An excerpt from chapter 14 of Waiting For Spring.

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“Tess didn’t go to college,” my mother started.

“Neither did I,” Brian returned.

“She wanted to go to school for her painting, but I told her that I wasn’t about to pay for her to play with her paints. Not when she could fool around with them at home for free.” She narrowed her gaze at me. “If you were really serious about it I’m sure you could have found…some way to pay for it on your own.”

I finished my beer. Two thirds of a bottle in one long, noisy gulp. I plunked it down on the table and looked towards the big, beautiful beer bucket, sitting prettily on the floor next to the kitchen counter. And I wondered if a fourth would do me more harm than good.

“She’s much better off cleaning, anyway,” my mother added. “She’s good at that.”

She’d finally managed to shock Brian. He sat silently for longer than I thought possible. Just staring at her. She held his gaze. Just waiting. And he said:

“Tess sold a painting last month. Obviously someone thinks she’s good at that, too.”

She only shrugged.

He set his fork down and rested his arms on the table. Leaned forward. “Don’t you think she’s a good painter, Mrs. Bellows?”

He thought he had her cornered. That he knew what she’d say, what she’d have to say. But he was wrong. He’d done it. And he didn’t even know it.

He didn’t know her.

She looked at me. At me, with those hard eyes. And I wanted to look away from them but I couldn’t. So I sat there, staring back at her. Just waiting.

“No, I don’t. And I think she’s wasting her time and her energy and her money when she should be using them for–”

But she didn’t get any farther. At the words, No, I don’t, Brian grabbed my hand. I looked away from my mother and over at him. His eyes were filled with remorse. Because now he knew.

“Don’t listen to her, Tess. You’re a great artist.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Part of it was because I was a little foggy from having downed three beers in less than fifteen minutes. But most of it was because his words were still bouncing around in my brain. They echoed. Everywhere. Especially:

Artist.

It sounded good. Better than good. I especially loved the way it sounded in his voice. And I loved him for saying it, because it was the first time anyone had. Not just, you do good work or that’s a nice painting.

Artist.

But even better than that was: Don’t listen to her. Because what he’d really meant was: She’s hurting you. And I’m gonna make her stop. Even though it wasn’t true. Nothing, ever, would really make her stop. But at least it was true for a little while. And at least he was willing to try.

This was originally posted on the Movie Fanatic website on January 22, 2009, the one year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death.

Heath Ledger – One fan’s perspective

Today is the one-year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death. I suppose it’s not really necessary for me to add my small voice to the chorus of solemn tributes and fangirly hysterics that will no doubt be whispered and shouted all over the net today. I’m going to anyway. Don’t worry; it’s going to be brief.

To say that he was a talented actor with extraordinary good looks is to state the obvious, but his looks weren’t what initially drew me to him. Hollywood stood up and took notice of him after his roles in the popular teen flick “10 Things I Hate About You” and the box office smash “A Knight’s Tale.” They offered him a career on a silver platter, a career filled with popular teen flicks and hot leading man roles, a career of certain fortune and big, big fame. It wasn’t the career he wanted. He wanted to act, to learn, to prove himself. To take the kind of roles he wanted to take, to have fun with it, not to be the next It Boy. So he told Hollywood to fuck off (I don’t know that he literally said, “Fuck off”, although it’s what I like to imagine he said) and set out on his own path. If he was going to succeed, he was going to do it on his terms, and if he was going to fail, it was going to be because he didn’t compromise.

I really admire that kind of thing. It’s extremely rare in any business, but especially so in the movie business. By now we know that he succeeded. The fact that he did so on his own terms was – and still is – a great source of joy and inspiration for me, in my personal as well as my professional life, even as his loss is still a source of great sadness. Chris Nolan put it better than I ever could: “After Heath passed on, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema.” He is, and will continue to be, greatly missed.

Today AmazonEncore released their late spring/early summer 2011 list and Waiting For Spring was on it. The official press release is here, but I’m also posting this link because I like seeing my name underneath the NBC peacock. My sort-of name, that is. My pen name. Until recently it’s the name I thought of as Online Me. Now I’m beginning to realize that Online Me and Real Life Me are going to have to figure out how to merge into just plain Me, and right quick.

But enough with the existential bullshit.

A lot of people have asked me how long the current edition of Waiting For Spring will be available before the Encore edition is released (TUESDAY MAY 10, 2011). The truth is I don’t know yet. I keep going back and forth about it. I’ll give plenty of notice before I do take it down, though.

In the meantime, here’s the trailer for the Encore release:

This has to stop.

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Reflection

(appears in Flash Fiction 40 Anthology 2009)

An eight-year-old boy saunters down the street, smiling proudly, armed with a powerful new weapon, a gift from his father the evening before.

He slips open the schoolyard gate and surveys the crowd with his sharp, green eyes, so like his daddy’s: Girls skipping rope; boys shooting hoops; teachers chatting amongst themselves, tired and bored. And, sitting by himself, leaning against a solitary tree, reading a book, is his target.

He makes his way over, fists stuffed tightly into his pockets, twitching to keep the grin off his face until just the right moment. He comes to a stop directly in front a pair of white, spotless shoes, rolling the weapon around his tongue, savoring the jagged consonants and tangy vowels. His father’s voice echoes in his ears as he lets loose his grin, pulls the trigger, and fires the word directly into his target’s fragile, tender heart:

“Faggot!”

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The Trevor Project
It Gets Better

An excerpt from chapter 21 of Waiting For Spring. (Also, you can check out an interview Todd Keisling did with me over at Self-Publishing Review.)

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When we got home it was already dark. There was no moon; only a skyful of stars. Brian met me on the lawn. I didn’t bother to go inside for a blanket, even though it really was chilly. We unpacked our little picnic right on the grass, which made both of us laugh, even before we’d begun. And he had a warning for me.

“This shit makes me…well, I’m gonna talk your frigging ear off.”

“And that’s different…how?”

It didn’t take me long to find out. He became the Philosopher of Everything. Great and small. It seemed unreal to him that love, a thing that was so chaotic and irrational, could even exist in a universe that was, at its very core, so orderly and precise, let alone keep that universe in motion. He heard music in the gently swishing pines and it was the same music he remembered hearing once in the ocean’s white, frothy waves as they crashed on glittery, stony shores during a childhood trip to the coast. I could actually hear the musical waves as he spoke, just as if I’d been there with him, and it washed away the lonely, empty ache inside me, better than the trippy haze alone ever could have done. Because his voice was deep and sweet and rich and slow and the words that poured out of him sounded just like poetry and honey.

I begged him to keep talking, to just talk and talk and never, never stop, so he told me all about the stars. He loved them, had always loved them. They were winking at us, he said, because they knew something that we didn’t. It was a secret they were forced to hide, a secret so great and wondrous that they wanted to shout it out so the whole world would know, but they had to keep it buried deep inside. Even so he knew what it was, because someone had told him a long time ago. The stars, he said, were actually souls; all the souls that were too restless to be locked up in heaven. They were so restless that God let them stay outside at night to play.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard him say, that I’d ever heard anyone say, and I forgot for a moment that he didn’t even believe in God. And when I did remember I still believed his words and I was thankful that He had chosen tonight to let so many restless souls out to play. I smiled up at them and they smiled right back. Giant prism smiles that shattered the white light into a thousand colors I’d never even seen before. They dripped everywhere, spilled all over the sky, slowly, just like hot candle wax; and then they froze. Stood still for a beautiful brief eternity and I tried to whisper to them. Wanted to tell them that I knew their secret, but no words would form. I could tell that they heard me though, or that they’d at least heard my thoughts, because they came in a little closer. They were so close that I knew I could touch them. I reached up, way up, stretched as far as I could stretch while still lying on my back…and I swept my fingers across the cold, wet, colorful sky.

Brian reached up, too, but not for the stars. He grabbed my hand, brought it back down to Earth and I think he knew, even though I didn’t tell him. I think he felt it, felt it all, in my fingertips. Because he kissed them, each one, so gently, with precious, tender lips. And when he kissed my mouth I could taste the night on his lips and his tongue. Sweet honey words and neon stardust, and we made love, in slow motion, naked underneath the mischievous stars.

The night was chilly and the ground was cold, like I was lying on January’s carpet. But it soon melted away; the cold, the grass, the ground itself. It all evaporated and we were enveloped in its steam. Because Brian was burning with a heat more intense and pure than the sun. He was heat, the source of everything warm and in that night of mist and haze and waxy skies his body was the only thing that was real. Our love the only thing that was solid, the only solid thing in the world, in vast expanse of the universe. For a brief moment lucidity flickered, and I begged the starry, restless souls that it was true. That it would still be true even after the mists were gone and the haze wore off and the ground returned.

That it would always be true.

An excerpt from chapter 13 of Waiting For Spring

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He brushed my bangs out of my eyes and said, “Tell me about Kineo.”

“Kineo?”

“Yeah. That Kineo painting.”

I shrugged. “There’s not really much to tell. It’s a painting of a mountain and a lake.”

“Bullshit. There’s more to it than just that.” He propped himself up a little higher on his elbow and, for the first time since I’d known him, struggled to find words to express himself. “There’s something about it, Tess, and I don’t know what it is. I never saw a place that looked like that before. It’s almost like the mountain is…like it’s weeping. It’s like a heartbreak or something. I don’t even know how you do that with just a brush and some paint. Were you sad, or depressed or whatever, when you did it?”

“No. I wasn’t.”

I’d painted it during my first summer with Jason. Summer of Love. We’d gone to Moosehead Lake for a daytrip and had a great time. Mount Kineo was supposed to be the highlight of the day because neither of us had ever seen it. It was a beautiful, oddly shaped mountain. Narrow at the bottom, cresting high above the lake, then ending suddenly flat on one side, in high, flinty cliffs. At first glance, from a distance, it had reminded me of the whale from Pinocchio, and we had laughed about that.

“I wasn’t depressed. But when I was up there I heard this story…a legend about a–” I pulled the sheet up and started playing with it, making little accordion folds. “It sounds stupid now, but it was about an Indian princess. Her husband went out on a hunting trip and he never came back. She waited and waited, for a long time, but…nothing. No word from him, not anything from him. He was just…gone. She was so…heartbroken that she jumped off the cliff and into the water, and killed herself. It was…it…I don’t know. I guess it sort of stuck with me.”

It had done more than that. The woman who had told us the story–she was a waitress in a restaurant a few towns over from where the mountain stood–had done so very matter of factly. It was obvious she’d told it a thousand times, and it didn’t really mean anything to her other than as a minor point of interest for tourists. But it had scared the hell out of me, so badly that I couldn’t eat my lunch.

Are you feeling alright, Tess?

Yeah, Jase. Just a little carsick. I’ll be fine.

It was after sunset when we drove past the mountain again on our way home. It looked different somehow. Lonely. Forbidding. Rising out of the water like a haunted headstone.

We got home late, exhausted from the day and the drive, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake for hours watching his peaceful, sleeping face. I couldn’t stop thinking about the poor woman–who had probably never really existed–waiting for her husband to return. Sick with worry. Going over every horrifying possibility of what might have happened to him. Had he been killed in the forest by an animal? Come across a member of an enemy tribe or stumbled upon a white settlement? Maybe his canoe had capsized and he had drowned in the lake

Or maybe he had just run off. Got bored or restless. Or fell out of love. And just…left her.

I shot out of bed, shaking so badly that my teeth actually chattered, pulled out my easel and poured everything out onto a fresh canvas. Dark, frantic, heavy lines. Foggy. Black and grey and dark, dark blue. But I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t depressed when I painted that picture. I was scared out of my fucking mind. Scared of losing that feeling I had only just discovered, for the first time in my life, of being in love and having someone love me back. Safe and completely, truly happy. Most of all I was scared because I could imagine, for a brief, fatigue induced moment, why that Indian princess had climbed to the top of the steep, woody mountain. Looked over the edge. And jumped. Landing hard on the water.

Brian touched my cheek and I jumped, startled back to reality.

“All that stuff you’re feeling right now? You got that all on the canvas, Tess.” He ran his finger gently underneath both my eyes. I hadn’t realized I was crying. “But I’m gonna make sure you never feel like that again.”

I nodded, blinked back a few more tears, then gave him my best smile. It didn’t fool him but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s pretty late you know,” I said. “And you need to get up early in the morning.”

“Nice try. Even I don’t work on Sunday.” He brushed my cheek gently with his lips. Then he whispered softly in my ear, “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

Just like that. Even though I’d already known it. So I said it back. “Yes I know. I love you, too.”

He fell asleep with his arm wrapped tight around me. He was so close that I could actually feel his breath, warm on my shoulder, his heart beating against my back. It was telling me that everything was okay again, that I was safe and loved. But I stayed awake all night anyway, shivering. Because I’d felt that way before. And I knew. Even if Brian didn’t.

Flying. Falling. Landing hard.

Well, technically speaking I can cook. I do it every day, because the authorities tend to frown on parents who let their kids starve. But I certainly don’t enjoy cooking and resent every milisecond I spend doing it.

Tonight was no different. I spent all of yesterday writing, all of last night pulling a graveyard shift, and all morning sleeping. Then, at around three-thirty, I realized that I hadn’t pulled anything out of the freezer for supper. And that I’d already shot my “fuck it, I’ll boil some macaroni and pour a jar of Prego over it” wad last night.

So, I rummaged through my fridge and found half a kielbasa. Yes, half a kielbasa. Half a kielbasa does not feed a family of four. So I rummaged around some more and found a ziploc baggie with chopped red/orange/yellow peppers inside it. (My husband chopped them up the other morning for, I think, an omelet, bless his heart.) And I found a Granny Smith apple. Actually, there was half a bag of Granny Smith apples. I bought it two weeks ago during yet another “Holy shit, my gall bladder is acting up again, I’m going to start eating healthy now, no, really this time I MEAN IT” spasm.

I chopped up the apple and kielbasa into pretty small pieces, then tossed them in a bowl with the peppers and put the bowl in the fridge so the flavors could mingle together. (TRUTH METER: After the exertion of all that chopping, I felt the need to unwind by watching last night’s episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on the DVR.)

After an hour of flavor-mingling, I sauted the crap in a pan (no oil required. We’re talking kielbasa, here) and spooned it (ooh! that sounds dirty) into some crescent rolls (people who hate to cook always have at least a dozen cans of crescent rolls tucked away). Then I baked it at 350 for eight minutes. Or it might have been twelve. Come to think of it, I have no idea how long it was in the oven. I just checked it every so often and pulled it out when it looked light brown-ish.

I wanted to serve it with a nice salad, but I didn’t have any lettuce in the fridge. So I popped some frozen corn (which is probably the least nutritious vegetable ever invented) in the microwave (which probably zapped what little vitamin content corn contains right out of it) and called it good.

Actually, it was pretty good. But someone really should call the authorities on me. Do it for my kids.

(Tomorrow’s post: Kel’s gall bladder finally packs up and calls it quits.)

An excerpt from chapter 18 of Waiting For Spring.

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“Well,” he said at last. “I’d better get going.”

I only nodded, because there was only one word left to say, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it. So he nodded back. Then he took a long look at me; at my face, my eyes. One more time. One last time. And his eyes were filled with something that was deeper than sorrow.

Then he turned away. Opened the screen door, walked down the four porch steps. And he left. Just like that. Leaving nothing behind. Just like he’d never been there at all. I sent up a quick prayer:

God, please help him to be happy…

Because he deserved it. And it wasn’t until the sound of his car died away that I finally remembered what it had felt like when we were happy. When we were in love. I closed my eyes and it was almost real. For just a moment I loved him again. And in that moment I was his. I was still Mrs. Dyer. Jason’s wife.

My wife.

I used to love those words, especially the way he said them. Two little words and they sounded like a song, like a poem. Because they meant that he loved me. It seemed like so long ago since I’d heard them, but it really wasn’t. Just a year, and what was one year compared with all the years that had gone before? And yet here we were, months after the ink had dried on the divorce papers, and we were still bitter enough to resort to yelling. To playing mind games with each other.

I climbed the fourteen stairs to Brian so I could start the repair work. He had turned off the music and was leaning back against the counter, drinking melted strawberry ice cream from a glass. I kissed him gently and told him why Jason had come. Told him that the tears were about the painting. About Alice. And it wasn’t a lie, because some of them had been. I told him about the money, too, and he shook his head. Told me that I was an idiot not to take it, that the money really was mine. It wasn’t, of course, but I didn’t say so. And I didn’t tell him about any of the anger and bitterness between Jason and me, or about the sadness, because none of that mattered. I did tell him that I loved him and that I was over Jason, for real. Because I was. And because those were the things that did matter.

Then I waited for him to speak, to tell me what it was Jason had said to him; but he didn’t. And he looked exhausted. So we went downstairs to his bedroom and lay down on his bed, naked underneath the fan. It was too hot for sex so we just lay there, silently immersed in our own thoughts. I didn’t know exactly what his were, although I could guess. And as for me…I was trying to push away bleak images of what the future had in store for Brian and me.

Because even though I loved him, more than anything, it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. There would be a day, there really would be, when there was no more Brian-and-Tess. There was nothing I could do to stop it either. But right now I couldn’t think about it; couldn’t bear to imagine what it would feel like when we moved onto the next step. The one that came after the love ran out.

Instead I reached over and grabbed hold of his hand, held onto it all afternoon. Concentrated hard on how it felt in mine so I’d always remember it. Rough, warm, calloused palm; long thick fingers. I held it tight as he drifted off to sleep, as I drifted off, too. Even in my dreams I was holding his hand. And even there I knew.

I couldn’t hold onto it forever.