Incompleat Iconoclast » Secrets

Exercise #24: Busted!

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:48:56 +0000

Super

Apartment 1A has never given me so much as a McDonald’s gift certificate at Christmas time, even though she has thousands of dollars under her mattress.

1B is a filthy pig. Clean your bathroom, man!

I once showed up to replace the window unit in 1C and found Mrs. S. still in her nightie at 4:30 in the afternoon. I thought I heard a noise from the hall closet. At 5:30, Mr. S. said hello to me while I was washing the sidewalk. He looked like he was on his way home from work.

2A owns a surprising number of toys for a man without children.

Apartment 2B always smells like a skunk that someone has tried to dress up with Old Spice. But he pays his rent on time, and once he helped me clean out the apartment after a long-time tenant passed away. (We found her after a couple of days.)

I have never seen so many dirty magazines in my life as the day that a pipe broke under the sink in 2C. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me, but then he grinned like a maniac when I caught him staring at my ass. Creepy.

Mr. J. in 3A is carrying on with the girl in 4A. They think nobody knows, but the only person in the building who’s in the dark is Mrs. J., who also suffers from the misguided belief that I don’t know she got a dog.

3B tells me everything. He thinks if he keeps me in the loop, I won’t tell anyone else what he went to prison for.

Note: The prompt was to write something about any sense of the word “busted.”

50/50 Fall 2008, Exercise #4: Time, stopped

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:06:39 +0000

Breakfast at Sunrise

“I can’t set foot in the place,” Milla said. “I don’t think I ever will again.”

I was only trying to make small talk when I had asked her about the Sunrise Cafe, the tawdry-looking diner across the street from where we sat sipping lattes at the Golden Spoon. I was waiting for the waitress to bring me a cheese danish. Milla was avoiding carbs today, so she hadn’t ordered anything but the coffee.

“Everything in my entire life since that moment has been colored by what happened there,” she told me. She shifted in her seat and stared into the canopy of the live oak that shaded the patio. Her eyes looked tired.

“When I met Jack,” she said, “I was fresh out of a three-year marriage that was a mistake from the beginning. I had fallen for the first man who said he loved me before dragging me into bed. That one early moment of discretion turned out to be his finest hour. It was all downhill from there.

“So Jack and I were taking it slowly, and I was okay with that. We’d been dating for three months. He didn’t talk much about relationship stuff. I suspected that he didn’t have much of a history. He was a few years younger than me, and I saw innocent excitement in his eyes. They were dark brown, almost black, and always seemed to sparkle in any light.

“That Friday, we’d made plans for dinner and a movie. All week I’d been working up the nerve to ask him to stay over at the end of the evening. I was ready for the next phase. I liked the idea of waking up together on Saturday morning. And not just the thought of spending the night in a man’s arms again. I wanted that warm familiarity. You know that feeling of having breakfast together for the first time?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s nice.” I’m not sure she heard me.

“An hour before he was supposed to pick me up, he called to say that something had come up at work. I was disappointed. I said, ‘Okay, call me when you’re free tomorrow. Maybe we can get together.’ And he said, ‘Sure, let me see how things go with the project.’ I didn’t like the sound of that, but what can you do? I called my best friend, Shawna, but got the machine. I left her a message and called my other best friend, Carrie. When I hadn’t heard anything from Shawna in an hour or so, Carrie and I went for soup and salads, then popped into Jason’s for one drink. I was home in bed by midnight. I hadn’t heard back from Shawna, but I didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes she would fall of the planet for a couple of days, and later she would be back and eager to spend time with her ‘best girl.’”

“I was wide awake by seven on Saturday. So I sent a text-message to Carrie to see if she wanted to meet me for breakfast. She replied with an ‘o hell yes’ before I finished brushing my teeth. We made plans to rendezvous at eight at Sunrise. My girls and I had spent a lot of hung-over mornings at the diner in college, and I had met Jack there for brunch one Sunday a couple of weeks earlier. He made fun of what he called ‘a mixture of self-conscious faux-retro decoration and real urban decline.’ I had told him that I liked the food and the people were always nice. He said, ‘Sorry, sweetie,’ and flashed those eyes at me. I smiled and called him a fashionista snob, and I took a few bites from the plate of pancakes that he’d pushed away.”

“When I pulled into the parking lot, I was 10 minutes late. I pictured Carrie tapping an impatient toe on the grubby linoleum. So I was surprised to find her waiting for me by the cash register, just inside the glass front door. She held up a hand to stop me, but I was intent on getting that first cup of coffee in front of me as soon as possible. I kept right on walking toward an empty booth on the right wall near the back. And then I saw him.”

Milla took a long swallow from her latte. She set the empty cup on the table and picked up her water glass. She put it back down without taking a sip.

“I’m not sure what went through my head. There were a million thoughts in quick succession. First I saw Jack’s face, looking as if all the blood had been drained out of it. His eyes were as sparkly as ever. I saw his hand, and her hand in it, and I stared at her but couldn’t seem to register that she was Shawna. I saw the look on her face, and I was surprised that it looked like anger. And months later I couldn’t even hear her name without wondering again how she could possibly have been angry at me. Then in an instant that seemed to last forever, I took in the laughing couple who sat across the booth from them—a work friend of Jack’s, Tim something, I think, and his wife—and the face of the waitress, who stood by with a carafe of coffee, wondering what to make of my presence. I saw my own reflection in the mirror wall, and the reflection of Carrie standing by the register, tears streaming down her face. And somewhere in all of that, I saw the plate of pancakes in front of him.

“And then those three eternal seconds were over, and so was that whole part of my life. I ran out of there, jumped in my car, and tried to drive home. But my hands were shaking so bad that I had to pull over after a couple of blocks. I cried for 20 minutes. I never spoke to any of them again, not Jack, not Shawna, not even Carrie. It was too much. Just too much.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want to go back there.”

She didn’t show any sign of having heard me. She stared across the street. Her cheeks were flushed. She began fishing around in her purse and said, “I wonder if the number I have for Carrie is still any good.”

Note: The assignment for this exercise was to write about a moment when time seemed to slow down or stand still.

Boot Camp Day 3: Searching in the Dark

Edward F. Gumnick — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:20:16 +0000

It’s the same dream, but it’s always different. I am back in the old house, the one where we lived before the war came and my father lost his job and we had to move north. I know, as I always know, that HE is here. He is here in the house with me. I can’t hear him, I never see him, I don’t want to see him, because I know what will happen if he finds me.

I wake up in my bed in the room we shared. I look around me in the darkness. I can see the three windows, filled with starlight and street lights. There is more light out there, on the shingles of the roof outside the windows, more light on the lawn that slopes away toward the valley. It is most dark inside the house, but this room isn’t the darkest.

Everything is there as we left it. The huge old radio sits on the dresser we shared. His big desk, my smaller one. His piled with books I couldn’t understand, with magazines, with the tools and supplies for his fly-tying, with pieces of leather and electrical components that I couldn’t identify. My desk has only an orderly row of books standing between two plain wooden L bookends. They are fiction—dog-eared paperbacks and thrift-store third editions of second-rate spy thrillers, science fiction, ghost stories.

I know that I cannot hide in the closet. That’s the first place he’ll look. That was always the first place he looked, and everyone had to learn that hard lesson once. I contemplate the attic door. He has to stoop to go through it, but I don’t. But I don’t know what I will find behind the small door. Will it be as we left it, packed from the center aisle below the peak of the roof all the way out to the eaves with moldering cardboard boxes and bug-infested baskets of old linens, broken toys, strands of Christmas lights, and outdated appliances? It used to be a maze of hiding places and a source of unexpected treasures. But this is a dream. Might I open the door to find the attic empty, and hear his footsteps in the hall outside our bedroom door? Will the bare bulb that hangs halfway between the door and the outer wall of the house be lighted, or will I have to feel my way carefully across the plywood sheets, reaching for the chain that hangs somewhere before me in the dark? No, I should not have wasted these moments considering the attic.

I climb out of the bed. In this dream, I am always surprised again to find how short my legs are. In my waking life, I cannot remember being small. It seems to me that I was always big, and strong, and if not an object of fear, at least imposing enough to avoid most physical confrontations. But my short legs—they are thin, too, not the sturdy pillars into which they would grow—my short legs barely reach the floor. I feel the carpet. Even in the dark, I remember its shades of brown and gold. I tiptoe to the door and press my ear against it. Nothing. He is not in the hallway. I think I would be able to hear his breathing. I pull the door open, taking care to keep the hinges from squeaking or the knob from banging against the wall.

In the faint glow of the nightlight coming from the open door of the bathroom, there is no sign of him in the hallway or in the open door of my parents’ bedroom at the far end. The other doors are all closed. He could be behind any of them. But that is not his usual game.

I keep to the wall on my right, from where I’ll have the best view into the bathroom and the open bedroom door. When I am outside the bathroom, I drop to my knees. I reach out and place the palm of my right hand on the cool linoleum. I know somehow that he is not in the bathroom. I draw back my hand and think about the space underneath the vanity. I could fit in there. I think of the warm, wet smell, and now I can almost smell it. No, not there.

He wouldn’t go in my parents’ bedroom. I know he wouldn’t. He pretends to have no respect for authority, and I think he is afraid of nothing, but we have been given a few rules, and he knows that we are not allowed in there when Mom and Dad aren’t home.

I wonder for a moment where they are. In the dream I cannot remember that one of them is two thousand miles from here and the other has been gone for 15 years. I am too young to think about these things.

I make my way down the stairs, careful to walk only on the ends of the treads where the nails are. Walking on the well-worn middle path makes squeaks and pops that you can hear from the front porch. Fourteen steps. I have to be more careful now. There is no nightlight in the downstairs hall. We aren’t supposed to go downstairs during the night. The curtains are drawn, and in this dream, there is never a light burning from my father’s study at the back corner of the house, and my mother is never in the kitchen making a cup of chamomile tea before bed.

I am quick to move away from the vulnerable open position at the foot of the stairs. Around the end of the banister to the left, there’s a small space next to the telephone table. I fit in this space, and in the deep darkness, no one can see my pale legs or the light-blue cotton of my summer pajamas. I wait here a few moments. It is always while I pause here that I realize that as much as I don’t want to do it, I must go into the basement.

Note: The prompt was “searching in the dark.” The character from whom the narrator is hiding—or whom he is seeking, perhaps—is loosely based on my brother, who did not abuse or torment me in the darkness (at least not on any regular basis), even if that’s how this piece kind of sounds.

Boot Camp Day 1(a): Golden Boys

Edward F. Gumnick — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:39:09 +0000

Mel was my best friend during the summer we spent at Lake Barron. When people asked what “Mel” was short for, she liked to say “Melvin.” Sometimes she’d wait for a reaction, but sometimes she’d just say it and walk away. There was nothing about her that made “Melody” seem like a good fit.

Mel and I were horsing around in shallow water in her father’s leaky rowboat the first time I saw the Payton boys race by in their aluminum canoe. I stood staring. Mel waved a greeting, but neither of the boys acknowledged us. They glided past us in a matter of moments. I watched until they disappeared from sight around the point where the campground ended.

“Who was that?” I asked Mel. Her family had spent summers on the lake for four years, and she seemed to know all the locals by name.

“The Paytons—Junior and Mike. Their parents own the house with the tennis courts.”

I whistled. We had rowed past the Paytons’ house a couple of times in our meandering explorations of the lake. It was a palace compared to most of the other houses around the lake, a six- or eight-bedroom Tudor mini-mansion tucked into a stand of pines on the hillside. The entrance faced the road along the ridge on the south side of the lake, so from the water, we had a view of the back. A dozen windows and three sets of French doors looked out on a broad patio. A flight of flagstone stairs led from the patio down to the level clearing where we’d seen the boys playing tennis in crisp whites.

“Which one is which again?” I asked. I tried to sound casual. I had only known Mel for three weeks, and I wasn’t ready for her to know the source of my curiosity.

“Evan—Junior, they call him—is the tall one with the straight hair,” she explained. “Mike has the curly black hair.”

—

I wanted to be like those Payton boys. I wanted to live at the lake all year in a big house with my own bedroom and my own bathroom. I wanted a tall, handsome brother who didn’t have to share a set of bunk beds with me. A brother who goes rowing on the lake and plays tennis at a competitive level and always gets invited to every party. I wanted the best teeth that money could buy and an expensive haircut and shoes for every different sport and muscular arms and long, tan legs. I wanted gold medals for swimming the butterfly and a wide smile and dark brown eyes framed by perfect eyebrows.

[This story goes somewhere very dark eventually, but I’m not sure where yet.]

Note: The prompt for this story was the word canoe.

50/50 Exercise #44: Confessional Text

Edward F. Gumnick — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:07:40 +0000

“We went to the Half Moon after we got off work. Lorraine wanted a drink ’cause she says it’s all over with Bobby, there’s no way she’s gonna take him back again. I said no, I’m due back here at 7:30, and she said, oh come on, just come with me for one.

“So we took her car, and I left mine behind the diner where I always park it. ’Cause you know I’d always rather ride with somebody else, especially if I’m gonna be drinking. And it was Lo who invited me to this party, so I figured she could make sure I got home.

“That guy with the arms was working the back bar at the Half Moon, so Lo and me went back there to get a couple beers. He said, ladies, can I get you started with a shot of tequila, and next thing I know, Lorraine is slamming her shot glass on the bar, and her and the bartender were saying, drink! drink! drink! and baby, you know how fucked up I get on tequila.

“We partied for a while after that, dancing and drinking a few more beers. I don’t know how many. I said to Lo, can we please get something to eat, or else I’m gonna be too hung over to work in the morning. So we walked over to Sonic and shared a burger and some fries sitting on one of the picnic tables in front. And I felt okay after that.

“We went back to Lorraine’s car, and she said, honey, are you okay to drive ’cause I could give you a ride home, it’s not that far out of my way. But I said no, I’m really okay. I really thought I was, I swear.

“She dropped me off by the side of the diner. I remember I saw Manuel’s truck was still in front, so I went the long way around to my car. I didn’t want another run-in with him the way I was feeling.

“And then I drove home, and nothing happened, I was really okay. I thought I was, and then I was almost home, and I slowed down for the blinking yellow. There wasn’t no one else on the road, not a soul in sight. I swear, baby, I was awake and sober and there wasn’t another car anywhere. And I put on my signal and made the left turn, and there was this horrible crunch on the right side, oh my God, something hit me or I hit something, I didn’t know, and I was so scared ’cause I was thinking about the tequila and the beers, and I didn’t see nothing but I felt the weight of whatever it was like a hard thump on the passenger door, and then I wasn’t thinking, just driving and driving, fast up the street, and looking around to see if anybody saw me, and I was crying and I was sure someone would be coming after me. And when I got to that sharp turn at Manassas, I was going too fast, and I went up on the curb, and I heard metal like something broke off the car….”

After that, she fell apart again, and it took me 15 more minutes to get her to stop crying. She told me that she’d left the car eight blocks away, parked next to the Baptist church, and walked home. From her driveway, she could see lights flashing over on Beaufort Street, so she walked around the corner and down to where a streetlight was out and she could try to get a look without being seen. But she was too scared to get close, so all she saw was the flashing lights of two patrol cars and an ambulance, and shapes of people moving around in front of the headlights and flashers.

She came home, locked all the doors, and sat on the living-room floor, crying her eyes out and waiting for a knock on the door. She was sure someone would come to arrest her as soon as they found her banged-up car. After two hours, she went back outside to find that all the lights were gone. That’s when she called me.

Note: The task was to write about a crime. This is a continuation of the story I started in Exercise #4 and expanded in Exercise #10. Still not finished, sorry! But at least you’re getting a little more of the picture.

50/50 Exercise #36: Invisibility

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:13:09 +0000

I wouldn’t be in this mess if I knew all the rules of invisibility. Okay, that’s not strictly true. I’m here waiting for my dad to post bail because I pinched a video game from Radio Shack. I think with another lesson, I probably wouldn’t have gotten busted.

Let me back up.

I didn’t even know that there were rules of invisibility until last week, when I met Jerry. Jerry was the first guy I’ve known who can make himself invisible, like me. When I figured that out about him, he told me that if I kept his secret, he’d tell me about the rules.

“Rules?” I asked. “There are rules?”

“Yeah, man. You gotta follow the rules. There’s, like, at least 10 or 12 of them.” He kept his voice low, so I had to lean across the lunchroom table to hear him. “I figured them out on my own, but you don’t have to find out the hard way like I did. I’ll explain them to you. Just don’t rat me out.”

“Sure, okay.” So far, my invisibility still had a lot of holes. What could it hurt to learn from someone with more experience?

“First rule: Don’t walk in front of the TV. I don’t know what the, like, physics are or anything, but no matter how strong an invisibility you have going, walking in front of the TV while people are watching it will make you visible again.”

“Okay, right, I’ve noticed that too. What else?” I asked.

“Second rule: Stick to your routine. If your invisibility works good when you wear your Anthrax T-shirt and that eyebrow stud, then don’t ever take off the Anthrax shirt or the stud. Get it?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, so like, the invisibility is connected somehow to certain things?”

“I don’t know exactly how it works,” he said. “This is one I kinda figured out by doing some experiments. My sister thinks I’m, like, totally mental.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rule number three: You’re more invisible around the ‘beautiful people.’ They can only see each other, and they make us more invisible when they’re around. Take Jordan, for example—if you stand near him, nobody can see you at all, even if your invisibility is kind of shaky at the moment.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen that effect. Stay close to pretty people. What else have you got?”

“Four: Some people can see right through invisibility. It doesn’t matter how well it works on your parents, your siblings, the really hot girls. Have you ever had Mrs. Foster for English? No? Well, don’t ever get into her class, because no matter how invisible you are, she’ll still call on you.”

I was about to ask Jerry what number five is. But right then, Ashley Martin came walking toward our table, stopped for a second to scan the cafeteria, saw somebody she knew, turned around, and moved on. When I turned my attention back to Jerry, he had disappeared.

Note: The topic is invisibility. This still needs a lot of work.

50/50 Exercise #10: Expansion of Previous Text

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:54:32 +0000

[ SEE PREVIOUS DRAFT ]

By the time I got to Angie’s neighborhood, I didn’t see any ambulance or highway patrol cars. I looked for signs of an accident, a mark on the pavement or something out of place. But what she’d said on the phone had been real sketchy on details, so I wasn’t even sure I was searching in the right spot. There, in front of the Diamond Shamrock, where the road makes a lazy s—were those skid marks on the wet asphalt? Had that light pole always tilted a little to the right? Maybe it had.

I’d driven to Angie’s house a thousand times, but not usually in the early hours of the morning, and not after being woken up from a hangover sleep by a hysterical phone call. And I hadn’t made this trip very often in the rain, at night, wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. Anyway, why would I bother to pay attention to this piece of road? It was unremarkable in every way, except that it’s right before the left turn into my ex-girlfriend’s subdivision.

I pulled my truck into the empty driveway. When she opened the door, she held herself together for half a second. Then she must have seen my look of surprise as I took in her wet hair, soggy clothes, and the remnants of makeup smeared all over her face, and she fell apart. “Oh, baby! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It was just…. I mean I…I didn’t know who else to call, I don’t know what…I’m so so sorry!” She wasn’t ready to start making sense, so I pulled her tight against my chest. She sobbed and shook with cold and panic. “I’m so sorry….”

I helped her inside the house. Whatever had happened, there was no reason to share it with her neighbors. I led her to the couch. I thought for a split second about how we’d grappled on this couch right before she threw me out the last time. But there was no time to think about what she wanted that she said I couldn’t give her. I needed to get a better idea of what she’d done—or what she thought she’d done.

“C’mon now, babe. Take a couple deep breaths, and tell me what happened. It’s all gonna be okay. You’ll see.”

It took me the better part of an hour to get the story out of her. Every time I thought the sobbing was over, I’d ask a question that was too matter-of-fact, sounded too much like an off-duty reserve deputy sheriff, and she’d go to pieces again.

“We went to the Half Moon after we got off work. Lorraine wanted to have a drink ’cause she says it’s all over with Bobby, there’s no way she’s gonna take him back again. I said no, I’m due back here at 7:30, and she said, oh come on, just come with me for one.

“That guy with the arms was working the back bar at the Half Moon, so Lorraine and me went back there to get a couple beers. He said, ladies, can I get you started with a shot of tequila, and next thing I know, Lorraine is slamming her shot glass on the bar, and her and the bartender were saying, drink! drink! drink! and you know I don’t do well on tequila.”

Author’s note: The assignment today was to look back through our work in the class so far and choose one text to expand. I opted to rework Exercise #4: Telling a Secret. You can read the notes on the first draft for an explanation of where this story originated.

It still needs more work, but at least I’ve addressed most of Gayle’s comments!

This is the second draft of this story. [ READ FIRST DRAFT ]

50/50 Exercise #4: Telling a Secret

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:05:35 +0000

By the time I got to Angie’s neighborhood, the ambulance and the highway patrol cars were gone. I tried to find any sign of an accident, a mark on the pavement or something out of place. But what she’d said on the phone hadn’t been too clear on details, so I wasn’t even sure if I was searching in the right spot. There, in front of the Diamond Shamrock, where the road makes a lazy s—were those skid marks on the wet asphalt? Had that light pole always tilted a little to the right? I think maybe it had.

I’d driven to her house a thousand times, but not usually in the early hours of the morning, not usually after being woken up from a hangover sleep by a hysterical phone call. And not very often in the dark, in the rain, wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. Anyway, why would I have bothered to pay attention to this piece of road? It was unremarkable in every way, except that it’s just before the right turn into my ex-girlfriend’s subdivision.

When she opened the door, she held it together for a moment. Then she saw the look on my face as I took in her wet hair, her soggy clothes, and the tear-streaked mascara on her cheeks and forehead, and she fell apart. “Oh baby! Thank God you’re here. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do….” She pressed her face against my chest and shook with cold and panic.

I gathered her into my arms and pulled her inside the house. Whatever had happened, there was no reason to share it with her neighbors. I led her to the couch. I thought for a split second about how we’d grappled on this couch right before she threw me out the last time. But there was no time to enjoy the irony. I needed to get a better idea of what she’d done—or what she thought she’d done.

Author’s note: The assignment today was “think of a secret you have kept.” Max had us do an exercise very much like this one in the Spectrum Center “Secrets and Lies” workshop. On that occasion, I wrote a true story about a fairly harmless secret I kept for one of my sisters.

This time, I decided to play with a fiction based on a true story I was once told by a friend, who reported it as being about the cousin of a friend of a friend…. (Is this an urban legend? You tell me.)

The lead character in that story was driving home late one night, slightly more under-the-influence than was her habit. Moments from her own driveway, she sideswiped something large in the road. In a panic, she sped away from the scene. She drove around back streets for a while, and then made her way home by an alternate route. Then she left her car and walked back toward the scene of the accident. She was too fearful to get close enough to find out whom (or what) she’d hit, but she could see the flashing lights of several police cars and an ambulance. She slinked home and spent the whole night waiting for someone to come arrest her, but no one ever did. The next day, she searched the newspaper for a report of the accident, but she never found out anything about it.

I’m writing from the perspective of her unsympathetic ex-boyfriend who isn’t entirely sure that she didn’t imagine the whole event.

This story has been expanded into a second draft.