In trying to put some of the pieces together, the mothballs are coming off of my long neglected novel. It has been more than a year since I last wrote even a word. New love, new jobs, moving, and life in general got in the way. I am hoping to use this forced inactivity to make some headroads into character development and plotline. Here is a glimpse into my writer's mind...A scene from the first chapter. I hope you all enjoy--David
Mildred Bohl hung up the phone, missing the cradle on the first attempt. She let Crane Holden's words run through her head, caught in a loop that magnified the horror with each replay. Her daughter was dead. Her only child was dead. Her Phoebe was dead. So she drank.
Not that she needed an excuse to drink. Since before Albert died, a bottle of Grey Goose had become her companion; her confidant; her lover. She walked, half-dazed, into the pantry, pulling a fresh bottle from the shelf. Into the freezer that bottle went, waiting its turn, only to be opened after Mildred had finished off the bottle that was sitting half-empty in the refrigerator.
Mildred walked toward the living room, grabbing a Waterford crystal highball glass from the curved-glass mahogany china cabinet as she passed. She may have been a drunk, but she still considered herself a lady, never drinking out of anything but the best. Arriving at her destination, she found her favorite rocker-recliner beckoning. It welcomed her like a featherbed, as she eased her fragile body into the chair that had become uncomfortable to anyone but Mildred; her bony body having made a permanent indentation after all these years. It would have been uncomfortable for anyone else—not that anyone ever visited her.
Vodka poured, Mildred closed her eyes and brought the faceted glass to her lips. The familiar clear, cold liquor passed through her mouth, down her throat, and quelled her loneliness. She savored its friendship. Isolation had become an unwelcome visitor over the years as her family deserted her. The only friend she found capable of retarding the descent into the well of self-pity was alcohol. It dulled the pain, but never healed the wounds.
She had been married to Albert Bohl for nearly twenty-five years before thousands of cigarettes began taking their toll. Ten years ago while Albert struggled to breathe, emphysema devouring his lungs, Mildred took to the bottle for comfort. Skeet, her younger brother, hated seeing his sister anesthetize herself to the torturous loss of her husband. He wanted to help her cope with the reality of life and death head-on, even to the extent of beginning the grieving process before Albert's demise. Hours on the phone hadn't helped. Praying together hadn't helped. All that Mildred wanted was to escape, to hide from Death's outstretched talon. At Albert's funeral, Skeet gave the eulogy. It made perfect sense that he would officiate at the funeral rather than the parish priest. But Mildred heard his eulogy as an indictment of her. In the middle of the eulogy, she screamed at him to 'shut the fuck up.' Skeet left the pulpit quietly and left the church, leaving Father Bryant to complete the service. Those were the last words between them. Recently, Mildred heard from her daughter that Skeet had returned to live in the town where they grew up. Father Skeet Mulvaney had become the new priest at St. Adalbert's. That pious fuck won't be giving the eulogy this time, Mildred thought, downing her glass and refilling it unsteadily.
About halfway through the second bottle, with her mind and body sufficiently numbed and wavering between lucidity and oblivion, Mildred allowed thoughts of Phoebe to seep into her consciousness. At one time, they were more than mother and daughter; they were friends. Phoebe wasn't your average child. She was an achiever. Mildred saw her failed self in her daughter, and never doubted that she was destined for great things. She was going to get out of that hellhole town. Phoebe's intelligence and drive were her ticket out, until… Why did she have to marry that man?
As soon as Phoebe and Brant started dating in high school, Mildred tried to come between them. She knew from bitter experience that loving a resort owner's son would resign her daughter to nature's purgatory. All her hopes and dreams would be put on hold. There would be no college for her daughter, just years of cleaning the rooms and fish house, cooking breakfast and fixing box lunches for hundreds of guests each year. It meant evenings of having strangers playing board games or working on jigsaw puzzles in your living room. It was a life of servitude.
All of her pleading fell on deaf ears. Nothing she did would break the bond that Phoebe had developed with Brant Holden. When the time came a year after her husband's death, Mildred found nothing ironic in wearing black to her daughter's wedding and ceding the newlyweds the deed to her dead husband's resort as a present. She knew her daughter's life was over from that moment onward.
Within a week, Mildred had arranged to move to Minneapolis. Though they still talked on the phone every week, there was rigidity to their conversations. Brant was never part of their discussions, neither was the resort. They spoke mostly of television shows and recipes. That is, until Mildred's first and only grandchild was born. At least Koi's birth had given them something to talk about.
About Me
- Blue Ice Dave
- Wilton Manors, Florida
- Just a middle-aged Peter Pan, who refuses to give up softball, DisneyWorld, and loving life with his partner.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment