.

Then her husband appeared. He’d been on a business trip, when she’d gone into labour yesterday. “I’m sorry honey. We can try again.”

“No, no more,” she said. She may not fathom little boys, but she understood her mother’s enough is enough.

Ticking off tourist spots

The trigger for my writing mate and I was from Fanny Flagg's Welcome to the World Baby Girl.
Both of us took the same course, two people with different ways of looking at travelling, although I set mine in New York and she placed her characters in Rome.

When they got back to the hotel, Dena was worn out.

Damn Jim. He had her up before dawn cracked and they'd found themselves downstairs waiting for the breakfast room to open.

"Eat, eat," he'd said, shoveling his bacon, eggs and toast into his mouth.

She preferred to eat slowly and watch the people around her, especially the business people as they glanced at papers from their briefcases or looked at messages on their iPhones.

Their first stop was a get-on-get-off bus. Jim pulled out his notebook. "Empire State Building, Central Park, Statute of Liberty . . ."

"I'm not climbing to the top," she'd said. Any hopes of browsing at Macy's or picking up toys for the kids at F.A.O. Schwartz vanished.

"We can go to MOMA, grab a sandwich, before the matinee."

Dena had always wanted to visit New York, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps. She should have known from other trips that Jim would cram several days of sight seeing if not several weeks worth into a single day.

Why she'd agreed to the trip she had no idea.

She kicked off her shoes and lay on the bed.

"Don't get too comfortable. We've dinner and I want to see Bernadette Peters sing."

Dena rolled over. This was going to be the last trip she would ever go on with Jim, she promised herself. From now her trips would be alone or with a girl friend. He could travel on his own too.

No more ticking off famous places saying they'd been there. In the future, she would have time to see, hear, smell and feel where'd she been.

The Visitor

My writing mate and I met back at LaNoisette. The opening line was from Fanny Flagg's Welcome to the World Baby Girl." Her character was sinister and her writing produced shivers on what could have happened.

She stood and watched the man pull away.

Her mother was at work as usual. As much as her mother tried to be home early each night, her work as a paralegal often kept her late at the office.

Lana saw the wind blow the first red leaves of autumn in swirls in the driveway after the departing car.

He'd rung the side doorbell, which was the first few notes of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Her mother had wanted to be a classical pianist, but Lana's birth had put an end to those hopes.

Sometimes Lana worried, she'd destroyed her mother's life, but her mother always said that Lana was the best thing that had happened to her.

Lana knew her mother would be unhappy that she'd opened the door to a stranger, but she was expecting her friend Jessica, who was coming to study for a history test. And besides only friends came to the side door.

Instead it was that man standing there. He was about her mother's age, although she wasn't that good at guessing grown-ups' ages. He was dressed in good jeans, an Irish knit sweater and expensive looking boots.

"Lana Friedman?"

"Yes."

"Your mother is Diana Friedman?"

"Yes."

Then he looked down at his boots, looked at his car and said, "I shouldn't have come." He ran to his car, turned and came back. "Give your mother this." It was his business card. He was a software engineer in another city. There were tears in his eyes. "Tell her there's no obligation to call me."

Then he went back to the driveway, calling over his shoulder in a shaky voice, "Tell your mom she did a great job in raising you and I'm so, so sorry."

Blizzard

The trigger sentence was from Blood in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope. As often happens, my writing mate used it to show conflict between two different personalities.

He was aware that was she restless, chafing at the enforced idleness.

“Stop pacing,” he told her for the umpty umpth time. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I should have brought my work home with me.” She flopped on the couch and started to bite the nails on her left hand.

A bad sign, he thought as he looked out the window. The snow storm had been predicted to go out to sea, but instead it had picked up water and was now blanketing Boston. The governor had closed everything, according to the morning radio.

“I suppose I could walk to the office and pick up the stuff.”

“And freeze to death.” He didn’t even want to think of her fighting the winds and drifts. “Besides no one else will be in the office.”

“I bet Thom is there. He was still working when I left.” She started on the fingers of her right hand.

“And he’s probably freezing. They said downtown is without electricity.” He almost wished she had worked all night and was stuck with Thom. 

As it was, she had gotten home after midnight having worked late and she’d planned to go back early which was why the briefcase—usually as much a part of her anatomy as her hands and feet—had been left in the office. Instead she’d overslept only to wake to a major Nor’easter. She’d still dressed to go into work as he’d argued with her until she’d given in.

At the moment he felt like he was in a cage with one very hungry tiger. “Why can’t we make the best of it?”

“It’s okay for you to not worry. You’re only a teacher. You can’t work when schools are closed.”

He wanted to lash out at her for that remark, but didn’t. She thought teachers were unambitious, while lawyers did important work. His measly salary compared to hers made her feel she had the right to determine everything they did.

When he was a child, snow days were fun. His mother would make hot chocolate and cookies. She would set out jigsaw puzzles by the fire for he and his sister. Up until their teens they would continue their story log tradition. A small log, or sometimes a branch, would be put on the fire and the story teller would have to make up a story that lasted as long as the piece of wood.

He watched his wife sigh, get up and pace. He thought about how much he loved his job and he knew that the storm brought more than snow. 

It brought the end of their marriage.

Tinsel stars

The trigger for this story is Margaret Attwood’s The Blind Assassin. My writing mate took an entirely different perspective writing about a child with cancer who liked crafts. She used the stickers in place of ribbons in her hair. The line is "She had a packet of tinsel starts, gold and silver, which she would stick onto things we'd done.

She had a packet of tinsel stars, gold and silver, which she would stick onto things we’d done.

I suppose Louann got the idea from nursery school where good papers would earn a sticker and when we were really good, Miss Weagle would put a sticker on our forehead.

I seldom got a sticker, but she did almost every day. Louanne was my twin sister. Naturally we were fraternal twins me being male and all.

Twins are supposed to have some special connection, but not Louann and me. Or maybe that’s just identical twins.

We do look alike. We could be in a commercial for spaghetti or a poster children for a holiday in Italy.

I guess we were more ying and yang, black and white despite our bodily packaging. Louann is an earth mother and me, well my girlfriend Madison thinks I have commitment issues just because I don’t want to set a wedding date.

Louann agrees with Madison which is difficult because my sister and I work together in the family dry cleaning business now that Pop is too old. I do the cleaning and pressing, she serves customers and does the books.

I get the financial statements with those stupid tinsel stickers when we have a good month. In fact, when I see those damned gold or silver sparkly things, I don’t bother to check the figures. When one is missing, it’s usually the month that we laid in extra supplies or bought a new piece of equipment.

It’s good that she does the client thing, because she’s good with people. I would rather deal with the machinery any day of the week—in fact that’s what I do every day of the week.

Business isn’t as good as when Pop ran the business despite all of Louann’s additions to the shop such as the coffee machine, which I still think is a stupid expense. People can go to Mildred’s next door for coffee. And the neighborhood announcement board, well, that’s pretty silly too.

I let her have her way just because it is easier than arguing. But I still would like to hide those God damned stars.

My writing pal and I sat in the café drinking hot chocolate. Who says the South of France is warm in winter? We met for our flash fiction writing exercises. When it is warmer we use people on the street as a trigger, but this today not that many people were out and we resorted to the first sentence of a book that the café keeps for its Anglo readers, The Butcher of St. Peter is the source of the first line. "I slept well."

 "I slept well," Frank said. he sat at the table in front of the stove and made sure that his robe was fascinated. The chill was more not just the temperature registering on the thermometer. What should he do next? Get his own coffee, he decided. He chose the red mug. The smell of coffee filled his nostrils as he took his first sip.

"Jeanne, my love, did you sleep well?" Frank asked.

His wife had been slamming around the bed and bathrooms for the last half hour before storming downstairs.

He threw the covers off, put on his robe and followed her.

Jeanne put on the coffee maker, opened the fridge and took out milk and jam. She banged the door so hard that it bounced open.




Jeanne passed by without touching him to pick up her toast. She spread it with jam and then put the jar back in the fridge.


"I get the feeling you're angry with me."

Jeanne took the toast and poured her coffee into her blue mug and sat down. When she bit into the toast the crunch broke the silence.

"I don't know what I did." He was sure her birthday and their anniversary was next month.

Last night, he'd come home late from a golf game. The guys decided to eat at the club and play a few hands of poker. His wife had been asleep when he slipped into bed.

She stared at him. "I don't believe you."

He frowned.

"I sat in the restaurant with your parents and my mother for three hours. The waiter kept asking when the birthday boy was arriving." She grabbed her coffee and left the room.

A knock on the door

My writing pal both dealt with the end of a relationship based on the first line taken from The Butcher of St.Peter.

It was the knock on the door that made her move at last. Only then was she aware that the room had darkened while she’s been sitting in the chair, his chair. He’d play with his iPhone with the television reporting the news in the background.

This was the time she sat at her desk, playing games on her computer. She didn’t like the violent games, but played things like Mahjong or Bubbleburst. Cricklers too.

She should have spent less time on the computer and more with him. Now she couldn’t.

Maybe she should have seen it coming. The clichéd working late, the too tired for sex. He’d just bought her a diamond necklace for Christmas, a guilt gift, she thought now.

When she came at noon at first she thought the flat had been robbed. Where his DVDs and his computer had been were now empty spaces. A robber wouldn’t take his clothes and toiletries and leave hers.

She found his note on the kitchen table. It too was clichéd: Couldn’t help himself…so in love with…didn’t mean to hurt her…Alan.

The knock was more urgent. She forced herself to answer it.

Janice, her best friend, stood there. “Alan called. He said you might need some company.”