Excerpt from “Click”
I slip notes in library books. Notes like I’m watching you. Readers step out of the stacks with an anxious look in their eyes. They head to me or Howard, my co-worker. Howard gets sweat beads on his upper lip and says, whoever did this is sick. I feel guilty for a moment. But when I see the concern in their faces, it satisfies something that edges my mind. I reassure them it won’t happen again. We won’t tolerate it. But after the initial excitement, it’s over. The routine goes on and people forget anything even happened.
Short Short Story
“Before You Understand” after Diane Williams
The sprinkler system spurted onto, spurted into the grass, the beds, the turf, and then erupted, as designed, into a giant spray that covers the yard in a mist that runs from the front porch of the house all the way down the hill to the street.
The sprinkler used to attach to my hose nicely, at the end, and I leaned forward into the weight pulling it behind without the words I can’t I can’t I can’t anymore, which means I cannot connect.
I cannot connect with the child who is silent and says stay away. Except when he was little and leaned on my breast when I read to him, and then later when he read to me what he wrote in a poem so that I would know he felt far away and lost. Which was how I felt after he left when the rhythm in my head said I can’t I can’t I can’t anymore, and then after when I wanted to run away and hide, but not in my head. Anyway I will tell him I cannot be this person and then I will run away so that I can hide from myself.
This disconnect–which is in the air, the water, the grass–surrounds you before you understand that you are becoming smaller, lesser, narrower; that you are becoming a person you do not love anymore, or even like. When you go out, other people pass you in the market and turn away to avoid your eye because if she gets too close she may catch this feeling of desperation, too, and feel faraway and lost while she is planting rhododendrons and have a problem, like stabbing her foot with the shovel and severing her toe. This is sad to lose my toe. The pain is not brief.
Excerpt from The Hesitation of Olivia Austin
Chapter 7 – Hattie
Early Sunday, Hattie folded back the covers and swung her feet over the side. They rested on the mahogany stepstool beside the high four-poster bed. Under the east window her dog Cubby emitted short, low snores from his pillowed basket. Morning sunlight seeped in around the shades and fell in thin lines on the wood floor beside him.
She shuffled across the hall to the bathroom and pressed a warm washcloth against her eyes. As always it took a minute to focus on her image in the mirror. Last night’s thunderstorm and the ensuing humidity had reduced her hair to kinky, unruly waves. Securing it behind her ears with bobby pins, she brushed her teeth and settled half-glasses on her nose.
Back in the bedroom, she raised the window shade, making a cursory glance outside to the street, the town and the valley beyond. The vista gleamed as it does after a storm but to her distress downed twigs littered the lawn. She sighed, knowing she would have to spend the day picking them up. And there was Joanie, wearing short-shorts, jogging past on her stork-like legs. Before Joanie returned to Kansas, she tried to make it as a stage actress in New York. Hattie had Googled her name and nothing popped up. It meant she had waited tables; that’s what happened to theatre people. They ended up servers, not that there was anything wrong with serving. In some cases it might even be considered a form of acting. She nudged Cubby’s bed. “Time to get up.” He lifted his head, dropped it back on his paws and closed his eyes halfway. No jumping up for him, she mused.
She dressed and descended to the main level to start coffee. Outside, she found the newspaper in the bushes by the front porch. Every day she had to fight the yews to retrieve the Langston Journal from the lower boughs. This morning the wet greenery dampened her slacks. Back inside, the combination of air-conditioning and damp pants chilled her. She would call the Langston Journal again and tell them—no papers in the bushes or she would quit her subscription. A good customer, a long-time customer such as she, deserved better treatment. Just because her house sat on a hill was no excuse for poor aim.
She looked right toward Olivia’s house next door. The view was obstructed by a hedge of large yews but by craning her neck she glimpsed two police cars parked along the curb. She let go a heavy sigh and shook her head. What had Olivia done now? Perhaps her niece Anna had been the one to shoot off M-80s last night. Hattie made her way down the front steps to the street and peered in the passenger window of the first police car. Her heart quickened. What a lot of electronic equipment it contained. No wonder taxes were so high.
From the sidewalk, she saw Olivia’s front door standing ajar and resisted the urge to go up. Last year, she’d observed the police at the house across the street. Like a good neighbor, she’d gone over to investigate and surprised a policeman coming around the corner, his gun drawn. He startled, almost discharging the gun. If he had, she could be dead now.
Retreating to her kitchen, she tapped her index finger on the countertop, picked up her cordless phone and dialed the police department’s non-emergency number. She lived close to the university and had to call frequently about noisy college students; the response was often tepid. She expected this call would elicit a more urgent follow up than the usual we’ll try to get to it.
A man answered immediately. “This is Hattie Sternberg,” she said. “Nine-forty-three Sunset Drive. The police are next door at nine-forty-five. I have information for them.” She pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose.
He confirmed her address and phone number. “Someone will be in touch right away.”
She hung up and smiled. That was the kind of treatment she expected. Let the police call her for a change. She now stood staring out the kitchen window into Olivia’s backyard. A house wren landed on the picket fence; a bevy of Monarch butterflies hovered over the Milkweed. Cubby interrupted her observations by ambling into the room. “Finally up, I see.” He wagged his tail and settled a hopeful gaze on her. Pouring a cup of coffee, she stuck the phone in her pocket, walked him out to the front porch and down to the garden. He sniffed at the redbud tree and lifted his leg high, rather athletically, on its trunk. When he finished, they returned to the porch where he sprawled at her feet to lick a paw with his pink tongue.
Hattie strolled to the front porch railing nearest Olivia’s yard and squinted to see through the hedge. She had a sidelong view of the front door, an unsatisfactory angle. Sipping her coffee, by now lukewarm, she reconsidered. Should she go over? It was early. Her watch said six-twenty. She pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead. Had anyone been there to observe, they might have noticed her remove a bobby-pin, run a hand through her red curls and reinsert the pins. In spite of her efforts, the curls fell wherever they wished.
She traced a finger along the plastic seam of the silent phone. She was less than fifty feet from Olivia’s house. It was quiet next door. She stood very still, scrutinizing the nearest window to discern any movement behind Olivia’s sheer curtains. If only there were no curtains, as in the story of the minister in Winesburg, Ohio. Missing window coverings enabled The Reverend Hartman to spy on Kate while she lay in bed naked. People did spy. Even her cousin Nell and Olivia herself had confessed to window-peeking in their childhood club. People! She shook her head just thinking of it.
A warm breeze moved through the trees and touched her face gently. Who could she call? Maybe Meg, who woke early each morning to bake and prided herself on being in-the-know. If she hadn’t heard what had happened at Olivia’s, it would satisfy something inside Hattie—a little corner of her soul—to be the first to give Meg this report.
The police should have called back by now. Her finger was poised over the phone’s keypad when two officers stepped from Olivia’s house onto the porch. They stood in conversation as an unmarked car pulled up. A heavy, ruddy-faced man in a shirt and tie got out, accompanied by a young black woman, smartly dressed. They climbed the steps to the porch with an air of urgency. Hattie inhaled sharply. Something unusual had happened and she intended to find out what it was. She put the phone and Cubby inside. Moments later, she trekked noisily up the steps to Olivia’s house and stood before them scowling, hands on hips. Four people, eight eyes, regarded her warily. “What’s going on here!” she demanded.
Judy Bauer 