Fiction "Losing it" {Lenny's story: 8th Grade part 1}

I've been writing all day and night, and it still isn't right. But I'm going to hit publish anyway because it's a start, and I've told myself I have to keep writing even if it's shit. Here is another part to Lenny's story. It's choppy and may not flow as well, but I had to break it into parts because it just kept growing and growing. This is the first part, which is a lot of back story that will build up to part 2 next week. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

 "Losing It"

 

That's me in the corner

That's me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Trying to keep up with you

-R.E.M 1991

In eighth grade, friendship is the closest thing you will ever have to religion and faith. The simple act of being accepted by a group can make you feel invincible and give you the faith and courage to do almost anything. I was abandoned by my former group of friends two weeks into my eighth grade year. It happened so suddenly, it was like an illness that came along over night. One day were were the best of friends and the next day they were ignoring me at the lockers.

In the beginning, there were four of us, Sheila and Isabelle, who I had met in our “College Prep” classes, and Deb, who had been their friend since kindergarten. I didn’t have that kind of friendship history with anyone at that point in my life. I went to a school that was mostly populated with migrant farm worker families, and they moved with the harvest. In sixth grade, I decided I wanted to go to junior high in a different district. After years of using Esperanza's address so she could take care of me after school, Mom and I decided that Cal Valley Junior High was better for me academically. The decision broke Esperanza's heart as she had been watching me since I was an infant. Mom found herself relieved that she didn't have to rely on Esperanza as much anymore.

I met Sheila and Isabelle on the first day. We had three college prep classes together. I sat behind Isabelle in Home Room, and she was warm and inviting and oddly enough shook my hand when she introduced herself. She also looked like a fashion model. Tall and slender, her black, shiny hair hung like a curtain down her back. Her skin was so smooth and fair that it was such a contrast with all her hair. Sheila was almost as tall, but fuller around the hips and bust. She appeared more womanly than our waif of a homeroom teacher. She was loud and brash and wore her thick blond hair in a braid everyday with it falling out around her face by third period PE, which coincidentally, we had together as well. They invited me to sit with them at lunch, and that is where I met Deb.

Deb was a force before she even opened her mouth. It was the early nineties and Deb was a vision of denim and lace. She wore the right sneakers with the two Velcro strips across the ankle, and they were pink. Her jeans were cuffed perfectly and her shirt was hot pink and peeked out in the space of her open jean jacket that had white lace on the back. It was as if she had stepped out of a copy of Seventeen. Her hair was a light brown and curly, she wore it gelled and sprayed within an inch of it’s life, and instead of a boring navy Jansport backpack like I was wearing, she carried a tote bag that said “ESPRIT”.

“Deb, this is Lenny. Lenny, Deb. She can eat with us right?”, Sheila said in her almost clipped dialogue.

“Hey. How’s it going?”, Deb offered as she concentrated on opening a package of chips.

“Hi. Thanks for letting me join you”, I replied. Embarrassed that I didn’t have more to offer. I was wearing khaki pants, a floral printed blouse, and navy Keds. My hair was pushed out of my face with a headband, and unlike Deb and Isabelle, I wore no make up. Even Sheila had applied gloss after PE. I had a tube of Avon chap stick. I had a lot to learn about Junior High.

I spend the entire seventh grade with Deb and the girls. Isabelle taught me how to apply eyeliner and how to pick out the right lipstick. Sheila taught me to speak up for myself and how to survive algebra. Deb taught me the rest. She gave me my first Sassy magazine. She gave me her hand me downs, though none of them fit very well since she was almost a foot taller than me. She introduced me to Beverly Hills 90210, and we bonded over a shared love and knowledge of Saturday Night Live. Deb showed me how to watch for trends in Seventeen Magazine and on MTV to make sure we were always in style. It was easy to be Deb’s friend, and I fell under her trance. It didn’t take long for her to invite me to sleep over at her house, which was an experience in itself. Deb’s family ate at the table for every meal, I didn’t know families still did that anymore. My family never ate at the table unless we were at Esperanza’s. It was an entirely different world as Deb’s friend and I would have stayed there forever.

But slowly it started to unravel.

It started in the Summer. Isabelle invited Deb and Sheila to join her family at the Boardwalk for a weekend. It’s something they had been doing for years. Deb was more apologetic than the rest of them, telling me she would miss me and wished she could take me along. It didn’t stop her from going. That weekend yielded inside jokes that i didn't understand, memories that didn’t include me, and a weird exclusion that started to manifest in funny ways. I’d call Isabelle and invite her over to our apartment and she’d make an excuse why she couldn’t come, then I’d invite Sheila and she would say the same. Later Deb would call and invite me to meet her and the girls at Thrifty’s for ice cream. It was clear they had spent the majority of the day together. Then we got our school schedules mailed to us, and as luck would have it, I was the only one of us with fifth period lunch. Don’t worry they said, it won’t be that bad, but all I could think of was eating lunch alone.

I didn’t eat lunch alone that first day, thankfully Erin Saunders had fifth period lunch too. We had two college prep classes together this year and the last. She was sweet and quiet, but she too was fearful of eating alone. At lunch that day we figured out that many of our fellow college preppers had fifth period lunch too. Sofie Pearson and Hannah Green. Brothers Alex (eighth grade) and Adam (seventh grade) Moorehouse. Best buddies Kevin Mackey and Sam Gould. I didn’t know them all that well, but they made me feel comfortable and welcomed. We all sat together on the grass behind the gym. Laughing and talking about our summers that were mostly spent watching 90210 (the girls) and Major League Baseball (the boys). That day would turn into every day, and soon I found a comfort zone, outside of my original one with Deb and the girls.

As it turned out, my new comfort zone destroyed my old one. New friends served as the main reason I was dumped by Deb and the girls. They became suspicious of my friendships with my fifth period lunch friends. They accused me of acting differently after a weekend spent with Hannah Green and her sister Caroline. Caroline worked for Contempo Casusals in the mall and gave us a box full of hand me downs when I spent the night at her house the first Friday of the school year. I went to school on Monday wearing floral print leggings and a magenta tunic, which was met with disgust and jealously at Deb's locker. Then Sofie Pearson asked me if I wanted to walk to the "Ice Castle" after school for milkshakes the following Wednesday. I accepted and didn’t ride the bus home. Mom picked me up from the "Ice Castle" after work and when we got home the phone was already ringing. I picked it up to Deb who had a million questions as to why I had missed the bus. When I told her, she got very quiet, and made up an excuse to get off the phone. My attempts to call her back that night went bust. She was cold and ignored me for the rest of the week.

By Monday we weren’t friends anymore. Sheila and Isabelle refused to talk to me in class, which became a problem when we got grouped together for a project. I tried to start multiple conversations with Deb, but she would just look through me or over my head. I made a good solid effort for two days, but by Wednesday morning I was exhausted. I tried to fake an illness so I could get a break from all the embarrassment of losing all my friends, but mom put her foot down.

"It's your turn Lenny. You ignore them. You look past them. And when they see you with your new friends smile as big as you can", Mom lectured in the car on the way to school. I didn't think I would survive another bus ride to school with them talking bad about me three seats away. "You're going to have to put on a brave face and grow thick skin", Mom added as she kissed me good-bye. "You can do it, babe".

I spent the next few months of school wearing my brave face and growing a thick skin. I spent more time in and out of school with my lunch friends. I loved Sofie and Hannah. I loved eating lunch on the grass behind the gym. I loved the sleep overs and the study sessions and the group projects that we worked on together. Still, it didn’t make up for the ache I had for Deb and the girls. I missed them desperately. I would see them in the halls and they would giggle as they passed. I grieved the friendship that was now being destroyed by gossip and rumors about me and my mom. They told people I lived in the trailer park. That I couldn’t afford clothes, so that’s why we shopped at Goodwill. They told Sofie and Hannah about Benny, and that he was in rehab (which was usually true). They wrote notes to me that said I was a cow, that I had a fat ass, that I was an ugly four eyed bitch. All things that I already thought about myself. All things that seemed much truer in writing. All things that could ruin any reputation in eighth grade.

It seemed like a dream, but it wasn’t. It seemed that one day I had friends and faith in things like trust, passed notes in the hall, and Bonnie Bell lip balm. Then with little explanation or reason it was all gone. It was like they didn’t even know who I was. They acted as if I had never existed. They were gone, and even with a thicker skin, I still felt like I was losing.

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Read all the other Musical Monday posts HERE

Lenny's Story {Fiction} #MusicMondays

Dear Readers,
This is a piece of fiction I've been working on for almost a year. It comes and goes but never really leaves. In an effort to write more and get the story out, I've decided to start linking up with My So Called Chaos and Music Mondays. That way I will have a goal of writing every week, and then you all can critique it every week since I don't have money for a proper editor as of now. I have some ideas on how I want it to go, but writing always takes me to different places. I hope you like it and as always, be honest. I'd love any and all feed back.
Thank you,
Megan

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Ah, look at all the lonely people…

-”Eleanor Rigby”, The Beatles

John Lennon died on my second birthday. For most people this wouldn’t be a big deal. For most people, the death of a music legend, would just be something cool about the day they were born. For me, John Lennon has never been just some guy who died on my birthday. You can’t be born to my parents and think that John Lennon was just a guy who made music. I’ve been listening to The Beatles since conception. My mother never sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, instead she sang Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. My father sent me birthday cards that were little more than the lyrics to Hey Jude and Yellow Submarine, until the year he actually sent me a model of a yellow submarine. You don’t just grow up, celebrating your birthday on December 8th, and think that John Lennon is just some guy. Especially if you name is Eleanor Lennon Estrada.

I don’t remember anything about my second birthday. My mother has never really liked to talk about it. My assumption is that it has more to do with my father’s absence and less to do with Lennon’s untimely death. I have one photo, and one story told to me by a very drunk Tia Carmen when I was nine. Carmen said that on the night of my second birthday, my mother was very distraught. Always holding high hopes that my father would surprise us all with his presence. Carmen said that my mother was late getting to Abuelita Esperanza’s house, and by the time she arrived with my birthday cake, we had finished dinner hours before. My mother had spend the day and part of the evening working at her important office job at the local hospital. My father, according to Carmen, was “on the road”, a term I had learned early on in my life really meant “no where to be found”. My mother brought the cake and the tears and by seven forty five, I was crying too. Tia Carmen says that she begged my mother to leave me with Abuelita and go to Herman’s bar around the corner to watch the end of the football game. Monday night football was a big draw in the tiny farming town apparently. My mother resisted saying that I needed my sleep and she needed a nice long bath. So Carmen walked us out, and while we drove home, Carmen sat at Herman’s with a whiskey sour as the news broke that Lennon was dead.

According to Tia Carmen, this was why my mother has cried every year on my birthday. Why she listens to Eleanor Rigby on the stereo while she drinking her morning coffee every December 8th. And while the tears fall silently down her cheeks that she still thinks of my father’s call that night, and how maybe, just maybe things could have been different.

Ahh… Look at all the lonely people…

On my fifteenth birthday, I sat down next to my mother on the couch with Eleanor Rigby playing in the background. I didn’t look at her, but just grabbed her hand in mine. Then, in a voice just loud enough to hear her, I asked her, tell me about that night. Tell me about the night he died. It was like I was asking about a relative, and though I wasn’t, somehow I was. Mom squeezed my hand, and said, “Your dad missed that too”.

Mom told me that the phone was ringing off the hook as she opened the apartment door. She knew who it was on the line. Benny, my father. Even though she had left messages for him for weeks, she knew he was going to miss my birthday. Like the year before when he sent a wagon, from the Sears catalog three weeks after my first birthday party with the words, “Sorry, I was on the road”, written in the card. This late night phone call was no surprise.

“She’s asleep Benny. You missed it”

“Mary Elizabeth. Lizzie. Liz. Turn on Monday Night Football”, Esteban “Benny” Estrada choked out through one too many Coors originals. “Just turn on the game”.

“Benny, what in the world..”

“Lizzie. He’s dead. Lennon. Is. Dead”.

I’ve never really known if my father knew it was my birthday. I don’t think he realized it right away. He was just calling my mother to break the terrible and awful news that something in their lives had died. A part of their childhood, their teenage years, perhaps even their love. In the years following, Benny’s calls were always short, and sometimes sweet. I never really knew if it was me that made him so sad, or Lennon. Still, he called, sometimes at three minutes to midnight, but he called.

The only picture from my second birthday, the evidence that it actually happened, I’m sitting in my mother’s lap. There is a cake, which for years I thought had a sad clown, but upon further investigation have found is actually a really ugly Santa Claus. It took years and my cousin Mando’s magnifying glass in fourth grade to figure that out. My mother still has on her trench coat that she wore every winter until I was thirteen and it literally fell apart. She looks very classy and business like in it, despite the hair that is escaping from her once pristine bun. I’m crying, my mouth open wide, saliva dripping from my chin. I’m wearing red overalls and a white turtle neck, my hair in pig tails. My mother is smiling so big, that the only conclusion I could draw was that she was trying to overcompensate for her crying child and absent fiance. It’s a smile that would repeat itself in many a picture for the rest of my life.

Now as an adult, my mother calls me on the morning of my birthday, her nose a little stuffed. Emotion clouding her voice. I know without asking that she has listened to Eleanor Rigby with her coffee. I also know that she has probably shed many of those tears for my father, who she will always love.

Ah, look at all the lonely people….

Sometimes I wish I had a different name.

It’s hard to grow up as Eleanor Lennon Estrada and not hate your name sometimes. My mother says that Benny begged her to name me Lennon whether I was a boy or a girl. She may have, except he was on the road when I was born. Photographing The Clark Hammond Experience. Today the “experience” is just a memory, but Pete Clark is a legend of rock and roll, and my father was his first photographer. How he landed that job I will never know, but my mom says it has something to do with “the right place at the right time”. Unfortunately that turned out to be the wrong time for my mother, since someone had to be responsible. My mother left her life in San Francisco, returned home to a sleepy little farming town in California and had me. She will tell you that she had a good life too, that I was all she ever needed, but I think that’s only true because I was Benny’s daughter, and he was the absolute love of her life.

Mary Elizabeth Shaw met Esteban “Benny” Estrada when she was sixteen at the bowling alley. She wasn’t supposed to be there, not on that side of town. Her father was a farmer, with acres of lettuce, among other things, and Benny was a Mexican, who spent his summers working in those fields. Benny was also the younger brother of my mother’s best friend Carmen Estrada. So when Carmen invited Mary Elizabeth to tag along to her cousin Frank’s fourteenth birthday, my mother accepted. She liked Carmen, and Carmen liked The Beatles, which I think made them instant best friends. My mother had no idea she would meet a boy like Benny. So sure of himself and his camera, that he had gotten for Christmas that year. Benny wasn’t like the boys Mary Elizabeth knew. The ones who played football and baseball and drove their father’s cars to Roy’s hamburger stand. Benny dressed in jeans and striped t-shirts like the surfer boys she saw on TV, She said he walked around like he was in on a private joke. Like he knew the punch line of life. And when he shook her hand, her stomach fell.

The following Monday, she found an envelope with a picture enclosed. She wasn’t looking at the camera, but for the first time in Mary Elizabeth’s life she thought she looked pretty. She felt she could be a person who took a good picture. On the back Benny had written “Lizzie Bean - 1969”.  My mother would keep those photos in her white vinyl jewelry box for the rest of her life.

Mary Elizabeth and Benny graduated from high school in 1970. As planned, my mom moved to San Francisco to go to Secretarial College. Benny stayed behind to work in the fields for his dad, who was a foreman at one of the farms, and start community college. She called Benny every night at six from the pay phone outside the apartment she shared with three other girls at the school. No matter what Benny was doing he made sure to be home for her call. When she called in December to tell him she’d be home in three days for Christmas, he told her he had a surprise for her. Benny had been accepted at the community college in San Francisco, his first semester tuition paid by his parents, and would Mary Elizabeth Shaw do him the honor of becoming his wife. It was the happiest Mary Elizabeth had ever been.

At home for Christmas, Liz and Benny decided that it would be smarted to live together in the city. Mom called her mentor at the secretarial college and she put her in touch with her brother who was a landlord. They sealed the deal over the phone with Benny’s dad, Armando offering a sizable deposit by December 28th that was over two months rent. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until Liz went home to tell her folks. It was 1971 and Grandpa Shaw was a traditionalist. No daughter of his was going to be shacking up with some Mexican as he put it. He also let mom know that he couldn’t abide by no Mexican son in law, and if she moved to San Francisco, she didn’t have a home to come back to. Grandma Shaw cried with a broken heart, but didn’t offer a word otherwise to her husband. Mom packed up what she could in some old warehouse boxes and packed her little car. She didn’t even offer a goodbye because she didn’t want her voice to crack.

Benny’s parents Armando and Esperanza were overjoyed. Mary Elizabeth had been a part of their family since Carmen had invited her to cousin Frank’s fourteenth birthday party. Mary Elizabeth had spent countless nights sleeping over and enjoying Esperanza’s famous enchiladas. Armando and Esperanza offered to pay for the wedding before the love birds left for the big city, but Mary Elizabeth and Benny wanted to wait. Let us get settled they said, let us finish school they argued.  

They did both, and neither.

My mother graduated from the Secretarial College and landed a very solid and good paying job at City Hall. She worked for someone who worked for the Mayor or something like that. My father got tired of going to school and left his job to work at a hotel bar. That’s where he met Pete Clark and David Hammond. Soon Lizzie Bean and Benny were going out every night, listening to every gig Clark and Hammond played until they were discovered with a house band at the Fillmore. Soon The Clark Hammond Experience needed a photo for a Rolling Stone debut article, and it was Benny Estrada’s photo that was printed next to the article. From there Benny went on the road, and by 1977, he lived on tour buses and in hotels in foreign lands, while my mother lived in their walk up and worked overtime to make sure the rent was paid. On one of Benny’s stops in San Francisco in 1977, my mother became pregnant. When she told Benny, he promised her that he’d be back after The Clark Hammond Experience played their Midwest tour. Mom moved back to Salinas after Benny called from Flint to say he missed her, but that the tour was going to be extended.

Much to her embarrassment, she found herself with no job and no place to live when she arrived home. She stopped at Carmen’s new apartment to tell her the news about Benny and the baby. Carmen said she could stay there on the couch until she figured it out, but that didn’t last once Esperanza found out. Esperanza said that Elizabeth needed a proper bed, and the baby a crib. Esperanza opened her home and rearranged the room Carmen had just vacated. Carmen helped her move in and Armando brought home a crib he had bought at Sears. Overwhelmed my mother spent her first three days in the Estrada home in her bed, crying and pining for Benny. Benny spent those days in Chicago with an underage groupie and cocaine.

Mary Elizabeth found a new job and a new life in Salinas. A stellar recommendation from the Mayor’s office helped her get a job in the administration building at the hospital. Along with the job she was able to find an apartment, much to Esperanza’s dismay, and by her third trimester she was living a brand new life. Eventually Benny tracked her down. He begged her to come home, although he was living in the hotel he formerly worked. He offered to come to her, but she always said no. It was easier this way. It was better this way. In her heart she knew Benny was in no shape to be a father.

In the early morning hours of December 8th, 1978, Mary Elizabeth awoke to find her water broken. She called Carmen, and Carmen drove her to the hospital in her green Volkswagen beetle. Carmen held my mother’s hand, fed her ice chips, and cried with her when the pain was too much to bare. Mary Elizabeth accepted no pain medication, as her punishment for loving Benny Estrada the way she did. Instead she sang every Beatles song she knew from memory starting with I wanna hold your hand. She would start and stop with each contraction. Somewhere around noon, she had started singing her favorite, “Eleanor Rigby”, and in between pushes and screaming she would silently whisper, “Ah, look at all the lonely people, where do they all come from”. I was born after the second chorus, and given the name Eleanor Lennon Estrada. 

Which makes it impossible for me to escape my name and the soundtrack of my life.

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Leave your edits and recommendations in the comments. And thanks for playing along.

My So Called Chaos

Short Story Saturday {seven ninteen fourteen}

I've been really hesitant to dive into another short story. Ok, that's kind of a lie. I've been writing little stories here and there for the last couple of months. I've had every intention to share them with you, and then, that voice. I hear the voice. The one that says my writing sucks, that I don't know shit about dialogue, the voice that says, save yourself from the embarrassment. You have that voice too, although, it may not tell you that you are a crappy writer, we all have the voice. Today I finally said eff the voice, and decided to start a new journey with fiction, Short Story Saturday. For now I think it will be a twice monthly thing, so I'm not too overwhelmed. And I'd like to invite any other story tellers out there to join in. If you write a little something, or have something written that you would like to share, share it. Just leave a comment with the link. There are no editors here, no agents, no content police. This is a safe place. At least I hope it is. Let me know what you think and if you look forward to more Short Story Saturdays.

Sure

Elizabeth Calderon was five when Jack Lewis kissed her square on the lips in the kindergarten lunch line.  Why would he do such a thing?  Michelle her best friend said it was because he liked her.  Alex Oliver said it was because he dared Jack to kiss a Mexican, whatever that was.  At five Lizzie was sure of two things, she wanted to be a ballerina, and she didn't like kisses from boys on the lips.

When Lizzie turned ten she no longer wanted to be a ballerina but a lawyer.  Lawyers made money and lived in nice apartments, like on LA Law.  She also noticed that on TV, lawyers didn't have to worry much about money.  A big apartment and lots of money seemed like a a dream worthy of dreaming.  If she had money she could help her mother pay the mortgage, because when her mother talked about the mortgage, her voice changed, and Lizzie didn't recognize it anymore.  At ten she was sure that being a lawyer with a fancy apartment would solve all of her mother's problems.

At fifteen, Lizzie wanted to go by Liz, desperately.  She spent her days slouched, trying to conceal her chest, ever since Sam Jensen asked if she stuffed her bra in front of the entire freshman PE class.  She didn't, but no one believed her.  How could she explain that she went to bed one night a 34A and woke up the next morning a 34C? Her mother was no help either, telling her in a few years she wouldn't be sorry.  But she was sorry.  Liz measured her days in class periods, mix tapes, and episodes of My So Called Life.  She was sure about three things, she hated PE, Sam Jensen was an asshole, and high school sucked.

The night Liz turned twenty she got drunk and had sex with Mason Young on the filthy floor of his fraternity house bedroom.  Liz had no idea what was really happening until Mason busted his way in.  It was short and painful, and she was pretty sure there had to be a better way to spend your twenties.

Three days after turning twenty five Liz met James Walker Harrington at Melissa Espinoza's engagement party.  Convinced she was destined to be a bridesmaid and never a bride, she wore her black work pants and a ponytail.  As she ordered a gin and tonic, she heard a voice behind her say, That's an old man's drink?  When she turned around, she saw the face of the voice and knew she really didn't need one more asshole in her life. Even if that asshole happened to be pretty handsome. Liz realized that the only sure thing in her life at the moment was the gin and tonic.

Liz celebrated her thirtieth birthday with a breast pump, dirty diapers, and a screaming baby.  Her birthday wishes included a nap and a shower.  With a four month old at her side she ate a pint of rocky road ice cream and watched horrible reality television. She prayed that her husband would leave work early and take the baby for the rest of the night. He didn't. Liz was struck by the idea that she enjoyed her rocky road more than Mr. Harrington.  At thirty Liz loved her baby, hated her breast pump, and was pretty sure motherhood was not her calling.

On the eve of her thirty-fifth birthday Liz typed away on her laptop, writing a story she didn't know she had.  Reflecting on how quickly she hit her scary age.  That number had seemed so far away just a few years ago.  With two kids and almost six years of motherhood behind her, she was exactly the kind of mother she always wanted to be: good, but not perfect. After eight years of marriage she was exactly the kind of wife she always hoped to be: supportive and loving.  

As Elizabeth Calderon Harrington turned thirty-five she was sure this was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

The Confession {Part 7}

Hello friends and readers.
Part 7 of my short story  The Dinner Party  has been published.
Click HERE.
Happy Reading!

The Dinner Party {Updates five and six}

Happy Friday. I had a few spare moments to edit and revise parts five and six of  The Dinner Party. Enjoy it by clicking here. And don't forget you can always read it by visiting the page, The Dinner Party.

Short Story Saturday {Part Four}

Looking for the next entry of my short story? Well I published it but not here in a regular post. Now you can find it on it's own page. It will be under The Dinner Party tab, right under my blog header. That way you can read it all together in one place in case you need a refresher. Enjoy friends.

The Gift {Short Story Part Three}

I'm still having fun writing this.  I hope you still enjoy reading.  As with every part of this short story, stop me at any time.  Be my editor and my critic.  I can take it.  Give me pointers on how to write dialogue.  Tell me when I'm spending too much on something and not enough on another.  If you are just joining the story, you can read part one and part two, before continuing on to part three.  It all started with a simple prompt and has taken on a life of it's own.

The Gift

A rosy and rambunctious Ed answered the door with a grand slosh of his highball glass.  Whiskey I assumed, and it wasn’t his first.

“Well it’s about damn time Witter, where they hell have you been?”, Ed boomed, and slapped Caleb on the back, knocking a bit of air out of him.

“Sorry, sorry”, I apologized as I walked in behind them, and stopping as I came into the living room.  Tara and Mike, sat side by side, like matched set.  Nina was on the chaise, with Peter at her feet.  They all looked up, and smiled.  We hadn’t been together like this in months.

“Don’t you apologize.  We thought you’d changed your mind”, Nina said, waving her hand as if she owned the place.  That was the thing about Nina, she always owned the place, whether it was her’s to own or not.

“That’s a great dress”, Tara said from her place beside Mike.  They looked blissful sitting next to each other.  They were holding hands, like newlyweds, even though they had been married for close to six years.

“Thanks, it’s…”, but before I could finish I heard her voice.

“Well I hope you brought me one hell of a gift to make up for being so late”, she too was booming tonight.  I suspected there was wine behind this cheerful taunt, yet I could feel a darker tone in her voice.

“Oh shit”, I said as I started to blush.  “It’s…” on the kitchen counter.

“In the car.  I’ll get it”, and with that Caleb was out the door.  I almost cried with relief that he had remembered to grab it.

As we waited for Caleb to retrieve the gift, I sat next to the matched set of Parkers (Tara and Mike), while Ed, poured me a glass of something red.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him red wine wasn’t my favorite, but I took a sip and smiled anyway.  Melissa just stood there, expectantly.

Oh, right, it’s her birthday.

I stood up and made my way across the room.

“Happy Birthday Mel, you look amazing tonight”, and with that I hugged her.

“Well Thank you Jenn, you look pretty good yourself.  New dress?”

“Yes, I was just telling Tara...”

“Finally’, she said, but then I realized she was talking about Caleb's return.

Melissa took the bag from Caleb and set it on the coffee table with the other gifts.  Caleb joined me and the Parkers on the couch.  Melissa and Ed stood in front of their fireplace.  

“Let’s have a toast to the birthday girl, my beautiful wife, Mel.  Mel, happy 2nd 29th birthday”, Ed bellowed as he raised his glass.

“Cheers”, we replied in unison.

“Are we doing gifts now?”, Nina asked.

“Yes, because you have to see what Ed got me before we get too drunk”, Melissa replied.

We watched as Melissa made her way through tissue paper and custom gift wrap.  A spa gift certificate, from the Parkers.  A pound of gourmet coffee and a French press from Nina and Pete.  Did Mel even know what to do with a French Press?  

Mel came to my gift.  I held my breath.  It wasn’t extravagant, but it was thoughtful.  She carefully opened the pink zebra stripped bag that I bought at the store along with formula, diapers, and a People magazine.  It paled in comparison to the fancy wrapping of the other gifts.  This was my life now I thought.  Drugstore gift wrap.

Mel lifted the bottle of wine out of the bag.  She looked at me in confusion, and then at the label.

“Four Corners Vineyard.  2000”, she whispered.

“The one and only”, I said.

“Where we met those Canadians and we got in a fight about California wines versus French wines?”

“Yes, but that was all you.  I still don’t know anything about wine”.

“Four Corners.  That was a trip”, Mel said, placing the bottle on the table.  “It feels like a hundred years ago”.  It was actually twelve.  To celebrate college graduation.  I bought that bottle of wine back then.  I still had yet to find an occasion to open it.  It seemed too special. But now, with no money for a proper gift, I gave the only one I knew I could afford.  A happy memory.

“Those were the days”, I replied back.  Because they were.  Before careers, before husbands, before babies.  Before the two of us had to grow up.  Before the two of us became strangers.

The drive {Short Story part 2}

This started as a fun way to exercise a muscle I rarely use: Fiction writing.  Just a little something to link up with Jenni at Story of My Life.  I was so anxious to hit the publish button, fiction is not my bag.  But you readers were wonderful, and very encouraging so I decided to think about Jenn and Caleb a little more, and Melissa a lot more.  Part one is Here.  Today I publish part two, and like I requested before, please be kind, but critique, edit, tell me what you like and what you don't.  I have not problem editing and rewriting.  Thanks in advance for participating.


The Drive
We sat in silence as Caleb drove.  Melissa and Ed only lived a mere fifteen minutes from us, but it might as well have been fifty.  The silence was excruciating.  It was heavy, it was humid, it was strangling me.  The only sound was the ping from his phone.  Ping.  Ping.  Ping.  As usual his phone was inundated with text messages.  According to Caleb, always work.  Always an issue at the office. Always an issue with a client.  And since his work, paid my bills, he had to take every call, and I had to remain silent.  Or so this was the routine that we fell into.  Ping.  Ping.  What was so damn important?
I could have broken the silence.  Easily.  I could have asked about the messages, but like everything with Caleb this was another battle.  Another contest in who could be the more stoic spouse.  The unhappiest spouse.  I would not be the one to break the silence and lose. How had it come to this? When did we turn into two people who just tolerated each other? Did we even tolerate each other anymore? 
In the silence that held me tighter than my seat belt, I tried to remember the last time Caleb and I were in the car alone.  The day we brought Addy home?  Could it be that we had not been completely alone for six months?  Then I remembered the Christmas party.  His company Christmas party.  Back then we were still in high spirits.  When we still said I love you, and had conversations that were important to both of us.  We were dressed up, even me, in a maternity wrap dress that thank God didn't look maternity.  I wore perfume and he told I looked beautiful.  It was going to be a great night.  A night for reconnecting.  A night for wine, a free dinner, and hopefully some amazing desserts, before and after the party.  I'm sure it would have gone, just as I had imagined if not for Claire McGill.  Claire McGill, beautiful, childless, and apparently my Husband's work wife.
Sure Caleb had talked about her, but he called her McGill, which lead me to believe that she was a man. McGill called all the time.  McGill sent text messages by the hour.  McGill, always bought the first round on Friday night.  So at the Aaron and Associates Christmas party, I was shocked to find that McGill was, not only a woman, but a  blond, twenty four, and no more than ninety five pounds, kind of woman.  The icing on the cake was her ringless finger.  
Caleb backtracked, swore, on nothing short of the Bible, that he had told me that McGill was a woman, but I could see it in his eyes.  A deer caught in headlights.  That look of utter terror, that now all his secrets were spilling out and he could do nothing to stop it.  He knew that I knew, this was why he was never home on Friday nights.  This is why we had fought every Friday night since Addy was born.  McGill was his Friday nights.
Just as I was angry all over again, Caleb turned onto Melissa's street.  Mini mansions all in a row, only deviated by color.  
"So, we're going to keep to the original plan?", Caleb said, breaking the silence and declaring me the winner of this round.
"Yes, please.  Just say it's all perfect.  Addy is perfect.  We are perfect.  I can't have it any other way tonight.  This is going to be a category five shit show", I replied, the anxiety threatening to come up the back of my throat.
"Jenn, it's ok you know, it's ok that Addy doesn't sleep through the night", Caleb countered as he slowed to the curb across the street from Melissa's fortress.
"I just don't want Melissa to know.  She'll try to fix it, with a book, or a website or..."
"Fuck her", Caleb said and it cut right into me.
Caleb took the keys out of the ignition and turned to look at me.  His eyes were sad and angry at the same time.  He looked like a stranger.  I don't remember the last time we looked directly at each other.
"Seriously, Jenn, I mean it.  Don't let her make you feel like shit.  Now let's get in there and lie about our life and drink all their good booze.  And if we are lucky Mandy won't call".
I nodded and took a deep breath as I opened my door.  Caleb waited for me and we crossed the street together.  I was just about to knock, when Caleb took my hand.
"You look really great tonight.  I meant to tell you earlier", Caleb said, almost shyly.
I smiled, without looking at him and knocked on the door.