Jinin Kiem

The Solo Book Club 2007

January 11, 2008 on 9:40 am | In No Context | Comments Off

The Solo Book Club was at it again in 2007:

• A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
• After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell
• Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
• Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor
• Bloomsbury Recalled by Quentin Bell
• Creek Walk by Molly Giles
• Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
• Everyman by Philip Roth
• Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
• Hotel World by Ali Smith
• How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
• Instances of the Number 3 by Salley Vickers
• Jackson’s Dilemma by Irish Murdoch
• Leaving Home by Anita Brookner
• Making It Up by Penelope Lively
• Maurice by E.M. Forster
• Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
• On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson
• Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk
• Skating to Antarctica by Jenny Diski
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovksy
• The Best of Saki by Hector Hugo Munro
• The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
• The Complete Talking Heads by Alan Bennett
• The Country Life by Rachel Cusk
• The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
• The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
• The Monkey’s Wrench by Primo Levi
• The Party and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
• The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble
• The Woman at the Washington Zoo by Marjorie Williams
• Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

“Beans” Served!

January 6, 2008 on 5:47 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

“Beans” appears in the 2007 issue of The Mochila Review, edited by Bill Church. And this issue features an interview with 2004 Pulitzer winner Edward P. Jones—wow!

The 2007 issue ($7.00) can be ordered by writing to The Mochila Review at:

The Mochila Review
Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Journalism
Missouri Western State University
4525 Downs Drive
Saint Joseph, Missouri 64507

THANKS!

“Beans” Will Be Served!

March 15, 2007 on 3:46 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

Once again, not to count my words before they’ve been published, but if all goes as planned, “Beans” will appear sometime in May 2007 in The Mochila Review, edited by Bill Church, and an excerpt of the story may be posted on its website:

http://www.missouriwestern.edu/eflj/mochila/

The 2007 issue ($7.00) can be ordered by writing to The Mochila Review at:

The Mochila Review
Missouri Western State University
Department of EFLJ 222 Eder Hall
4525 Downs Drive
Saint Joseph, Missouri 64507

THANKS!

The Solo Book Club 2006

January 2, 2007 on 4:25 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

Here is what The Solo Book Club, its membership unchanged, was up to in 2006:

• A Closed Eye by Anita Brookner
• A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips
• A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
• Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
• Brick Lane by Monica Ali
• City of the Mind by Penelope Lively
• Daughters and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
• Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey
• Equal Love by Peter Ho Davies
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
• Fools of Fortune by William Trevor
• Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
• Latecomers by Anita Brookner
• Looking Back by Shusha Guppy
• Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
• Paradise by A.L. Kennedy
• Runaway by Alice Munro
• Saturday by Ian McEwan
• So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy
• Strangers on a Train by Jenny Diski
• The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
• The Laws of Evening by Mary Yukari Waters
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• The Unfinished Novel & Other Stories by Valerie Martin
• These Demented Lands by Alan Warner
• Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
• Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

White Space

December 1, 2006 on 4:55 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

“Last year I gave you Chippy,” stated Conrad Strabone, Jr. (a.k.a., Def Con, ConRag, ConStra, RadBone, among other aliases), “and this year I give you White Space.”

He certainly did.

And here’s how:

“What a way to spend your Thanksgiving vacation,” joked the sister-in-law to Conrad as they waited outside a J-Town market, Conrad’s arms laden with plastic bags full of his mother-in-law’s groceries.

“It’s okay,” replied Conrad, smiling serenely. “We all need a little white space in our lives.”

True, true. And thus he earns yet another handle: Philosopher Con.

Ginners

November 7, 2006 on 4:29 pm | In Short Stories | Comments Off

Miss Virginia Pauley Killed in Auto Crash
Friends here have been notified that Miss Virginia Pauley, 19, was killed and that her mother, Mrs. Pauline Pauley, was injured in an automobile accident in Pennsylvania last Thursday. The information was to the effect that JP Pauley, 15, younger brother of Virginia, who was in the car with his mother and sister, escaped injury. Funeral services for Miss Pauley, who was graduated from Township High School in 1932, were held in Philadelphia, a male friend of the family said.
The Township Talk, Illinois, May 1933

“I got an eerie feeling, JP,” Ginners said, coming into my room.

“A Lake Erie feeling,” I answered back, proud that this time I wasn’t fooled. All day she’d been fooling me and annoying Mother with stupid jokes about tomorrow’s road trip to Vermont. But when Ginners sat down at the foot of my bed, I saw her eyes staring hard, like at something that wasn’t here, but in her head, and her lips moving like she was whispering to whatever was in her head, and I remembered that that’s how she’d looked the day Mother told us Father had died, and then I knew she wasn’t joking.

“It’s like my heart’s beating irregular,” she said, and grabbed hold of my bare foot, “and my mind’s spinning crazy, and all I want is to spend every minute with Matthew, the rest of my life with him,” and she started twisting my foot in ways it wasn’t meant to go, “but then that makes me so scared about going away for so long.”

“Stop that!” I shouted.

Ginners looked at me and blinked, blinked, blinked, like she was surprised to see me here, like she’d just snapped out of one of those trances that Mother says lady spiritualists get into to talk to the dead. “Sorry, JP,” she said, but not letting go of my foot, “I don’t mean to scare you with my talk.”

“You’re not scaring me,” and I kicked up my foot. “You’re hurting me.” Truth was, though, she was scaring me, not her same old sweet talk about her boyfriend, but her way of talking, it was so—eerie. But when she slapped my foot and grinned like her normal silly self, I wasn’t scared anymore, so I said real cocky, “What’s there to be scared about?”

“This feeling that me and Matthew won’t ever see each other again because of Mother’s stupid trip.”

“We won’t be gone forever, just for—” but I couldn’t remember how long Mother said we’d be away, or, come to think of it, if she’d said at all. “What did Mother say again?”

“That’s the thing,” Ginners said. “She won’t say for sure, and I’ve asked her a dozen times. She’s being so secret-like. All she says is,” and Ginners made her voice deep and exact, copying Mother’s formal talk like only she could, “‘We will want to stop to enjoy the numerous pleasurable sights on the scenic drive, and the duration of our visit with relations is not solely up to me, it is also up to him,’” and Ginners spat out the word him the way she always did when she mentioned Mother’s fiancé. “Mother’s saying a whole lot of nothing that just don’t add up. Think about it, JP, if we’re driving all the way to Vermont and staying for god-knows-forever and with god-knows-which of our relations, and then driving all the way back to Chicago, all the time stopping at ‘numerous pleasurable sights,’ then we’ll be gone forever!”

I didn’t like to say so, but all of a sudden my heart and head started up irregular, same as Ginners, but if I wasn’t in love like she was—no girl gave me a chance—then maybe my eerie feeling was just what Mother always said: “With what nonsense is your sister filling up your head?”

“Mother’s always been secret-like to us,” I said. “Hasn’t she?”

“Not like she is about him! And you know why? Because she’s ashamed, because she knows she looks an old fool, holding hands with him and cooing, ‘my fiancé,’ like they’re young sweethearts.”

I nodded, even though it never occurred to me to wonder why Mother was the way she was. To me she was just Mother. “I keep my own counsel, march to my own beat,” she always said. Except Ginners was right that ever since she got engaged she was even more secret-like to us, but I figured it was because she’d started marching to her fiancé’s beat, keeping his counsel, like she said she’d tried her best to do—”against my better judgment”—with Father when he was alive.

“Oh, it’s all eerie, JP,” and awful dramatic, Ginners collapsed flat on her back across the foot of my bed, her arms hanging off one side, her legs the other, her robe twisted round.

I gave her a soft kick in the side and said, “Then tell her you don’t want to go,” and right then I knew it was the stupidest thing that smart Mrs. Pauline Pauley’s stupid son ever did say, but all I wanted was to make Ginners—and me—feel less eerie. And I didn’t think she was stupid enough to actually do it.

But up she jumped and out she ran, calling out, “Mother.” And the way she said it, deep and exact, made me see that Ginners was smart, not stupid, for knowing how to stand up for herself, something I was too stupid to know, especially with Mother. And right then I believed that Ginners would outsmart Mother and talk her—and my—way out of that eerie road trip.

“Go, Ginners, go,” I whispered.

* * *

“Mother.”

My impetuous firstborn, my beautiful daughter, my little girl. Virginia. How she exasperated and enraged me. And enchanted me. Yes, often I was enchanted, and often I longed to tell her so. But at that moment, as she swung open my bedroom door and marched in, setting my heart racing, my hands trembling, I was in no mood to be enchanted. I was nervous. Perhaps I was afraid. Yes, I was afraid. I hadn’t told Virginia and JP the whole story. About the trip. About many things. I hadn’t told the truth.

“I don’t want to go, Mother,” Virginia announced, pacing beside me. “I have such an eerie feeling about this trip, like maybe I’m never going to see Matthew again.”

I stood hunched at the foot of my single bed, atop which lay two open suitcases packed with most of my clothes. I shut one suitcase, and then the other. I straightened my back, and clearing the fear out of my throat, stated, “You will see him when we return.”

She stopped in her tracks, her restless body tensing with apprehensive hope. “When’s that?”

“Virginia, we have discussed this time and time again—”

“A week?”

“There is no timetable—”

“Two weeks? A month? I got to know!”

“You’re being selfish, Virginia.”

She relaxed her shoulders and cocked her head. “Mother, if I’m selfish for wanting to stay here with my boyfriend, then what are you for forcing me and JP to go on that stupid trip with yours?”

Touché, I should have declared. But I was enraged. “I am your mother, and soon he will be your stepfather—”

“You can’t force us to be a family,” Virginia shouted, raising both fists. “Maybe you want him for a husband, but I don’t want him for a father.” Then, stepping toward me, fists still raised, she glared into my eyes and whispered, “I don’t much like him, Mother, but you know, I don’t think you do either.”

It frightened me, the growing blackness in her pupils. I raised my hand. My fingertips felt so cold, my palm so dry, and so creased, my hand looked so unnaturally creased, and it trembled, trembled like an old lady’s. But I was not an old lady.

“Shut up!” I ordered, and slapped Virginia’s cheek, feeling, even in that violent flash, the warmth and silkiness of her cheek, her tender, flushed cheek.

“I’ll shut up when I’m dead.”

Suddenly, the will, the strength, to argue, to merely speak, died in me. I collapsed on my bed and lay still, silent. Without hesitation my little girl came to me, and her soft fingertips smoothed and soothed my cheek, my hand.

“Mother, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just—oh, my heart’s going irregular, is all. I know we won’t be gone forever, but I can’t help feeling scared that me and Matthew won’t ever see each other again.”

“Our trip will be over before you know it,” I promised. I should have told her. The truth. But the truth was so unseemly to me, more unseemly than my constructive lies. “And then you’ll have all the time in the world to see Matthew.”

* * *

Turned out I was wrong. Ginners didn’t stand a chance against Mother. And if she didn’t, then me neither. But at least she’d spoken her mind to Mother, or rather shouted the truth: “You can’t force us to be a family.” I sure didn’t have it in me to speak my mind to Mother.

“Mother, look who’s here,” Ginners called out the next morning when we saw Mother’s fiancé driving up in his car, and then, awful mocking, she went on, “Oh, joy, I’m so pleased I could just die,” and even though it was just her usual way of talking, her words spooked me.

Ginners scooted out of the sitting room quick. But me, I never was quick so early in the morning, so there I was near the door like I was greeting Mother’s fiancé when he walked right in like he owned the place, which was odd, because usually he knocked so unsure, like he expected to be shooed away.

“JP, my boy,” he said, “let’s grab all these suitcases and show the ladies how big and strong we are,” and he slapped my back and winked, like it was all man-to-man and I was supposed to be proud to be included.

I did as I was told, and I found out quick that his idea of showing the ladies how big and strong we were meant me hauling all the luggage like a bellhop and him standing around whispering to Mother. When I as good as broke my back lifting Mother’s two suitcases, I got to thinking that maybe Ginners was right. Things just didn’t add up. Like why was Mother’s fiancé suddenly talking and acting so sure of himself? And why’d Mother pack so much stuff for a summer vacation? And why’d she go to the trouble of boxing up her books when she wasn’t even taking them on the trip? And why’d she, who was always scolding me for not taking my studies serious enough, withdraw me from school early instead of waiting just a few weeks for the term to end—not that I was complaining? I got Ginners’ eerie feeling about the trip again.

But once we got on the road, I wasn’t spooked anymore. I was bored. I saw not a single one of Mother’s “numerous pleasurable sights,” so I stopped looking out the window and started staring at the back of Mother’s fiancé’s head and hat, noticing how narrow and pale they both were, especially compared to Mother’s big head and fussy blue hat, and then when that made me crazy, I turned sideways and watched the spit coming out of Ginners’ snoring mouth. I was dead tired myself, and I must’ve dozed off, because all of a sudden I felt my head drop forward like it weighed a ton and then snap right back up, and my eyes popped open and looked straight to the window, and I saw the same dust road, the same line of trees, the same dead sleeping town that we’d just passed, and my mind got turned upside down because it was like we were driving in place, getting nowhere.

“Where are we?” I asked Ginners when we finally stopped at a hotel.

“Nowhere I’m ever coming back to,” she whispered.

“Me neither,” I agreed.

The next day we finally got somewhere. Right away I knew this wasn’t the same old road-trees-town, and as soon as Mother’s fiancé stopped the car, I jumped out and ran. I couldn’t wait to see it. Niagara Falls! Neither could Ginners. She ran and caught up to me fast. Even Mother and her fiancé kicked up a little dust. And right at the same time, when our ears went deaf at the sound of the roar-whoosh and our eyes went blind at the sight of the white-white-whitewater, me and Ginners shouted, “Mother!” And we all laughed. Even Mother. Even her fiancé.

Later Mother saw a photographer’s studio and went in, and without being forced, Ginners followed, still laughing, yelling out, “Rroarr-wwhoooshh!” I followed because Ginners had, and Mother’s fiancé followed because what else could he do? Mother told the photographer that we wanted a family portrait, so he pointed to a white park bench in front of a blow-up picture of the Falls and told us to pose there. Ginners got to the bench first and sat down and yanked up her skirt just enough to show some ankle and sucked in her cheeks and raised her eyebrows sky high and made her eyes look faraway at nothing, “Like Greta Garbo,” she claimed, though I couldn’t tell. Mother sat next to her and took off her white summer gloves and set them one crossing the other on her lap and said, “Settle down, Virginia,” so Ginners made her cheeks and eyebrows and eyes go back to normal, and she posed her left hand on her knee to show off the ring Matthew had given her on her birthday. Mother told me to stand behind Ginners, so I did, and that left her fiancé to stand behind Mother, so he did. Waiting for the photographer to focus the camera, I noticed that everyone but me had on a hat, so I flicked Ginners’ hat forward, thinking it’d be funny if the flash went off right as she was trying to set straight her hat, but she just let it be, saying it was “alluring” to have one eye “concealed.” “Settle down,” Mother said again, and then the photographer raised his hand, and up went one, two fingers, and on three, he called out, “Niagara Falls,” and the flash blinded me for one, two, three seconds.

When we went back later to pick up our picture postcard, Ginners asked Mother if she could send it to Matthew, but she said, “No, Virginia, it’s our family memento.” Why Mother wanted to keep it, I didn’t know, because we all looked like we’d just been arrested. Except for Ginners. She was the only one smiling.

* * *

“So much for eerie premonitions, Virginia,” I made a point of remarking as we crossed from New York into Pennsylvania. My confidence was fueled by the children’s continued giddiness long after we’d departed the spectacle of Niagara Falls. “You seem to be quite enjoying our family vacation after all.”

“Quite, Mother,” Virginia chirped from the backseat.

I did not have to turn around and look at my daughter to know that she was crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at me. A mother knows. But I let it pass. She was enjoying herself—Quite, Mother. I was confident that she was enjoying herself, that we all were, that our nerves were settling down, that she was finally accepting my fiancé into the family, perhaps as a father, and if she did, then JP would follow her lead.

“So Vermont next?” Virginia asked, and JP chimed in, “To see Father’s grave?” and then together, “Please!” And my confidence was annihilated.

“Your geography is atrocious,” I stated, controlling the tremor in my voice. “We are nowhere near Vermont.”

“Then where are we going?” my children asked.

“Philadelphia.”

“Philadelphia?”

“You mean,” my fiancé whispered to me, his eyes blinking at the road ahead, “you haven’t told them?”

Before I could respond, Virginia tugged on my sleeve, “Mother, why are we going to Philadelphia?”

Tell her, I thought, as I squinted ahead, trying to see past the film of dust and dead insects on the windshield. The truth, I thought, but all I could say was, “Some matters do not concern you.”

“How can this not concern me?” she shouted, now gripping my upper arm with a strength that frightened me. “I’m being shanghaied to Philadelphia, and for what reason, you refuse to say.”

“Refuse?” I stated calmly, still staring ahead. “I have not refused.”

“Then tell us, Mother. Turn around and look me and JP in the eye and tell us the truth.”

I intended to, I really did, I intended to do as she had rightly requested. I intended to—I wanted to—yes, I wanted to turn around and look my own children in the eye and tell them the truth. But she did not give me the chance. She did not.

“Well, since Mother refuses,” she taunted my fiancé, “then you—” and out of the corner of my eye I saw her index finger dart forward and nudge him in the back of the shoulder—”better spit out the truth.”

My fiancé stiffened—frightened by a nineteen-year-old girl?—and I was enraged, at her and him and JP, at myself. I turned around and slapped her hand down. She slapped mine. I lunged forward, my arms outstretched, my fingers curled like claws. I intended to seize her and shake some sense into her. But when I saw her eyes opening wide in fear—fear of me, her own mother—I wanted only to calm her, to reassure her, my little girl.

But the car suddenly swerved.

“We’re crashing!” Virginia screamed.

“Don’t say that!” JP shouted, clapping a hand over his sister’s mouth.

I turned forward and clenched the edge of my seat and shut my eyes. I waited for the brake, the skid, the crash, but there was only breathing, heavy, rhythmic breathing, my fiancé’s, JP’s, Virginia’s, even mine, even though I thought I was holding my breath. The car stopped. My eyes opened, and immediately I twisted back, and when I saw Virginia and JP sitting up straight, clenching each other’s trembling hands, alive and safe, I rejoiced, “My children.”

“Your children?” muttered my fiancé. “What about—” and he shut off the engine. “I cannot drive in this hysterical commotion.”

“Then let me drive,” JP exclaimed, beaming now, as if he’d just hopped off a thrilling rollercoaster ride.

“Yeah, let him,” Virginia piped in. “At least he’ll do a better job of crashing.”

My fiancé sat glaring at and drumming the steering wheel. “I can’t,” he whispered, “I can’t—what you expect from me—I can’t be their—I can’t.”

I gripped his upper arm with a strength that seemed to frighten him, for he ceased drumming. “You can,” I stated. “You’re tired. I’ll drive.”

I released his arm. Slowly he turned his face to me, but before his eyes could meet mine, he turned away and pushed open the driver’s door.

* * *

Philadelphia. I never in my fifteen years thought about Philadelphia until Mother announced we were going there. I didn’t even know what state it was in until I remembered the sign that told us we’d entered Pennsylvania.

“I’ve got that eerie feeling again, JP,” Ginners said, as Mother got out and went around the front of the car, and her fiancé got out and went around the back of the car, and then they both got back in, switching seats. “Me and Matthew, we won’t ever see each other again.”

“That’s not true,” I said, even though my head was now dizzy with doubts.

When Mother settled in behind the wheel and Mother’s fiancé sat in the passenger seat, both of them dead silent, Ginners leaned in close to me and whispered, “He’s got family in Philadelphia, and this morning I heard him and Mother talking about ‘the new job’ and ‘arranging matters with the movers.’ I thought it was about him moving in with us after they’re married, but now I know—”

“That’s dumb,” and I shoved her in the shoulder. “Mother would never let strangers move her belongings unless she was there to boss ‘em.”

“Listen, I may be dumb as dead and nothing as smart as Mother,” Ginners said, “but one thing I know is that a girl can act dumb over a boy, and Mother’s acting real dumb over him.”

“Mother’s not a girl,” and I laughed out loud. Maybe Mother’s fiancé could’ve passed for a boy on account of how skinny he was for a full-grown man—no bigger than me, but at least I was still growing—but it was crazy to think Mother could pass for anything other than—well, Mother.

Ginners shushed me, but Mother was already calling out, “JP,” and she fiddled with the mirror till she could fix her eyes on not my reflection, but on Ginners’. “With what nonsense is your sister filling up your head?”

“Why, with the Liberty Bell and Mr. Benjamin Franklin,” Ginners sassed back for me, like usual. “So eager are we, Mother, to view Philadelphia’s hysterical, oops, I mean historical sights.”

I started giggling, and then Ginners started giggling, and the more we tried to quit, the more historically, oops, I mean hysterically we laughed.

“JP, Virginia,” Mother scolded. “At what, or should I say whom, are you two laughing?”

Her fiancé suddenly huffed, “What does it matter?”

“Settle down,” Mother told him.

“Settle down?” he shouted. “Dammit, am I a child who needs to be told to settle down?”

Ginners and me, we both stopped laughing real fast. We’d never heard him shout and swear like that, and me, I was scared, I admit it. But Ginners wasn’t. She leaned forward and said in what I swore was Mother’s voice, and not her usual mocking Mother’s voice, but Mother’s own voice, “How dare you speak to my mother in that disrespectful manner.”

I watched Mother’s fiancé. He didn’t turn around and look at or answer Ginners. He sat there sort of rocking, his jaw grinding awful, like when you gnaw on gristle. Mother reached out, and I could see her hand shaking, like she was afraid if she touched him he’d fly away. “She is the one,” he said, this time so quiet it scared me more than shouting, “who needs to be told to settle down.”

“Virginia,” Mother said, and her hand, not shaking anymore, touched his shoulder. “I would like you to ride up here with me.” He didn’t fly away.

“I’m better off back here, Mother,” Ginners said, sinking low in the seat and crossing her arms. “Trust me.”

Mother’s fiancé sighed, opened the door and got out.

“I need you to help me navigate,” Mother said to Ginners, but the whole time watching her fiancé who was looking like he was reading the sky for a storm.

I gave Ginners a shove and whispered, “Go navigate us back home.”

“We’ve seen the last of home,” she whispered back, and then got out of the car.

I waited for Mother’s fiancé to get in next to me and for Ginners to settle up front and for Mother to start the engine, and then I leaned toward Ginners and said, loud enough so everybody could hear, “You’re wrong.”

* * *

She was right. I’m better off back here, Mother. Trust me. And I should have, but because I didn’t, I drove her away.

Now, lying in this dreadful hospital ward in Philadelphia, my bruises and cuts already healing, my grieving heart irreparable, I wept for her. My impetuous firstborn, my beautiful daughter, my little girl.

“I’m truly sorry, Pauline,” said my fiancé, his eyes darting from JP to the row of unoccupied beds to the open door, but never once to me, “about Virginia.”

“You’re sorry about nothing but your wrecked car,” JP stated, his voice, his eyes deadened, so changed, and I wept for him. My gentle baby, my considerate son, my little boy. I was driving him away.

“Please, JP,” my fiancé said, blinking away tears. “I’m truly sorry—”

“Just go,” I cried out.

“Yes, I understand, Pauline,” my fiancé said, his voice fading to a whisper, his eyes lowering to a close. He stepped back to the foot of my bed and only then extended his hand, too far away to touch me. “It’s best for us all if I go.”

“No,” JP said. “It’s not best. Can’t you see?”

“I—” and my fiancé twisted sideways, as if to go to my son, and then leaned forward, as if to come to me, but his legs and feet would not follow. Slumping forward, gripping the railing of my bed, he mumbled, “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t go,” JP stated.

“Go,” I urged my fiancé.

He—no longer my fiancé—nodded and mouthed, “Goodbye.” And he left.

“Goodbye,” I whispered, my grieving heart aching, but not breaking, for I was not a girl of nineteen who had lost her true love, but a woman of forty-five who, for the sake of her surviving child, drove away her last chance for—it was not love. It was fondness, companionship, respectability, many wonderful things, but I knew it was not love. Love was what I had once known, when I was an impetuous, beautiful girl of nineteen, like my Virginia.

“The doctor will release me tomorrow,” I said, looking up and searching JP’s eyes for a tear, a twitch, for any sign of life. They were dry, motionless. I realized that a part of him had died with his sister, and I vowed then that I would never relinquish what remained of him. “And then we’ll return home, just the two of us.”

“We’ve seen the last of home,” he stated.

“No, we’ll go back, if that’s what you want. I promise.”

“You never meant to go back there. You meant for us to move here. Just didn’t bother to tell us. But Ginners knew.” Only then, when he spoke her name, did his voice quake, his eyes glisten, and I reached out and seized his hand. It was stiff and warm. He did not yank it free, did not stir, just continued, “But I guess what you mean is that we got to go back there to get our stuff,” his voice dead again, as if his words, so unbearable for me to listen to, were meaningless for him to recite. “Unless your movers already packed it up and sent it on out here.”

“JP—”

“Or maybe you mean we got to go back to face Matthew and tell him that it turns out Ginners was dead right after all, they won’t ever see each other again.”

I squeezed his hand. “JP, do you blame me?”

* * *

Yes, I blamed her.

“No, Mother,” I said, “I don’t blame you.”

Because she was not to blame—not for the accident. It was just that, an accident. Blind curve. Something that wasn’t supposed to be in the middle of the road. Swerve, brake, skid. Crash. “An unfortunate accident,” the cop said. No, she was not to blame.

“You do blame me,” Mother said.

Yes, I blamed her—for everything else.

“I understand, I blame myself,” and just then, when she let go, I realized she’d had a hold of my hand. “But please say you forgive me.”

Never. Never ever. But I didn’t say so, because I knew Ginners would’ve never stood for my unforgiveness of Mother, which was why I’d swallowed my pride and asked him not to go, so I could dump my unforgiveness on him. Except Mother made him go, and that made me mad, because why now, why not when Ginners was alive and could enjoy seeing the back of him? But then I knew there was no sense in being mad, because if Ginners was still alive, then Mother would’ve never made him go, and the fact was she was dead and even if Mother hadn’t made him go, he wouldn’t have stayed.

“Even he’s not that much a fool,” Ginners would’ve said.

And then she would’ve reminded me that now that she and Father were dead, I had no real family except Mother, and now that he was gone, Mother had no one but me, and she would’ve made me look down at Mother’s face and hands, all swelled up, and listen to her mumbling over and over, chant-like, “My impetuous firstborn, my beautiful daughter, my little girl,” and she would’ve explained that Mother’s bruises and cuts would stop hurting quick enough, but her secret heart never would, because Mother never would forgive herself. Never ever.

“She’s her own worst punishment,” Ginners would’ve said.

“Do you forgive me?” Mother asked.

Never. Never ever.

“So don’t punish her anymore,” Ginners would’ve said.

“JP?” Mother said.

I shut my eyes so tight they ached, and I swallowed hard and concentrated harder, trying to kill my unforgiveness. But it wouldn’t die so easy.

“Promise me,” Ginners said.

But the only way I could keep that promise was to hide my unforgiveness—from Mother, from everybody, and especially from Ginners—and the only place I could hide it was deep inside my own secret heart.

“JP?” Mother said.

“Yes,” I said, not opening my eyes. I promise. “I forgive you, Mother.”

From “Stranger on a Train” by Jenny Diski

October 19, 2006 on 3:44 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

I thrill at being a stranger. I thought of the other travellers I would be with on the train as vignettes, moments or summaries of lives, flashing and vivid as they passed me by, then gone back to their regular existence. I can see other people so much better in my strangerhood. Strangerness brings people into sharp focus, so that like a firework display, vibrant patterns can be seen in sudden blazing light before the overall blackness of the sky returns and prepares us for the next revelation. Everyday busyness and regular social contact is more like a firework display in broad daylight.

Jenny Diski. Stranger on a Train. Picador, 2002.

“Disappear” Appears!

June 12, 2006 on 1:10 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

Yippee! “Disappear” appears in The Louisville Review, Volume 59, Spring 2006, guest-edited by writer Julie Brickman.

The issue can be ordered by writing, phoning or emailing The Louisville Review at:

The Louisville Review
Spalding University
851 South Fourth Street
Louisville KY 40203

Phone: 502-585-9911 Ext. 2777
Website: www.louisvillereview.org
Email: louisvillereview@spalding.edu

Okay, enough of this shameless self-promotion!

Ginners [An Excerpt]

June 6, 2006 on 2:14 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

Miss Virginia Pauley Killed in Auto Crash
Friends here have been notified that Miss Virginia Pauley, 19, was killed and that her mother, Mrs. Pauline Pauley, was injured in an automobile accident in Pennsylvania last Thursday. The information was to the effect that JP Pauley, 15, younger brother of Virginia, who was in the car with his mother and sister, escaped injury. Funeral services for Miss Pauley, who was graduated from Township High School in 1932, were held in Philadelphia, a male friend of the family said.
The Township Talk, Illinois, May 1933

Ginners had an eerie feeling about that damn road trip. The night before we left home she did two odd things. First, she sat at the foot of my bed and cried so sad like she hadn’t cried since Mother told us Father had died. Second, once she stopped crying, she started talking sentimental about her boyfriend to me, of all people, her own brother, like she thought I cared. Usually I didn’t, not about what she and Matthew were up to, but that night I cared, because that night she talked like it mattered whether I cared or not.

“It’s an eerie feeling, JP,” she said so serious, “like my heart’s beating too fast and my mind’s spinning crazy, and maybe it means I’m in love with Matthew.”

I didn’t like to say so, but suddenly my heart and head started up fast and crazy, but I wasn’t in love—no girl ever noticed me, ever cared about me the way Ginners and Matthew cared about each other—I was just getting that eerie feeling, same as Ginners.

“And all I want,” she said, grabbing hold of my bare foot, “is to spend every minute with him, the rest of my life with him,” and she started twisting my foot in ways it wasn’t meant to go, “but then that makes me real sad and mad and scared about going away for so long.”

“Stop that!” I shouted.

Her eyes opened wide, like she was surprised to see me there, like she just snapped out of one of those trances that, according to Mother, lady spiritualists get into when they talk to the dead. “Sorry, JP,” Ginners said, still twisting my foot, “I don’t mean to scare you with my talk.”

“You ain’t scaring me! You’re hurting me!” and I kicked up my foot. Truth was, though, she was scaring me with her talk. But when she slapped my foot and grinned like her normal silly self, I wasn’t so scared anymore, so I said all cocky, “And what’s there to be so scared about?”

“That if Mother forces me to go on her damn trip, me and Matthew won’t ever see each other again.”

“We won’t be gone forever, just for—” and I couldn’t remember how long Mother said we’d be away, or if she’d said at all. “What did Mother say again?”

“That’s the thing,” Ginners said. “She won’t say for sure, and I’ve asked her a dozen times. She’s being so secret-like. All she says is,” and here Ginners made her voice deep and exact and slow, copying Mother’s highfalutin talk like only she could, “‘We will want to enjoy the numerous pleasurable sights on this scenic drive to Vermont,’ and, ‘The duration of our stay in Philadelphia is not up to us, it is up to his family,’” and Ginners spat out the word his the way she and I always did whenever we mentioned him, Mother’s then-fiancé, whose name I’ll never ever say again as long as I live. “She’s saying a whole lot of nothing that just don’t add up. I mean, if we’re going to Vermont and visiting with her family and to Philadelphia and visiting with his, and then driving all the way back to Chicago, all the time stopping at all the damn ‘numerous pleasurable sights,’ then, my god, we’ll be gone forever!”

“But that’s just Mother’s way of talking, you know that. And she’s always been secret-like to us.”

“Especially about him! And you know why? Because she’s ashamed, because she knows she looks an old fool, holding hands with him and saying, ‘my fiancé,’ like they’re young sweethearts.”

I nodded, even though it’d never occurred to me to wonder if there were reasons why Mother was the way she was. To me she was just Mother. “I keep my own counsel, march to my own beat,” she always said. Except Ginners was right that ever since she got engaged she was even more secret-like to us, but I figured it was because she’d started marching to his beat, keeping his counsel, like she said she tried her best to do with Father when he was alive.

“Oh, it’s all wrong, JP,” Ginners said.

“Then tell her you don’t want to go!” and I knew it was the stupidest thing that smart Mrs. Pauline Pauley’s stupid son had ever said, but right then all I wanted was to make Ginners feel better. And I didn’t think she was stupid enough to actually do it!

But up she jumped and out she ran, demanding, “Mother!” And the way she said it, steady and clear and not too loud, made me see that Ginners was smart, not stupid, for standing up for herself, something I was too stupid to do when it came to Mother. Right then I believed that Ginners would outsmart Mother, that she would talk her—and my!—way out of that stupid road trip with him.

“Go, Ginners, go!” I whispered.

“‘Disappear’ Will Appear” Reappears!

April 4, 2006 on 2:24 pm | In No Context | Comments Off

Not to count my words before they’ve been published, but if all goes as planned, “Disappear” will appear sometime in June in The Louisville Review, Volume 59, Spring 2006, guest-edited by writer Julie Brickman.

The issue can be ordered by writing, phoning or emailing The Louisville Review at:

The Louisville Review
Spalding University
851 South Fourth Street
Louisville KY 40203

Phone: 502-585-9911 Ext. 2777
Website: www.louisvillereview.org
Email: louisvillereview@spalding.edu

THANKS!