April 2014 Issue of The Scribblers Newsletter

Welcome to the April issue of The Scribblers.  In this issue we have new writing prompts, part one of a story by Jamie Baker, a story by John Matthews, contest information, a few interesting writing sites/blogs.  We hope you enjoy this issue.

April Writing Prompts

Each month we try to provide prompts for you to use. Pick one or more and write 500 to 1,000 words using the prompt/s as the basis of your story.  And have fun with it.

1.  Karen slammed the door and got into her car.  This was the end.

2.  Dave and Jim were fishing from the shore of Assateague Island.  Jim's deep sea rod bent almost to ground level.  What in the world was on the line?

Sisters

A Coming of Age Story, 

by Jamie Baker

Part 1

The hall was crowded with kids, yelling and messing with each other in the five minutes between classes.  Scuttling along the edges, waiting for a break in the crowd so I could cross to the intersecting hall to the science class, I watched as the kid ran towards me and swerved around the corner.  He was one of the Mexican kids, his hair greased back so that it was as smooth and shiny as his sharp-pointed dress shoes.  Swerving around the corner, he smacked full-face into Nannette Gyerson.  Nannette is in the same science class as me.  We both sit in the back, slumped, heads down, crouched behind the broad lab tables. 

I always thought Nannette was a name that should belong to a pretty girl, a girl like Annette Funicello, smiling and confident, but this Nannette wasn’t like that.  She was tall, taller than all the other students and many of the teachers.  And she was big, shaped like a barrel, wearing shapeless baggy flowery dresses that looked like the housedresses Mrs. Pelligrini wore when she gardened.  On Saturdays, she would pay me a dime or a quarter to pinch off the dandy lion buds so they wouldn’t bloom into yellow flowers and then the white puffy seed fairies that blew away in the wind.  That was at our old house, before I had to come to this school.

 When the kid hit Nannette, the hall became instantly silent, all heads and eyes turned to watch the collision, mouths half open in stop action.  The kid slammed into her, his face burrowed into her big chest for a half second before he bounced off her and fell on the floor.

In the next instant, time started again.  He jerked himself back up off the floor, the noise in the hallway winding back up to full volume. 

“Damn,” he screeched, “she bounced me like a ball.”  Jumping and pointing at her as she tried to apologize, he continued to screech, “She bounced me like a ball.”  The laughter in the hall rose into an echoing clamor.  Nannette laughed too, a hysterical giggle that sounded too much like the cries of a coyote I’d seen on Wild Kingdom, it’s rear leg caught in a trap. 

I dodged around the crowd and slunk into the science lab.

We don’t live next to Mrs. Pelligrini anymore.  We had to move.  Now we live in an apartment complex.  Our apartment is on the second level, above the big open concrete yard where the pool is. 

“The pool will be great, hon,” my dad said to my mom as he carried boxes up the concrete steps that led from the parking lot, always trying find the silver lining.  Always trying to convince her that opportunities and good fortune were everywhere. 

The new apartment, number 32, is right above the pool.

“You can keep an eye on the kids when they’re out here swimming.  Just look out the window and they’ll be right there.”

As it turned out, she never needed to look out to see them.  You could hear my brothers all over the complex when they were in the pool, or anywhere, if they weren’t asleep.    And she didn’t have to look for me at the pool either, because I was never there.  I stayed away from my brothers as much as I could, but even when they went over to the playground at the elementary school, I didn’t go to the pool.  I’d outgrown my old bathing suit and I’d gotten into an argument with my mom in the middle of trying to pick out a new one.  She wanted me to get one with a little skirt on it, which only babies and old women wear.  Even my mother’s bathing suit didn’t have a skirt on it, which she never wore anymore because her legs were veiny. 

On the far end of the courtyard, which is what my parents call the concrete yard that surrounds the pool, is the room where the coin-operated washers and dryers are located.  There are a couple of chairs in there, along with a wobbly table and some old magazines, and a Coke machine.  Outside the laundry room, there are two old beach chairs tucked in under the concrete walkway that runs around the 2^nd level.  I volunteered to do the family laundry because it’s the one chore that gets me out of the apartment.  I was down there one Saturday, slouched in one of the beach chairs, reading the Red Badge of Courage for school and waiting for the washer to finish so I could move the clothes to the dryer, when I heard voices and laughter echo through the concrete entrance from the parking lot.  

Two girls, carrying boxes and suitcases, came through from the shade of the walkway and went to the door of apartment number two.  I tried to look like I was still reading my book while I watched them.   They were young, just a few years older than me I thought.  The girl with long blond hair had on a short little sundress; one of the thin straps slipped off her shoulder.   She fumbled a key into the door lock.  The other girl had a mass of frizzy brown hair that reached to her shoulders.   She was wearing faded jeans and a t-shirt that was cut off at the waist.   Both girls went in to the apartment, closing the door behind them.

Two pages later, and after I had slotted the quarters into the dryer, the girl with the wild hair came out of the apartment and crossed the court yard to where I was still sitting in one of the beach chairs.  She nodded at me as she passed by and went into the laundry room.  After a few moments, I heard the clink of coins, followed by the crash of a bottle tumbling out of the Coke machine and then the pop and hiss when she used the machine’s opener.   Standing in the doorway, she took a big swig of the Coke, and then dropped into the other beach chair, sitting sideways with one leg over the grey-weathered arm of the chair, so she could face me. 

“Hi, I’m Ginger.”

“I’m Carol.  Did you just move in?”

“You know I did.  You just watched me move in twenty minutes ago.”

“Well, yeah.  But I thought maybe you were helping your friend move in.”

“That’s Marci.  We’re sharing the apartment.”

“Um, I didn’t see any furniture.  Is your apartment furnished?”  We had brought our own furniture with us, but I knew that a few of the apartments were rented furnished. 

“No, Marci’s boyfriend has a truck.  He’s coming over after he gets off work.”

“Oh, well, welcome to the neighborhood, I guess.”

“Sure, thanks.” She unwound herself from the chair and stood up.  “Well, see you later.”

“OK, bye.”

I watched her walk back over and let herself into the apartment.  When she came out again a few minutes later she was wearing cowboy boots.  Marci had the same little dress on, a big macramé bag slung off her shoulder, and sandals that laced up her tanned calves. 

After that, I tried to hang out at Marci and Ginger’s apartment as much as I could.   They were both waitresses at Galloway’s Family Restaurant, three blocks away. Marci would turn 21 on her next birthday.

“As soon as I do, I’m getting a job tending bar at one of the lounges down by the airport,” Marci said.  She was dressed for work and I could see her standing at the bathroom sink, putting the finished touches on her make up.  “That’s the way to make money.  The tips are great and a bar’s a good place to make connections, if you know what I mean,” and she winked at me in the mirror.    I didn’t know what she meant.  

“I’m not going to work in restaurants or bars for the rest of my life, that’s for sure,” said Ginger, who had graduated from high school in the spring. It was her day off and she’d hollered come in when I tapped on her door.   I had two loads of whites sloshing away over in the laundry room.  Ginger was slouched down in the faded over-stuffed armchair she’d bought at the Salvation Army store.   There was an old sofa, too, covered with a bedspread to hide the torn cushions. 

“What are you going to do?”

“Join the army.  Or maybe get a job at the zoo.  You know the San Diego zoo?  It’s the best zoo in the world.  But I’ve got some family business up here to take care of first?”

I wanted to know what kind of family business, but I didn’t want her to think I was prying. 

“Does your family live close by?”

“Oh, yeah,” she took a long drag on her Marlboro and then stubbed it out in the tuna can she used for an ash tray, “yeah, one of my families lives close by.  Real close.”

“You have more than one family?”

“Sure, doesn’t everyone?”

I thought about that.  I had my family that lived upstairs and then I had my grandparents who lived in New Jersey, but I just thought of all of them as one family.

“Where does your other family live?”

“In Oakland.  That’s where I grew up.”

“I was born in Oakland.  At City Hospital.  Is that where you were born?”

“Yep.”  She pulled herself out of the chair and padded over to the refrigerator in the kitchen alcove.  This was a one-bedroom apartment, much smaller than ours, which had three bedrooms and an eat-in kitchen.    This apartment seems small and compact in comparison, cozy and relaxed, with milk crate book cases filled with second-hand paperbacks and Marci’s collection of shells and bones, the two twin mattresses on the bedroom floor, flanking the dresser that Marci and Ginger shared, and the pots of aloe vera and wandering Jew on the window sill in the living room.

Ginger flopped back into her chair, reaching a Coke out to me.

“It’s the last one.  We can share.”  I took a sip and handed it back to her.    She passed it over to Marci.  I’d never drunk from the same bottle as anyone except my brothers.   I felt my cheeks get hot, but Ginger and Marci didn’t seem to notice. 

Marci took a couple of sips from the bottle before passing it back to Ginger.

“I’m going in a little early, I’ll see you there Ginger.” She swung her macramé bag onto to her shoulder and went out the door. 

Ginger gave me the Coke and crossed to one of the milk crates, pulling out a photo album.  She sat down on the sofa, close enough that I thought I could feel the warmth of her thigh. 

“This is my Oakland family,” she said, flipping the book open.

Over several pages, I looked at pictures of people I didn’t know doing the same kind of family stuff my family does, trips to the beach, picnics at the state park, holiday dinners.  There were two girls and two boys.  It was hard to tell anything much about them in the earlier, black and white pictures, but the ones on the later pages were in color, taken when the kids were older. 

“How come your parents named you Ginger?  You don’t have red hair.  No one in your family does.”

“My name’s Virginia.  My other mom called my Ginger and my Oakland family just stuck with it.”

“Your other mom?”

“Yeah, the mom in my other family.   Hey, I have to get ready for work.”

“Yeah, ok, I better go check the laundry.  I’ll see you later.”

If she answered, I didn’t hear.  She was already in the bedroom, shucking out of her jeans, when I was letting myself out. 

A few days later, Ginger and I sat in the beach chairs, a load of my brothers’ clothes tumbling in the dryer.   A light rain was falling, spattering the surface of the pool, sending overlapping, concentric circles across the water.    Ginger was talking about her family again. 

“My parents aren’t really my parents, you know?  I mean, they brought me up, but they adopted me.  They adopted all of us.”

I couldn’t think of anyone that had been adopted.  I thought about the pictures in Ginger’s photo album. 

“Are you the oldest?”

“Yeah, but I was the last to be adopted.”

“Wow, really.”

“Yeah, the boys, Tom and Rick, are brothers.  My parents adopted them first, when they were 2 and 3 years old.  A year later they adopted Christine.  She was just a baby, ten months old.  I was adopted next, when I was seven.”

I was about to ask her where she’d been before she got adopted when the buzzer went off on the dryer and I had to pull the clothes out and fold them before they got wrinkled.  When I came back out, the warm, folded clothes neatly stacked in the basket, Ginger had gone back to her apartment. 

I had looked forward to Christmas break, planning to hang out with Ginger or Marci as much as I could.  I stopped by their apartment the day before the last day of school.    Ginger was packing one of the suitcases I had seen the day they moved in.

“Hey, Carol, I’m going to Oakland for a week.  Can you water the plants for me and keep an eye on the place?”

“Um, sure.  But what about Marci?  Won’t she be here?”

“Maybe sometimes, but she’s been staying with her boyfriend a lot, so she may not be around.”

“Her boyfriend?  That guy Jimmy?”

“No, not him, they broke up.  She’s going with some older guy she met at the restaurant.  He’s a bar tender and he’s been teaching her how to mix drinks.”  She fished a key out of the Mason jar they kept on the kitchen counter for the change they needed for the laundry machines.

“Here’s the spare key.  Don’t water the plants too much, maybe just once and then let them dry out.  I’ll be back for New Years.  Marci and I are gonna have a party here.  You’re invited.”

I checked the apartment every day, letting myself in with the key that I had added to my own key ring, sometimes two or three times a day.  Sometimes I hung out in there for an hour or so, watching game shows on Marci’s little black and white TV or thumbing through the worn paperbacks.  More than once I pulled the photo album out and studied the pages.  Now that I knew that Ginger was the oldest, it was easy to pick her out in most of the pictures, but the images were so small and grainy, it was hard to see any real features or details.  In most of the pictures her hair was short, a tangle of kinks and ringlets that reminded me of my own mess of cowlicks and curls. 

To Be Continued

Writing Sites for Authors:

Suite 101.com, Four Steps to Editing and Revising a Manuscript:  Four Steps to Editing and Revising a Manuscript

Helping Writers Become Authors.com, 10 Ways to Make Your Readers Loathe your Antagonist:10 Ways to Make Your Readers Loathe Your Antagonist

The Write Life.com, 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy: 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy

Writing Blogs for Authors You May be Interested In:

Better Novel Project.com, Deconstructing Bestselling Novels, One Index Card at a time:Better Novel Project.com

Martha Alderson, the Plot Whisperer: Plot Whisperer.Blogspot.com (At the bottom of the page is her plot planner)

Vix Stories.com, 25 Guides on How to Write a Short Story: http://vixstories.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/25-guide-on-how-to-write-a-short-story/

Downsizing

by

John Matthews

                                                            

     “Mike, she’s here again.  She’s pulling weeds in the flower bed.”

     “I’m sorry Wilbur.”  I said.  “I’ll be right over to get her.  This is embarrassing.”

     “It’s okay, Mike.  She’s no bother.  I was just worried you might not know where she was.”

     “I should have guessed.”

     I hopped in the car and started over to our old place to pick up my wife.  It had been a year since we moved out of the big house in the country.  The work of keeping up with the garden and flower beds had become too much for Bonnie, even though she loved to do it.  Yes, of course I did my share, but I was retired and starting to resent how the chores were eating into my enjoyment of my golden years. 

     So we downsized.  Moved to a condominium in the city.  The extra time we found ourselves with was a blessed relief.  I had time to play golf again.  And Bonnie’s hip and back pain got better.  I thought she was at last content.  But she has always been a restless person.  When she finally agreed to give up her driver’s license it made the boredom even more confining.  And with boredom came confusion.    She sometimes forgot we had moved and seemed perplexed when she stepped out the front door of the condo and found the surroundings strange. 

     But we coped.  We had good neighbors who lent a hand when necessary and offered reassuring reminders when she needed them.

     It was one of the neighbors who first drove her over to our former home.  It seemed like a reasonable request from Bonnie.  She said she wanted to visit one of our former neighbors who, she said, would bring her back to the condo.  That was the first time I got a call from Wilbur, who had bought our old place.  He said Bonnie had walked into the garage, helped herself to a pair of clippers, and was deadheading the butterfly bush blooms. 

     It’s true Wilbur has never taken as good care of the landscaping as Bonnie had.  What she was doing was as necessary to her as it was a waste of time to Wilbur. 

     But her plan for getting back to the old house and getting our new neighbor to leave her there, alone and without a car, was so well thought out and reasonable that it reassured me.  I had started to fear that Bonnie was starting to slip into one of those conditions common to older people.  One of those diseases I can never remember the name of.   No, not Asperger’s, the other one that starts with an “A.” 

      And when I picked her up that first time at Wilbur’s she gave no indication she was in any way mixed up.  She was not thinking that the place was still ours, just that Wilbur was kind of lazy.  And, truth be told, I think when Wilbur saw her, he waited to call me until she had done a pretty good piece of work.

     So I saw no reason to try to change things.  Life was good.  We were happy.  Sometimes I even drove her over to the old place myself and sat and visited with Wilbur while she puttered in what used to be her yard.  Yes, of course I kept my eye on her.  I could tell she now got shaky after shorter and shorter periods of work.   But she wasn’t doing anything she didn’t want to do.  And she never forgot her doctor’s warning:  “Just  remember,  Bonnie.   No BLT’s.  Do not bend, lift, or twist.”

     I enjoyed watching her doing what she loved and I was reluctant to tell her when she’d had enough.  Sometimes Wilbur would go out and suggest she quit and she never argued.  At his suggestion she would come in and tell me she was ready to go home.   She knew we now lived at the condo.  And she was glad to go home. 

     Her bones, joints, and muscles continued to wear down.   But there was nothing wrong with her mind.  She was aware of what was going on and that eventually even our home in the condo would be too much for her to manage.  I was going to suggest we visit some places where she could get some assistance with her day to day living.  But I was selfish.  I didn’t want to live at such a place together when there was nothing wrong with me.  But I didn’t want to live without her.  She made it easy, as she always did. 

   “Let’s just look,” she said.  “We don’t both have to move.  I know you’ll still visit, take me out now and then, have dinner with me.  It will be like when we were dating, remember?  We each had our own home, which we loved, but we looked forward to our times together as something special.”

   Yes, it was easy.  I hadn’t realized there are people who are specialists at working these things out.   We could afford to keep the condo and a room for one at Evergreen Manor.  Our kids were very supportive.   Oh, that’s right.  I didn’t tell you we have kids.  They are great, but I hate old codgers who are always bragging about their kids.   Their names and ages and jobs wouldn’t interest you so I won’t waste your time listing them.  But Bonnie would not ever consider asking them to take care of her, any more than I would.

     So now I visit Bonnie every day.  She has her own room so we can share some privacy, but we spend most of our visits with the other inmates.  I’m not supposed to call them that.  It’s sort of an old person’s joke.   Some of them are really sharp.  Witty and clever.  But of course some of them have a little more trouble keeping things straight.

     Today’s visit was particularly pleasant.  Italian night in the dining room.  Braciole and a nice glass of Sangiovese.  We sat at a table with several other women, friends Bonnie has made already.  She doesn’t usually have trouble remembering their names.  But once in a while I have to help her.  Sometimes it seems like I know these people better than she does.   Why is that?   We took a walk on the veranda in the moonlight then came back to her room and watched “Doc Martin.”  I dozed off for a few minutes but it didn’t matter.  It’s pretty easy to pick up what’s going on.  At least we haven’t degenerated into watching Lawrence Welk.   

     After that, it was time to go.  I got up and fumbled in my pocket for my car keys.  They’re never in the pocket where I left them, but this time it was particularly difficult to find them. 

     But then Bonnie’s arms were around me.  She knows just how to squeeze to make everything seem all right.

     “Oh, Mike.  You forgot again, didn’t you?”  I could hear her jingling her car keys in my ear.  “I’m the one who has to go home.  You’re already home, remember?”   

                                                          THE END   

And Finally...

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