The art of in-scene writing in fiction is critical for allowing a reader to enter the fictional story and vicariously participate in the story to discover meaning and pleasure.  It is one on the main skills in creating great fiction, as opposed to memoir and creative nonfiction.  In-scene writing is illusory and created by a process difficult to dissect.  To start, in-scene writing is not narrative descriptive writing, although certainly scenes with timelines, beginnings, middles, and ends are often created in narrative description to great effect.  But narrative description tends to static, and tends to increased psychic and physical distance from the action in the scene.  Not so in scene where the writer brings the reader in close to the action leaving space in the writing for the reader to imagine, and participate.

FIFTEEN COMPETENCIES FOR CREATING IN-SCENE WRITING.

1.  Direct viewing with feeling of action as if it is occurring "now" in story time.   

Note differences in these two scenes.

The apple fell from the lowest branch, landing in a muddy puddle too shallow to allow a splash. 

(A narrator, from a distance, relating happening.)

The skin on his right hand blanched where he gripped the cold steel of the pistol, and his left hand, bloody from the knife cut, supported his right wrist but only slightly decreased the trembling.

 (A narrator through third person, bringing immediacy, action, and intimacy through the use of the senses of the character and "close up" imagery.)

2.  Switching to present tense. 

Switching tense has to be carefully considered; switching tenses can be disruptive and break a well-crafted fictional dream of the reader.  However, in some circumstances, a switch to present tense from past tense can add immediacy and intimacy with the action in certain scenes and styles of writing–but not always!

Past tense.

He wiped the scalpel blade on a square piece of sterile gauze.  Then he cut her open, the blade engulfed in skin and fat until the blood oozed.

Compare–

Present tense.

He wipes the scalpel blade on a square piece of sterile gauze.  Then the blade cuts the skin to disappear into muscle and fat until the blood oozes.

 [Note need for verb change, which demonstrates different construction sometimes needed for past and present tenses.]

The advantages of present tense over past, as is often true, are based on taste and context.  Don't switch tenses when the there is minor or no improvement in the story telling, or when the tense switch calls attention to itself.  It must be seemless.

Example of inappropriate use of a tense switch.  Too abrupt and disrupts sequence.

He was called to the OR, the patient had a distended belly, and he scrubbed quickly.  He wipes the scalpel blade on a square piece of sterile gauze.  Then the blade cuts the skin to disappear into muscle and fat until the blood oozes. 

3.  Incorporating sensual detail and attributing to the specific character when appropriate, not to the narrator.

Narrator POV

She felt the touch of his fingers on her breast as he leaned over to kiss her ear.

Character POV

Her ear knew the abrasive feel of his dry cracked lips and her skin the exploration of her breast by his fingers seeking her always sensitive nipple waiting to be excited.

OR

My ear knew the abrasive feel of his dry cracked lips and his exploration of my breast by his fingers seeking my always sensitive nipple waiting to be excited.

4. Use strong verb forms.

A. Avoid participles (often weakens effectiveness of action verb).

He believed in her.  (Stronger)

He was always working at believing in her.

B) Avoid past perfect constructions (except when needed for orientation on the story timeline).  He traveled.  NOT  He had gone. OR  He had traveled.  

C) Avoid passive constructions whenever possible EXCEPT where progressive tense can be used to advantage.  He was perfecting his technique by practice.  USUALLY PREFERABLE.   He perfected his technique by practice.

5. Use perfectly crafted dialogue appropriate for in scene. 

6.  Use pinpoint imagery.

Pinpoint imagery expressed succinctly and with room for reader to create their own unique images is usually better that lengthy descriptions of a setting.  It may be useful to think of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  What are the fewest number of pieces that would suggest the whole of a puzzle?  Each piece has to pinpoint the most revealing aspects of the whole.  The feather of a bird, the foam and mist at the foot of a cascading waterfall, the windshield wiper of a car, etc., examples where a revealing bit may be better than a descriptive whole.  This concept engages the reader whose imagination fills in the whole mentally with unique personalized imagery.

7.  As an author, pay attention to the story timeline.

Backstory does not lend itself to in-scene writing.  Backstory is in the past, before the story (or sometimes scene in a novel) timeline starts, and essentially loses any sense of immediacy.  Write on the timeline in the logical position of story progression in the story present (not necessarily present tense).  (Don't forget or confuse the timeline of the story, which in-scene writing must adhere to logically while satisfactorily sequencing story information for the reader.)

8. Consider use of past and present progressive tenses for reader engagement.

Using present progressive.

He drives the car off the cliff.  COMPARE   He is driving the car off the cliff.

Using past progressive.

He ate his pancakes.  COMPARE   He was eating his pancakes before tasting the coffee.

9. Action and prose with momentum are essential to good in-scene writing.

Word choice

Look for different degrees of specific action in the following.

Look for nouns that have energy.  EXAMPLES: LOW-HIGH ENERGY

Concrete and abstract words have different effects on a reader.  For
action in-scene writing, concrete is almost always better.  EXAMPLES:  concrete–abstract

10. Use proper constructions to make in-scene writing effective.

Authors write to be read; authors must avoid constructions or unclear associations that cause reading to be difficult, especially in in-scene writing.

Sentences. Chose best sentence types for the prose of the story-moment.

Tight subject-verb, subject-verb-object sentences are concise and often serve well in in-scene writing.

Examples of compound sentences that are often needed for clarity and variation,  but with caution in in-scene writing so as not to slow momentum in the writing:

The emphasis and effect are different.  Both are valuable when used in an appropriate, receptive, creative-writing context.  Sentence length and sound, as well as structure, should also be varied with attention to rhythms and tensions of the story-moment.

11. Manage ideas effectively.

1. Don’t present subordinate ideas when the relationship to the main idea is not clear.  He feared Jason, always believing that honesty is the best policy.

2. Movement in images is a privilege fiction gives to authors.  In writing, images are created in a reader’s mind, which is active in forming the image.  Basically, great authors don’t create still lifes, they paint portraits that intrigue and engage the reader in scenes that live on the page.

There was a bird on a limb. Static. The flying bird settled on the limb. Improved with some action. The olive branch quivered when the claws of the sparrow grasped the sturdy twig. Lots of action.

3. Prose with momentum.  Consider your preference in the following:

– The locomotive with colorful cars behind followed the track that snaked though the valley.  Any motion perceived is really implied.  Now with action:

–The steam of the locomotive reddened the face of the engineer as he leaned out the window.  The track curved many times ahead.  He wondered, as the clouds gathered, if the printed banners with the czar’s name flapping above the red, green and white decorations so carefully applied on the cars behind by the birthday celebrants, would be dampened, maybe even destroyed, by rain.  He gripped the waist-high metal lever jutting up through a slit in the floor and shoved it forward.  The locomotive strained ahead tilting to the left when it banked into the first turn.

12. In fiction, and especially when writing in-scene, make antecedents clear.  

Avoid constructions such as:

He would never use that to do this again.  

Even if the context provides some clues as to meaning, these vague pronouns frustrate a reader.  Here is a possible improvement:

John would never use a spoon to dig a grave again.

IN-SCENE WRITING REQUIRES CLARITY AND AUTHORIAL SKILL TO TRANSMIT IDEAS WITHOUT OBSCURE IMAGERY AND QUESTION-INDUCING SYNTAX.

13. Minimize narrator stage direction, let action set the stage, for best in-scene results.

Examples:

He went to the door and twisted the door handle.

COMPARE

The noise from his opening the door alerted the fugitive.

14. Balancing fictional style elements.

Consider carefully the length of in-scene writing to narrative description.  Both techniques are usually necessary for a successful story, and the relative use of each will vary from story to story.  In-scene cannot deliver all narrative can, and visa versa.  Choose wisely for best development of your effective style.  Think: what will it do for the reader you want to please?

15. Parting thought.  Genre writers depend on in-scene writing.  Their readers expect to be engaged in the plot and characters' story world.  In contrast, contemporary literary writers, especially academic fiction writers seem unwilling to master in scene writing, or willfully ignore it.  Could it be a sense of superiority in the belief that writing lyrical narrative description as fiction is more intellectual?  Regardless of cause, readers deserve to be served the best writing and story telling, whether genre or literary.  And every story needs a carefully considered balance of fictional elements, in scene and narrative description being among the most important in any style of storytelling.

William H. Coles

Tom Jenks is the coeditor and founder of Narrative Magazine, the first and foremost digital publisher of quality literature online. He is the editor, with Raymond Carver, of American Short Story Masterpieces, as well as a former fiction editor of Esquire, literary editor of Gentleman’s Quarterly, an advisory editor of The Paris Review, and a senior editor at Scribner’s, where he edited Hemingway’s posthumously published novel The Garden of Eden. Jenks’s stories and articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, Story, and elsewhere.

I’m in San Francisco, attending a writing workshop conducted by Tom Jenks, and after class there is time for a conversation about writing.

William H. Coles

Thank you, Tom, for taking the time to talk to storyinliteraryfiction.com. I know how hard you work and how dedicated you are to your students’ educations, which makes your willingness to interview all the more appreciated.

Tom Jenks

My pleasure.

WHC

What is your concept of story? What does it mean to society?

TJ

Storytellers are myth-makers. Stories explain the things that cannot otherwise be explained. Part of storytelling is the experience of life, and another part is the meaningfulness that the storyteller brings to the story.

WHC

Has storytelling and its effect on readers changed because of the way society is progressing? Is it harder for a writer to put meaning and theme into prose?

TJ

The present always tends to seem a difficult, complex time. The past can seem simpler, but that, of course, is an illusion. Stories move along a line of human emotion, the truthfulness of human emotion. Emotions don’t grow old, emotions don’t change. We may tend to be distracted by current phenomena such as social media or information technology, or the ebb and flow of economics, the haves and the have-nots, or whatever else you want to point to in terms of contemporary problems. But what we always look to in story is human nature. Great stories are always centered on that.

WHC

The demographics of readers who look to story for what you just described is changing dramatically: a significant majority of readers are women, often in midlife; something like 80-plus percent of men don’t read a novel after they graduate from college; fewer literary books are published; agents don’t seek literary fiction. Is the readership changing, and is the receptive base for stories in prose dying?

TJ

I don’t think so. Vogues change, fashion changes, and in a short time one thing may be more popular than another: memoirs may be more popular than novels, or works of nonfiction that are more factual may be more popular. Finding support for poetry is like finding Fabergé eggs. Literary work in terms of pop culture is always a subset. Mass culture is less interested in literature per se than it is interested in entertainment. Good literature entertains, but it doesn’t purely entertain. If you look at Hollywood and the movies that are being made, if we take Hollywood as a representation of pop culture, we could observe that many of the stories that come out of Hollywood originate in books. Movies, television shows, online and mobile media: at the root of much of it is story. Good newspaper articles have a basis in narrative. They do! This is human nature. I don’t think it’s ever going away. But at its highest level of performance, there is a smaller audience for that than there was for Barnum & Bailey. That’s just what it is.

WHC

Isn’t there a tendency for authorial involvement in story, in the sense of memoir, being popular? I always sense you feel that good writing is ubiquitous in both memoir and fiction. In memoir the author is in the story. But great literary stories seem less author based. As you teach fiction, the authorial presence is filtered in complex ways. You express the roles of narrator and character and the relationship of the author. But when the author is openly present in fiction, the readers are attracted by the need for prurient voyeurism, or confessional. Doesn’t the authorial presence in fiction work against the potential of great writing by negating imagined characters and plot outside the author’s experience? My question is: Doesn’t the influx of memoir into fiction writing alter the traditional success of fiction as an art form, because the choices available for great dramatic story telling are more limited?

TJ

Well, that was a long question. [Laughing.] Whoa!

WHC

I’m asking if, as an editor and a publisher, you don’t see more authorial involvement in fiction, to the point of it becoming “me-fiction”?

TJ

I don’t know that I have an absolute answer to that question. An awful lot of people are writing today. One of the good effects of modern education is that there are vastly more people now who can write at a level of relative proficiency than there were in the nineteenth century, for instance. And there are a lot of writing schools and degreed writers coming out of these schools, so there is a culture of writing that didn’t exist previously. Along with that, there’s been a trend in mass culture toward an iconography of the self. Tolstoy, in his essay “What is Art?,” noted that among a hundred works one will be a diamond and the rest will be paste. That’s the perennial circumstance. The real article has always been very rare. And there are degrees from indifferent to wonderful.

It would be easy to say things are deteriorating. There was a point in the technological revolution when there was definitely a falling off of reading, and it was a big concern to everybody who cares about literature, but now that the technology has progressed to the point that its intersection with literature is becoming clearer, as with devices such as the Kindle and the iPad, there’s been a reversal toward more reading rather than less. Prior times have exhibited cycles in which the publishing business has been more conducive or less so for various kinds of material. Whenever the fashion shifts, concern arises. Bookstores are dying. Amazon is bad. Google is bad. But really it’s all just change, metamorphosis.

My belief is in the human imagination, in the human spirit. It’s not a given that everything turns out well, but with care, attention, and persistence things do tend to turn out well. People who are interested in reading, writing, and storytelling are usually interested for all the right reasons. There’s a desire to communicate, connect, understand, share; it’s a basic human need. Storytelling is a vehicle for it.

WHC

The reason I asked the question was not so much to understand the deterioration of story, but to examine the insertion of self into fiction for writers trying to learn the art of fiction. It seems that authors who insert themselves produce a different result when writing objective fiction than authors who limit themselves to their own world and experiences. Is it useful for beginning authors to walk away from the insertion of self into their stories to be able to write stories at a higher fictional level?

TJ

I think everybody writes out of some desire for self-expression. That’s part of it. But then, ideally, it moves from the personal to the impersonal. The material is set free from the individual self and it becomes available in its entirety, in its transparency, to anyone. The work invites a connection and a participation, as opposed to “look at me.”

WHC

One of the concepts I always admire in your teaching is the idea that characters act out stories, narrators tell stories, and authors create stories. Could you articulate the idea that the narrator’s perception is always present in the story, as distinct from the characters’ view? Is there a useful way to think about a narrator’s perspective?

TJ

It’s hard to do better than Virginia Woolf in terms of writing and thinking about writing.1 In her discussion of incandescence, the idea is that in the best work the author’s personality is completely dissolved in the work. The author is omnipresent but nowhere visible in his or her personality. Woolf uses the example of Shakespeare.

WHC

And Wuthering Heights.

TJ

Well, she used the example of Wuthering Heights as a situation in which incandescence is not entirely achieved. The personality of the writer evinces itself in a way that causes an eruption or a break. The author’s individual emotive expressiveness creates a disruptive ripple in the story.

WHC

But Shakespeare?

TJ

In Shakespeare we’re reading Shakespeare, but he has completely deployed his personality by giving over the characters. He’s orchestrating it all without our observing his presence as such.

Tolstoy is another great example. There are three great characters in Anna Karenina: Anna, Levin, and Tolstoy. We experience Tolstoy’s nature only via his gifts in the storytelling and not by literal autobiographical acquaintance with him. And in the best memoir, something similar happens. We know the author by what the author has to say about life, about events and about characters other than the self. Constant, steady self-involvement tends to create a closed loop that holds a reader outside the experience of the story.

WHC

When we go to the movies and are engaged and react–in Howards End, the Merchant Ivory film, for example–and then we read the novel, we might have a different sense of engagement, and a slightly or totally different reaction. It has to do with the differences allowed in storytelling with film and fictional prose. In film, everything is images, action, dialogue. How do we, as beginning writers, use internalization, internal reflection, and access to memory in our written stories to best advantage?

TJ

I don’t watch films the way I read literature, which is to say, with a few exceptions, I don’t take film as seriously as I might. It is an art form, but it’s been said that the good films made from books are best made from not very good books. There are exceptions. You mentioned Howards End. John Huston’s The Dead, a film version of the famous James Joyce story, is another example. Novels can do a lot of things that films can’t do. And often novels do things that don’t lend themselves well to film. The depth and nuance of characterization won’t translate easily to film, especially if the characterizations are interior. In film, what carries a story are the images. Jaws is a perfect film—it doesn’t need any dialogue. You can just watch the images. The whole story is there.

A holy grail of a certain kind of filmmaking is to let the images do the work. The point of view is provided by the camera. Novelists and storywriters do another kind of work. They put it on the page. Film initially took inspiration from the page and imported literary techniques into movie-making. A line space became a jump-cut. But a writer trying to learn to write by watching films or TV may fall into a fallacy of trying to import the techniques of film straight into literature. Most of the time this is a mistake, because there is distortion or exaggeration in the translation, or so much is left out in film that needs articulation on the page. A film audience understands the story from the images, but in written storytelling the language itself does the work.

WHC

Is the translation easier for a genre writer than it is for a literary writer, since genre is not usually based on a character-driven plot?

TJ

I don’t know enough about genre work. When I watch film, I’m just passing the time. I don’t enjoy many films. Few worthwhile ones are being made. The film business sometimes posits the audience as the chumps out there eating popcorn in the theater.

WHC

In literary fiction a writer focuses on character-based emotional arcs, engaging a reader’s interest and sympathy. So is that kind of work a good place for beginning writers to look for inspiration?

TJ

Yes, look to the best authors, the best stories, for inspiration.

WHC

In an imitative way?

TJ

Imitating things you love is a great way to learn. Many writers start that way. Look at the influence of Homer on Virgil, and Virgil on Joyce, Joyce on Faulkner, and Faulkner on Márquez. You take inspiration from what came before, and then you go beyond.

WHC

You’ve known a lot of writers. Who has astonished you? I’ve always admired your associates: Plimpton, Carver, Peter Taylor, to name only a few.

TJ

I was lucky. I went to New York for grad school and, to help pay the bills, I worked in publishing.

WHC

Did you major in English?

TJ

Literature was my undergraduate major. English literature, American literature. But when I went to work in publishing, I found that academic knowledge was almost useless. Discussion and analysis of completed works by dead authors, often from a theoretical perspective, is quite different from trying to be of use to a living author with a work in progress. I was lucky to land in New York at a time when there were a lot of interesting people around. Fiction and the short story were experiencing a great vogue. There was a lot of excitement and interest in it. Right away I got to meet everybody I wanted to meet, and I got to work with a lot of them.

WHC

And did you watch writers working creatively? Can you identify the process? What is it exactly?

TJ

Somebody once said that creativity involves putting together two or more things that don’t seem to go together. Today we hear a lot about creativity. It has become a pop cult idea—as if everyone is creative.

Knowledge, resourcefulness, spontaneity, habituated mastery, strength, sensitivity, perceptiveness, accuracy of touch, and nimbleness are all elements that lend themselves to the creative impulse. Jazz is an improvisational art form, but the artist’s ability to improvise is based on the habituated ability with the music, with the instrument.

WHC

Yes. That’s a good analogy.

TJ

Once I was working with Robert Stone on a piece. I had made an excerpt from one of his novels, for Esquire—this was in the 1980s—and in making the excerpt I made a couple of cuts and the remaining material needed to be stitched back together. Bob came into the office, sat down at a desk, and in a matter of minutes wrote a few sentences. I looked at them and said, “That’s great. That does it.” And he said, “That’s what you do. You bring ’em down and you take ’em up again.” The cuts had needed some transitional material with dramatic force. Bob saw right away what was needed and performed it. He takes great pride in his discipline. Some of it is natural talent, and some of it is accomplishment.

WHC

Can beginning writers learn how to create conflict and drama if that doesn’t come to them naturally?

TJ

Have you read Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana?

WHC

No.

TJ

I’m reading it for the first time. It’s extraordinary. The circumstance in the novel is that there’s a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana in 1958 just before Castro’s revolution. The vacuum cleaner salesman is enlisted by a British intelligence operative to be “our man” in Havana. The salesman doesn’t really want to be a spy, but he needs the money—he’s a single father with a daughter who wants a horse. The British operative wants our man not only to collect intelligence but also to form a network of intelligence operators. So the vacuum cleaner salesman just makes it all up. He invents agents, he invents information, and his imagination just runs riot. He needs an agent. So, here’s a name, here’s a story. Oh, wait! Oh, no! There’s a complication, and he has to get rid of an agent who doesn’t really exist, so how to do it plausibly? We watch the salesman create fictions, and we’re also watching Greene’s imagination at work through this vacuum cleaner. It’s satirical, of course, and hilarious.

In daily life, most of us go out of our way to avoid conflict, if we can. We think, “Don’t say that!” Or, “Oh my God, let’s don’t have that happen.” But the story writer is going in the opposite direction. Let’s make as much trouble as we can. Let’s really stir it up.

WHC

I think it was Graham Greene who said it is the duty of a novelist to forget, while the duty of a journalist is to remember. The idea is that what you forgot would be internalized to emerge as creativity. It sounds as if this novel is a result of that creative process.

TJ

In Our Man in Havana Greene looked at what was going on in Cuba at the time and wrote the book quickly. It’s short and was timely when he published it, and it holds up very well today. Not many writers can sit down and say, in effect, I see something happening in the world right now, and not only am I going to write a story out of it, but the story is going to be a satire that’s connected to Conrad’s The Secret Agent and exists prominently in a long line of literature of this type. But Greene’s novel is also a genre unto itself, because it has so many different modes. It’s a wonderfully dense piece of work that reads like a horse race.

WH

Thanks for the recommendation. I look forward to reading it.

TJ

Creative activity is a basic human need, but not everyone has the kind of creative ability that goes into writing a great story or novel.

WHC

What’s the difference between the ordinary and the exceptional range of creativity?

TJ

Well, when my middle daughter was in preschool, the kids were painting pictures and one of the teachers would say, That’s good, or she’d say, That’s bad. But kids don’t want or need that sort of valuation. Instead they want, Wow! Or they want some specific, practical helpful information that includes some note of encouragement. They want to paint. But of course the results are not all equal. In our time, there’s a sense in the adult world that everybody is creative and everybody can be creative. Everybody is equal. That Internet helps reinforce this sense of creative equality—whatever anyone writes is equal to what anyone else writes, and anyone’s opinion of what anyone writes is equal to whatever else anyone has to say on the subject. Look at the reader comments on Amazon—most are contentious and negative, a flourishing of uninformed opinion and spleen. Information technology is democratic by virtue of access. Art is not democratic. Reading is democratic. Viewing is democratic. It’s meant to be, and should be, accessible to all. But the creation of art is not really democratic.

WHC

How does intelligence relate to this?

TJ

Well, it depends on what kind of intelligence you’re talking about.

WHC

[Laughing.] Augh. That’s slippery, I tell you.

TJ

The Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, has been an accepted indicator of degrees of intelligence. There’s a scale, 160, 145. God help you, you could have 90. The numbers are meaningful to some extent. But another mark of intelligence is how well a life is lived. There are many kinds of intelligence other than raw IQ. There’s emotional intelligence, intuitive knowing, common sense, and specific gifts for music or math or horse trading. Having a high IQ is not necessarily predictive of success.

WHC

Or of creativity?

TJ

Yes. Individuals with a very high IQ can fail at life and sometimes fail ultimately at the very things they’re best at. Bobby Fischer comes to mind.

WHC

Anyone setting out to be a writer might wonder, Am I capable of doing this? Am I capable of creating art at the level I want? Can I assess my abilities? Am I smart enough, with enough background . . . with enough life experiences?

TJ

You never know what you can do until you do it. And if you’ve done it once, maybe you can do it again.

WHC

I love talking to you and I wish we could go on forever. One wrap-up question. And by the way, congratulations on the success of Narrative Magazine.

TJ

Thank you.

WHC

You’re cofounder and coeditor, with Carol Edgarian. What does Narrative show us about the future of publishing?

TJ

Well . . . that’s a broad question. [Laughing.] Carol had a conversation with the head of the NEA literary panel this week, and it was a really encouraging conversation because he said: You guys were there before anybody else and before anybody knew what it was. Now everybody recognizes it. Basically you guys are the template for what literature can look like, and be, in the digital age.

Today publishing is in a period of transition. Nobody knows exactly what the new permanent steady-state model of publishing will be. Formerly there was a model that everyone recognized and understood, from the end of the Victorian period to about twenty years ago, when technology really began to take off. Now it will take another ten to twenty years before we arrive at a steady-state model that everyone recognizes and agrees on. And all kinds of things are involved, not just the technology, not just the means of delivery for literature, whether we talk about the iPad, the Kindle, or online interfaces, or financial models that involve author royalties, permissions, rights, and the public domain. Everything is in flux. The biggest prior, and relatively recent, revolution in publishing occurred with the invention of the paperback. Compared to that, what’s happening today is enormous.

There’s a current fascination with social media as a necessary companion to literature. Will the fascination last? Does anyone really know?

Authors ask: How do I get out there? Do I need to have a Twitter account? A Facebook account? Some of this activity will eventually subside. The means of delivery is transitory, as compared to what’s inside the book or story or poem or essay. As publishing formats change, we have to make sure that the substance—the quality—of the work is not diminished by the machining of formats.

When we started the magazine, there were no online or digital platforms for first-rank literary work—The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, the Paris Review, none of them, nor any other quality publisher of literature, had an online presence. And, according to studies done by the NEA, readers were falling away from literature by the millions, and certainly the rise of technological media was a big part of the shift away from reading. A general sense of depression and indirection was overtaking the literary community, and we wanted to show what quality literature could look like online, and we wanted to do all we could to encourage and support good writing and reading. We started with six authors and about a thousand readers. (You can find the contents of our first issue here: http://narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2003.) And I have to say that when we started the magazine, no one—friends and authors—seemed to understand what we were doing, though they were all cheerful enough about it, as if to humor us by saying, Sure, why not?

Today, of course, everyone grasps the challenge and opportunity that technology presents for literature, but until Amazon launched the Kindle in 2007, the handwriting on the wall wasn’t read by many publishers and litterateurs who should have been reading it much sooner. But change, especially the kind of radical change that has taken place in publishing, is always met with resistance, and existing book and magazine content was less immediately available to be digitized than were film and music files. Old-line publishers, clinging to print rights, sunk costs, and traditional bona fides (a digital publication was not considered a “real” publication), harbored reluctance and denial, though the shift from bricks-and-mortar to digital was inevitable once the technological revolution started and the Internet caught the collective imagination.

In the early stages of this shift, Douglas Coupland observed that the Internet had begun to look like a cross between a shopping mall and a bordello, and today online commercialism remains a big challenge to literary values. Amazon’s “the readers decide” is a great consumer-oriented retail credo, but as a literary value it’s akin to a popularity contest. Narrative began and continues as an example of excellence, combining old-school values with new media technology. Narrative was one of the first two periodicals to release an iPhone/iPad Application (it’s free) and one of the first periodicals on Kindle. We have 160,000 readers and publish several hundred writers and artists each year. We have been much watched and imitated by other periodicals with vastly greater resources, and now in an environment in which technology and business investment seek scalability and ROI above all, we continue to look for ways to co-opt the means of production for the sake of literature. We can’t take its existence for granted or think that the free market values it as we do.

The constant readership for good writing forms a small subculture within mass culture. Sometimes a book or author crosses over from the small world to the large, most often in the case of a film adaptation. Cormac McCarthy’s first five books sold about three thousand copies each. Then came the film version of All the Pretty Horses. There are other examples, but the point is that all who care deeply about literature and its generative effect on society recognize that anything and everything that can be done to encourage good writing and reading needs to be done. With Narrative, we work hard to reach as many readers as possible, to put forth the best work by the best writers, to engender an intelligent and respectful level of discourse, and to further the best of traditional literary values in the new age.

WHC

Do you think the influence of word-of-mouth regarding the quality of writing still generates interest? The “this-is-good” phenomenon driving readers to read?

TJ

Buzz always counts. When Umberto Eco published The Name of the Rose, it became a bestseller, though it involved some extremely arcane material. I asked the translator, William Weaver, how he explained the book’s success. He said, “Nobody can explain it. If we could explain it, we would bottle it.”

People talk. Sometime they’re right and sometimes they’re not. When talk creates sales, the talk has weight. Sales may or may not be meaningful in terms of quality. But either way, more people are reading and talking than ever before, simply because there are more people.

WHC

And availability? Are your Apps and mobile editions reaching the same numbers of readers as your online editions?

TJ

In the past twelve months there have been approximately 300,000 articles downloaded via our mobile devices. That’s a big number. This spring we’ll release an Android App, and we think it will be very popular. We expect to gain a lot of new readers. As computers and notebooks merge into hybrid devices and everyone seeks mobility, the desktop site will become a footprint that feeds devices.

WHC

The potential of the digital age for literature seems almost unlimited.

TJ

Publishers are struggling. When technology became an obvious means for literature, I thought, Here’s a great way for writers to connect directly with readers. The only thing writers could not do easily for themselves was marketing. In the digital replacement of printing, binding, shipping, warehousing, and returns, there’s been a great economy and a freeing up of resources. So, for writers, it would seem there should be a greater share of the profit. But that’s not exactly what’s happening.

Instead, Amazon, which is driving the train, has an enormous share of the book market; they set prices and an economic model that puts a lot of pressure on publishers. This condition has not resulted in greater sales or greater profits for writers. Amazon, Apple, and Google are vying to control publishing revenues, and Amazon is leading.

What one hopes is that competition in the marketplace will create something more beneficial to the production of art. Amazon is primarily a technology company. It’s secondarily a retailer. It’s a business. They are publishing works now, as well as selling works published by others. Old-line publishers can’t be too happy about it.

It amazed me that it took Amazon as long as it did to start publishing. I thought they would have done that five years ago. How will it all turn out? I don’t know. Amazon claims that it can provide authors with greater economic benefit by providing books to buyers and by offering a higher-than-standard royalty to writers. But it hasn’t yet been proven that the model works other than by holding prices very low. And most of the books selling on Amazon sell because outside publishers promote the authors.

Overall, I’m optimistic about writing, about writers, and about publishers. I have a basic belief in the human spirit and imagination. Just the fact that you’re sitting there with your iPad, on which you can within a few seconds access almost any work of literature that has ever existed, speaks volumes.

1Woolf's The Common Reader has a number of enlightening essays.

Character traits for fiction, every one useful to consider, are readily available in texts on writing and online.  For examples: confident, conceited, domineering, outspoken, shy, short tempered, violent, passive, etc.  These traits tend to be descriptive about appearance (e.g. overweight), or about personality  (e.g. garrulous).

But for the serious, character-based writer, there are other characteristics useful for creating character-specific voice and dialogue, assuring synthesis of logical desires and emotions, and displaying levels of intellect and imagination of the character through the narrator.

Characters in great, lasting, stories are sculpted by every word chosen; the construction of every prose element; the rhythmic pacing; the character-specific accuracy of metaphors related to character development; and the actions and reaction to the plot, be it fatalistic or character-based, or both (usually).  To achieve this in fiction, an author creates from a broad knowledge of the world and humanity.  In almost every instance, character development is more effective when an author can imagine what the character feels, thinks, and does in the story setting.

These are thoughts about character traits presented as seeds for in-depth thinking about characterization.

Humor.

A sense of humor is essential for human bonding and social existence.  What makes the character laugh, and what triggers that response, reveals a core, inner self.  Irony is a form of humor that is complex.  Characters should be able to credibly contribute (from their authorial development) to the creation of story irony and be capable of understanding the story ironies at an intellectual and instinctual level.  How does the character being created form humor, and how is it used?

Civility.

Being polite and courteous to others springs from a caring about others feelings.  Does your character have a touch of civility or is the caring not enough to display civility.  This can be important in plotting, to maintain credible yet surprising plot progression and character interaction and conflict.  Good dialogue can use character civility both for identification and consistency of characterization for understandable motivation.  And a lack of civility can also motivate characters and drive plot.  

Morality.

Every human's concept of virtue and evil, good and bad, differs.  And morality contributes strongly as to how a character acts in a story, and is often a source of inner conflict.  What is the morality of a character?  How would it be expressed in in-scene development (most effective) and narrative description.   

Metaphor.

Inaccurate metaphors degrade the quality of writing and erode effective characterization.  Effective character-compatible metaphors are difficult to create; to error produces damaging effects on the quality of writing and storytelling. 

Religion

Does your character believe in a superior being?  Does that being direct their lives?  Is a divine presence vengeful, benevolent, just?  Do they pray?  Do they believe in human will, or predestination?  Important to carry religious belief of the character into dialogue, and often into theme too.

Voice.

Voice is everything a character–or narrator–does, thinks, says, or feels.  Most great fiction maintains distinct character and narrator voices in the creation, but in contemporary fiction, the authorial voice dominates  as the voice of the work of fiction without differentiation of characters' and narrator voices.  How is voice used in your fiction?  Can a character voice be easily identified?   FOOTNOTE.

Speech.

Speech for characters reveals how they think, and after a time, who they really are.  Dialogue for a writer is an effective way to build character.  But the dialogue must be crafted for a purpose, not just written as a description from life, or an imagined scene.  And, of course, dialogue is a major way to reveal character in scene without being told details by a narrator or author;  character speecht allows a reader to develop a sense of the individuality of the character in the story, a phenomenon that occurs when the author has created characters with distinct voices and personalities,.

Winning.

What does the character need to win . . . in the moment or in life?  This is an essence of fiction.  The character must need something, must want to win something.  Is it admiration, content, domination, superiority, revenge, love, etc.?  Real life is often a constant adjustment to get along . . . survive and procreate, without pain or threat of death.  But the fictional character, living in the story world of conflict and imbalance, must have a need to win something that will help make them unique.  And this winning is most effectively presented through action and dialogue.  Thoughts are secondary, since a character often doesn't know what they want.   And narrative description, with it's distance from the action and it's necessity to tell things that should be experienced by a reader along with the character, is often not the right choice by an author for best results. 

Fear.

What does your character fear, and how does that fear affect his or her life?

Hurt.

How do your characters hurt others.  Physically?  Psychologically?  Verbally?   Do they humiliate, condescend, disagree, lie, exaggerate, ridicule?  

Emotions.

What makes your character laugh and cry on both a daily level and throughout life.  Are emotional responses mainly positive (love, etc) or negative (anger, etc.).  Is your character displaying a range of emotions (it's best) and what emotion predominates?  Even though angry, passionate, focused, dedicated characters help drive plots, characters described from life are frequently depressed, loveless, and non-creative and seriously erode story and characterization.  Find predominant emotions and be sure that the majority of character emotions expressed in the story result in positive action, that is contribute to strong characterization and plot movement, and not contributing to negative action, which stops story momentum and tend to make characterization flat and uninteresting.

Victimization.

Strong effective characters often see themselves as victims of circumstance, or birth, and are most effectively created through an objective narrator, who can present the victimization without the self-pity, self absorption, and negativity that might be expressed through the character.  Victimization often acts as tragic flaw in a character and can precipitate nemesis, so it is very useful, yet it can also turn readers away from engaging and caring about the character.  If your character is controlled by victimization (being from a minority ethnic background, not being given or taught the skills to succeed, feeling the unjustness of being ignored, etc.), work to present the victimization objectively–although the character's view is almost always subjective–so the reader can identify and sympathize with the character's burden of victimization. 

Response to criticism.

How does your character respond to criticism?  As constructive?  With anger?  Pondering the value?  Criticism is often used to insert conflict in fiction, and your character's responses will need to be logical and credible while simultaneously being as unique and interesting as possible.

Memory.

How does a character remember things?  Does he or she always try to be accurate, and qualifying when they're not sure for the sake of honesty?  Or do they inflate or minimize for their own advantage.  What do they tend to forget, and why?

Gender.

Is the gender of the protagonist right for the story?  Would a change in gender be more engaging, provide better support for meaning, allow more accurate establishment of enjoyable voice?

Truth.

What is truth (in accordance with fact or reality) to the character? How does he or she perceive truth in his or her world, and how does it relate to the real world and the worlds of other characters.  (Potential for conflicts.)

Conformity.

Is the character concerned with social acceptance, rebellious against accepted norm, or just apathetic.  Does he or she conform to local, national, or world standards?  How does this desire to conform or not conform relate to the story being created?

Beauty.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what a character finds beautiful can reveal inner self . . . most often through dialogue and internal thoughts of characters so unique and valuable to prose.  Humans find pleasure in what they think is beautiful.  Music, art, motion, nature, proportion, symmetry or asymmetry, creating (a chef, for example), and many others.  How might your character react to these contrasts of beauty:

ART

MOTION

SOUND

ARCHITECTURE

NATURE

To create your characters' choices about what is beautiful to them can have great value for an author.  These choices may never be expressed directly in the prose, but what is beautiful to a character can be revealing and used for creating dynamic fascinating individuals.  And the character who never knows a sense of beauty will add a special slant on story motives and theme.

Summary

Great literary fictional characters are created for a story purpose that will please a reader, and, to be most effective, are not described from reality or imagined reality as an author achievement.  To create effective characters, an author must build the character word by word, idea by idea, action by action.  It means, to be good storytellers, authors must be able to live as the character would speak and think , and empathize with the character's choices.  Few writers attain this skill, but all should try.

Afterword

Examples of character development: 
Heathcliff and Catherine (Wuthering Heights); Anna Karenina and Levin; Homer's Odysseus; Jane Eyre; Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and Mr Collins (Pride and Prejudice); Helen and Mr. Wilcox (Howard's End); Freddy and Fredericka; Emma (Madame Bovary; Randall Patrick McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest); Rodion Raskolinikov (Crime and Punishment); Charles Marlow (The Heart of Darkness); "The Stone Boy"; "Miss Harriet"; Felicite in A Simple Heart (Flaubert).

FOOTNOTE.

Creating characters with distinct voices unique to their developed characteristics in a story provides the skill the serious author of character-based fiction can use to create memorable stories with significant meaning.  In the past half century there has been the tendency to write fiction with an all pervasive authorial voice created by an author intent on describing events (usually personally experienced) rather than creating story through action and conflict.  For the most part, this trend has produced energy-deficient fiction and meaningless storytelling.  Characterization has diminished to physical description and avoids character action; logical, credible, unique character motivation; and desire.

In successful fictional works–works that are remembered , reread, and will pass to future generations–characters are created by  a writer as  separate humans.  Successful characterization is the element of a great story that drives action, creates ironies, and embeds humor.  Effective dialogue–with action and reaction, and internalization–is ideally expressed through the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the character, a process  unique to fiction as a storytelling medium.

CHAPTER 1

2003

Piedmont of North Carolina

I

nside the cemetery bordered by a waist-high iron fence and crowded with modest stone markers and wooden crosses, some draped with plastic flowers, two fresh graves waited . . . side-by-side . . . flanked by the caskets of the mother and father of the Broward family.   Carrie Broward, a tall, muscular girl with pretty facial features and short-cut straw-blond hair, stepped forward from the sparse crowd and Jessie Broward, her older sister, a full-figured woman with a close resemblance to her sister but with pecan-shell brown hair, followed to lay flowers on their parents' caskets.  The other Broward children, Henry and Martha, stood a few feet away, heads bowed and eyes closed.

At cemetery edge, a young Arab driver in a dark suit and tie leaned against the front of one of the two freshly washed hearses, spotless but dull from decades of wear.  His eyes did not leave the sisters.  A minister delivered a final prayer for the deceased.  The gnarled fingers of an old woman sitting on a three-leg stool painfully searched the frets of her weary guitar for the strummed chords of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee."  The service concluded, the mourners drifted toward the church, as the undertaker directed workers to lift the straps of the first coffin for its descent into the earth.

The next morning, the four Broward children gathered to divide their parents' possessions at the modest, century-old, family farmhouse with a tilted for-sale sign on a stick at the end of the dirt drive.

"I am not taking on responsibility for a seventeen year old," Henry said pausing his brush stroke and turning from the window frame he was painting.

"Quiet, she'll hear you," Martha said from the kitchen throwing a cracked and chipped casserole dish into a metal trashcan with a crash of splintered glass, and turning back to scrub glassware in the sink.
            Jessie went to the front door to look for Carrie.  "She's carrying stuff out of the tool shed."

"Don't let her throw out any power tools," Henry said.

"I've only got a one bedroom apartment," Jessie said picking up her broom and sweeping.

"Well, she can't stay here alone.  You'd have to move out here," Martha said.

"It's forty miles,"

"Get a job closer."

"They're no jobs here.  They're no people."

"I can't afford it," Henry said.  "Her living with us.  Marie is trying to get into college."

Carrie came in the front door.  Jessie stopped sweeping the fireplace hearth.

"Can I keep this?"  Carrie asked.  She held up a child's oak chair less than two and a half feet high, with a hoop back and spindle slats.

"It's junk," Henry said.

"It's was mother's when she was a little girl," Carrie said.  "She told me."

"Bullshit."

"Leave it in the shed," Martha said.  "Sell it with the house."

"I want it for my kids," Carrie said.  She set the chair defiantly near the front door and went back to the shed to finish cleaning out.

"That is exactly why I won't take her," Martha said.  "Obstinate. Disrespectful.  I have no responsibility to live with that for the rest of my life."  A stemmed glass splintered as she threw it in the trash.

They worked in tense silence for a few minutes.

"You're the one Jessie.  You're closest to her," Henry said.

"She'd at least be able to stay close to where she was born," Martha added. "She doesn't have the smarts to make it in a big city."

"Move into a bigger apartment, for Christ's sake," Henry said.

"And who will pay for that?" Jessie said.

The silence intensified.

"Well?"

Martha went somewhere into the back of the kitchen out of view.  Henry stared out the window and kept working.

"I'm not taking her on myself," Jessie said.  "I can't afford it."

"Sell what's left after today," Martha said coming in from the kitchen and wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

"There's nothing of value," Jessie said.  "You've taken everything."

"I'll try to send an allowance," Martha said.

"How much?"

"I can't afford more than a few dollars a month.  Jake won't give it to me.  I'll have to take it out of my house budget."

"Then I get what's in the bank accounts," Jessie said.

"No way," Henry said.  "I'll be the executor."

"It's the only way I can take her on."

Martha picked up a box full of dishes and started toward her truck.  She looked to Henry.  "You've got more money than all of us put together," she said to Henry as she went out the front door.

"I've got family responsibilities," Henry said.

"And a big boat," Martha retorted.

"I make just above poverty wages," Jessie said.  "Hourly.  Nothing guaranteed."

Martha reentered.  "Give her the money, Henry.  It can't be much anyway."

Henry paused.  "Only part.  And only if Carrie is living with her."

By late afternoon, cars and a van were packed, and Martha left for Michigan and Henry for Arizona.  As Jessie locked up the house, she pretended not to see that Carrie had tucked the child's chair under some blankets in the back of her car.

For weeks after the funeral, from her bedroom, Jessie heard the quiet sobs from Carrie sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room.  Carrie missed their parents and the farm, but she rarely spoke of them.  But with time, the crying disappeared.  Carrie had a job in a movie theater working behind the concession stand.  She liked helping the patrons and considered her job a career to conquer.  And she stayed busy.  When Jessie returned from work as an assistant for an optometrist, she'd find Carrie polishing, scrubbing, and washing the apartment.   For recreation Carrie chatted on the Internet on Jessie's computer, or watched movies or late-night reruns of "I Love Lucy" on TV. 

 Jessie loved Carrie as best she could . . . better than she did Martha and Henry, for that matter . . . and convinced herself she liked having Carrie around, but she couldn't bury the burden of inherited parenthood.   It wasn't personal.  Jessie really didn't have room for a teen-age girl, or anybody, in her apartment . . . and . . . she felt trapped.  Worst of all, there was no relief.  Henry and Martha still refused to consider taking Carrie in, even on a rotating schedule, and Jessie had no support . . . and no money had been sent by either Henry or Martha.  

The reality haunted Jessie now.  Carrie had dropped out of high school to work the farm, selling produce roadside and in town markets.  She would never go back to school, and college had never been considered.  As Carrie settled in, Jessie 's dream of a loving husband and a happy brood of children of her own faded.  So Jessie prayed and thought, thought and prayed, and finally accepted her new responsibilities of mothering Carrie would never go away.  Jessie determined to bring up Carrie with their parents' Christian principles, and keep her innocent from worldly sins.

CHAPTER 2

On a Tuesday, almost four months after the funeral, Jessie waited at the apartment front door to take Carrie to work at the MoviePlex.  Carrie, who was in Jessie's cramped bedroom with the door open, typed laboriously on Jessie's computer keyboard with her index fingers.  Mom's child's rocking chair–the aged, scratched and dented oak oiled and polished by Carrie–sat against the wall squeezed between the bed and the computer stand.

"Hurry, it's raining," Jessie called.

"I can take the bus," Carrie called back. 

"I can't be late.  Shut it off."

"He wants to meet me!" Carrie exclaimed when the screen displayed a chat-room return.

"Who?"

"Zamel."

"Zamel? What's with Zamel?"

"He says he saw me at the funeral."

Jessie entered the room.  "You don't know him."

"He's single.  He lives alone.  He fixes computers and works part time for the funeral home."

"You can't tell crap on the Internet.  He might be a rapist, or a serial killer."

"He's not."

"A terrorist even!"

"He loves animals.  He wants a puppy.  He misses his mother in Iran."

"Don't promise him anything."

"He wants to meet me at the mall."

"No!"

"He wants to meet you too."

"That will never happen."

Carrie typed in a reply and turned off the computer.

"You didn't say yes, did you?" Jessie said.

"I can do what I want."

"Not until you're eighteen.  And maybe not then."

Carrie grabbed a jacket from the bed as Jessie slipped into her rain gear and opened the door.

"You are not going to see that boy!" Jessie said as they walked to the car.

CHAPTER 3

Two days later, Jessie sat with Carrie at a white-painted metal table for four at the second-floor food court of the mall.  In front of them, twenty feet away, the escalator merged from the ground floor.    

Jessie wore jeans and a sweatshirt; Carrie had on tight slacks and a lace-trimmed blouse low cut to show cleavage, and orange plastic hoop-earrings dangled from her ears.

"I hope he's not late," Carrie said for the second time.

"We're twenty minutes early," Jessie said.  She had no idea how to handle this infatuation that seemed to make Carrie contrary to everything she said.  She picked up a picture of the guy on paper Carrie had printed from the Net.  "I can't see his face," she said.  It was fuzzy like a picture from a store surveillance camera.

Carrie jumped up.  "There he is!"

Zamel rose inching above the meshing top stair of the escalator.  He was six inches shorter than Carrie, built like he was prepubescent, but he wore adult clothes–a black short sleeve shirt, Sansabelt tan slacks, and white running shoes.  His black hair shined, his white teeth gleamed when he smiled in contrast to his dark skin.  Carrie ran and took his hand but he glanced at Jessie and then, gently and shyly, pulled his hand away.  Jessie wasn't ready to acknowledge him yet and she remained impassive; still he nodded to her as he and Carrie approached.

Zamel pulled out a chair for Carrie and then stood before Jessie, who was almost at eye level with him while sitting, and stared at him relentlessly

"It is a pleasure to meet you," Zamel said.

"Really?"

"Carrie has told me all about you.  You are like mother to her."

"I'm her sister.  She lives with me."

"She's told me.  I'm so sorry to hear about your dear parents.  So sudden."

Jessie shook her head in disbelief.  "You might as well sit down."

"It would be my pleasure to buy you a drink.  I know Carrie loves Dr. Pepper with lots of ice."

Jessie paused, concerned she was not Christian enough to be  ashamed of her impulse to order something expensive.  "Chocolate milkshake," she said.

"My favorite also." Zamel left for drinks.

Carrie beamed.  "Isn't he wonderful?  So polite."

"He's darker than I thought."

"He's Persian."

"Like Persia is in Africa somewhere.  He's not one of us."

Carrie turned her head away in anger.

"Break it off now," Jessie said.  "Don't let it get complicated."

"Be nice to him, Jessie.  For me."

Jessie begrudgingly admired the way Zamel placed the milkshake before her . . .  first, carefully laying a brown paper napkin underneath, and another one to the side, removing the straws from their paper wrappers careful to never touch them as he handed them to her, and then serving Carrie.  He had a cup of water for himself.

"Thanks," Jessie said to Zamel but glancing quickly at Carrie to convince her she wasn't satisfied in anyway by Zamel's performance.

"Pleased to have the opportunity," Zamel said.

"Are you legal?" Jessie asked.

"I have student visa.  I take classes at Stringer Community College.  I hope to apply for a green card."

"You have family?"

"Yes. In Iran."

"You saw Carrie at the funeral?"

"I was there.  Yes."

"You tracked her down?"

"Not exactly.  I found her Internet.  I work with computers."

Jessie squinted, her brow creased.

Carrie clasped Zamel’s arm.

"Leave us, Jessie," Carrie pleaded.

"I don't think so."

"You promised."

"I never . . ."

"P…l…e…a…s…e!"

Carrie and Zamel had identical forlorn looks that made Jessie suspicious of predesigned agendas.  Jessie sighed inwardly and stood and walked toward the Sears store entrance, looking back over her shoulder at Carrie and Zamel now talking intently.

Two hours later Jessie led Carrie by the arm from the mall to her Ford Focus. Zamel waited near the doors of the mall exit, grinning.  What exactly had gone on?

"He is so cool," Carrie said.

They walked to opposite sides of the car.  Jessie paused before unlocking the doors.

"That’s it.  No more, Carrie.  He’s not right for you."

Carrie tensed.

They got in the car.  Jessie put a key in the ignition.

"We’re going to the museum next Sunday," Carrie said.

In the name of God!  Jessie had hoped this would be the end.  Not the beginning. Not Carrie falling for some Internet guy.   And she cringed inwardly at Carrie's blatant disregard for her authority.

"Absolutely not!" she said. "Tell him, 'No.'"

"I can take the bus.  He doesn’t have a car."

Jessie started the engine.  "It’s over.  I mean it."  She backed out of parking space.

Carrie stared determinedly out the side window hoping to get a last glimpse of Zamel.

A sample of the complete text.

Read the complete novella!

Download Sister Carrie in .pdf format for only $1.49:

Sister Carrie is also available in print and as eBook at:
AuthorHouse, Amazon, (Kindle click here), and Barnes and Noble

William H. Coles

Kirby Wilkins was Division Chair at Cabrillo College for thirty-one years where he taught creative writing.  He studied with Wallace Stegner in the Stanford Creative Writing Program.  He taught at the Foothill Writers' Conference (1991-2001) and at the Surprise Valley Writers' Conference.  His novels are King Season, set in Alaska, and Quantum Web.  His book of short stories Vanishing was published by Blackwells Press.

WHC

It's September 15, 2012.  I’m with Kirby Wilkins in Surprise Valley in the town of Cedarville, California, at the Modoc Writers’ Conference directed by Barbara and Ray March. 

I’d like to thank you very much for agreeing to interview with storyinliteraryfiction.com.  It’s been a pleasure to be in your class these past four days, and I really appreciate all that you’ve done for your students.

Kirby Wilkins

Well, we should mention how much you’ve brought to it.

WHC

Well, thanks, but minimal.  I’d like to start with your conceptualization of story in the way that story is so important to humankind and  to a cultured society, but also in the way  humans depend upon story for communication – to get ideas and thoughts across. 

Kirby Wilkins

The importance of story is indisputable, obviously . . . particularly oral stories that come up through cultures that are not written.  Oral stories that come up into the world that we know, the Odysseus and Iliad, Beowulf . . .

WHC

Gilgamesh.

Kirby Wilkins

Gilgamesh.  And, those stories were told to carry on tradition, remember the stories, retell them, retell them in the community, retell them to the family.  I mean that  is the most important aspect of story.  But that’s not where we are now.

WHC

For the prose fiction writer, what are the features of story as you see it that will make it readable, memorable, entertaining . . . I guess?

Kirby Wilkins

For me, the development of story has always been organic and it’s had to do, I think ultimately, with getting far enough into myself, into what I know about the world and what I feel about the world, to finally bring up a shape of some sort.  And then the technique comes in – you maybe heal after that.  There are writers who I think are maybe even more akin to the story tradition–the oral story tradition–who just tell story.  T. Coraghessan Boyle . . . when I read him – I’m not wild about it because he’s so facile–but he tells story.  And you just almost imagine him telling those stories without revision, which I know he doesn’t.  So I think that there are many stories – storyteller types – and I’m not the type who conceptualizes story.  It’s strictly something I do from within myself that’s organic, and if I bring any technique to it through the years, it’s what happens after that.  Once I’ve got something I can, in fact, give it more shape, help it, speed it up, give it some sort of ending.  Endings are frequently a problem. 

I also think that the stories in my particular case – early stories in the book of Vanishing reflected the view of life, which I didn’t realize until  they all came together.  It’s a fairly bleak view, a kind of existential ‘50s view, which emerges in which there’s really not a lot of meaning and not a lot of love.  There’s a sort of emptiness in character’s lives.  So what emerges is a kind of worldview that I had at the time, less so now than I did then.

That came from the writing itself.  I admire writers who are prolific and can turn out stories – shape these stories . . . like Joyce Carol Oates, they just do it.  And I’ve never really felt that I was in that class.

WHC

A story begins, of course, and as you said, a story ends.   Do you have some feeling as you write that the end is going to happen or  do you let the end just sort of fall of the cliff?

Kirby Wilkins

Well, the famous New Yorker stories that didn’t end, they dribbled out.  But as I was talking[about] the other night,  I personally I don’t want to know the end when I start.  I want to discover the end and let it be a bit of a surprise.  And the act of writing leads me to the point where it’s got to end and sometimes that happens naturally and sometimes I artificially say "wait a minute, I’ve got to get out of this somehow.  What’s going on here?"  But in many cases – I think that’s almost true of every story my book Vanishing – the story evolved and ended.  And for my own reading of stories I tend to prefer a more organic story – a little less predictable maybe in terms of plot manipulation.

WHC

Should a fictional story be entertaining?

Kirby Wilkins

Yes, it should be entertaining.  But we get into trouble there if we’re competing with big entertainment – films.  Yes, it should be entertaining, you want people to read it and enjoy it and come away not just entertained, but, I hope, maybe moved in some way.  That would be nice. 

The stress on entertainment now is hazardous because you’re up against overwhelming odds through other media, which I think has put some pressure on fiction to be extremely snappy right out of the box. You've got to have the catcher, you got to sink the hook, and a lot of times that’s kind of artificial, but maybe an economic necessity that you’re competing [against].  But I’ve always found that kind of approach difficult.

I do think a story, when you pick it up, you want to keep reading after page one and there are many ways to do that.

WHC

One of the admirable things I’ve seen you do this week is you have a very distinct control of discussion of student manuscripts in class and I wanted you to go through the very specific things you say at the beginning.  You give a list1 of things that shape the discussion.  Those are so valuable and I just wondered if you would share those with us.

Kirby Wilkins

Well, I don’t have my copy, [but] that evolves from the whole approach to the class and to dealing with student manuscripts.  It  does directly relate to my own experience in writing school in the ‘50's.  Specifically Stanford.  I didn’t realize it fully until later, it was quite a destructive experience to be in classes that were very pushy in terms of aiming toward publication, fame, and fortune.  So the effect at that point was to turn me completely off.  I didn’t write again.  And that’s why I mentioned Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who was a very supportive man.  He is well known to anybody who lives in Reno, Nevada.  Track of the Cat, is one of his books, Ox-Bow Incident . . .

WHC

Oh, yes.

Kirby Wilkins

City of Trembling Leaves.

WHC

I know him now.

Kirby Wilkins

And he was for a while sort of the great white hope.  I mean it looked like he was really coming as a writer, and about the time I had him as a teacher, he quit writing.  Nobody ever knew [why].  All the people who loved him didn’t know what was going on.  He couldn’t write.  So he was frozen.  I was frozen up when I had the class with him.  He was extremely sympathetic.  I didn’t do any great writing with him but I had a man who understood about writing. 

So that shaped my whole philosophy, which is a writing workshop of any kind has got to be completely supportive of the people in the workshop, but not pussyfoot around the issues.  So partly it’s a delicate balance.   You want to look at manuscripts; you want to offer comments.  You would like as many of those comments as possible to come from students themselves and not from you.  There needs to be an attitude of respect toward the people in the class regardless of the quality of the manuscript. 

Many of the writing programs are kind of ego fests where it’s important to put people down – and to be top dog and to have the teacher’s attention and so on.  So basically I tried to stay away from that and work with the students in the class, bring the students along, let them do the work as much as possible.  To that extent I gave that little list of things1. 

If you’re reading, you’re not reading as a reader anymore, you’re now a writer reading as a writer.  Then there are different things you’re looking for, structural items, how does a piece begin, how soon is there tension?  There should be tension immediately [that provides entertainment value].  Something’s amiss.  Nothing [needs to be] dramatic, not sinking the fishhook, but there’s something’s not quite right.

WHC

Something out of balance?

Kirby Wilkins

Something out of balance.  And that unravels and unfolds as you move into the story.  A short story’s quite different than a novel in that respect.  A short story is, some people have said, more difficult to write than a novel.  That the novel allows you a little more sloppiness, a little more room, a little more space to kind of wander around in.   

WHC

This is sort of a tangential extension of that question.  Last night I saw you, when you were giving your lecture, answer a question from a woman who gave some background on the story that she was writing.  I – and everybody – admired the way you were able to ask her specific questions, to help her find within herself, ideas, thoughts . . . images too, I think.  

You may not think about it, it may come naturally, but I wonder if you could sort of delve in  and give us some specifics about how you do that.  It was so effective. 

Kirby Wilkins

Well, thank you.  That moment was nice for me too just because of the way she responded really.  I have talked to her since and it turns out there’s even more to the story.  But it goes back to this fundamental philosophy between Walter Clark and Wally Stegner at Stanford, and San Francisco State, in my experience in the early ‘60s, and that is respect for the people, the students . . . and instead of answering questions with authority as the expert, I would much prefer to have that come through, you know, from the student. 

In this case it’s a question of just Socratic questions.  [The idea is to] just zero in on a couple of things, let her respond to those.   In that case, they were pretty much just abstractions, I think.  She talked of the tall Indian man, and she’s just new in town, and so the immediate question was how did you know he was Indian?  And suddenly she cuts loose: "Oh, well, the Indians dress completely differently, they wear the hats, they got these clothes on, and all sorts of stuff.   And so then there was a pause and I said what did you say the problem was in your writing?  I mean everybody laughed because of course there it was.

WHC

She’d solved it right on her own.

Kirby Wilkins

Then she [said] she walks across the street – and at that point I didn’t know she’s just gotten off a bus – she goes to a Laundromat, which I thought was amazing coming to a strange town and going to the Laundromat.  And she’s also got two kids in tow.  And so just pressing for those details from her, which she was quick enough to give, pleased everybody.  It pleased me; I found out information. 

What she was doing was what any writer has to do, which is just go deeper into the material.  And because it was all on a public stage, I suppose it made it more dramatic.  But it was just push a little deeper and let it come from her.  I didn’t have to say anything.

WHC

This is one of those impossible metaphysical kind of questions.

Kirby Wilkins

I love those. 

WHC

What is voice for a writer? 

Kirby Wilkins

Well, we heard a discussion of poetic voice, which I didn’t entirely agree with.  Fictional voice is, in my view,  after all these years of teaching, the single most important aspect of writing.  But you can’t lay it on; you can’t invent it.  It has to do with your character, your angle of vision, the way you see the world, and the way you project as a narrator and the kind of language you use.

I mean there are famous voices you recognize immediately – the Hemingway voice that infected generations of people.  Another voice you could probably recognize a mile off was Faulkner.  But I think voice is more fluid for most of us.  [An author] could write a series of stories and people will not be sure necessarily they’re written by the same author.  So I’m not sure it’s a steadfast voice.  That's a voice that develops in a unique piece of fiction and it comes from the choices the writer’s making and the way the writer approaches the material . . . and of course the language the writer uses develops voice.  And it’s not easy to define, but I think when all the elements come together in those first opening lines of a story, [the effects] are huge.  And it’s best not to be self-conscious about that.  Not –" I think I’m going to have a tough voice here," but [create a voice that] drives the story.

When the reader picks it up, the first couple paragraphs, they either put the story down or they keep going.  And if they keep going, in my case mostly, it’s the voice that’s coming on the page (and are written words on a page) . . . no human voice behind it all, they’re coming into my head and they’re resonating in some way that makes me want to keep moving.

WHC

Now, is that the authorial voice?  Is that the persona of . . .

Kirby Wilkins

The writer.  And it’s not even quite a persona.  Because it’s not a stand-in for the writer, it’s the writer’s language on the page.  It’s not as though you can back up as you might from a person and figure out who the guy is behind [the person].  I hate to say it's mysterious process or mystical, but there is no person like that.  I mean the writer wrote the words, wrote the story.  There’s the story that goes and resonates in our mind with a kind of voice.  That voice may in fact surprise the writer himself.  So I’m not sure it’s a persona exactly.  I mean it’s tempting to say that, but I’m not sure.

WHC

When considering the voice of the author, is it ever different than that of the narrator?  Or the character?  Is there a distinctive voice for each?

Kirby Wilkins

What do you mean by the narrator?  The person telling the story?

WHC

Yes.  In my conceptualization, an author creates a story,  a narrator tells the story, and the character acts in the story.  But there are all sorts of fluctuations; for example, in first person, sometimes often the author is the narrator,  in first-person often people collapse,  the –

Kirby Wilkins

What did you say?  The first-person, the narrator telling the story, who’s the [narrator]?   The author’s doing what?

WHC

The author is creating the story.

Kirby Wilkins

And the narrator’s telling the story. 

WHC

Telling the story.

Kirby Wilkins

And that narrator’s not the author?

WHC

Well, it depends on who’s writing, of course.  I try to separate the author from the narrator so that the narrator’s background and perceptions are really imagined differently, and often more effectively, [than] when the author is relying on authorial worldview that is limited.  This allows more potential and flexibility in the way the overall voice of the piece goes forward.  And I’m wondering in your thinking and in your writing, whether you ever do think about narrator-distinctive voice . . . and also character-distinctive. 

I've come to believe that in creating a character voice, it helps the work to have the reader recognize that this is one unique character’s dialogue.  The author is creating a character’s voice and that character’s voice can only be consistent if the environment and the experience of that character are specific and maintained consistently for that character. 

Contemporary literature, quite frankly, doesn’t even deal with this very often.  To see it done well, you have to go back to the classics of the 20th and 19th Centuries: Forester, Jane Austin, the Brontes.  Although the author is present in these works as the creator of the work, the author is not in the work.  There is no distinct authorial presence in the story world.   These didn’t create an authorial presence, still the author is there in the unique way they create the story and deliver it through a separate narrator related to the story world. 

Kirby Wilkins

Well, I’m still not totally clear about the separation between the author and the narrator.  I think I know what you mean.  That is, in a third-person story where characters are thinking certain ways and even in say close third-person where you’re in somebody’s mind throughout the entire story and you’re seeing the world through their eyes.  Okay, that’s the character’s perception of the world.  Now, I have invented that character . . . that voice. 

Now, I, as the author have invented that, but you’re right, there’s a funny little distinction in that the voice of the story at that point and the way that character is seen and moved and the way the thoughts move.  It’s almost as if it’s not entirely me doing that.  I’m assuming it’s not a narrator because the narrator’s not telling the story.  The narrator’s sort of creating the story, allowing the story to happen.  But is that me?  That’s an interesting question.

WHC

There seems to be an advantage for that narrator separation in the sense that every story is essentially written in the past, about something that has happened, even if you put the story in the present or future tense; everything in the author’s mind has happened, from a place with a different perception . . .

Kirby Wilkins

Yes.

WHC

. . . in the telling.  If you’re writing a Civil War story, and I’m not talking totally about historical fiction, I’m just saying there’s a setting for a fictional story.  So you’ve got an historical setting and you've got a narrator not in 2012, but, let’s say, you've put him or her in 1940.  And you’re writing about a story that is positioned as if occurring in 1864.  There is an advantage of writing through that narrator using all that narrator's perceptions, thoughts, attitudes, opinions from 1940.  And the advantage being that there is this totally different perspective of the Civil War from 1940 than from the author’s in 2012.  It is a rich source of ironies.

Kirby Wilkins

That’s getting pretty tricky because you’re talking about an actual narrator who exists in 1940 as a person, as a character.

WHC

Yes.  But not always as an in-story character.  Story narrators are often not characterized, or even identified.  Instead, they remain a presence in the story for the reader that has a specific voice, although not necessary developed on the page, and a worldview.

Kirby Wilkins

So if we’re sitting here, 2012, how do we know that it’s a character in 1940 writing the book?

WHC

You mean how does a reader know?

Kirby Wilkins

How does a reader know?

WHC

Well, the reader doesn’t  need to be told the character is speaking and thinking in 1940.  But the reader needs to assume that for credibility and reliability in the reader's perception and acceptance of the story.  All this is subliminal in most cases.

Kirby Wilkins

I think you’re going to have to have cues in a case like that. 

WHC

Yes.

Kirby Wilkins

I mean otherwise why not just tell the story of the Civil War right now.  We sit down and let’s write a story about the Civil War.   We’ll get the research together and we’ll get it started and there’s a character doing X and somebody else doing Y.   I mean that’s writing a story about the Civil War.  Now, if you and I are going to create a novel with the patina of the voice of 1940, I can’t actually get my mind around that, how we would do it.

WHC

In the 1940s, the thought and actions of the narrator, the character, or even the author, are different.  For example, the voice in 1940 will have an entirely different view of the race issue from that of 2012, or from the time of Thomas Jefferson, or any other time.  It is timeline specific.  The advantage, it would seem, is creating believable – and accurate – voices for characters and narrator – that contribute to storytelling.  Accurate voices help distinguish characters, and help provide broader interpretaion of story meaning and themes.

Kirby Wilkins

Well, no.  It’s just as I say, to my way of thinking, it’s almost an impossible thing to concede to do because when the book is picked up in the bookstore, which it wouldn’t be anymore because it would be online, but anyway it’s on the Kindle, you’re reading a book about the Civil War.  Now, I see – in my mind, I’m not seeing any way we’re going to  know that’s a 1940 narrative.

WHC

Not a 1940's narrative.  Simply a voice that supports the character's (and narrator's) position on the story timeline.

Kirby Wilkins

It’s virtually [impossible] – except again in the post-modern thing where you can play all kinds of games and tricks. But in a conventional realistic novel, you don’t want to break that narrative stance . . . the consistency . . .

WHC

I understand.

Kirby Wilkins

. . . otherwise you’re going to lose your reader.

WHC

Not lose the reader as much as allow room for the reader to join into the story narrative. 

Let me ask you about point of view and voice.   Are they the same thing?  And if not, how do they differ and how do you use them?

Kirby Wilkins

I don’t think that they’re the same thing, but they’re related.  One of the deceptive things about first-person is it seems to be a clear point of view.  We know where we are, [from] where some guy’s talking to us, and this is the way it is.  In fact, that’s a stance, it’s an invented character, it’s also a creation – as much a creation as a third-person.  But we buy into it a little more easily  . . . first-person. 

You get to third-person, it gets trickier.  The third-person voice you adopt can be some slangy voice, it can be in New Orleans, or whatever.  You take a voice of a character who has a voice in the story.  Outside the story, yo,u the writer, are creating that voice.  First-person, the banter of voice is not so clear because nobody’s talking now.  Now we’ve got a person on the page, moving around, doing things, who’s being seen from a particular angle, either a so-called omniscient, way back, up close, stream of consciousness.  Those choices, how close and intimate we become with the third-person character, are in my mind curious and have something to do with voice. 

I know when I’m most comfortable with a close third-person voice in which I’m almost in a stream of consciousness.  I’m up so close that everything is really in that person’s mind and it’s kind of a free-flowing association that’s going on.  That seems to be my natural default mode.  Other people, not at all.  They have to be further back.  Well, the choices may have something to do with where the author sees the world. 

WHC

Are all first-person narrations unreliable?

Kirby Wilkins

Well, we never know how reliable they are as long as we’re stuck in the first-person all the way through.  I think the good ones – and I’m being very vague here – have to have some questions in reader's mind around if this person really right or not.  I wish I could remember the name of a book – oh, God, I’m completely blanking it out, that just weighs two points of view, the man’s point of view and the woman’s point of view, completely separated about the same events in America.  And of course they’re wildly different.  They’re so wildly different that you expect it to be resolved in some way.  In other words, there’s this view – go home and sleep on it.  And they’re so wildly [different]– I mean they can’t both be right, so something’s going on here.  Well, the author in that case is not going to help us out.  He’s deliberately not helping out in the first-person box.  Just dropped us in and said good luck.

WHC

So the author could use the unreliable first-person effectively in prose for  . . .

Kirby Wilkins

Oh, yes.  One of these people is either unreliable, lying – but they’re both very winning.  I mean, you know they’re talking; I’m going with them.

WHC

Do you see writing either novel or a short story as a structured procedure.

Kirby Wilkins

Yes.

WHC

You call it organic earlier.  And yet are there times when structure can help?  Are there certain stories that you find that need to have some sort of structure to it to be effective?  And the reason I say that is that structure seems to relate to drama in many ways.   Structure also seems to relate to logic and continuity.  And when you need logic and continuity to get across some complex emotional changes, do you look to structure then?

Kirby Wilkins

Definitely in revision, yes.  It seems to me at the point the questions you’re raising relate to something’s got to be moved around, and there’s got to be motivation.  Why would this happen? 

WHC

Yes.

Kirby Wilkins

You’ve jumped from point A to point B, but there’s nothing in between what’s going on there.   In issues of motivation, you get  into the plot.  Yes, at that point trying to work a finished product, those are the kinds of technical aspects that are internalized, but you certainly have to do them.  And sometimes miraculously an occasional writing will have the flow and have the satisfactory kind of plot resolution that doesn’t need much tinkering; you know . . . it just bends.

WHC

Do you use second person, either the you voice or we voice?

Kirby Wilkins

Not much.  I’m trying to think; it seems to me a couple of stories.  And I like to play with it in the sort of things we’ve been working on in class, leads for material, and I’ll just start talking.  You know . . . this is really a lot simpler than this, can’t we look at it this way?  So it’s a person – it’s not actually a fictional voice.   So I kind of like the intimacy of that.  But in terms of using it in fiction . . .

WHC

Now that seems to be a direct approach to the reader.

Kirby Wilkins

It is a direct approach and it’s like you’re having a little chat with the reader.

WHC

Right.

Kirby Wilkins

– and you almost like know who your reader is.

WHC

When you say, "We’re going down the street" or "You’re going down the street and you walk into the café and you order a sandwich," or "We went to the fair and looked at the pigs."  In that sense, what do you see as advantages to the use of the second-person voice in contemporary fiction.

Kirby Wilkins

You mean the "we"?

WHC

The we-voice or the you-voice.  

Kirby Wilkins

It’s  completely different.  It’s a completely different voice and it can get aggravating for the reader to have somebody addressing them as you all the time as if they’re bosom buddies.  And particularly if the person saying you is not a very nice person – it even makes it harder.

WHC

Because you don’t want to be associated with them? 

Kirby Wilkins

But we is simply say my wife and I are going into the store, you know, we’re going in, that seems to be a
very unusual construction for a number of people doing something.

WHC

That's different than the confrontational [accusatory] 2nd person, often in 1st person.  You go into the store.  The reader thinks "really?  Why?  Or: "You think she is ugly as sin, but you like the way swings her butt.  The reader may think,  "That's not what I would think. Why am I reading this?"

Kirby Wilkins

How would you use "we" as a second person?

WHC

I don't think I would use it.  But people are using it like this: "We looked to the other people in the life boat, maybe twenty or thirty." [note how this implies that the reader, being part of the we, can't see or count.]  Or: "We went to church and we thought, 'you know God is here today.' [The reader thinks, "really?"  I was with you doing that?]

Kirby Wilkins

Okay.

WHC

We went to church, we lit a candle, and we watched that candle melt, the flame yellow orange, and it brought an idea to us.  And the reader asks, 'that's not what I would remember.  Why am I included?"  Always the author confronting the reader, and demanding suspension of disbelief.

Kirby Wilkins

Well, in what you’re making up there, there is an implied other person beside the reader.  We were doing this and it’s not just the reader, but there’s somebody else going along.

WHC

Yes.  The author actually demands the reader join in, if they are to continue reading.  It's more than use of "we" as plural second person descriptive.  It's including the reader by addressing them as "you" plus someone else, often unclear.

Kirby Wilkins

Oh, I see.  Yes, okay, I’m hearing it a bit now.  I gotcha.

I don’t have a feeling about that one at all.  You-voice I like to play with.

WHC

How is literary fiction changing for you in the last century, and do you perceive a change to be positive or negative?

Kirby Wilkins

You know, I don't know.  I think literary fiction as a concept is probably fairly recent. I’m not sure there was much literary fiction before.  There was fiction and people read.  My father read Hemingway.   People read Dos Passos . . . the popular writers – Steinbeck, I mean those were good writers, they’re not literary writers.  They become literary writers as we look back, but at the time they were part of the culture and they wrote. 

I think literary fiction is partly the distancing of what’s happened and the writing schools reflect that in a way, that a literary story is opposed to the popular story, and the popular story is – of course – lower status.  The literary story appeals more to people with education and a degree of sophistication and those who are willing to give it the time.  I’m not sure when that happened or why it happened, but I do think it’s become more exaggerated.  I mean is Stephen King a literary writer?

WHC

No.  [But a very good writer.]

Kirby Wilkins

He’s a popular writer?

WHC

I would think yes. 

Kirby Wilkins

Yeah.  Okay.

WHC

He's a genre writer.  But will he persist on the shelves of  literature and with time be seen as literature.  I don't think his characterization is strong enough and his plots are too fatalistic, [and often fantasy.   In general, most literary fiction is character-based with significant change in thinking and with meaning.]

Kirby Wilkins

Ray Carver, whom I liked a lot, is certainly relegated to literary status.  He might have had a little more outreach than other literary writers.

WHC

Right. 

Kirby Wilkins

Joyce Carol Oates?

WHC

Literary.  But with widely variable quality in her output.

Kirby Wilkins

Literary?  [Oates] publishes like mad.  I don’t know how many, you know, of her novels she sells.  But it’s an odd distinction.  I’m not sure when it crept in, but it seems to me it’s a little bit artificial, but it’s been accelerated by the 822 writing programs and people learning to write.  Look what’s become of literary fiction, which apparently means sort of serious or slightly more demanding fiction that would not appeal to the popular reader.  So it’s aimed at a slightly different audience.

WHC

Would you think that being character-based, fiction could be assigned to literary fiction whereas plot-oriented fiction would be genre in a sense?

Kirby Wilkins

Yeah.  I’m sure that that’s partly it.  That the good popular writer who’s writing, publishing, making a living off of it is certainly using certain techniques that are working in a lot of that is plot.  A lot of it is the expectation of the audience.

WHC

And fatalistic plot.  The asteroid’s coming towards earth and we got to figure out a way to save earth.

Kirby Wilkins

Yes.  And maybe what they call – what is it?  Chick lit.  That implies an audience and so when people are writing Chick lit, they have an audience, probably with expectations.  I’m not sure what the age range for Chick lit readers is.  So part of it is audience and the literary writer almost doesn’t have an audience except, if he’s picked up, gets good reviews, good New York Times reviews, makes it kind of up the ladder of critical success, and probably never going to  make it into the top ten in the New York Times, but at least will have a solid reputation, solid enough sales that maybe they might even bring out a paperback.  That will help in going to writing conferences and teaching schools and do the things that literary writers can do.

WHC

How does memoir fit into this spectrum?

Kirby Wilkins

I have no idea.  All I know is there’s a lot more memoir being written.  It may be almost a turn against literary fiction . . . that memoir seems to be real; as you open the book up at least it’s got you hooked there.  I’m going to  find out something real about the world.  There’s a call for it and that seems to be a need for voyeurism on the part of readers.  A lot of writers now are wanting to  expose themselves?

WHC

Well, expose things that wouldn’t have been exposed in last century as writers.  We want to know salacious detail, we want . . .

Kirby Wilkins

Well a memoir’s the last place you’re going to get it about the person themselves.  I mean they will be telling all kinds of salacious detail about their friends and who was screwing whom and so forth.  But inadvertently telling a lot about themselves too.

I have read almost no contemporary memoir.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  There’s a memoir class going . . . people were talking about memoir this morning; a lot of my students have been interested in memoir.  What is it about memoir?  To my way of thinking, somewhat cynically, it’s a form of fiction and increasingly the blurring is between fiction and memoir.  It’s a creative nonfiction.  I think for some fiction writers it’s hardly even necessary to conceal some of the things that you used to have to conceal.  So I’m not sure what’s going on out there.  Whatever it is, I suppose maybe I’ll find out some day.  I read some memoir; I just don’t think about it much.

WHC

I wanted to ask you about your teaching experience with Wallace Stegner;  You had mentioned that it wasn’t as positive as I had imagined, actually.

Kirby Wilkins

As a teacher of literature, he’s a Western author and a formulator of the Western kind of movement – a mystique.  The writing school in the ‘50s was spun out of Iowa and it was, I guess, the first one on the West Coast – San Francisco State followed soon after.  And I think Stegner was quite ambitious.  I mean he was opening a new program, it was not that common in the country, and he wanted to succeed.  He was pushing; he wanted results, which is fine. 

In my own defense, I would say I’ve met at least half a dozen friends who quit writing after they left the Stanford writing program.  So to my mind something was slightly amiss there. 

I think what was amiss for me was, as an undergraduate, when I got into the class, the graduate students were part of the problem.  [I'd] written a couple stories that my undergraduate teachers liked and so I got in with the big fellows.  Well, I shouldn’t have been in with the big fellows first of all because I was just barely a developing writer, didn’t know my ass from first base.  So that’s one problem. 

The other is that, in retrospect, it’s the bad side of the writing program in which there is probably insufficient respect for  the student writers.  I mean, if something’s bad, it’s bad, period.  We’re not talking about improving it necessarily; it’s just a piece of shit.  Well, it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was in that kind of background.

And when you’re in a delicate state, not even sure what you’re doing, it can be quite damaging.  I knew good writers who went in the program and never wrote again afterwards . . . I mean, who were more confident writers than I was. 

So I think in the early days at Stanford probably there was too much push, and Stegner wanted to get up equal with Iowa right away.  And that push worked for some people.  I mean the Stanford program, of course, is famous for the writers it has put out in the Stanford Fellowship Program.  So it works.  For me it became the definition of what I would not do when I taught.  So everything has been sort of anti-Stanford.

WHC

I guess it’s ironic in a sense that the present director of the Iowa workshop is a graduate of the Stanford program.

Kirby Wilkins

Doesn’t surprise me at all.  But now this is a very personal opinion.  But I’ve run into enough road kill that I I feel confident.

WHC

I understand.  Thanks for sharing.  Do you have any recommended reads, contemporary or classic, for students and what would they get out of those reads  if they read them?

Kirby Wilkins

Well, I have such a lousy memory I’ve got to go look up things that I read because I’ve already forgotten them.  But in terms of things that have made a distinctive impact on me, in my thinking, in my writing, there are two or three that come immediately to mind. 

In the ‘50s it’s Hemingway.  For better or worse because I think there’s a downside to Hemingway.  But if they haven’t read Hemingway, they haven’t read the stories, haven’t read the novels, and increasingly I think people haven’t, [they need to].  I mean he finally faded out.  Some of them now are painful to read for me.  The Old Man in the Sea, looking  back, it just didn’t work.  So Hemingway may finally just vanish.  But at the moment, at that time, {he's worth the read.]. 

More recently for me, very important has been Ray Carver, his stories.  The bleakness of the stories appeals to me, that kind of existential emptiness in the suburban world.

WHC

And the minimalism . . .

Kirby Wilkins

And the minimalism.  I think you can make a direct link between Carver and Hemingway; I don't know the details, but I think you could very easily. 

Another one who’s minimalist and maybe the most important for me is James Salter . . . particularly the novel Light Years.  He’s written stories, and he’s written a memoir, which is extremely powerful.  He had gone out of style in the early ‘50s; nobody knew anything about Salter and he was rescued by North Point Press, which produced fine paperback work out of the  East Bay.  And these are really beautiful books, they’re just gorgeous. 

Somebody wandered in a library and saw it and brought out Light Years and you hate to think such a book was ever lost.  Anyway I have that North Point copy and it’s available – the book.  You want minimalism, Salter has so much white space you can’t believe it.  And he also has a nice way with erotic material.  In a book called, A Sport and a Pastime, which is entirely erotic, but in the one I’m talking about, Light Years, it’s amazing.  You can’t believe what that man did. 

Carver, I’ve reread in the course of teaching people.  But stylistically all of those are held together I guess by minimalism, a certain kind of bleakness.  

WHC

If somebody wanted to study with you, is there a way to access you in the teaching setting?  I know you’re not teaching actively as much these days, but, is there a way?   Do you teach privately?   When do you teach workshops . . . is there a way for people to know how to access?

Kirby Wilkins

Well, that’s been an evolutionary process.  When I was teaching the same students, I was constantly available and endless office hours.  And it’s one of the things I think really needs to be done, and that’s why I prefer to talk to a student about a manuscript rather than write comments.  Because it’s give and take when you’re talking about manuscript.  Then I got into writing groups with students who had been my students, who wanted to go on and have a writing group, and wanted to pay me for the writing group.  I was extremely uncomfortable with that.  So that didn’t last long.  I just didn’t want to do it.  I didn’t want to take their money; I didn’t want to be responsible for that.  So then that evolved into a writing group of former students with me still presumably in a position of authority.  And I totally wasn’t comfortable with that. 

So over the years there’s been a lot of interaction with students.  And then, last year I went to this memoir conference in Salt Lake City and people there got so close and they didn’t know anything about me as a writer.  I was just another person in the conference.  But we got close and we wanted to talk about what people were writing and everybody wanted to send stuff around.  And that’s the point I began to wonder, I don't know, can I do this?  Particularly if there’s a number of people.  What’s the arrangement?  And reading can be so time consuming.  And it feels like often I think I’ve got to get this read.  Then I’ve got to come up with a written response, and you know the easier way always for me has been the student in person.

WHC

On a one-to-one basis?

Kirby Wilkins

Well, it would have to be pretty limited given my life.  And you know doing that for money is not comfortable to me.  On the other hand, if it’s taking up a lot of time  that becomes an issue.  There’s a lot of writers that I’ve encouraged over the years who have published.  I’ll make a plug, these classes I’m talking about at Cabrillo.  Natalie Serber just got a nice review in the New York Times for Shout Her Lovely Name.  She’s got a huge advance, she’s managed to get in on that before it all  collapsed.  So I’m delighted for her and she’s gone on to teach.  And she was one of these people that went all the way through, one of the people to do the writing, paid-for writing group; in fact, she’s one of the people who suggested the writing group that we we're in.  Now she’s teaching writing herself in Portland.  And, yes, I’d love to keep in touch with her, but she wouldn’t, it's the last thing she’d want to do is send anything to me at this point.

WHC

Could somebody contact you if they wanted to study?

Kirby Wilkins

Yes, they could except the problem is who are they, what are they doing, and what’s the nature of their work?  Is it something that you really want to spend some serious time with?  And that’s pretty hard to filter out. If there was a way to do that where it would really be of value to them – but I’m doing something that there’s a zillion of schools are doing, that are putting out lots of writing teachers.  If there was some reason why I was the perfect person for a student, I suppose I would talk about it.

WHC

It’s a pleasure talking to you and I certainly have learned a great deal.  I’d like to thank you very much for talking to www.storyinliteraryfiction.com. 

Kirby Wilkins

Well, it’s a pleasure talking to you because you know so much about literature.

WHC

Thank you.  That’s very kind.  

Available in Hardback and Paperback from:
Authorhouse, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

M

y Auntie Caroline drove my dead mother’s plum red van on the way to the courthouse.  Aaron, my older brother by two years but not quite as tall as me, sat unstrapped on the passenger side in what my mother used to call the death seat; Patsy, my seven-year-old younger sister, and I were in the back.  We were dressed up to go to Dad’s arraignment, but no one was exactly clear on what an arraignment was, except maybe Auntie.

The van was soooo warm; Auntie had set the temperature knob in the red.  We didn’t know about our dad, and I was afraid to talk about him–or anything–until I started sweating.

“It’s hot back here, Auntie,” I said.

“Shut your face,” Aaron snapped.  I wished the death seat would do its job.

“I don’t want half moons under my armpits,” I said.  It was a silk blouse my mother gave me. 

“That’s not from heat,” Aaron said.

“What is it then?”

“From being so friggin’ screwed up,” Aaron said.  Without Auntie around, he would have used the “f” word.

Auntie was my dead mother’s younger sister and she was taking care of us this month.  This was her second day.  The family members drew straws to assign responsibility for us.  No one was eager to just take on three orphans like a new family.  

Patsy and I missed Mom but having Auntie in the house suited Aaron just fine.  He was crazy for her.  He followed her around like a puppy dog and his eyes searched up and down her body as if her clothes had dropped off. 

Before the arrest Auntie and Dad jogged together and when they returned, she would shower and dress in the guestroom and Aaron would hang around outside—as if he were there by accident–for a glimpse, I knew, of her nude through a partially opened door.  After Auntie caught on and shut the door I saw Aaron on his knees looking through the keyhole.  He said to shut up or he’d kill me. 

Aaron talked back to Auntie now but he still liked her.  He was just messed up because she acted like a parent.  He would have liked to screw her.  Believe me, it would have been his first time although he said he did girls all the time.  No way, Jose.

“I’ll turn down the heat, Sandy,” Auntie said, “It’s hard to tell how hot it is in the back from up here.”  We had at least an hour before we got to the courthouse.

My sister, who saw Auntie’s adjustment with the heat knobs as a victory for us in the backseat, stuck out her tongue at the back of my brother’s head.  She was young enough to still do that.  I would have given him the bird but Auntie had a clear view of me in the rear view mirror.

I hated my brother.  There was talk of him going away to school again.  I prayed that some place would accept him.  But none did.  I knew him for the devil he was and every school discovered it sooner or later.  He’d been twice expelled from preppy schools and now had to go to public school.  Aaron hated public school.  He hated me too.

Aaron was furious that Auntie made him go to court.  Aaron shouted and told her to mind her own goddamn business.  But Auntie was like mother was, steely with the will, and she stared Aaron down and told him to get dressed, that our father needed us and she was not going to be a part of his son not being there.  Aaron said it was the last time.  She didn’t answer but there was a firestorm in her blue eyes that were usually glacier cold.

Next to me, Patsy leaned forward straining against the seat belt to be heard.  “Do you think Daddy did it?” Patsy piped up with innocence but there was nothing innocent about Patsy.  She could be twice her age if you measured craftiness.  Aaron and I were dead silent.  I wondered what Auntie Caroline thought about Dad.  They were always best friends.  Did she blame him for Mom's murder?  Everyone on TV news acted as if he were guilty. 

Auntie Caroline waited.  She made an extra fuss turning left against traffic but I could tell she was finding her words.  “Of course your father is innocent.  How could you believe anything else?”

That’s exactly what the papers said about us.  We had to believe.  I saved the stories in an oversized envelope.  Some had pictures of us, old and new, with lines underneath like “children of the deceased” or “family of the local doctor charged with wife’s murder.”  The posed studio picture of Mom was taken before we were born.  I don’t think she looked pretty even then, more determined and intense with a round face, cocker-spaniel eyes, and light reddish hair.  I would look like her.  Not like gorgeous Auntie Caroline.

“Has it been hard at school?” Auntie asked, to all of us and none of us.

“No,” said Aaron.  Aaron’s friends were geeky pimple-assed weirdoes.  They probably thought it was cool to have a Dad arrested for the murder of his wife.

“What about you, Sandy?”

“Oh, they’ve been just great,” I said.  The kids my age shunned me from the day Dad got arrested, as if I had clap or AIDS.  I went back to school for the first time a week after Dad was arrested.  Girls who were once my best friends suddenly wore these frumpy frowns on their faces and ran into the restroom to avoid me.  Groups of kids I used to hang out with would split up like exploding stars when I approached.  I said screw it.  It wasn’t my fault.  My dad was not guilty.  I don’t need you fartheads anyway.

“They asked me what it was like to be famous,” said Patsy.

“What did you say?” asked Auntie.

“I dunno.” 

Patsy was acting like a four-year-old to make Auntie think she didn’t have a purpose.  But Patsy wanted to know what Auntie thought.  Auntie merged the van into the fast lane. 

Mom called Patsy a mistake.  I was never sure whose mistake Patsy was–mother, father, or God’s.  Maybe that’s why Mom was always lecturing me about safe sex.  I haven’t done it but I think Mom thought I did.  She called me a slut once and said nice girls didn’t pierce their navels.  I had wanted to but she wouldn't let me.       

“Who killed Momma?” Patsy said.

“Someone in the park,” Auntie said.  We rode in silence.

“Why do they think Dad did it?” Patsy finally asked.

Auntie didn’t answer, so Aaron said,  “Don’t be stupid, Patsy.  They don’t know Dad like we do.   He’s too smart to be guilty.  If he were going to hammer Mom to death he wouldn’t stab her with a knife too.  That’s psycho stuff.”

Patsy said, “eeeyouuugh.”

Auntie said, “Aaron!”

I didn’t like Aaron’s talk either.

“They found the hammer in the garage,” Patsy said, “I saw the picture.”

I was a little pissed that Patsy, who had been reading my clipping collection, was acting like she knew it all. 

“The papers say it’s only circumstantial evidence …” Aaron said.

“What does that mean?”

“… no witnesses, no confession.”

I read the columns over and over.  This week’s Newsweek and Time had pictures of Dad in an orange prison jump suit holding his handcuffed arms up to hide his face.  Dad was a famous surgeon.  He lectured and taught other doctors.  He had a clamp named after him.

“Will Daddy come home today?” Patsy said.

“He might if the judge sets a reasonable bail,” said Auntie.

“Would you stay if Dad came home?” I asked.

“Of course I’d help, Sandy,” Auntie said without a pause.

“Are we almost there?” Patsy whined.

“No, dear.  Just a few more minutes.”

“Will we sit with Daddy?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Aaron said again.

“No.  We’ll be far away.  But your Dad will be able to see you.”

“Will he go to the electric chair?” Patsy said.  I acted as if the thought had never crossed my mind.

“They don’t fry people anymore,” Aaron said, out of control as he usually was, even when Mom was alive.

“Oh yeah?  Then what do they do?” Patsy asked.

“They stick you with a needle and shove drugs in you.”

I looked at Auntie Caroline in the rear-view mirror; her eyes were wet.  But Auntie was tough and I didn’t expect tears.  None came.

Auntie Caroline decided it was time for a bathroom break so we pulled off at an Exxon service plaza.  Aaron got the men’s room key.  The lock on the ladies’ room had been torn out of the door where there was now just a hole.  Auntie and I waited outside the ladies room while Patsy was inside.

Auntie whispered, “You’re going to have to be strong, Sandy.”

“I know.”  I was uncomfortable.  I didn’t choose to be here with Auntie, or with any one in my family.

“Aaron can’t do it.  And Patsy is too little.” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “okay!”

What did she expect me to do?  I couldn’t make Mom alive.  I couldn’t get Dad out of jail.

“We all miss your mother,” she said.  But there were months when Auntie and Mom wouldn’t speak to each other. 

Patsy came out and Auntie went in.  Patsy and I walked to the van alone.

“I wish we didn’t have to go,” Patsy said.

“Dad needs us.”

“Auntie isn’t like she used to be.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Not as nice,” said Patsy.

I saw Auntie had come out and she bought pops at a dispenser.  Aaron was still inside probably playing with himself.

We finally got back on the road and we rode in silence again.  It seemed like hours.

I was surprised when Aaron spoke up.  “Were you there where Mom was killed?” he asked Auntie.

“Of course not, why are you asking?”

“Your car was out front of the house,” he said.  He would know.  He would have looked for any opportunity to get a glimpse of Auntie’s legs in running shorts.

“I was jogging,” Auntie said.

“You were in the woods when Mom was killed.”  It was like an observation.  Not a question.  Not an accusation either.  But even Patsy held her breath. 

“I don’t know when Martha was killed,” Auntie said slowly, emphasizing the words as if she were struggling to remember the details.

Aaron wanted Auntie to tell the truth.  He didn’t want suspicions to spoil his fantasy life with Auntie.

“Rusty and me saw Mom and Dad leave together that morning,” said Patsy.  Rusty was our dreary-eyed cocker spaniel.  

We all sank into a silence. 

“It’s not a big woods,” Aaron said.  I had thought about these things too.  And now we were on our way to sit in public and watch my Dad.  We were all more nervous than I thought.

Auntie kept her eyes on the road.  “It’s a lot of acres.  You can jog and never see anyone you know.” 

I watched Auntie in the mirror.  Her look was a rock.  Could I ever be a strong as she was? 

“It must have been terrible,” Auntie said.

“She wouldn’t have died right away.  It would have taken a lot of blows,” said Mr. Know-it-all in his I’m-so-important mood now.  His information came from watching horror films on video.  “Mom would have known who it was.”

“That’s horrible,” Auntie said.  I think she meant Aaron, who thought words could make you brave.

We were silent again.  Aaron slumped.  We didn’t know what Auntie believed.  I admired Auntie.  She had opinions and stood up for herself as a woman, just the way I want to when I get out of school.  And she was usually good to all of us.  She wouldn’t hurt mom.  I had convinced myself of that from the very beginning. 

“I heard on TV that a lot murderers are family,” said Patsy.  She’d been thinking about this.  No one, not even Aaron had anything to say about that. 

“Dad wouldn’t kill anyone,” I said but I was surprised.  It just came out.  I hadn't thought about saying it before.

“Of course not,” said Auntie.  Her voice rang with clarity.  With those three words we became a team all of a sudden.  We seemed together for Dad on this.  Our van was filled with purpose.  As we get near the courthouse, we were a little army for Dad.  All of us knew we had a role, even though none of us was really sure what exactly that role was.  In her amazing way I thought Auntie had taken our few stray parts and made us whole. 

This was my first time in this or any courtroom.  I was amazed at how much wood there was.  They must have cut down an entire forest for justice.  There were wooden benches.  The walls had wooden panels.  The judge and jury boxes were polished wood too, although the chair seats were upholstered in red leather.  I believed we should not sacrifice one tree for this court or any court for that matter. 

The fluorescent lights on the ceiling glared so intensely they erased the shadows on faces; the bailiff, court recorder, and judge had an eerie sameness as if they were wearing Halloween masks.  We sat in the third row on the left side facing the judge. 

Aaron made sure he sat next to Auntie Caroline probably wanting to grab a feel of her bottom.  His fantasies clouded any hope of decency.  But Auntie stood up and repositioned us like checkers on a board.  Aaron, me, Patsy and Auntie.  Hah.  She was as far away from Aaron as possible.  She had not forgotten our purpose.  We looked like fans at a football game.

In his pant’s pocket Aaron carried Clearasil for his acne.  He used it fifteen, maybe twenty times a day.  He had gotten it out now, mashing the tube for a little cream.  The tube was as empty as you can get without really being empty.  The stuff was not working and I thought he wasted his money.  But pimples were his life: his face was splotchy with red and pink mounds; the skin on his back where he couldn’t reach looked like the surface of Mars: his thumb and forefinger were as strong as pliers from squeezing blackhead craters.

Aaron was sloppy too.  His glasses slid down his pug nose.  He was slack on brushing teeth and the crooked little devils were getting yellow.  Aaron thought yellow was cool.  He wanted to be a run away to New York or Seattle but that passed.  A phase of junior high.  He had tried drugs, I’d seen him, but I don’t think he was addicted.  I thought it was more to go against Mom.

Dad’s case came up.  The bailiff’s voice echoed.  “Henry Gerhardt Greiner.”

After preliminary speeches and lawyers standing and saying “yes, your Honor,” Dad pled “not guilty.”  His voice was easily heard but far from its usual loud, do-it-or-else tone.

After more discussion, the lawyer argued for release with no bail.  Auntie leaned forward, I thought to hear better although the lawyer's voice seemed more than loud enough to me.  The lawyer said Dad’s medical service to the community was beyond equal.  Dad was magnanimous, always caring for others.  The lawyer said the weaknesses of the prosecutor’s case were obvious.  The DNA evidence was easily explained.  Dad had a nosebleed that morning and it got on Mom’s dress.  Finally he pointed out all of Dad’s family–us–and friends.  All his support.  Would any man leave?  I barely listened to this, but Aaron listened with the intensity of looking at MTV with no sound.

The judge did not look impressed by Dad’s achievements.  She denied bail.  Auntie Caroline gasped, as did most of the other hundred or so people in the courtroom. 

“He lied,” Aaron said under his breath to me.

“What?” I said. “Tell me!”

“No … he lied.”

“Aaarooaan …” I said but I realized he was shaking with silent sobs.

“The nosebleed …”

“What is it?” said Auntie from the end of our line.

“Aaron’s crying,” Patsy discovered, happy to announce Aaron’s baby side to the world.  She thought he was crying about the bail.  I knew better.

“Be quiet,” I said to Patsy.

I watched Dad.  I searched for a brief glance as the lawyer droned on.  Not one look!  Dad was between two guards who held him by his arms.  He could have looked at us.  Easily!  I willed him to do it, to make it all right.  But he did not look.  Had he forgotten we were there?  Impossible!

Aaron held his sobs but tears still trickled down his face.  "He didn't have a nosebleed," he said.

As the judge closed the proceedings, Dad stared between his shackled feet.

Aaron curled his upper body on the wooden bench like a possum in danger.  I knew he’d been waiting for Dad to look too.  Although Aaron's legs hung down now, his feet were not solidly on the floor.  He was a mound of broken bones in a loose skin sac.  I still hated him.  But he knew something terrible, and for the first time ever, I wanted to touch and comfort him the way Mom did to me when we were small and happy.  To tell him Dad was innocent.  Not to worry.  Dad would be home someday. 

Duh.  I was struck how crazy that was.  How childish.  I was fourteen.  Mother wanted me to start taking the pill.  Why would I say totally ridiculous things to my brother?  He got on my nerves but he was not an idiot!

“Aaron’s still crying.” Patsy said again quietly.

“Let him be,” I said to Patsy.  Patsy stared at me with an odd look I had never seen before.  Something in my voice?  She turned away and didn’t move.  “Grow up,” I said.

Auntie leaned over Patsy toward Aaron and me.  “Aaron,” she said, “you okay?”

“Leave him alone,” I said.  Auntie backed away with a puzzled look, but she didn’t interfere.

I finally reached over and touch Aaron’s arm, just for a second; it was for the right reason.  I was there.  He didn’t pull away and he glanced ever so briefly at me.  I saw the stress in his eyes shrunken by the lenses of his glasses.  Then fear possessed him.  I took his trembling hand.  He was still staring at the closed door where Dad had been led from the courtroom.

“We'll get through this,” I said.  

Illustrations by Peter Healy

T

he wind gust between the walkway and the airplane door chilled Father Ryan as he waited for Bishop Henley to move into the cabin.  Father Ryan’s hand swept across his rustled thick head of light brown hair as the flight attendant smiled and turned to open a can of tomato juice in the galley. 

Inside, the cabin was warm and humid.  The Bishop pushed ahead for his assigned window seat in first class.  

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like the aisle, sir?”  Father Ryan said with a touch of sincere sympathy for the bishop’s large frame in cramped circumstances; but there was more than a little sarcasm too.  The Bishop liked to look down with a divine sweep of gaze over his ecumenical territory as they took off, a move Father Ryan described often to the delight of all who knew the bishop.

The Bishop did not answer.  Being around Father Ryan had consistently engulfed him in an intense resentful smoldering.  The Bishop thanked God for this duty of taking father Ryan from Boston to his new parish in Idaho, and he pushed aside any guilt of being delighted to never have to speak to Father Ryan again, except maybe at conferences.  Being rid of this priest gave him hopeful expectations of a tranquil future.  After much prayer, the Bishop believed that his dislike for Father Ryan was not just their personality clashes, but an appropriate distaste for his loose, too-friendly demeanor with the parishioners.  That, the Bishop was sure, had been the source of the complaint too, from a young married women, whom the Bishop did not trust but could not ignore.  During the Bishop's interview with the complaintant, she had been unable to hide surprise and pleasure—and a touch of mischievousness–in her eyes at the moment when the Bishop expected anger and accusation.  She did not claim assault, or even touching. “Suggestive” she said.  “He hinted,” she had added.  Was she a prevaricator?  Probably.  But with all the recent sex scandals among the clergy, he could not let this explode.  He’d seen enough of danger in his thirty-five years of service to the Lord to know when it lurked.             

The situation still stressed the Bishop.  The Bishop was particularly confused by Father Ryan’s response to his admonition over the young woman's–was her name Helen?–complaint.  Initially, Father Ryan seemed perplexed, unable to mount a defense, and then the Bishop saw a switch to defiance with a definite touch of pride and with Father Ryan's ever-present glint humor.  After that confrontation, Father Ryan refused to even address the complaint with the Bishop, much less defend himself, as if he considered it trivial and unworthy of self-recrimination.  

Father Ryan’s bag slipped into the overhead easily.  The first class seat yielded pleasantly to his flesh.

“Are you really comfortable, sir?” he said to the Bishop.  “You seem tense.”

The bishop watched the ground crew disconnect hoses and truck baggage.  He resented Father Ryan’s so public observation on his temperament and physical condition.  Was it as always?  Wry!  Or was that fair?  Could Father Ryan be innocently sincere?  Erroneous thinking there.  Father Ryan was definitely cursed with a well-developed sense of satire that had not a smidgen of sincerity.  The Bishop tried to appear unconcerned.  No one of his status should be ruffled by such a routine administrative problem as Father Ryan.  The Bishop sighed silently.

After the preflight preparations, the plane began its takeoff roll; Father Ryan leaned back to enjoy the thrust of the engines, the ebullient disconnection from the earth.  Father Ryan noticed the Bishop’s hands gripping the armrest, and knew the Bishop was praying by rote for safety and survival, and probably not including any of his colleagues, especially Father Ryan.

Father Ryan believed the Bishop’s attitudes and unjust accusations toward him were unfounded.  And even though Father Ryan would never let on, they had kindled the greatest humiliation in him.  He was celibate, proudly so, and his dedication to Christ and the Church had never wavered.

Father Ryan had instantly forgiven Helen; it was a refined name, Helen.  He had come to think of her as Helen of Troy the entire time he knew her.  She was, in a quirky way, beautiful.  Married, but standing on the fortifications of Troy for all the enemy to see with unshakable self-confidence in her allure.  She was justly proud. 

Father Ryan still felt the right approach had been to not appear defensive or accusatory to the Bishop.  That would have yielded a loss of dignity, and a resultant suspicion in the truth of Helen’s claims.  So he did not defend himself.  In fact, he had been complimentary of Helen, refusing to admit to himself he had enjoyed her company.  In all honesty, he had angered at first over Helen's misunderstanding of his intentions.  But he had immediately decided Helen deserved the benefit of the doubt concerning her desire to complain, which, he reasoned, were reflexive and not personal.  After all, she had enjoyed the talks and the confessions.  She had said that.  And she had known he was celibate.  Teased him once about it.  But he'd done nothing and was innocent of provocation in the judgment of his maker, and that was enough.  He found solace in his well of forgiveness for her spiteful visit to the Bishop; she deserved forgiveness; she was hard working, and he was sure she feared God.

Father Ryan accepted the relocation without protest to higher authority, divine or administrative.  And he forgave the Bishop for his actions too, which were probably inevitable in the circumstances.                     

They had reached cruising altitude.  The flight attendant in first class had a lovely shape, Father Ryan thought.  Just lovely.  He imagined her name was Janice.  As she bent over to serve the other passengers, he savored, Dear God, he did savor, the lovely curve of her backside.  Not a sin he thought immediately.  Admiration is not a sin.  And priests had a right to be human at times.  He had always believed that.

He sneezed.  His allergies were in full bloom. 

She walked toward the back of the plane.  She did not look at him as he waited for her to reach his aisle.  She looked to others across the aisle.  He touched her thigh, about half way between the knee and the pelvis, a thigh with implied softness under the tight fabric.  He touched just enough to get her attention.

“Excuse me, do you have a tissue?” Father Ryan said.         

Her face flushed and contorted into harsh lines.  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

Father Ryan stared.  “I wanted …”

“You touched me.  Don’t do it again.”

Father Ryan wiped his nose with the back of his hand.  “I have allergies.”

“Ask.  But don’t touch,” she repeated with renewed emphasis.  She moved making a show of pleasantness to those in the next row, ignoring the priests.

“That’s embarrassing,” the Bishop said to Father Ryan.  The Bishop sighed audibly.   “Dear God.  Why doesn’t it surprise me?” 

“A misunderstanding, sir,” Father Ryan said with less authority than he had wanted.         The Bishop turned away to look out with his divine glare over the State of Pennsylvania.

An hour later Janice inched the service cart down the aisle.  Father Ryan watched the grace of her skill at smiling and handing … and pleasing.  She anchored her cart in the aisle near his row, and started with those passengers opposite to him.  She dropped a drink can that bounced off a seat arm onto the floor and spewed liquid.  She bent over with her backside less than a foot from him.  He reached to the cart for napkins to help her clean up.  Clutching a small stack of napkins, his hand started its path from the cart to the floor and the back of his hand accidentally made contact with Janice's backside flesh.  He knew immediately the implications of the accident and in his surprise he dropped the napkins.  She stood up, her hand moving with the light speed of a heavenly ray, the open palm poised to hit him.  But she stopped and clasped her hands, the restrictions of her professional training overriding her feelings, and her face turned tense as if she might cry.

“I can report this, you know,” she said. 

“I was reaching for the napkins.”  Father Ryan said, afraid he had delayed too long with his explanation to comfort.  She seemed rebuked now.  But her features remained rigid.

“It’s okay,” Father Ryan said, “I understand.”  He tried to smile, but his frown of concern remained. 

The chief flight attendant arrived.  Janice whispered in his ear.  “One more time and I’ll put you in hand cuffs,” the chief flight attendant said,  “I have the authority.”

“There is no need to threaten,” the Bishop said, irritated to be defending Father Ryan yet again under the halo of the Church.  “I can assure Father meant no harm.”

The chief flight attendant considered this for a few seconds.  He glanced at Janice with suspicion.   The frown on his face suggested this was not Janice’s first altercation.    “Of course,” he said.  “Let’s just forget it.”

Janice deliberately avoided eye contact with Father Ryan.  He smiled.  He noticed her badge said her name was Ester.  She didn’t strike him as an Ester.  He was determined to always think of her as a Janice.  Especially now that her lovely eyes carried the spark of interest.  Now, Janice stared at Father Ryan with an almost apologetic motherly benevolence before she followed the male chief flight attendant up the aisle.      

Father Ryan read St. Thomas Aquinas mechanically, his mind revisiting the words on the page as his mind dwelt on his words and glances with Janice.  The Bishop looked out the window.  After an hour, Father Ryan put down his book.

“I seem to be having a run of bad luck,” Father Ryan whispered leaning toward the Bishop and holding the flat of his hand near his mouth to assure the Bishop knew this was confidential and to exclude any passengers from hearing his words.  Father Ryan waited but the Bishop did not turn his head.

“I pray about it.  But sometimes it seems unjust.”  Father Ryan paused.  “The accusations.  Am I a victim of divine punishment?”

The Bishop finally did look at him with a noncommittal stare.

“Sorry, sir," Father Ryan said.  "It’s just these things test my faith at times.  Not now.  This is minor, of course.  But with the greater injustices.  I do wonder at times.  Does God care?”

The Bishop stared out the window again to marvel at the Mississippi, the aortic lifeline, he was well aware from occasional visits, to the heathen of the Louisiana diocese.  When the Bishop made no attempt to respond, Father Ryan picked up his book and opened to a random page to start reading.

Janice rolled the service cart into first class from the galley.  The Bishop had red wine.  Father Ryan declined.  Janice smiled and handed him salted peanuts.  "You’ll be leaving us in Salt Lake City?” she said sweetly.

“Yes,” said the Bishop before Father Ryan could answer, turning again to the window.

Janice handed Father Ryan two paper napkins.  “For your allergies father.  You might want to put them in your pocket.”  She quickly rolled the cart down the aisle.

Father Ryan glanced at the second napkin with a torn edge.  In ballpoint Janice had written a phone number.

The Bishop had not seen.  Thank God.  Father Ryan stuffed the napkins into his side pocket and put his head back.

Father Ryan did not believe he was a man of the world, but he knew Janice's gesture for what it must be.  She had misunderstood him, probably not cognizant of his devotion to his vows.  Protestants often seemed unaware of such things.  But it was worse.  She failed to respect him for his piety.  She assumed his licentious intent.  And that was unfair.  His distress agitated him and he made his way down the aisle to the rear restroom.  He splashed water on his face, rubbed his neck to relieve the tension.

Back in his seat, some of his composure returned slowly over the next hour.  He reflected with his earphones delivering the Pachelbel.  Was there something about him that precipitated such behavior in Janice?  He never provoked.  Surely not.  He had dedicated his life to Christ.  No one could mistake that.  And that eliminated provocation.  And he was not one of those priests who, with clandestine unconcern, ignored celibacy.  Look at the French.  The Italians.  He was not among them.

He drummed his fingers on the seat arms.  He found his gaze darting here and there without purpose.  He removed his earpieces and with his iPod stuffed them in the seat pocket in front of him.  The music had begun to grate on his ears.  Finally he put down the tray table, crossed his arms, and lowered his head.  Doubt swept though him.  Did I look to that woman with lust in my heart? 

When he’d raised his head, The Bishop was staring at him, his eyes hard with distrust.

“You’re incorrigible,” the Bishop said.

Father Ryan looked away, close to tormented that the lust might be in him forever, like the Blood of the Lamb after Eucharist.

Illustrations by Peter Healy

O

ne summer when I was eight the dead flies were so thick on Grandma’s porch that Mom swept them into piles and shoveled them into large plastic trash bags.  “They’re a danger.  Think of the disease,” Mom said. 

It was our once a year visit to Grandma.  The flies arrived one at a time at first.

“I didn’t invite them,” said Grandma.

“They’re here for some reason.  Flies are attracted to something,” Mom said.

“Well, it’s not that I’m dirty.” 

Grandma went into her workroom at the back of the house to weave throw rugs on her antique loom–whish, whish, bang, squeak, squeak.  Whish, whish, bang, squeak, squeak. Mom stayed in the kitchen scrubbing sinks and floors with Lysol.  “Your grandmother is mean and stubborn,” she said. 

I thought it was Mom who was mean and stubborn, not letting me spend my summer time with Dad in Alaska, but I didn’t say so.

Grandma lived in Calliope, NY, a four-hour train ride from New York through farming country.  Grandma’s house was just out of town near the river at the edge of a bog.  From my bedroom window I looked out on the two-thousand-acre farm owned by Obadiah Waddle whose wife had died.  He had a few dairy cows, lots of laying chickens, and grew mostly cash crops like soybeans.  He never said much but he let me ride with him on his tractor and taught me to milk a cow.  Grandma frequently took him tuna fish casseroles covered with crushed Ritz crackers in a Pyrex bowl to heat up in the oven.  Sometimes she stayed to share dinner with Mr. Waddle almost until bedtime, while Mom and me ate alone.

Grandma thought we were only as good as the food we put in our stomachs.  She fed me meats and sweets to make me grow and keep me pleasant.  For Mom, Grandma cooked brussels sprouts, beans, acorn squash and fried baloney with pickle relish. 

“Baloney is a good source of protein,” Grandma said when Mom complained.

“It’s the floor scraps they sweep up at the meat factory,” Mom said.

“You’ll never live long enough to enjoy your social security,” Grandma said.

Mom said fried baloney was the reason she could never stay for more than two weeks.

Grandpa had been a Methodist preacher before he had his stroke two years ago and ever since then he had been in the second floor bedroom.  The stroke had made him loud and mean.  “Took the good side of his brain,” Grandma said.  Now Grandpa thought the heathen had attacked Calliope and he feared evil.  He called Mom–his only child–the “witch of the antichrist.”  And he frequently confused me with David and complimented me on my bravery with Goliath.  

Grandpa’s bowels didn’t stop-up too good and that set Grandma and Mom to clean him two or three times a day.  That left bad smells in the house and foul moods in Mom and Grandma.

“Father’s mess attracts flies,” Mom said.      

“Nothing of the sort.  I keep him clean as a whistle,” said Grandma.

Grandma didn’t talk to Mom much after that.

We’d been there two days when I killed the first fly after three swats with one of the flyswatters–the old fashioned, metal-screen-mesh kind, with cloth binding around the edge and a wire handle–that hung on nails near the doors.  About sunset I was using one swat per fly.  Still I wasn’t keeping up so Grandma borrowed strips of sticky paper from Mr. Waddle next door that we hung from the light fixtures in the kitchen and pantry.  Then Grandma called Mrs. Rather in the next house down the road.  Mrs. Rather had flies too.  Grandma felt better knowing she wasn’t dirtier than her neighbor, and grandpa, as family, wasn't the only fly attraction.

The next morning stuck-flies blackened the papers. 

“Mercy be,” said Grandma.  We hung up more fly paper and by early afternoon they were black again with flies.  I was getting good with my swats now, killing two and three flies with one swing.

“I wish Dad was here,” I said to Grandma when Mom was upstairs, “he’d know what to do.”

“Yep.  He’d get ‘em,” said Grandma.  Mom and Dad were in a custody fight over me and Dad hadn’t been allowed to visit in over a year. 

Dad sent me a post card from Nome, Alaska.  I saw it in the mailbox at home before Mom could take it out and save it for me until I was older.  On the front was a picture of a man in a winter coat with fur-trim around the hood.  Of course that wasn’t Dad.  He worked on a pipeline.  They had moose, caribou, and bear, he wrote.

The flies were getting worse.

“Each filthy little bastard carries hoards of diseases,” Mom said.

“Can you see the diseases?” I asked.  Mom was a sixth grade science teacher at a private school.  Her job made her know everything about the mysteries of disease. 

“Of course not.  They’re microscopic.”  She gave me that look that she used with Dad sometimes.  Like we were too slow to understand. 

Grandma kept a five-inch magnifying glass to read the phone book.  Under the lens flies were as large as jellybeans: their heads round circles, their legs fuzzy, their wings transparent as Saran wrap.  I wondered where the bugs hid. 

On the fifth day dead flies layered the porch and we swept them up to shovel into bags.  Mom drove forty miles to get surgical masks: mine half covered my eyes, and Grandpa tore his off again and again and we gave up on his disease prevention.  We lined all doors we didn’t use with tape but the flies crept through the heating ducts. 

Mom called PestKill the Surefire Exterminator.

“He’s useless,” Grandma said about PestKill.  “His garage went bankrupt.” 

The pest killer came with a tank strapped to his back and a wand with a nozzle.  He sprayed in the basement and attic.  Mom followed to be sure he didn’t miss a spot. 

With my magnifying glass I noticed that flies never died on their backs, at least that I could tell.  They seemed to just fall over on their sides, their legs pulled up, their bodies often arched.  I showed one to Grandma.

“Do flies hurt?” I asked.

“No, Bobby.”

“But they’re all stiff and twisted.”

“Rig-a-tortoise.  Happens when we die.”

The same morning a health department guy parked his green pick-up truck in the driveway.

“The bog and farm next door are thick with larvae,” he said.

“We ain’t never had larvae before,” Grandma said.

“From chicken manure for fertilizer.  Cows too.  Maybe you should move out for a week or so.”

“We got an invalid upstairs,” Grandma said.

The health guy said he was sorry and they would hire a crop duster to spray. 

“It’ll poison the river,” Mom said.  She was an environmentalist and belonged to the Sierra Club and bought Ranger Rick magazine for me.

“We’ve got to do something,” said the health man.

That afternoon a red and white crop duster plane swooped down to level out across the bog and Mr. Waddle’s fields then pulled up and did a roll to come back the other way.  That was what I wanted to do when I grew up.  Mom shook her fist.  “Polluter,” she yelled. 

“Could we go flying sometime?” I asked Mom.

“That’s stupid.  You’re sounding like your father.”

I turned away but Mom grabbed me and squeezed me from behind.  She said she was sorry and she loved me and I wasn’t like Dad at all.

The next day it wasn’t much better but it wasn’t any worse.  Mom wanted the sheriff to jail Mr. Waddle for causing an apocalypse with his chicken shit.  She looked in the phone book for the number. 

“There’s no proof,” Grandma said

“You’re so irritating,” Mom said but she closed the phone book without calling.

In the evening Grandpa soiled himself and the flies descended.  Grandma screamed.  Mom sprayed insect kill and grandma and I washed grandpa off with towels and water from a bucket.  It took a long time. 

Mom refused to surrender to flies.  It wasn’t in Mom’s blood to give up when she had a cause.  That was what Dad used to say to me after they’d had a fight.

Two days later the live flies were gone.  We still found lots of dead ones behind the sofa and in the curtains.  Flyswatters hung idle on their nails and we took down the strips.  No more crop dusters or health men in pick-up trucks. 

“That’s weird,” Mom said.

“Praise the Lord,” Grandma said.

“Cool,” I added.

“I’m baked,” Grandpa yelled from above, loud enough for us to hear downstairs.  I was sent up to open two windows as wide as I could.

“Don’t ever let a snake roam in your garden, Judas.”

“I won’t ever let a snake into my garden, Grandpa.  Never!” 

“That’s a good Christian boy.  Wish my kin was like you,” he said. 

Mom turned silent and kept to herself in her bedroom.  I think she was mad, not the insane kind.  Well, maybe a little.  She had found purpose in her war with the flies but now the enemy refused to fly around anymore.  She felt defeated at the surrender; there was no glory, no purpose, no lesson learned to be taught to the multitudes.

Grandma started cooking again, singing to herself, beating eggs and opening and closing the oven door.  For meals, we'd had microwaved packaged food for days.  Now grandma chopped raw vegetables and plucked a fresh-killed chicken.  She made a special dinner for me to take next door to Mr. Waddle.  I might get a tractor ride.

“What’s that?” Mom said.

“Tuna fish casserole for Mr. Waddle.”

Mom grabbed my shoulders and the dish fell out of my hands to the floor; the glass shattered.  I wiggled away.

“Don’t feed that criminal,” Mom said.

Grandma came in from the other room.  “Wasn’t Mr. Waddle’s fault.”

“That’s your trouble, Mother.  You never stand up for what is right.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The bag was getting dark brown spots from the casserole soaking into the paper but Grandma kept quiet. 

“He can’t eat that,” I said.

“I’ll get him something else.”  Grandma said. 

“It’s your mess, “ Mom said to me.

“We’ll clean it up when we get back,” Grandma whispered to me.

Mr. Waddle and Grandma hugged when we took him chicken. 

“How you doing, Bobby?” Mr. Waddle asked.

“Okay.”

“Doesn’t sound so okay.”

“He misses his father, don’t you Bobby?”

“Yes’m.”

“Why is Evelyn so mad?” Mr. Waddle asked.

“Bobby wants to see his Dad.”

Mr. Waddle put his food down and said we ought to pray.  We all kneeled next to his sofa.

“Dear Lord, in thy mercy, let this young man see his father again, a father he loves…” And when he finished Grandma said “Amen,” and kissed me on the top of the head.  Ick!  

“Could I talk to my Dad?” I asked Grandma.

“You don’t talk to your Dad?” Mr. Waddle asked.

“His mother won’t let him, “ Grandma said.

Mr. Waddle looked and Grandma.  “I don’t see why I couldn’t give him a call.”

“I know the number,” Grandma said.  She looked to the palm of her hand where she'd jotted it down with a ballpoint pen.

Dad told me how big moose were dangerous but independent.  He wanted me to come and after we finished talking, Dad talked to Grandma a long time about legal stuff. 

In Grandma’s house, I hugged Mom. 

“You look happy, my little man,” she said.

And I was but I didn’t tell her until the next day that Grandma and I had planned a trip while we were at Mr. Waddle's.  To Alaska!

Illustrations by Peter Healy

T

uesday, the old cardboard shipping box with UPS tracking labels left outside Sarah Tanner’s door by the building manager came from Florida.  Masking tape fortified the torn edges and black-marker blotted out the original California wine company logo and on the top were coffee-stained partial circles from coffee-cup rims.  She briefly worried the box might be a threat; she was afraid of everything lately after her divorce.  She cut the carelessly applied transparent tape that sealed the top; she folded back the flaps.  She rummaged items from a camping trip: a backpack, water bottles, a toilet kit, extra hiking socks.  Every item evoked memories of her fervent, secret affair with Peter Musconi more than twenty-five years ago. 

In the bottom of the box was a business envelope with no markings, the flap sealed with Scotch tape.  She opened it.  A white-gold engagement ring dropped to the floor.  A faceted diamond, perfect color, no inclusions, and more than a carat, glittered rare value.  Pristine without blemishes.  She picked it up, clutched it in her hand.  It's how she remembered the perfection of her affair with Peter Musconi.  Pristne.

She'd never seen this ring before but knew it was meant for her.  Their love for each other had been interrupted by the suddenness and immediacy of the breakup; Peter believed she'd been unfaithful … unfounded, but circumstantial evidence delivered in rumor and innuendo had convinced him otherwise. 

She sat and put her head back on the armless metal kitchen chair to stare at the blistered paint on the ceiling.  Almost everything about Peter, his kindness, his caring, returned to her with edged clarity.  And the longing resurfaced … began to consume her again.  Tears blurred her vision.  It was easier to ignore Peter when she was still dutifully caring for her husband Carl and her daughter Carmen.  But Carl, a surgeon ready to retire, lived alone after the divorce in his three-room apartment, and Carmen was a medical student in training and lived near the hospital. 

The quiet of this post-divorce rented apartment now irritated her.  She turned on a radio near the sink.   She sat again and leaned forward resting her forehead on her arms.  Many minutes passed before she reached for the phone to call the name, Richard Conway, on the return label on the box.

Richard Conway, a probate lawyer in Florida, was not available for phone conversation at first.  When he finally did respond, he was unfriendly.  Mr. Musconi was dying, he said.  Leukemia.  He had made up a will for Musconi.  “He asked me to find this box.  I had to crawl below ground to a storage-bin beneath his apartment.”  

She needed to believe Peter still cared.  That he hadn’t forgotten.  That she had misjudged him.  “There was an expensive ring,” she ventured.

“I do probate.  I barely know him.”

“It’s probably worth at least ten thousand dollars.  Is that a mistake or what?” 

Mr. Conway was silent.

“Can I talk to him?”

“He's on a respirator most of the time.  He mouths a few words.  But he mostly writes on a pad.”

“Would you ask him about the ring?” she asked.

“I’m finished with him.  The will is finalized.”

“Where is he?  What hospital?” 

“Near Sarasota,” he said.  He reluctantly looked up the address. "Goodbye,” he said abruptly.  

In the morning she chose her white blouse, black skirt and matching jacket, to attend the evening faculty meeting after work without having to come home to change.  Later that night, she had to meet daughter Carmen.  A rumor circulated that Carmen was dating a man her father’s age, the Chairman of Psychiatry at the University where Sarah worked as a scientist.  Hospital and school policies prohibited faculty dating students.  The policy prevented favoritism that might result in costly legal action.  If Carmen persisted, scandal could strangle her career, and her lover’s. 

Sarah was afraid to intervene, afraid to risk the last of her barely existent parental control.    But Carmen no longer accepted her father’s calls, and her father had insisted Sarah talk to Carmen—he was angry and frustrated with Carmen's denials, irate at her irrational behavior.   

After faculty meeting, Sarah took a cab to Carmen's apartment.  Carmen was not home so Sarah dined at a Deli alone and then let herself in to wait.  Finally, just before midnight, Carmen arrived and immediately expressed resentment of her mother’s unwelcome visit; Carmen obviously suspected Sarah's purpose and delayed their talk with hyperactivity and silence, finally spending many minutes behind the closed bathroom door.  Sarah waited anxiously, sitting cross-legged on a throw rug, proud at sixty-one she could bend like a teenager. 

Carmen emerged from the bathroom in pajamas and a robe and settled into a place on the love seat.  The lights were off.  Carmen preferred the dim light that seeped through the window from the street with a half drawn shade.             

Sarah asked about Carmen's rotation at the hospital.  Carmen did not respond–her face barely visible–perched on the love seat, her left leg up, her right foot positioned to relieve chronic pain she had from a congenital deformity of the lower spine.  Sarah never suppressed her worry about the imperfection, even though she'd been told by many she was blameless, that some handed-down gene or some accident during the pregnancy was not responsible.

 Carmen gasped with pain and changed position.  

“Can I get you a pillow?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t need a pillow, mother.  I need to go to bed.”

“It’s not me, Carmen.  I didn’t come to irritate you.  Your father thinks we need to talk.”

“It’s not negotiable.”

 Below the window shade a dim glow from a neon bank-sign across the street outlined shapes in the room, but did not throw shadows.  Icy rain pelted the windows.  The joint tip between Carmen’s thumb and forefinger glowed as she inhaled. 

“We’re in love.” Carmen said.   

Sarah paused.  “It can’t work, Carmen.”

“We’re discrete.”

“His wife knows!”

“He doesn’t love her.  I don’t think he ever did.”

“Married professors can’t love students,” Sarah said.           

“My God, mother.  What difference does that make?”

“It’s against school policy … it’s immoral.”

“He’s going to separate …”

Sarah leaned back on the floor, put her hands behind her head, crossed her legs as Carmen stared.  She worried Carmen would see her flexibility as a taunt.  She sat again with her arms around her knees.   “He told the committee it was over,” she said.  “I heard it at work.  They warned him.  He denied any wrongdoing.  I heard from one committee member they almost recommended his dismissal.”

“He has to say that.  Until his divorce is final.”

Sarah waited.  “Your father won’t support you if this goes on.  He told me to tell you.”

Carmen hissed with disgust.  “How could you let him do that?”

“I have no say with your father.  You won’t answer his calls, Carmen.  He needed me to tell you.”

Carmen scrapped the butt dead in an ashtray.  She closed her eyes.  “You’ll support the tuition,” she said.  “You have to do that."

Sarah hesitated.  “I don’t have that kind of money, Carmen.”

“Make him do it, then.  What’s different?  I’m his daughter.”

“You’re having an adulterous affair.  No one approves.  He thinks you’re ruining your life.”

“And you?  What do you think?”

It's crazy, Sarah didn't say.  You're blinded by lust for an older man that is attracted to your youth.  There is no permanency in that.  You're doomed to pain and humiliation. “I think you’re making a serious mistake,” she said.

“As if you’re some expert.  What the fuck would you know about love?  I'd never want what you and Dad had.”

"You know, Carmen.  I don't give a damn what you do anymore."

I know more about love than you’ll ever know, Sarah thought thinking of her memories of Peter Musconi, but said nothing.  What she had with Peter was beautiful, spoiled by the misunderstanding that shattered a joy of caring.  It was love so special, so electric and binding between two human beings that Carmen could never know.  But Sarah could not tell Carmen now.  Carmen would dispute every word, and another argument with Carmen would only again accent Sarah's failure as a mother. 

  Carmen rolled to one side to ease the pain of her standing. “I’m going to bed,” Carmen said.

“I’ll sleep here till morning,” Sarah said, moving to the love seat. 

“Suit yourself,” Carmen said.

Sarah could not sleep.  With time, Carmen’s crack about Sarah knowing nothing about love hurt Sarah more than she would have expected.  But why allow Carmen the satisfaction of irritating her at will?  Look at the facts.  Carmen hadn’t developed life skills Sarah had hoped.  Oh, she loved Carmen and worried for her, but Carmen was not a superstar in anything.  Of course she was pretty enough, being young helped her, and her deformity was barely noticeable.  But she was consistently cranky and insecure, smart but not brilliant, demanding but never giving.  And she had no parental respect … none.  Well, Sarah reasoned, I gave so much more than most mothers.  She was definitely not responsible for Carmen’s mediocrity–that Sarah ultimately blamed on Carl.  He really wanted a boy.  Sarah saw the disappointment in his face after the delivery.  At first, he was kind and attentive to Carmen, and loyal … even if humorless.  But as Carmen got older and lost her daddy’s cute-little-girl routine, he ignored her.  He spoke in platitudes and reprimands, chipping away her already thin veneer of confidence. 

Dawn came.  Sarah sat up and put her bare feet on the floor.  She would go see Peter.  He was dying.  She wanted to believe his package was a signal of his longing for her over these years, longing she hoped equaled her own.  She wanted to know her never fading passion, although suppressed by time, marriage, and motherhood, was not just a memory of what might have happened.  She was unconcerned with pretenses now.  She'd been desperately lonely for years.    If  Carmen knew about Peter, saw him, saw the source of Sarah's intensity, caring, hoping, and longing … Carmen would know why love lost had ossified Sarah's heart, forever trapping the marrow of feeling inside.  It was not Sarah's fault.  But it had dried up any caring they as a family might have had for each other in the early years.  

One of Sarah’s PhD colleagues knew a spine clinic near where Peter was hospitalized.  Sarah made an appointment and insisted Carmen go.  They would have three days together.  Carmen resisted by reflex, but her pain had turned worse with winter and she liked the idea of warm Florida where she could get pills her internist would no longer prescribe, and take medically-related personal days off from her student duties at the hospital.

The next day Sarah went to Carmen's apartment and they took a cab to La Guardia.  A freezing rain iced the wipers and visibility was not good. 

Carmen undid her wool coat in the heat of the cab.  Sarah thought Carmen looked attractive in a cochineal red dress, the hemline above her knees to show her thin, only slightly defined legs, which gave her a little girl look.  Sarah understood how a middle-aged man could be attracted to Carmen’s youthful skin and naturally blond hair.

“Who’s this friend?” Carmen asked as if this was the first time she’d thought of it.  Sarah wanted to blurt the joy of her good memories about Peter.  Tell her the crescendo of sharing and caring she had never forgotten.      

“I knew him in school,” Sarah said.  “I spent a year in his lab as a post doc.”

“Really.”

“He was a surgeon, but he was doing work in angiogenesis in a mouse model.”

Carmen gazed out the window.  

Sarah wanted to tell her what she and Peter had talked about–beauty, fulfillment, shared values.  How the sound of his breathing in the dark aroused her.  She wanted to explain how an ardent suitor she never liked or encouraged in any way had lied to Peter to convince him she was unfaithful. 

“Is your pain any better today?” she asked Carmen.

“It doesn’t change,” Carmen said without looking at her.

When Sarah asked her about her pathology rotation, Carmen shrugged.  Sarah said little else.  Their delayed flight arrived in Florida four hours late.  The motel front desk had already shut down.  They rang a bell for the sleepy attendant.

After the visit to the specialist, Sarah took Carmen with her to the hospital.  Peter’s family was not there; they rarely came, the nurse said.  Sarah and Carmen looked down at Peter.  His breath rattled in the opening of the tracheotomy tube in his neck. 

“Peter,” Sarah said.

Monitors at the beside gave uncoordinated beeps for vital functions. 

“He’s not conscious,” Carmen said.  Carmen’s authoritative medical-student speech irritated Sarah.  “Let’s go,” Carmen added.

“In a minute,” Sarah said sharply.  This is Peter, she wanted to say, the first man she gave herself to … with passion and warmth and caring she never experienced again.  Do you think you're strong enough to carry that with you for a lifetime, my little Carmen?  The joy of being loved?

“He’s seventy-two?” Carmen asked.    

Sarah held Peter's coarse, dry-skinned hand in hers.  Tears filled her eyes.  Carmen turned away and went to sit on an armless chair near the door.  Carmen saw no love.  She saw sentimentality and it embarrassed her.  Disgusting, really.  The sentimentality.  

Bringing Carmen was an enormous mistake. Carmen would never understand; she could never perceive the reality across twenty-five years of time with Peter unable to communicate.

Sarah remained quiet for many minutes as Carmen read a magazine.  Sarah slowly became aware of Peter's presence.  Then there was tension in his hand, an attempt to communicate.  One time she thought his head turned a fraction of an inch toward her.  She squeezed his hand gently.  She knew he squeezed back.  Carmen never knew.

“Why did you break up?” Carmen asked.

It was what Sarah had wanted.  An interest in the past from Carmen.  But now it seemed insincere.

"It was a fateful misunderstanding.”

“That is so male,” Carmen said with disdain.

“He was hurt.  We both were.”  She felt Peter’s hand tighten again.

“His pressure is dropping,” Carmen said as she stared at a green-line monitor.

Sarah thought through his closed eyelids Peter tried to look at her.

“His pulse is irregular,” Carmen said.

“Get the nurse.”

“Push the call button, Mother.”

“I don’t see it.”  It’s probably on the floor.  “Please go!”  Sarah no longer wanted Carmen in the room.  Carmen’s crass aloofness seemed cruel.  She wished again she had never brought her.

“Damn it,” Carmen said.

As the door closed, the tension in Peter’s hand increased.  She thought he might have smiled.

 The pulse monitor alarm went off.  In a few seconds a nurse rushed in.  Carmen had not returned.  There was so much Sarah needed to explain; she felt life leaving when Peter's body tensed ever so slightly in waves that must have been more imagined than real, like a breeze caressing a flag, then the flag drooping motionless.  Sarah waited, hoping for more time with Peter, but resuscitation routines were useless.

Sarah took Carmen to the airport that evening.  With Peter's death, she needed desperately to tell Carmen every detail of her love for him.  Sarah wanted to probe the loss she was suffering.  How love could lapse so irreversibly into grief.  But Carmen talked continually about her pain and her doctor's appointment, allowing no time for conversation, as if she dreaded words from her mother, any words. 

In a motel room, Sarah waited alone for the funeral, lying on the bed with little sleep day or night, eating crackers and drinking sodas she collected from the vending machine down the hall.  Three days later she attended the brief service at the funeral parlor.  The youngest son had come to oversee arrangements.

“Who are you?” the son said.

Sarah gave him a questioning look.  She could see a likeness to Peter, and grief escalated.

“An old friend … years ago.”

“You dated?”

“Almost two years.”

He looked away.  He had demons he was hiding, but she could only guess what they might be.  She wondered if he loved his father.  She doubted he loved anyone. 

“He was a wonderful man,” she said reflexively.  She looked away. 

“What would you know?” he said without turning.

“I knew him well,” she said testily.  She looked away from the son, from the casket, out an open door to an alley.

“No one ever knew him.”  He laughed without humor and walked away.  He had no consolation for her; he had no grief to compare.

A minister, who did not seem to have known Peter or the family, said prayers.  The son gave a short, remote, insecure eulogy to the thirteen people who attended.  She could imagine Carmen reluctantly giving the same empty words for her.  She left before the reception started.

Waiting to board a flight to return home, Sarah sat at gate A32 next to a gray haired woman in a print dress with wire-framed bifocal glasses and swollen feet in black low-heeled shoes.  She clutched her bag on her lap.

Sarah, when she closed her eyes, saw the redundant details of Peter’s dying parade before her.  She needed to talk about him, about them.  In death he deserved to be known for the good man he was.  Someone needed to know.  To know the source of her misery.

“You don’t like flying?” Sarah said.

“Why, no, I don’t.  It’s my second time.  To visit my only grandchild.”

Sarah looked down. 

“I flew down to see a friend who died …” Sarah began.

“She’s adopted.  My daughter-in-law has blocked tubes, or something.”

“I hadn’t seen my friend …”

“Did you come far?” the woman asked.  She talked loudly as if she might be hard of hearing.

“I live in New York now.  That’s why I didn’t …”

“I go to Houston.  It takes two stops.”

The overhead announcement told standbys there were no seats available.  The woman heard this and opened her purse and looked at her boarding pass.  She replaced it.

“He was cremated,” Sarah said.

“That’s the way now.  Isn’t it?” the woman said.  “But not for me.  I want to be whole for the second coming.”  The woman shook her head as if affirming cremation was a serious mistake. Then she stood pointing to a light green tote bag.  “Would you watch that?” the woman said.  She headed toward the restrooms.  Sarah waited until the woman returned before joining her group that was in the process of boarding.

Her aisle seat was on a two-seat row; in the window seat a tall black youth with a reversed-bill baseball cap sat with his knees angled into her space.  She slipped down into the seat.  He said nothing.  Peter’s open-coffin was on her mind, his lifeless look so inhuman that the passing of his life seemed even more acute.

The plane leveled off at cruising altitude.  The youth ate a banana he pulled out of his pocket, put the skin in the seat-back pocket in front of him.

“You like bananas?” Sarah asked.

He looked at her as if to tell her to go away, and then he ignored her.  He seemed intent on ignoring her.

“Not really,” he said.

Sarah smiled.  Surprised. 

“Potassium,” he said.

“You play basketball?” she asked. 

The youth looked at her guardedly.  He nodded.

“I had a friend who played basketball.  He was tall.  A natural when he was young.”

The boy turned his head to stare out the window.

“He passed away four days ago.”

The boy twisted in his seat.  He waved to a passing attendant.  “You got a pillow?” he called out.

“I’ll see,” the attendant said, beginning to open overhead bins.

“Are you tired from a game?” Sarah asked.

The attendant returned with a pillow.  The youth tucked it under his head turning away and closing his eyes. 

Sarah extracted an in-flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her and methodically turned the pages without reading.  The youth was asleep and breathing deeply when the snacks were served; in her seat pocket, Sarah saved three packets of peanuts for him to eat when he woke.

At home, Sarah believed Peter waited to die until she arrived at his bedside.  She removed the box from her closet, put it on the kitchen table, and removed items, pausing to stare at each one before she stuffed them back into the box and carried it to the trash shoot at the end of the hall.  It was bulky and stuck in the opening and she had to push with her arm almost up to her shoulder into the main drop.  When it fell, she felt no different.  She had hoped for finality, a sense of a house burned to the ground and then moving on to a new life in a new place.  But nothing changed.  When she returned she checked the kitchen drawer to be sure the ring was still there.

The next morning she was up earlier than usual to dress and leave.  The night had been turbulent with indecision but before dawn she knew she must tell Carmen it was best to follow her heart.  Carmen must not suffer from recoiled love.  If Carmen loves, she must love as much as she possibly can and never squelch love for fear of love fading.  Of course there will be dangers Sarah could never mention.  Carmen wouldn’t listen anyway.  But Carmen must know, a tethered heart is never freed, and swells with an oppressive sensitivity that becomes ever-present.  Sarah would say no more, except she would sell the ring to help pay this semester’s tuition. 

Outside the apartment building, as she was about to hail a cab, the homeless man who lived in the neighborhood called to her.  He was wedged into the right angle where the building wall met the street. 

“You got anything for today?” he said grinning, his eyes looking up.

Sarah found a five-dollar bill in her purse.  “My friend died …”

“Oh, no.  Shame it is … everlasting condolences …” he said and a chunk of hardened egg yolk wiggled at the corner of his mouth, caught in his beard.  “… dying ain’t good for no one …  friend or not.”

“I hadn’t seen him for twenty-five years …”

“Lesson learned there … ”

He looked content, like a baby about to burp.  A neighbor had fed him.  He waved to a woman passing, a stranger.

“Hey … you.  Spare a little something for a homeless vet?”  The woman ignored him.

Sarah kept an eye to the street.  Cabs were sparse today.     

“I don’t think he ever knew …” she began hesitantly.

The derelict wiped his mouth with his frayed sleeve.  His eyes closed, his head nodded.  She sat beside him on the street, her back to the wall.  She wanted her words to come out now.  She did not believe he really heard her tell him about Peter, about the missed opportunity of a life vibrant with love.  But she spoke with intensity from the heart as if he knew every meaning.  And when it was over, she slumped … her mind soothed, her emotions quieted …  before forcing herself to stand.   When she hailed a taxi, he awoke.

“You have a good day, my dear,” he said raising a limp hand.

She tucked a twenty-dollar bill into his jacket pocket as the taxi pulled up to the curb.

“Bless you,” he mumbled.

Illustrations by Peter Healy