Backstory: July 15

Looking at something until it becomes real

We are all obsessed. There’s no denying it. One thing or another grips us and we cannot shake loose … for years, maybe. Maybe for a lifetime.

Last week in workshop I asked participants to make a short list of the things that obsess them, and then to choose the one that interested them most. One participant chose heaven. One chose peace. Each abstract concept was then whittled into a place, person or event in the physical world that a character (autobiographical or fictional) would strive for, with a villain thrown in for complications.

A rabidly obsessed participant wrote about her thrift store hunts for useless but compelling objects with a villain who seems to show up everywhere she shops and beats her to the same inexplicable chrome spirals. Isabella Orion, whose nemesis was “time,” responded this way:

By Isabella Orion

Lillian never cried — she was of the firm stock carved out of the rocky hills of Missouri. And not only did you have to show her, you had to show her twice before she believed you. That is why when her brother told her that the old family farmhouse had finally been emptied and no family belongings remained, she had to go to see for herself. And she would look 10 times if that is what it took, before she would believe it.

The mailbox of the family’s farm sat on a dusty road, and the drive into the farm was a pitted path of cemented mud, finally hardened by long seasons of drought following drenching rains. This was good for the fields of clover and acres of corn, but hard on the axles of the old trucks and wagons and now the car that had made its way along the route up to the base of Tator Hill, around it to the west and up to the old farmhouse.

As Lillian opened the door of the car, she could see that no windows remained in the two-story grey shack that had once been her family home. The yard had disappeared into clusters of tangled brush with blackberry vines woven through them creating large thickets of green with the purple/black berries sprinkled generously throughout, utterly impassable without a machete.

The old barn, so huge and orderly when her father ran the show, had long since begun its exhausted lean towards the middle where once the tractor had parked, so that now, large wedges of sunlight testified to the absence of piers in the foundation and supporting beams above. The structure had given up and was now resigned to defeat by the next Blue Norther with its gale force winds — just a matter of time and not much more of that.

It was a shocking sight taken in all at once and not observed over the decades since her last visit, and the disbelief of her own eyes was overwhelmed by the sure vision of her past.

Lillian stood, leaning against the closed door of the rental. She stood there so long and still, that observing her, anyone would have thought that she was waiting for someone or something — an arrival of some sort — but that was not the case. Lillian was waiting, taking in the last visions of these places, these memories as they played back before her. The old pump well, the helpless fence, the missing gate that had kept the cattle out and the chickens in. The old smokehouse where she would play as a kid as the meats were prepared and dried and aged — and she could taste those meats even as her eyes rested on the pile of wood that remained.

After what seemed like hours, Lillian opened the trunk and took out a machete she had bought at the local hardware store on the way through town. She purposefully whacked a path to what had been the front door, feeling the prickles of the berry vines as they tangled against the tool, scratching her hands, scraping her arms as she progressed toward the opening.

Once there, she saw that there was almost no floor left, but some beams remained leading over to the old staircase, so narrow, but standing still. Her eyes counted the steps she could see and there they were, one, two, three at least remained, very warped, but intact. Carefully, slowly, she crossed the beams, using the machete to support her now against the wall, against the boards lying in chaos around her. Once to the stairs, she bent and used the sharp tip to wedge open the top of one step. There in the burlap bag she had used to hide it from her siblings, lay the wooden box inlaid with mother of pearl flowers and a little brass hook lock to close, that her father had given her.

Lillian felt her eyes water and knew these must be tears, tears of relief, sadness and joy. She closed her eyes and looked again because, after all, it always took her at least two times to believe anything.

* No part of Isabella Orion’s piece may be used without her permission.

Backstory: May 13

Roles reverse when the leader becomes lost

Sometimes in workshop we just do writing that’s fun. Most of the time we work on craft — structure, characterization, etc. — but sometimes we take a break and have a good time without thinking too hard about the ways stories are constructed.

This past week we wrote about road trips. I asked participants to unfurl their stories in a cinematic way, imagining their written scenes as movie scenes. We talked about road trip movies: “Easy Rider,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Badlands,” “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou,” “Sideways,” others. In all of these stories there is a sense of freedom that can only come from being in a car (or on a bike), speeding down a highway, passing fields and towns and stands of trees, maybe having run-ins with the law.

The pieces that emerged from the prompt were highly varied — some gleeful, some emotionally complicated, some not so cheerful. We got rid of the story arc, the upward diagonal plotting that begins with a character’s need or desire and increases in intensity until a climax takes place. The road trip stories possessed the archetype of the journey, the longitudinal motion in which obstacles are encountered and strange occurrences show up suddenly.

Last year around this time, my niece and I took a road trip and saw a rain-sheathed tornado close up, an abandoned Dodge City, a frothing river with sage erupting from boulders, a hidden mountain town called Salida, which seemed like what Taos must have been before tourists discovered it, and the real tourist Mecca, the Grand Canyon, which was so dense with people you had to shove yourself between shoulders to look down at the mammoth vermilion cliffs. What we thought would be the highlight was not, and what we imagined would simply be the “getting there” turned out to be the heart of the journey.

This piece about getting there — and arriving — by Tanya Knudsen, came from this past week’s prompt.

By Tanya Knudsen

The blue lights flipped on and her sister yelled “Oh my God, Julene,” in her New York drawl. This had been quite a trip with just a few miles left to return to home and finally to bed. The adventure was on again with the introduction of this tall, Southern hunk of a law man approaching the car.
“What were you thinking pulling over before he even turned on the lights?!”
“We all knew he was coming after me.”
Julene was the sweet one, the true Southern lady of this rowdy bunch of girlfriends. That’s why she was behind the wheel. Katie offered to show some skin to help get out of the ticket, and that’s all they needed to be off and running with their comfortable comedy they had perfected between them. They all knew the laughter, raunchy remarks and quick wit were there to serve as a balm for what this trip was really about. So, the entertainment began of watching Julene use her Southern charms on their new roadside companion.
The officer didn’t seem as enchanted with the stack of expired insurance cards that poured from the glove box as the passengers were. Julene was polite, but they all knew of the ace she might play. And then it came. “Sir, we have been traveling 10 hours today to be with our friend who is dying of cancer.” Roxy sat in the back seat, and the sting of the words pierced her chest. Could this man possibly imagine the events that had occurred that day? The car had served as a small chapel for this band of sisters. They were losing one of their own.
Melanie had come out to greet them earlier in the day with such effort to be just herself. She wasn’t herself. What was the gap that rested between them, impossible to fully cross? The gap was visible through the hollow look in Melanie’s eyes. She invited the rowdy bunch to sit on her patio. Gifts and compliments were exchanged at a hearty pace. While she sat, still holding the travel watercolor case they gave her to take to chemo, she declared “You know, you guys, I’m not going to die.”
So the gap became a little wider and the loss of words a little greater. The friends would be nothing but supportive and chimed in like a lovely chorus of how they knew she would beat this thing. Their minds silently raced, knowing what stage 4 metastatic cancer meant. Melanie was their leader and had introduced each to the other. She was the one who had taught each of them about the adventure of life! To see life itself leak slowly out of her was not their greatest pain. Where was their leader at the moment they needed her to show them the way? She was lost herself, and the roles were being reversed. Their fearless leader was looking back at them with fear-filled eyes, looking for someone to assure her they knew the way.

*No part of Tanya Knudsen’s piece may be used without written permission from the author.

Backstory: April 14

Adding the surprising or inexplicable

In workshop this past week we explored mystery in character.

Participants developed characters that acted one way and made choices that were surprising or inexplicable. Writer Susan Bull wrote a piece that introduced elements of mystery, but she was cut off by the time limit. This is sometimes a challenge in class, but participants have material to continue with at home, at least! What follows is her draft. I like that we don’t know where it’s headed.

By Susan Bull

He called the answering service for Methodist Hospital.
“Hey, Louise, it’s Dr. Day. Any calls for me?”
“No, Doctor. All’s quiet on the home front.”
“Great. How are you, Louise?”
Dr. Day always asked how she was doing. He was by far the friendliest physician that Louise answered calls for. Louise felt as if they were friends because she had been taking his messages for over 20 years. He was always personable and kind. Just last week he had given Danny a pair of expensive cowboy boots. Danny was the housekeeper that did the cleaning for both Louise’s switchboard and Dr. Day’s pathology lab. Danny had six kids and could never have afforded such a beautiful pair of rust colored leather boots.
“I’m A-OK, Doctor. What do you have planned this sunny day?”
“As a matter of fact, I am going to let Dr. Keffler take my calls for me. I am headed for the lake.”
“Roger that. I will spare you and torture him for the rest of the day.”
“Sounds good, Louise. I will call you when I am back on.”
“Good-bye, Doc.”
“Bye-bye, Louise.”
He hung up the phone and took the next hour to clean off his roll-top desk. After organizing all of his insurance papers, bills and investment notices into separate piles, he placed five photos into a neat stack. The first photograph was of his wife, Kathy. She had finished her bachelor’s in nursing a few years before when she was 45. She looks happy with her white nursing cap and uniform contrasting with her black hair and red lipstick. Next, he stared at a small picture of Andrea, his oldest daughter. Her eyes are blue against the blonde of her hair. She is in a fitted bridal gown at her wedding to a man she will divorce in a few years, but he doesn’t know this now. Julia, his second daughter is in the third photograph; she is riding the brown and white pinto that he bought for her 25th birthday. Sarah, his youngest daughter, is standing in line with the ice skaters pictured on the front of the program of the Broadmoor Ice Revue. He had paid for her training in Colorado Springs when she had taken lessons from Peggy Fleming’s pro. This photo marked her success. His only son and namesake, John, is standing next to the red Porsche that he had purchased for his son’s 17th birthday. He gingerly placed a rubber band around the photos and deliberately placed them into the top left-hand drawer.
His boat was already hooked to his van as he had been planning this trip to the lake for quite some time. He climbed into the driver’s seat and opened a small package of Little Debbie powdered-sugar donuts. Alternating between bites of donuts and sips of hot coffee from his thermos, he managed to back out of the driveway. Kathy wasn’t home; she had picked up an extra weekend shift at the psyche hospital in order to help out a co-worker. He thought back to their last conversation.
“Have you heard from the kids?” he had asked her while she was brushing her teeth.
“Nope, not a word. I’ll have to make the rounds and call everyone on Sunday.”
He had patted her on the butt and she had jumped away laughing.
“Not now, John, I’m late for work.”  She kissed him on the lips. “Maybe we can have a quiet dinner.”
“That would be nice.”
He hadn’t told her he was going to the lake. He just felt better not bringing it up, as he wasn’t sure what he would have said. And now as he drove out to White River Lake, he thought about how much he loved west Texas. The sunrises and sunsets were gorgeous, so much sky and nothing blocking the view. He didn’t even mind chewing dirt after a dust storm. The sky was massive and the clouds full of shapes and hope. Driving down the highway was always a straight shot; hills and curves in the road did not exist in west Texas. Not much was the color green.
After arriving, he backed the van with the boat leading into the lake. He put on the emergency break and stepped out to unhook the boat and lower it into the water. He had practiced doing this by himself for the past three months and had become quite proficient.

No portion of Susan Bull’s writing may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Backstory with Gabrielle Idlet

About a month ago, my friend Carmen from second grade found me on Facebook. She said she’d been trying to find me for a long, long time.

When I met Carmen, my family was living in a Mexican neighborhood in northeast LA. In the mornings at my local primary school, half the classes were given over to busywork so the rest of the student body could attend English as a second language. My father was concerned that I wasn’t getting an adequate education.

Integration bussing arrived, and I was sent to a white school in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The bus scooped up Mexican kids from all over east LA before hitting the freeway, the blond driver tuning the radio to FM rock ’n’ roll as we rose in altitude to the tan elementary with its sharp wind and bright skies.

We were foreigners, and we and our new classmates knew it. I was white with a faint Chicano accent, not a fit for either group. I had no friends.

Except Carmen.

She took me home to her family, which was bursting with warm, teasing brothers and a delighted mother I wished was my own. Carmen and I both had glasses and chubby cheeks, and our corduroys dragged in the mud. When she found me on Facebook, she said, unprompted, that she was still goofy. How reassuring, at 40, that that could be true.

A couple of weeks ago in workshop, participants wrote about reconnections with people from the past. Barbara Jaquish’s “Good-bye Vacation” is a response to that prompt.

‘Good-bye Vacation’ By Barbara Jaquish

Oh, the stories she had told me! Of clearing out her mother’s house after the funeral and finding a stockpile of thin communion hosts her mother had hidden for what possible contingency. Of coming home after hours at the bar on a hot Philly night and stripping bare to feel the breeze. Looking down, she saw something dark sitting among her pubic hairs. Crabs! She set down the wine glass, stuck her cigarette between her lips and took up the razor. She was halfway done shaving when she realized the small dark invaders were cigarette ash. She laughed then, and laughed when she told me, and left herself half-shorn.

When I told her I was leaving, she said good-bye in a final kind of way. We’ll write, I said. That never works, she said. When I say good-bye, it’s good-bye.

That was almost 20 years ago. I didn’t know I’d be back until the job posting showed up on a professional website. Reference librarian. At my old university. It was the right job. I was the right person. In six weeks, I was back in center city, just a few blocks from City Hall and William Penn. I’d settled in to my sunny apartment and my not-so-perfect job by the time I saw her just off South Street, squeezing oranges and arguing with the Italian vendor.

Sure she was grayer and stouter, but there was no mistaking the voice with its metallic Easter Shore tones overlaid with a touch of Philly.

“Nancy? You’re Nancy, aren’t you? It’s me, Margaret Robbins. Remember? From Pine Street? 1972?

She looked at me, flat and uncomprehending, still grasping the orange. Her eyes, always small and blue, had sunk into the sag and wrinkles of a 50-year-old face. She squinted. Then her face cracked open in a big-mouthed smile and she pulled me into a tight hug.

“Of course! It’s you! You’re grown up and …” she fumbled. “Groomed! You look like some kind of university professor.”

“Librarian,” I said. “Some kind of university librarian. Back where I started. Are you still there?”

“No no no. They folded the student health center into the hospital, and that hellhole is no place for a sane person to work. Hey, I’m done here. Are you? Let’s get coffee.”

South Philly seemed to be one of the few places in the hemisphere that hadn’t been invaded by Starbucks. Next to the cheeses shop — the same one from the ’70s! — was a storefront with a few tables and a coffee roaster tumbling. We fussed with our coffees, sat and were quiet for a moment.

“So. Where are you working now?” I asked.

“The HIV clinic over by Jefferson. What a world. You see it all there. Little kids. Old people. Even a few gay men. But believe it or not, they’re the minority, thanks to drugs and needles, you know. Drugs and needles and little kids born with that disease hanging over them and the same mothers who gave it to them in the first place die themselves or are too fried to help their babies. So you got grandmas and foster parents bringing in carloads of kids that take boatloads of drugs and get their blood drawn and checked every week …”

I faded out a bit. Nancy was still talking, words tumbling over each other, thoughts straddling other thoughts, cutting them off. Who was the “Craig” she referred to? Another nurse or a patient?

It was like I had only been away on a short vacation. I was back in her chaotic, jumbled world.

Writing Challenge

Find someone you haven’t seen for a long time, and then write about the experience.

▲ Gabrielle Idlet supports writers at every stage in their creative process. She works privately as a consultant and holds weekly drop-in writing groups. gidlet@gmail.com