Lit in Progress

I’m considering re-naming either this or Feminist/Christian The Other Side of God.

“It’s funny,” she said, “how often the things you want aren’t. I mean, aren’t what they’re supposed to be. You know?”

“Like when you’re a kid and you want some talking dinosaur or something for Christmas, and you’ll die if you don’t get it, and you end up playing with the bubble wrap longer than the damn toy?”

“Or when you have a crush on somebody in middle school and they end up being total jerk-offs, and you run into their relatives after you’ve grown up and realize how miserable you’d have been if it had worked out?”

“No.”

Why does there always have to be this space? This void, this nothingness, that gobbles you up when you are quiet enough to hear it? Why can you not keep it away with the memories of living, of being, of talking and drinking coffee until three in the morning, of sour pickles and hockey games? Why do you have to be swallowed by everything in order to avoid being swallowed by nothing?

“Worrying is the Jewish form of prayer.”

Take me up on that. Go ahead. I don’t want you to do what you’re doing, just listen to me and do what I suggest. No; I take it back, I don’t make suggestions. Do what I say. I’m angry! But I don’t want you to hurt – I want you to listen. Won’t you? Will you? Can you?

Marienne & Jason – she’s in Nashville, he’s back wherever they started (gotta figure that out sometime) Their son, Robert? something like that, who was ‘having some problems with his coach’ and who’s dating what’s-her-name, Brianna – is Joseph her dad? Does she have a mom? He seems kind of like Billy Flinn; at least, that first scene in the tailor’s reminds me of him. Maybe I need to put all I’ve got so far up here, and just sift through it that way. We’ll see. And then there are James & his patient Herb, whose sister Cynthia Marshall just passed away a bit ago. Scott’s dad is getting out of prison. Sarah from somebody’s work (probably the salon – who else wouldn’t have to sign their name?) has cancer; Nelda, speaking of which, is the main gossip-monger at the salon, I think she’ll be driven away by her own machine at the end. Susanne is a patron of the salon, she’s a grandma. She may end up being something like Mrs. Bennett, but I’m not sure. Maybe she’ll be Darcy’s grandma. But who the heck is Darcy? And why is she so loath to get out of bed? I mean, besides general principles. I think she’ll be in her late twenties or early thirties – I’d love to use that story of Michelle’s, with her permission, of someone inviting a woman she knows to church and then after she bought a new outfit and everything saying, “that’s not appropriate!” – It’s so disgustingly believable, eh? Are we all so thoughtless? anyway, more later.

Amanda Gratten– experimenting with witchcraft and other things
Brenda

“I don’t want to do this anymore, man.” Jimmy looked over at her, dark makeup smeared and running, fingers tapping the table nervously. She … I’m going to have to do some more research. I really want to explore this phenomenon, and especially from my own perspective, but I don’t think I know quite enough about it. Amanda will have to wait.

Francis came in to tense silence. She had heard that term before, ‘tense silence,’ but always thought it a bit dramatic. It wasn’t. She set her keys and purse on the kitchen table, with a thud. She looked at the three children sitting there, and her husband Adam looking up toward her. She pressed her lips together.

“We got it. Y’all can stay with us, now,” she said, squeezing Sarahbeth’s shoulder. Sarabeth, the oldest at eight, nodded and kept her eyes on the macaroni and cheese. The middle boy smiled; the baby started to cry.

Jerry Wollser– needs to find a job
Francis Kittersley – taking care of her grandkids and goes to court tomorrow for custody
–Brenda

“Then we grow up, have affairs, and become alcoholics,” the man on the screen said.

“Sometimes,” his companion answered, “you depress me.”

Brianna smile-laughed; her date consumed her. What more was there to say?

Robert sat in his room, watching the bars of light from between the blinds make their way across the littered floor. He blinked at the alarm clock, the phone, the pile of dirty clothes. He watched the light approach his feet. What did they think was going on? Like he couldn’t tell. Like he didn’t know. Like their words didn’t slide like throwing stars through the house and into his ears.

He heard the door open, and his mother set the alarm. She thought he was at practice. She thought he was fine, not worried enough about his grades, getting along well with Miranda, probably not having sex with her, or at least using a condom. Probably not gay, or a trenchcoat mobster. He figured she thought she’d raised him right. He figured she didn’t feel bad.

He blinked again. He ought to go. He put on some shoes – the bars of light were up to his shins – and grabbed his hoodie. The walk to the diner took a while; it was past rush hour. Cars honked at his jaywalking. He flipped them off inside his pocket. Randal was there, of course, sitting in the corner smoking. “Hey man.” “Hey.”

Robert slid in across from his companion, took a cigarette from Randal’s pack. He rolled it back and forth on the table between his fingers. “When you gonna quit, Ran?” he asked with no question in his voice. “Mom left today.”

“She’s been like that, you know, forever. She’s always like that. I honestly don’t know why they don’t just kick her off—”

“You do too!” Nelda replied, carefully snipping her friend and client’s hair.

“Yes, well, if it was me, I would,” Susanne said. The fifty-something grandmother took up her magazine and shook off the fallen hair.

“If it was you, honey, we’d have other problems, right?” Nelda said, still snipping away.

“Nelda! I don’t know what you mean,” Susanne retorted playfully, then chuckled. “Have you heard about Marienne? About her and Jason?”

Darcy. Wake up. Seriously, it’s like 8:30. Get UP. Darcy pulled the covers over her head, and turned away from the window, from which her alarm beeped incessantly. The blinds glowed with the daylight outside. She could hear cars starting, igniting like matches and rumbling off to work and school from the street below. The beeping continued: Darcy, you know it’s time, you know you’ve got stuff to do, you know you gotta wake up. She inhaled deeply.

“Well, hello there!” Susanne said. “Darcy honey, I haven’t heard from you for so long!” Her granddaughter’s voice crackled from her earpiece, “I know, Grandma. I’m sorry, I’ve just … been –”

“Busy?”

“Yeah.”

“Busy,” said Grandma Susanne, “is what everybody is. Even I’m busy.” She sat at her writing desk, her gaze drifting over the neatly stacked library books. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, a lot. I’m in the middle of my third year up here, I’ve got finals in a few weeks … I’m kind of worried about them, but not really, you know? I’m still working at the restaurant. Things are pretty normal, really. Um, how are you doin’?”

“I’m getting alone fine, honey. Just keeping the garden weeded and the laundry done, you know how it is,” she said, smiling at the wall.

“Yeah, I do,” Darcy said. “Well, I don’t want to take up your day, just wanted to say ‘hi’.” Really, thought Susanne, you don’t want to take up your day, hm?

“Okay, honey, you take care.”

Click.

Lenore saw her come in, lowering her head as she walked around a young couple laughing at a cover on the Bestseller’s table. The woman glanced over the titles on the other side of the table. She pulled her woven green handbag to the other side and vanished into the stacks.

Lenore smiled at the man across the counter, took his books, took his money. Gave him back the books. As he walked away, she placed her hand against the side of her abdomen absentmindedly and felt the baby press against it. She leaned back against the shelf behind her and sighed.

Lenore noticed her, the unfamiliar woman, again, picking up a book that had fallen in the Classics section, her long hair falling over her shoulder. A few minutes later, she was next in line.

Lenore smiled at her. “Is this all you’d like today?” She asked kindly. The woman nodded. As Lenore scanned the barcode, she glanced at the title. Madame Bovary. “Mm, Flaubert. Have you read it before?”

“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “It’s for my sister, Flo. She likes to read and is going to France this November.”

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy it,” Lenore said. “Where at in France?”

“I’m not sure. Um. Not Paris. Somewhere in the south. She’s been there before.”


Lenore wished the lady a nice evening and watched her leave, the plastic bag crinkling in her hand.

The woman was back the next week, then three weeks after that; Lenore saw her come in, looking windblown. She watched the woman, her name was Marienne, take a book off the Science Fiction shelf. Leaf through it with a studious expression. Move on to another section.

She smiled at over the counter, handed across another volume. “How are you today, Marienne?” Lenore asked. “Fine. Well, pretty good,” she said, and smiled.

They met for coffee after Lenore got off that evening.

Lenore sat three rows from the back, resting her elbows on the pew before her. The pale wood felt smooth and cool on her skin. The music played, rose, swirled around the ceiling, fell back to the congregation in waves and bubbles. Some were standing, she could see in front of her, below her. Some were sitting like her, patting the pew back with their hands, their arms draped around an imaginary seatmate.

The praise team looked, she thought, like wooden dolls in a music box, turning very slightly back and forth with the rhythm of the song. She’d been in churches with riotous dancing, and also in churches were even smiling was discouraged. She breathed in, holding on to the smell of the clean, well-lighted sanctuary, where it was understood how much to clap, how loud to sing, whether or not to tap one’s foot. She exhaled.

Marienne sat beside her, still and folded. She let the sound, the incandescent glow of sameness surround her. She watched as the pastor, a youngish-older man, with bland features and a blue tie, walk up the steps beside the alter and turn on his lapel mic.

“Doesn’t it feel good to be in the house of the Lord this morning?”

Lenore sighed deeply, her hand on the chair’s worn arm. Her eyes felt dry and sticky. What had she been dreaming of?

Her feet were longer, with fewer toes and no toenails. She walked on all fours to the side of the mound, then dove into a thick, smooth liquid like melted chocolate. Down, down she went, as the walls of the chasm her weight created rose around her. Though immersed in the flow, could smell it and feel its heat, the fluid remained apart from her body. She stretched her fingers towards the wall of thick, dark whatsit. The membrane, pearlescent, insubstantial, stretched almost to breaking but held. The opening above her, or below or beside her, drew slowly closed like a drawstring purse. She was suspended within; the last rays of light narrowed, spun, and were gone.

My dad is, well, most of you already know, but he’s almost done with his sentence and I want to ask you to pray for him that he can get a job and be, you know, a productive member of society. Also please pray for me that I can know how to rebuild our relationship because there’s a lot we’ve been through.
–Scott

Scott seemed thoughtful, his dad thought. He (Scott) was drumming his fingers along the armrest the way he used to when he was a boy, whenever they told him they were moving again. Tap-tap-tap-tap … thud.

“How’s your sister?” Frank asked, gazing out the windshield.

“Fine. She’s doing well, I mean.” Scott glanced at him, then back to the road. The barrenness of the country was slowly giving way to the barrenness of town, still yellow and brittle from winter though now mid-March.

They passed an old Volkswagon Beetle that had been set up on six long legs and painted like a black widow spider. A ways farther, Frank’s eye caught on the white fence of a horse breeder’s pastures, with the foals chasing one another around their mothers.

They turned slightly west with the road as it curved, passing a gas station and some newly-erected metal buildings. A dollar store. A barbecue joint. A sheriff’s office.

There was a new subdivision closer to town, with its bland brick buildings, posing awkwardly along treeless streets.

“What’s James been up to these days?” Frank asked.

“Nothin’ much. Graduated from nursing school a while back. He’s working at one of the Integris’s.”

Scott and James had been, as they say, thick as thieves when they were in high school together. They’d both gone to OU afterwards, but Scott got a Communications degree and James had stayed with Biology. They both went to Gracelake, but weren’t as tight as they once were.

“Wanna go to Sonic?” Scott asked as they rounded another curve through Noble.

Joseph was worried. There were only four members there, and the meeting started three minutes ago. He traced the first button of his jacket cuff with his forefinger absentmindedly. He wouldn’t be asked to say anything because he never was when they were making money, which they were. He pulled on his studious, attentive look which had served him well in the many years since its development during his undergraduate years. Jamie, his daughter, was at a concert with her group.

His wife – his ex-wife – was coming down to visit them in three days and four hours. On the dot. She would say that her girl had grown so much, and that Leonard should really do something about his skin. Because that was what she said.

Joseph thought about his trip to Chicago in two weeks, as he nodded to an idiotic assertion one of the board members made. Jamie had said she wanted to go with him. She was so transparent.

Although he didn’t want her to, he knew in his mind that she would talk him in to it. In point of fact, he did want her to. He just wasn’t sure he wanted her to go with him.

Joseph shrugged, twisted his neck. The jacket seemed to fit well, but the pants were still too loose in the waist. They gaped, rustled quietly, settled. The tailor’s fingers snatched and pulled, smoothed. He settled back onto his heels, listening to the sounds of fabric and fluorescent lights. Outside, the street was moving with people and cars like insects – not far away, a bluejay yammered on a dead neon sign. He thought about his car, and his daughter wrecking it. It hadn’t happened. Yet. But it would. He thought about his son and the girls he brought home. He thought about his son and the girls he didn’t. He turned his mind from these things and thought instead about Canada.

Flo held the storm door open with her shoulder. With plastic bags of groceries hanging like bat wings from her arms, she jiggled the key in the lock until the knob turned. Her entry sounded like static over a cell phone, and jingle bells from Christmas-time department stores, and the cheering of die-hard fans at a losing college football game. “How you doin’, hun?” she asked her grey cat Roger, eyes laughing from behind plastic glasses at the way he sprawled on his back, looking like a dog.

Flo’s tanned hands moved slowly over the keys of her old upright, working through a Dixie Chicks song note by note. She mouthed the words as her fingertips pressed the keys; she didn’t hear Marienne come in and was startled to see her sit down out of the corner of her eye.

Marienne looked small sitting in the cordoroy-covered chair. Flo smiled toothily over her shoulder and finished the chorus. She turned, swinging her legs over the bench like cranes.

“How’s it goin’, kiddo?” she asked, leaning forward, her hands on her knees.

“Okay I guess.” Pause. “I spent the day at the bookstore. I saw Lenore again. She’s, she’s nice. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, we go to the same church, Lenore and me. She’s sweet, huh? I wonder when she’s due.”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“What do you say to going out tonight,” Flo asked, her hair swinging as she tilted her head to one side.

Hi, everybody! You need to pray for a gal I work with whos name is Sarah. She’s got cancer and is mad at GOD and you just need to take care of her, amen? Her family’s all Christians but this is hard on them too and especially with her being mad. So just keep praying!

“Good morning, Herb,” James said. He was just wrapping up this week’s last 11 to 7 shift. “Hiya James.” “How are you today?” James said as he wrote something down. Herb was drifting in and out of sleep and didn’t hear him.

James looked at him for a moment, at the way his face wrinkled and creased, at the pattern of sun spots wrapping around his neck. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said. James put the clipboard back in its slot and walked to the next room.

“Good morning, Miss Sara,” he said.

Sara sat with her boyfriend in the waiting room. There were children playing behind her, running toy cars over the back of the bench she sat on. She picked up a magazine about childcare. She was not a mother; her boyfriend was not a father. They sat silently. “Sarah Peterson?” the woman called.

He sat still; she walked across the concrete, heels clicking like clock hands. “Thanks,” Sarah said. “Right in here,” the woman answered, and shut her in. There was a mirror on the inside of the door. Sarah undressed before it, taking her plastic bangles and storing them in her bag, hanging her white t-shirt and linen skirt on the hangers there. She folded her bra and panties and stashed them in her purse as well. She smiled, because how can you be modest in such a place?

She looked at the slivers of herself visible around her hanging clothes. She was young. She was pale like milk. She shivered, despite the cranberry walls and Anne Geddy calendar. Wrapping the apron-like cover around her body, she amused herself by making a halter dress, a tube top, a jumpsuit. She sat down on the tablebed.

She swung her feet. Her heels bumped the side; she swung the stirrups back and forth. She turned the light on and off. She lay back. Sat up. Got up.

She picked up an American Baby magazine and sat back down. There was a knock at the door. It opened, and the doctor said, “Ready?” Sara sat the magazine beside her. It fell down. They ignored it.

“I’m a little nervous,” Sara said, smiling and tucking a strand of tightly curling red hair behind her ear. She held her arms close to her body, wrapping them around the thin cloth. The doctor sat down in the chair at the foot of the table. “That’s alright,” she said, smiling. Her short blonde hair stayed back; her glasses were plastic. “Here’s what’s going to happen…”

“Herb?”

He turned his face, almost imperceptibly, toward James, the night shift nurse. James smiled through his light beard. “Mm?” Herb said.

“How you doing this morning?”

“Just fine, I reckon.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, now,” James said, doing something to the drip bag. His voice was higher than Herb’s, and less grainy, but their accent was almost uncannily the same. When Herb was transferred into this unit, they found out that they’d grown up in the same house in southwestern Oklahoma City.

They both liked to fish, both enjoyed reading, though Herb preferred Louis L’amour and James, Steven King.

“I’ve got some bad news, Herb,” James said, sitting down in the mauve chair beside the patient’s bed.

“Who’s died now?” Herb asked, and smiled.

“Cynthia.”

“Slide down,” the doctor said, sitting on the stool below the table. “More.”

“More.”

“Okay, that’s good. Just relax. First I’m just looking on the outside. A little touching … Little touching … Lots of touching,” she said, warning her before she did. It tickled.

“Now, you say you haven’t had sex before?”

“No, I haven’t,” Sara said. They should put something reassuring on the ceiling, she thought, like “Don’t Panic,” for people like her.

“Do you use tampons?” the doctor asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, we’ll use the pediatric speculum.” She held up a shiny metal object that looked like a duck. “Otherwise we’d use this one,” she said, pulling a larger one from under the table. It looked to Sara about the size of, oh, a football.

“Thanks,” she said.

“OW!” The speculum was cold, then grew warmer as it pushed its way inside. It hurt worse than the first time she’d put a tampon in. She tried to relax, deepened her breath. She consciously let go of the arms of the table.

“Okay, now that horrible stretching sensation,” the doctor said. She felt like someone had raked a file over the walls of her vagina. Her breath sounded shakey and foreign. And then the metal speculum pulled wetly out, and she exhaled.

The doctor stood up and handed the tiny plastic spatula to her nurse, who put it into a what looked like a plastic film canister.

The doctor stood between Sara’s legs; she pushed her finger into Sara’s vagina, and pushed down on her lower abdomen with her other hand. Sara felt like whatever it was that people were always saying was between an anvil and a hammer.

“It’s just the tissue stretching,” the doctor said reassuringly.

“I don’t want my tissue to stretch if it feels like that!”

“It will, you know,” she said with a laugh in her voice. Sara had said that she was convinced to come because she was getting married and wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with her.

“Not for another six months!” Sara smiled at herself; was it really that bad? Yes. Unequivically yes. But it was over, all except the breast exam, which sounded like a piece of cake.

She took her feet out of the stirrups, now warmed from her skin, and slid back up the table. The doctor’s hands were soft on her breasts, one then the other, moving her fingers in quick circles. “Feels like you’ve got a little lumpy there,” she said.

Good morning, church family,
Cynthia Marshall passed away late last night. Please keep her family and friends in your prayers. Services are set for Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. If you would like to volunteer to bring food, please contact the church office or reply to this. Also, Cynthia’s brother Herb is in St. Meredith Hospital right now if you want to send him a card. Love you all,
Julie

Dear church family,

Thank you all so much for your prayers for my son. He is still having some difficulties with his coach, and I would appreciate further prayer for him to have wisdom. I also have an unspoken request that I would appreciate your holding up in prayer.

In Christ, Marienne

I can’t stand you! I can’t stand this! Who do you think you are? How can you be such a jerk?

She sat still, listening. The house creaked; someone upstairs moved. Breathing. Sighing. She heard him turn, grasp for her, settle back. She waited. Come, come, don’t make me do this. I don’t want to. Or maybe I do. Give me just a bit! An inch! All I want now is for us to be quiet together. Not to talk or yell or rage or glare, just to be quiet together.

But you won’t. I can’t. Maybe tomorrow.

The phone rang. And again. He grunted and pushed his ear into the pillow. It rang again.

She knew he never woke up until the fourth ring, just when the machine took it up.

He cursed and pulled the sheet aside. Beth rolled onto his side of the bed and pulled his pillow under her head, tangling her dark hair in her arm. She breathed deeply and was still.

“Hello, you have reached the Noll residence, please – ”

“What?” He pushed random buttons on the machine to make it shut up, couldn’t hear anything through the beeps.

“Wha’dju say?” he asked again, rubbing his forehead.

“It’s Marienne.” She heard him breathing, heard the grandfather clock chiming in the background. There was stillness for a moment.

“Where are you?”

“In Nashville. With Flo. I wanted to tell you. So you’d know.” Marienne stared into her cousin’s sink with its dirty Tupperware and bottle of soap, rolling the phone cord back and forth between her fingers. There wasn’t any sound. He had hung up.

Marienne sat in the bus station, watching her teal hardside luggage with half her mind and the clock with the other half. She listened as mothers tried to keep their children from catapulting into things, as chatty types discussed the weather, the end times. She listened as men and women tried to speak in each other’s languages. She listened, and watched the clock, and her luggage.

She sat still, waiting. The bus drove in, and still she sat. She could feel her hair move slightly in the heated room. She could feel her bag in her hand, her pen and paper and clothes and life just inside her softside suitcase. She breathed slowly, shallowly. The bus doors opened.

People like she’d seen before, like she hadn’t, filed in. Loudly, silently, smelling of detergent and perfume and salty unwashed skin. A misunderstanding with a ticket a young man in a ponytail didn’t have; she rose.

A woman with a narrow smile and a faded flowered dress let her in line, asked if she spoke español. Asked where she was going. I … yo … no sé. The woman patted her arm and smiled again.

The man took her ticket. She filed in. The rolling suitcase clack-clacked on the floor. She picked it up and carried it down to an empty seat. She leaned her head against the window, against the greasy mark where someone else had leaned their head on the ride here. The bus around her was alive, moving, breathing balmy air through its grill, staring with stolidly bright eyes up the street, past merging, honking, careful buicks and dodges, past unmanicured meridians and dirty curbs. Its sides shook with the effort of carrying so many things in its belly. The road unfolded before it like the peel of an apple, and the road disappeared somewhere behind the loud windy back wall.

Marienne drew a breath of cold air through her nose. It stung. She slowly let the air out her mouth, watching steam curl around her face as she waited beside the bus’s belly. Eventually the man got to her two bags. She looked at him as he lifted them, tthohat, and dropped them in the line of unclaimed baggage, sclok. A corner of her green bag was resting on an older woman’s teal hardside. The woman looked stonily, like Maryanne, at her belongings. She pushed the green bag down, off, with her hand and handed the hardside to someone else to carry.

Marienne waited. She picked up what was hers, and noticed that the wheels left skid marks on the pavement when she turned around. She started toward the door, through which she could see a wall of payphones. One was ringing, two others were being used by a tweedy older man with thin grey hair and a pair of young women who weren’t wearing bras, with their arms around each other’s waists.

Marienne. Go call a cab.

Marienne ambled past the glass windows, the ATMs, the brightly-colored fast food restaurants that stood like sentries along the road. She slowed as she neared a tangle of young people sitting and standing outside a music store. A thin young woman with straight hair sat on a boy’s lap, talking with animated gestures, but a curiously monotone voice. Her hair swished around her arms as she hugged the boy she’d been sitting on. They got up, and she went over to another girl and they walked to the window of the store, pointing out some now album or other.

Marienne started – a man bumped into her arm on his way out of a shop. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, looking dog-like. His long grey hair hung around his face like dirty icicles from a truck grill. She looked small, he thought. Not physically small – she was as tall as he – but drawn into herself, and only recently startled into looking outward.

He seemed kind of silly, she thought. His jacket was wrinkled, his jeans torn. And yet he walked so uprightly and appeared so relaxed, like he’d just come out of a board meeting of his Fortune 500 company and been told very good news. Incongruous was the word she though of when she looked at him.

They hadn’t moved. They were still standing there, looking at one another apologetically, when Flo came out of the cafe and said, “There you are! Who’s this?”