And so here we are, closing things down like an all night bar. Everyone’s gone home, have they, or somewhere, because they’re not here. No one’s been by since the accident twenty five years ago. That’s a long time to be brain dead. Most don’t last that long. Even Evangeline the sentinel caregiver doesn’t think they’ll ever wake up at this point. Still, she smiles at the vivacious Vivien, the striking beauty, summa cum laude at Vassar, silver medalist in Olympic sailing, whispering she was going to meet Dash the estate’s gardener from Australia.
He does know roses, I see that, but I understand his lineage traces to the penal colonies, sniffed Mama.
In the prison hulks they chained the felons below decks in their vomit and filth, said the Count.
Cover for me, won’t you dear Eva, they mustn't know, mustn’t. They’ll disown me, or kill him.
If their attention had spread beyond the tendrils of their own lust they’d have known, there’s the rub. That the Bugatti’s axel, well, you can guess the rest. Really, it was the children made it such a tragedy. At least they died, shared not the bedrot fate of these two, who after all, curiously, shared a future. Mama and the Count are long gone. Why they provided for Dash at the end is the family secret, lodged in the subterranean safes of Barclays Bank.
It’s dawn now. Evangeline enters the room and spreads the curtains so the sunlight floods over the couple sleeping forever.
Gregory didn’t get far. Crashed into a gurney in the hallway and limped to the elevator. The elevator! Managed to exit the front door of the hospital and attempt an escape on a lime scooter. Ran a red light and collided with a police cruiser. The officer couldn’t stop laughing when he came by the bookstore to take my statement.
Gregory was unhurt, but his trial for attempted manslaughter is next month. Meanwhile, he has called my mother to complain about jail food.
My mother? Has a new beau. The coroner, who was “such a great comfort to her” when everyone thought I was dead, has begun spending several nights at a time at her house. He seems nice. And he seems to have taken her mind off match-making for me.
Which is good.
All right, it may have been foolhardy. Did I say “may have?” It was foolhardy.
I found that key, and I knew who was behind it all. Charon is a daemon. Immortal and reckless overall. I’ve read enough mythology to realize just how jealous, petty, vengeful, dramatic…and lustful immortals are.
Oh, but that last characteristic.
So, yes, I went through that door. A woman’s entitled to some fun after that ordeal.
Beyond that night? Or was it three days? In his world, who knows?
But Elias and I are back in the bookshop.
And that very good looking cop who took my statement has a kayak. And a newfound interest in literature.
After I deleted my novel-in-progress from my laptop, cursed my lack of talent and vowed never to write fiction again, the characters from my book continued to live in my imagination. Every once in a while I would catch them doing something surprising: shy Eleanor got drunk and went home with a bushy bearded stranger; sedentary Lionel started working out like crazy; hard-charging Katherine quit her investment banking job in a fit of pique. I let them live their lives in my head and refused to succumb to the temptation to write any of it down. I knew that what I had so vividly imagined would end up inert and inelegant on the page. Not writing was a great freedom. All that time spent alone at my desk, deluding myself that I was working on something important. What a waste. You might think that my realization that I had no talent for writing fiction would give me a greater appreciation for those that do have talent, but you would be wrong. I began to find novels ridiculous- the doings of imaginary people seemed absurd, like a child playing soldiers or Barbies. I’d read a few pages of Tolstoy and think, “bullshit, Leo, that never happened.” I’d read Proust and think, “grow up, Marcel.” When my characters would appear unbidden in my mind’s eye and utter an interesting phrase, I’d smile at them like a reformed alcoholic who is tempted to drink, and say, “not today, Satan.”
As we pack up to leave, I can’t help wondering whether what we’d done here will ever make any difference to anyone but us. Obviously, it made a difference to Sam. He lost his leg. That’s a big difference. And, then Cheryl. She found out that Sam had been carrying on with a secret second family all those years. That must have jolted her around a bit. But, for people outside of our group, did any of what we tried to do change the world for the better? We did save the diner. That might make a difference, especially in a small town like this. It’s possible that someone sometime in the future will have something happen in the diner that will result in something important that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. And we did destroy all those forged passports. That’s going to slow things up, but will it change the final outcome? Maybe it’s just delay not actual change. Well, we can’t sit around here pondering these questions. It’s time to get out and get Sam to the doctor.
Nice! I never read what others have written until I’ve posted mine - but somehow I think Sam and Cheryl might have got along well with my crew. Of course, my narrator’s writing from prison, so…
Many have wondered what ever became of Rachel. After a life of giving and dedicating herself to the needy and the disenfranchised, she finally got what she deserved. The man she secretly adored all of those years, Sterling, ended up falling in love with her older greedy sister, Rocco, and those two lived happily ever after. The dishonest banker who had garnered Rachel's wages at her dead-end job finally seized her lifelong childhood family home and then made a fortune when he resold it after discovering the chest of gold bullion buried in the basement. Still believing in the goodness of people, Rachel forgave him and her vicious sister, but then was struck by lightning at the orphanage as she was handing out her hand-made presents to the children who remained ungrateful to this very day. Still, Rachel believed in people. When she ran into that burning house to save the family pets, the Rottweiler bit off her ear; still, she succeeded in dragging the snarling, snapping beast to safety. Her emergency room bill was $4,000, and they kept her heirloom diamond ring as a promissory note, the only thing she had left from her long, dead grandmother who had always favored Rocco over her. Still believing in the goodness of people, her dog bite got infected and her insurance denied to pay for her antibiotics for the sepsis that ensued, including meningitis. She prayed and prayed, and she was miraculously cured from the meningitis, but she finally died from lockjaw, which was an incredibly painful condition of lethal muscle spasms of every muscle in her body. Even with her last breaths, she forgave all who had hurt her and wished for world peace and good fortune for everyone. Except for Rocco, that bitch! And Sterling. And those rotten orphans. And the nurse who kept her ring. And as the last tetanic spasm scrunched her abs into indescribably agony, she died in peace.
'... the chest of gold bullion buried in the basement...' '... she succeeded in dragging the snarling, snapping beast to safety...' The reportage-style, neutral commentator voice lends itself well to epilogues, it would seem. (Only one line seems to lose the neutrality: 'And those rotten orphans.')
I never told him what I wanted him to know because he never picked up the phone or called me back. After I was cut off when I started telling him the news in that last message, I waited. And waited. I guess I’m still waiting, although it’s too late to do anything about anything. That’s the thing: if you wait long enough, everything just dissolves on its own. That’s what I’ve discovered, and it satisfies me. Everything dissolves, disappears, and at some unexpected moment your fears disperse like so many gnats in a gust of wind. It was like that for me. One day I realized I didn’t mind that he didn’t know. I can live, alone, with it all. But if he were to call me back now — I have the same number and of course it was in his phone — I would tell him, what? I don’t know what I would tell him. What could I say? Call me back sooner next time? I’m sorry you never knew, and I’m sorry she never knew what accounted for your silence?
Oh, that final sentence (question) is so mysterious! Reading your piece made me realize that this is a really good exercise for writing a story because there's no problem with how to begin, or what is this story about--you just launch it and go with it. I think I'm going to try it more often. And yes, it's quite true, that time seems to always do its thing and what seems dire at one moment can simply dissolve, given enough time.
‘Shakespeare’s superior indistinctness can easily be seen if we compare the way Marlowe’s Barabas, and Shakespeare’s Shylock, talk about their wealth.
Here is Barabas:
“Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinth, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds … “
[I i 25–7]
... However, with all due credit to Marlowe’s jewels, compare Shakespeare’s Shylock when he hears that his daughter (who has run off with her lover, taking some of her father’s gold and jewels with her) is living it up in Genoa and has exchanged a ring for a monkey.
“Thou torturest me Tubal, – it was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”. [III i 1I2]
Marlowe could never have written that. Quite apart from the human depth, the indistinctness is what stamps it as Shakespeare’s. ‘A wilderness of monkeys’, the lightning phrase with which Shylock registers his wit, scorn and outrage, is unforgettable and unimaginable – or, rather, imaginable in an infinite number of ways. How do you imagine it? Are there trees and grass in the wilderness? Or just monkeys? Are they mixed monkeys, or all of one kind? With tails or without? Of what colour? What are they doing? Or are these questions too demanding? Is the impression you get much more fleeting, much less distinguishable from the mere blur of total indistinctness? At all events, compared to ‘grass-green emeralds’, ‘a wilderness of monkeys’ is a wilderness of possibilities....'
(With thanks to James Marriott, who quotes John Carey.)
Wilderness of Monkeys: great name for a band or a novel or a Jane Goodall documentary, but fantastic as Wm Shakes. wrote it. Thanks for pointing to this.
The monkeys I saw were similar but only to each other and had gum leaves around them. This must’ve been early Shakespeare when Australia was still joined to Africa, South America, Antartica and India. I think. Might’ve been a bit later in someone’s garden.
"Everything dissolves, disappears, and at some unexpected moment your fears disperse like so many gnats in a gust of wind." Kevin. . . As I wait I'm counting on this being true, please let it be true.
A few years after our definitive rupture, during the worst of Covid, there was a post on Jerry’s Facebook page. “in hospital cant breathe pneunoxmia.” Characteristically, it was uncapitalized, with no punctuation. Uncharacteristically, there was the typo of the “x”, and I surmised he was in very bad shape to have just posted that – he never posted on Facebook anymore, so he really wanted people to know. I found myself extremely conflicted and called Malcolm. I delineated everything that had led up to my walking away from the friendship – the lies, the extraordinary abuse of my generosity, the relapses. Malcolm told me I had to follow my conscience, but any decision he would certainly understand.
In the face of death that I thought very likely, given his age and years of smoking, I decided the best thing I could do was contribute to his sense of peace if the coming days brought his last moments. I called, relieved he didn’t pick up. I left a simple message. “It’s Lucien. I just wanted you to know that all is forgiven.” That was it. I don’t really know whether I totally meant it – I’ve never felt forgiveness made much sense unless it was asked for first. But I knew that he wanted it from me, and in the grand scheme of things, easing someone’s passing into the next realm was far more important than standing in your own grievance.
He died two days later, and I never knew if he heard my message, but strangely – or perhaps not so strangely-- it was suddenly quite sincere. But going to his memorial service would not have been, and that’s what I told Malcolm. He reported back that it was sparsely attended, but that could have been because of Covid. The tributes showed up on his Facebook page though, and they mostly reflected his glory days, before the fall, and the only references to his tendency to eventually turn on most everyone who tried to love him was one phrase, from Helena, “he could be at times mercurial.”
I debated with myself, then realized that I had some of his best work on my walls. I very carefully photographed my favorite, the collage of my mother’s life that I had first commissioned from him back in 1998. I posted it with the simple words. “He was a great artist.”
Her unused baby shoes finally sold on E-bay. She was cleaning out her mother’s house after her death, and it was one of the last precious things her mother had insisted on keeping in the glass cabinet in the dining room. She hated those shoes and the fact that her mother always made such a big deal about her distain for wearing shoes. She still had the small fur-lined moccasins from the time when she was a baby. And she never wanted to even try to understand the big deal people made about her barefoot hiking and insisting on wearing sandals no matter the weather.
So that's what happened to the "baby shoes, for sale, never worn." Now we know! (I have a nephew who wore only shorts for years and years and years, no matter the weather. Not quite the same as barefoot or sandals, but close.)
Doyle drove along Main Street, slowing before the shop with the family name in faded, peeling gold lettering. The windows were boarded up. The street was empty except for an old man and his dog slowly making their way to O’Brien’s pub. Without stopping, he continued out of the village as the road rose gently towards Oughill.
Everything looked smaller, narrower from what he remembered. He should have come to the turning by now. They still hadn’t put the road signs back up. He turned the car around, slowly going back the way he came. He soon found the turning , parked the car and walked slowly along the gravel drive. The current owners had built a new fence and a sturdy gate. There was a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. Little good that would do he thought, anyone could go up the back way along the trout stream and across Peggy O’Brien’s field. Leaning on the gate he looked up at the farmhouse - still the same solid building even if Ma and Da were in their graves and the brothers and sisters all gone away.
It was late summer afternoon. Slievemann a blue haze in the distance, the air warm and sweet. He could almost imagine the sound of the men running the threshing machine, Da calling him to get the cows in. As he turned, he saw the old marl pit where uncle Denny had drowned. He shook his head, got back into the car and drove down into the village. The old man was sitting outside O’Brien’s.
“I thought that was you Christie” he said, leaning out of the car window.
“You came back so”
“I did”
“Planning to move back?”
“No, I have a life and family over there now”
“Probably for the best. Your Da reckoned if anyone would survive it would be you”
“How so?”
“On account of your stubbornness, said once you had an idea in your head, nothing else mattered.”
Doyle smiled, turned off the ignition, “Another pint Christie?”
Reader, I did divorce him, and my life has continued on for another sixty years. I married again, had another child, and came out as a lesbian in my early thirties. I went back to school, graduated college with a degree in Economics, and became a writer. I founded and co-founded theatre companies, and continue writing plays. I've also published three novels and six collections of poetry. As for Ronnie, he kidnapped our son when he was five, and scarpered off to New Orleans. I didn't see my son again for five years. He and I are now estranged -- because of my writing. My daughter and I live together now. She married and had two children, then divorced (a pattern in my family, I fear). She and my grandchildren are the lights of my life.
Today, December 22 is Maya’s birthday, her third year. I tell you this because mine was yesterday the shortest day of the year. He never knew these dates and that’s just his style never to know anything important to “regular” folks.
Adalbert, was never one to care about the normality of “regular” folks. In fact as I have written in "This Last Year" he shied away from the life I wanted us to have . . . always afraid the Materialism of Life might creep into his soul. Although he tolerated the fuss I made on his birthday – perhaps the longest day of his life :) .
Those who love Adalbert wish him the best future he can tolerate.
After being harangued by his students because he could not say why silent letters run right through the English language, Hugh finally became comfortable speaking of Prologs and Epilogs. His attention turned to the galling (to some fellows in his language classes) dilemma of extraneous double letters. He still fights that battle.
Can we get him onto the homonym case? I, for one, am extremely frustrated by the bare bear waiting to bear the weight, and the plain plane landing on the plane.
Claudia finally told Jim to get out of her life. She went on to become a photojournalist specializing in social subjects. She married, had a daughter, also a photographer, and lived with her family in Northeast Ohio. After many years working for local papers, when the last of them folded, she published a book of portraits of Ohioans addicted to Oxycontin. She died in 2015 from a rare autoimmune disease.
Jim is today a fairly well-regarded artist in NYC, with gallery representation. He had his 15 minutes of fame a number of years ago when he exhibited those raunchy kitsch paintings, that critics favorably compared to Jeff Koon’s Made in Heaven series. Social mores have finally caught up with him and today they seem very tame compared to Kim Kardashian’s daring art. Fortunately he made some wise investments in real estate in lower Manhattan, and can still afford to live there with his wife and two mistresses (three different generations share his attentions). He has two grown daughters, both at loggerheads with him but for opposing reasons. After retiring from his teaching job, he spends his days making art (he’s not going to let Kim Kardashian give him the one-up).
After snitching on Jim, Sandy fled to the Mediterranean coast, and has lived ever since in a seaside suburb of Toulon, where France’s nuclear submarines are based. Should Russian drones come a-calling, Toulon will likely be a prime target. Every day she reads the New York Times obsessively, combing over the details of the depredations brought about by by the Trump administration, to the point of being totally oblivious to events closer at hand, to wit the election of Jordan Bardella. For her, it’s probably better that way: a drone strike will be a more merciful end.
i love "after snitching on Jim." Leaves so much to the imagination. And thank god, Claudia got rid of him. But why she had to die while he continues to make art.... Life just is not fair.
What the heck! After he decided to stay, nothing changed. He still kicks the dog when she barks, fails to look after his children, and continues to ignore the hole in our roof.
Matthew never turned over a new leaf, nor raked a leaf in his life. I continue to rake over every ignorant thing he has done and plans to do. The Real End to Not Having Fun.
Just a few months later, a man appeared on her front porch like a sunray selling glow in the dark dog collars. His name was Evan Huddle.. He reminded her of the late corgi, Bonnie. He was paunchy, with a dainty glimmer in his nut brown eyes. “I don’t walk my team at night,” she said, hands fishing around in her fanny pack for a treat. “I understand,” he said, licking his lips. It was 103 in the shade. She invited him in for lemonade. A few nosy dogs caught on, and gathered outside the window. They worried too much, it was true.. Had never seen her acting so human before. None of them knew what to think.
I was laughing as I jumped in. I knew what would happen. Everyone would think I was dead by drowning, or deep-frozen like fish fingers but without the crumby bits all around. Either way, very, very dead. I had discreet vidcams set up, and tiny, almost invisible mics. Magenta-my-love was running them from the control room hidden in that old cabin five hundred yards up the shore. I would see – not direct live, you can't have everything, but later – how each of my friends had reacted to the drama. My friends, or not my friends. Lovers, or not my lovers. Sheep or goats, ha! Sorted! My vengeance would be complete!
It was as well I was laughing, because the cold in this mountain lake was extreme and I was wearing nothing at all. That was part of the dare, jump through the hole in the ice with nothing on. Certain of my extremities were beginning to feel the pinch. And it was time to come up for air, the air that was between the water and the ice. I kicked out and began to rise.
Slowly.
I kicked out stronger. That burned oxygen. I needed to reach the air layer. I was going to choke, pretty soon.
I tapped my earbud. Three times, three times again, three times again. Mayday. SOS. Magenta-my-love, why am I not going up for air?
Crackle, spittle, crack.
My darling, you're in an unexpected downflow of very cold water. I'm so sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. Kismet, my love. Goodbyeee!
Crockle, spattle, crick.
There are times I feel so lonesome...
The cold is at least a comfort...
Except when it burns. And it does, it burns, it burns...
True, it's not the epilogue. He was in fact saved in the nick of time. This will be told in the epilogue. He was not saved by Magenta. She had already run off with all the bets laid for or against his escape. A mountain rescue helicopter pulled him out through the hole in the ice. He was not pretty to look at (he wasn't anyway), and he had a few bits missing due to frostbite and the little toe-chompers that live at the bottom of this lake. Lizzie doesn't care, she just loves him anyway. She was the one who called mountain rescue. Every day he wishes she hadn't. He can't tell her because his tongue got chomped off. And he's forgotten how to write. And all his friends who were at the lake dropped him when they understood how he was planning to test their friendship.
Now tell me if he can't speak or write, there can't be an epilogue. Go on, I can take it!
And so here we are, closing things down like an all night bar. Everyone’s gone home, have they, or somewhere, because they’re not here. No one’s been by since the accident twenty five years ago. That’s a long time to be brain dead. Most don’t last that long. Even Evangeline the sentinel caregiver doesn’t think they’ll ever wake up at this point. Still, she smiles at the vivacious Vivien, the striking beauty, summa cum laude at Vassar, silver medalist in Olympic sailing, whispering she was going to meet Dash the estate’s gardener from Australia.
He does know roses, I see that, but I understand his lineage traces to the penal colonies, sniffed Mama.
In the prison hulks they chained the felons below decks in their vomit and filth, said the Count.
Cover for me, won’t you dear Eva, they mustn't know, mustn’t. They’ll disown me, or kill him.
If their attention had spread beyond the tendrils of their own lust they’d have known, there’s the rub. That the Bugatti’s axel, well, you can guess the rest. Really, it was the children made it such a tragedy. At least they died, shared not the bedrot fate of these two, who after all, curiously, shared a future. Mama and the Count are long gone. Why they provided for Dash at the end is the family secret, lodged in the subterranean safes of Barclays Bank.
It’s dawn now. Evangeline enters the room and spreads the curtains so the sunlight floods over the couple sleeping forever.
This is so intriguing!!! I had to read it a couple of times to get all the clues/hints. Really such a fun read, Tod. Unplug those two already!
You've got a thing for the letter V, I can see. Very intriguing, Tod.
What a story. I'm going to be very careful with my lust from now on.
Nice! Enough mysterious characters to create real intrigue...
Maybe another cup of coffee will clarify this or maybe not.
Oh, I see. Another stone person
For God's sake, please shake that out of your head.
Oh my god, Tod! I want to know more about Vivien and Dash—and why the family has kept that secret.
Epilogue.
Gregory didn’t get far. Crashed into a gurney in the hallway and limped to the elevator. The elevator! Managed to exit the front door of the hospital and attempt an escape on a lime scooter. Ran a red light and collided with a police cruiser. The officer couldn’t stop laughing when he came by the bookstore to take my statement.
Gregory was unhurt, but his trial for attempted manslaughter is next month. Meanwhile, he has called my mother to complain about jail food.
My mother? Has a new beau. The coroner, who was “such a great comfort to her” when everyone thought I was dead, has begun spending several nights at a time at her house. He seems nice. And he seems to have taken her mind off match-making for me.
Which is good.
All right, it may have been foolhardy. Did I say “may have?” It was foolhardy.
I found that key, and I knew who was behind it all. Charon is a daemon. Immortal and reckless overall. I’ve read enough mythology to realize just how jealous, petty, vengeful, dramatic…and lustful immortals are.
Oh, but that last characteristic.
So, yes, I went through that door. A woman’s entitled to some fun after that ordeal.
Beyond that night? Or was it three days? In his world, who knows?
But Elias and I are back in the bookshop.
And that very good looking cop who took my statement has a kayak. And a newfound interest in literature.
And so the story wraps up!!! Such a great ride--looks like it's about to take off again.
It could. I need to finish Simon’s book first.
Where there's a kayak there's a way, I always say.
YES, oh yes, yes, yes!
love it!
After I deleted my novel-in-progress from my laptop, cursed my lack of talent and vowed never to write fiction again, the characters from my book continued to live in my imagination. Every once in a while I would catch them doing something surprising: shy Eleanor got drunk and went home with a bushy bearded stranger; sedentary Lionel started working out like crazy; hard-charging Katherine quit her investment banking job in a fit of pique. I let them live their lives in my head and refused to succumb to the temptation to write any of it down. I knew that what I had so vividly imagined would end up inert and inelegant on the page. Not writing was a great freedom. All that time spent alone at my desk, deluding myself that I was working on something important. What a waste. You might think that my realization that I had no talent for writing fiction would give me a greater appreciation for those that do have talent, but you would be wrong. I began to find novels ridiculous- the doings of imaginary people seemed absurd, like a child playing soldiers or Barbies. I’d read a few pages of Tolstoy and think, “bullshit, Leo, that never happened.” I’d read Proust and think, “grow up, Marcel.” When my characters would appear unbidden in my mind’s eye and utter an interesting phrase, I’d smile at them like a reformed alcoholic who is tempted to drink, and say, “not today, Satan.”
Such a great closing line. Better write that book now.
I'm having a t-shirt made: Grow Up, Marcel!
😂 do it!
Wonderful!
You have to write this!
I love this!
Please let these characters pull you back in!
All these great lines ! bullshit Leo ! "not today, Satan"
As we pack up to leave, I can’t help wondering whether what we’d done here will ever make any difference to anyone but us. Obviously, it made a difference to Sam. He lost his leg. That’s a big difference. And, then Cheryl. She found out that Sam had been carrying on with a secret second family all those years. That must have jolted her around a bit. But, for people outside of our group, did any of what we tried to do change the world for the better? We did save the diner. That might make a difference, especially in a small town like this. It’s possible that someone sometime in the future will have something happen in the diner that will result in something important that wouldn’t have otherwise happened. And we did destroy all those forged passports. That’s going to slow things up, but will it change the final outcome? Maybe it’s just delay not actual change. Well, we can’t sit around here pondering these questions. It’s time to get out and get Sam to the doctor.
what an epilogue! A secret family, forged passports, a lost leg, a diner.... you've got all the makings for a Twin Peaks-like novel!
What Mary said! This could be a great novel.
Nice! I never read what others have written until I’ve posted mine - but somehow I think Sam and Cheryl might have got along well with my crew. Of course, my narrator’s writing from prison, so…
TITLE: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, RACHEL!
Many have wondered what ever became of Rachel. After a life of giving and dedicating herself to the needy and the disenfranchised, she finally got what she deserved. The man she secretly adored all of those years, Sterling, ended up falling in love with her older greedy sister, Rocco, and those two lived happily ever after. The dishonest banker who had garnered Rachel's wages at her dead-end job finally seized her lifelong childhood family home and then made a fortune when he resold it after discovering the chest of gold bullion buried in the basement. Still believing in the goodness of people, Rachel forgave him and her vicious sister, but then was struck by lightning at the orphanage as she was handing out her hand-made presents to the children who remained ungrateful to this very day. Still, Rachel believed in people. When she ran into that burning house to save the family pets, the Rottweiler bit off her ear; still, she succeeded in dragging the snarling, snapping beast to safety. Her emergency room bill was $4,000, and they kept her heirloom diamond ring as a promissory note, the only thing she had left from her long, dead grandmother who had always favored Rocco over her. Still believing in the goodness of people, her dog bite got infected and her insurance denied to pay for her antibiotics for the sepsis that ensued, including meningitis. She prayed and prayed, and she was miraculously cured from the meningitis, but she finally died from lockjaw, which was an incredibly painful condition of lethal muscle spasms of every muscle in her body. Even with her last breaths, she forgave all who had hurt her and wished for world peace and good fortune for everyone. Except for Rocco, that bitch! And Sterling. And those rotten orphans. And the nurse who kept her ring. And as the last tetanic spasm scrunched her abs into indescribably agony, she died in peace.
Moral of the story: Let it out!!! (Such a fun read, Gerard!)
And better late than never!
What the heck...this is not fair to Rachel!
Life's a bitch...
spoil sport :)
Heat, kitchen...
Oh my god, Gerard. Someone needed to intervene. Poor Rachel!
Such a great build in this - or should I say piling on. The grandmother always favoring Rocco is the perfect detail.
“Still believing in the goodness of people…” this made me smile.
'... the chest of gold bullion buried in the basement...' '... she succeeded in dragging the snarling, snapping beast to safety...' The reportage-style, neutral commentator voice lends itself well to epilogues, it would seem. (Only one line seems to lose the neutrality: 'And those rotten orphans.')
Film at 11.
I never told him what I wanted him to know because he never picked up the phone or called me back. After I was cut off when I started telling him the news in that last message, I waited. And waited. I guess I’m still waiting, although it’s too late to do anything about anything. That’s the thing: if you wait long enough, everything just dissolves on its own. That’s what I’ve discovered, and it satisfies me. Everything dissolves, disappears, and at some unexpected moment your fears disperse like so many gnats in a gust of wind. It was like that for me. One day I realized I didn’t mind that he didn’t know. I can live, alone, with it all. But if he were to call me back now — I have the same number and of course it was in his phone — I would tell him, what? I don’t know what I would tell him. What could I say? Call me back sooner next time? I’m sorry you never knew, and I’m sorry she never knew what accounted for your silence?
Oh, that final sentence (question) is so mysterious! Reading your piece made me realize that this is a really good exercise for writing a story because there's no problem with how to begin, or what is this story about--you just launch it and go with it. I think I'm going to try it more often. And yes, it's quite true, that time seems to always do its thing and what seems dire at one moment can simply dissolve, given enough time.
I have a tendency to overrely on inference and suggestion, so this is a perfect exercise for me. Don't need any of those pesky details.
Right! Who needs those???
Courtesy of James Marriott (https://substack.com/@jamesmarriott716869/note/c-186383405):
‘Shakespeare’s superior indistinctness can easily be seen if we compare the way Marlowe’s Barabas, and Shakespeare’s Shylock, talk about their wealth.
Here is Barabas:
“Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinth, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds … “
[I i 25–7]
... However, with all due credit to Marlowe’s jewels, compare Shakespeare’s Shylock when he hears that his daughter (who has run off with her lover, taking some of her father’s gold and jewels with her) is living it up in Genoa and has exchanged a ring for a monkey.
“Thou torturest me Tubal, – it was my turquoise, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”. [III i 1I2]
Marlowe could never have written that. Quite apart from the human depth, the indistinctness is what stamps it as Shakespeare’s. ‘A wilderness of monkeys’, the lightning phrase with which Shylock registers his wit, scorn and outrage, is unforgettable and unimaginable – or, rather, imaginable in an infinite number of ways. How do you imagine it? Are there trees and grass in the wilderness? Or just monkeys? Are they mixed monkeys, or all of one kind? With tails or without? Of what colour? What are they doing? Or are these questions too demanding? Is the impression you get much more fleeting, much less distinguishable from the mere blur of total indistinctness? At all events, compared to ‘grass-green emeralds’, ‘a wilderness of monkeys’ is a wilderness of possibilities....'
(With thanks to James Marriott, who quotes John Carey.)
Wilderness of Monkeys: great name for a band or a novel or a Jane Goodall documentary, but fantastic as Wm Shakes. wrote it. Thanks for pointing to this.
The monkeys I saw were similar but only to each other and had gum leaves around them. This must’ve been early Shakespeare when Australia was still joined to Africa, South America, Antartica and India. I think. Might’ve been a bit later in someone’s garden.
"Everything dissolves, disappears, and at some unexpected moment your fears disperse like so many gnats in a gust of wind." Kevin. . . As I wait I'm counting on this being true, please let it be true.
We just have to hope the gust of wind doesn't knock us all over!
Wow. Good advice in this one on so many levels.
Gnats in the wind! Love that line.
A few years after our definitive rupture, during the worst of Covid, there was a post on Jerry’s Facebook page. “in hospital cant breathe pneunoxmia.” Characteristically, it was uncapitalized, with no punctuation. Uncharacteristically, there was the typo of the “x”, and I surmised he was in very bad shape to have just posted that – he never posted on Facebook anymore, so he really wanted people to know. I found myself extremely conflicted and called Malcolm. I delineated everything that had led up to my walking away from the friendship – the lies, the extraordinary abuse of my generosity, the relapses. Malcolm told me I had to follow my conscience, but any decision he would certainly understand.
In the face of death that I thought very likely, given his age and years of smoking, I decided the best thing I could do was contribute to his sense of peace if the coming days brought his last moments. I called, relieved he didn’t pick up. I left a simple message. “It’s Lucien. I just wanted you to know that all is forgiven.” That was it. I don’t really know whether I totally meant it – I’ve never felt forgiveness made much sense unless it was asked for first. But I knew that he wanted it from me, and in the grand scheme of things, easing someone’s passing into the next realm was far more important than standing in your own grievance.
He died two days later, and I never knew if he heard my message, but strangely – or perhaps not so strangely-- it was suddenly quite sincere. But going to his memorial service would not have been, and that’s what I told Malcolm. He reported back that it was sparsely attended, but that could have been because of Covid. The tributes showed up on his Facebook page though, and they mostly reflected his glory days, before the fall, and the only references to his tendency to eventually turn on most everyone who tried to love him was one phrase, from Helena, “he could be at times mercurial.”
I debated with myself, then realized that I had some of his best work on my walls. I very carefully photographed my favorite, the collage of my mother’s life that I had first commissioned from him back in 1998. I posted it with the simple words. “He was a great artist.”
That felt true and right.
This is very sweet. I think Malcolm would have very much appreciated that post.
Did you mean Jerry? (He's the one who died.)
Yes, sorry. I meant the one who died--Jerry.
". . . I had to follow my conscience, "
Mark, I wish I could do that too
Her unused baby shoes finally sold on E-bay. She was cleaning out her mother’s house after her death, and it was one of the last precious things her mother had insisted on keeping in the glass cabinet in the dining room. She hated those shoes and the fact that her mother always made such a big deal about her distain for wearing shoes. She still had the small fur-lined moccasins from the time when she was a baby. And she never wanted to even try to understand the big deal people made about her barefoot hiking and insisting on wearing sandals no matter the weather.
So that's what happened to the "baby shoes, for sale, never worn." Now we know! (I have a nephew who wore only shorts for years and years and years, no matter the weather. Not quite the same as barefoot or sandals, but close.)
(underwear, i know a guy who always went Commando --- no underwear!)
“Disdain for wearing shoes” seems like a stand-in for a whole personality. I want to know her…
Really good take on the famous six word story as Mary said. Perhaps this could be a future exercise?
I want more about this protagonist.
Epilogue
Doyle drove along Main Street, slowing before the shop with the family name in faded, peeling gold lettering. The windows were boarded up. The street was empty except for an old man and his dog slowly making their way to O’Brien’s pub. Without stopping, he continued out of the village as the road rose gently towards Oughill.
Everything looked smaller, narrower from what he remembered. He should have come to the turning by now. They still hadn’t put the road signs back up. He turned the car around, slowly going back the way he came. He soon found the turning , parked the car and walked slowly along the gravel drive. The current owners had built a new fence and a sturdy gate. There was a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. Little good that would do he thought, anyone could go up the back way along the trout stream and across Peggy O’Brien’s field. Leaning on the gate he looked up at the farmhouse - still the same solid building even if Ma and Da were in their graves and the brothers and sisters all gone away.
It was late summer afternoon. Slievemann a blue haze in the distance, the air warm and sweet. He could almost imagine the sound of the men running the threshing machine, Da calling him to get the cows in. As he turned, he saw the old marl pit where uncle Denny had drowned. He shook his head, got back into the car and drove down into the village. The old man was sitting outside O’Brien’s.
“I thought that was you Christie” he said, leaning out of the car window.
“You came back so”
“I did”
“Planning to move back?”
“No, I have a life and family over there now”
“Probably for the best. Your Da reckoned if anyone would survive it would be you”
“How so?”
“On account of your stubbornness, said once you had an idea in your head, nothing else mattered.”
Doyle smiled, turned off the ignition, “Another pint Christie?”
Very nicely written and atmospheric. Makes me want to read the non-existent book!
Reader, I did divorce him, and my life has continued on for another sixty years. I married again, had another child, and came out as a lesbian in my early thirties. I went back to school, graduated college with a degree in Economics, and became a writer. I founded and co-founded theatre companies, and continue writing plays. I've also published three novels and six collections of poetry. As for Ronnie, he kidnapped our son when he was five, and scarpered off to New Orleans. I didn't see my son again for five years. He and I are now estranged -- because of my writing. My daughter and I live together now. She married and had two children, then divorced (a pattern in my family, I fear). She and my grandchildren are the lights of my life.
What an epilogue! And what a life! Love this one.
Thank you. A brief epilogue to a memoir about growing up too soon.
Love the “anti-echo” of Jane Eyre to begin this! What a life!
Thank you!
This Last Year, an Epilogue
Today, December 22 is Maya’s birthday, her third year. I tell you this because mine was yesterday the shortest day of the year. He never knew these dates and that’s just his style never to know anything important to “regular” folks.
Adalbert, was never one to care about the normality of “regular” folks. In fact as I have written in "This Last Year" he shied away from the life I wanted us to have . . . always afraid the Materialism of Life might creep into his soul. Although he tolerated the fuss I made on his birthday – perhaps the longest day of his life :) .
Those who love Adalbert wish him the best future he can tolerate.
Adalbert! I don't love you or even know you but I, too, wish you the best future you can tolerate!
Nicely crafted. I feel like I know so much more about Adalbert than you have on the page. Probably more than he would have wanted to share.
Adalbert! Noble and bright. Beware the philistines... A brilliant short piece.
After being harangued by his students because he could not say why silent letters run right through the English language, Hugh finally became comfortable speaking of Prologs and Epilogs. His attention turned to the galling (to some fellows in his language classes) dilemma of extraneous double letters. He still fights that battle.
Too funny: got me laughing in the aisle!
Can we get him onto the homonym case? I, for one, am extremely frustrated by the bare bear waiting to bear the weight, and the plain plane landing on the plane.
KC, what's going on, is your life in danger?
Claudia finally told Jim to get out of her life. She went on to become a photojournalist specializing in social subjects. She married, had a daughter, also a photographer, and lived with her family in Northeast Ohio. After many years working for local papers, when the last of them folded, she published a book of portraits of Ohioans addicted to Oxycontin. She died in 2015 from a rare autoimmune disease.
Jim is today a fairly well-regarded artist in NYC, with gallery representation. He had his 15 minutes of fame a number of years ago when he exhibited those raunchy kitsch paintings, that critics favorably compared to Jeff Koon’s Made in Heaven series. Social mores have finally caught up with him and today they seem very tame compared to Kim Kardashian’s daring art. Fortunately he made some wise investments in real estate in lower Manhattan, and can still afford to live there with his wife and two mistresses (three different generations share his attentions). He has two grown daughters, both at loggerheads with him but for opposing reasons. After retiring from his teaching job, he spends his days making art (he’s not going to let Kim Kardashian give him the one-up).
After snitching on Jim, Sandy fled to the Mediterranean coast, and has lived ever since in a seaside suburb of Toulon, where France’s nuclear submarines are based. Should Russian drones come a-calling, Toulon will likely be a prime target. Every day she reads the New York Times obsessively, combing over the details of the depredations brought about by by the Trump administration, to the point of being totally oblivious to events closer at hand, to wit the election of Jordan Bardella. For her, it’s probably better that way: a drone strike will be a more merciful end.
i love "after snitching on Jim." Leaves so much to the imagination. And thank god, Claudia got rid of him. But why she had to die while he continues to make art.... Life just is not fair.
Considering Jim's life after Claudia, I can only imagine his behavior during Claudia.
Epilogue to “At Last Having Fun”
What the heck! After he decided to stay, nothing changed. He still kicks the dog when she barks, fails to look after his children, and continues to ignore the hole in our roof.
Matthew never turned over a new leaf, nor raked a leaf in his life. I continue to rake over every ignorant thing he has done and plans to do. The Real End to Not Having Fun.
What an ending....
Oh my. Still kicking the dog both actually and metaphorically.
“Matthew never turned over a new leaf, nor raked a leaf in his life” - love it!
Just a few months later, a man appeared on her front porch like a sunray selling glow in the dark dog collars. His name was Evan Huddle.. He reminded her of the late corgi, Bonnie. He was paunchy, with a dainty glimmer in his nut brown eyes. “I don’t walk my team at night,” she said, hands fishing around in her fanny pack for a treat. “I understand,” he said, licking his lips. It was 103 in the shade. She invited him in for lemonade. A few nosy dogs caught on, and gathered outside the window. They worried too much, it was true.. Had never seen her acting so human before. None of them knew what to think.
oh, my god! What a story!--and so wonderful to have you pop in here, Meg! This one's a keeper.
What a brilliant prompt!
I was laughing as I jumped in. I knew what would happen. Everyone would think I was dead by drowning, or deep-frozen like fish fingers but without the crumby bits all around. Either way, very, very dead. I had discreet vidcams set up, and tiny, almost invisible mics. Magenta-my-love was running them from the control room hidden in that old cabin five hundred yards up the shore. I would see – not direct live, you can't have everything, but later – how each of my friends had reacted to the drama. My friends, or not my friends. Lovers, or not my lovers. Sheep or goats, ha! Sorted! My vengeance would be complete!
It was as well I was laughing, because the cold in this mountain lake was extreme and I was wearing nothing at all. That was part of the dare, jump through the hole in the ice with nothing on. Certain of my extremities were beginning to feel the pinch. And it was time to come up for air, the air that was between the water and the ice. I kicked out and began to rise.
Slowly.
I kicked out stronger. That burned oxygen. I needed to reach the air layer. I was going to choke, pretty soon.
I tapped my earbud. Three times, three times again, three times again. Mayday. SOS. Magenta-my-love, why am I not going up for air?
Crackle, spittle, crack.
My darling, you're in an unexpected downflow of very cold water. I'm so sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. Kismet, my love. Goodbyeee!
Crockle, spattle, crick.
There are times I feel so lonesome...
The cold is at least a comfort...
Except when it burns. And it does, it burns, it burns...
oh, dear god! The only upside is that this is written in first person, so he must have survived to write it.....???
True, it's not the epilogue. He was in fact saved in the nick of time. This will be told in the epilogue. He was not saved by Magenta. She had already run off with all the bets laid for or against his escape. A mountain rescue helicopter pulled him out through the hole in the ice. He was not pretty to look at (he wasn't anyway), and he had a few bits missing due to frostbite and the little toe-chompers that live at the bottom of this lake. Lizzie doesn't care, she just loves him anyway. She was the one who called mountain rescue. Every day he wishes she hadn't. He can't tell her because his tongue got chomped off. And he's forgotten how to write. And all his friends who were at the lake dropped him when they understood how he was planning to test their friendship.
Now tell me if he can't speak or write, there can't be an epilogue. Go on, I can take it!
maybe he does that eye-blinking form of communication...?
Maybe not. (Eyelids chomped off)
A Pre-Epilogue or……… did he have a superpower and was really doing this to trap Magenta who he suspected was going to double-cross him?
He did it because he is profoundly stupid.
We don't realize, but Profoundly Stupid People (PSP) are widely discriminated against in fiction.
Inclusion for PSPs !!!
Maybe with Magenta out of the picture, Cyan can fill in.
In fact, Cyan is the PSP hero's middle name.