Category: Excerpts (page 1 of 3)

On those summer camping trips to Wisconsin, I was glad to forgo airconditioned Holiday Inns. I rallied around the campfire, toasting my
marshmallow by gleefully setting it on fire, taking my turn at Charades, and later, after you kids went to bed, chortling over the dirty stories your father and Scott—a pair of preachers’ sons—told.

It was worth it, in those days, because Joan and Scott Sebastian were our best friends; I loved them like the siblings I never had. Being with them and their kids took the pressure off your father and me, somehow made us seem easygoing, more like a postcard family than how we really were.

Mary knew there were black widows in the house. This morning, while reaching for a jar of tomatoes, she had seen one in the cupboard and had carefully caught it in a glass with a playing card and carried it outside to the lilac bush, careful not to injure it, planning on not telling a soul about it.

Then, when she was sweeping up some dust around the hearth, she thought she saw two more, darting into a crack in the fireplace. What if it was an infestation? What if one bit the child?

Still, it was important to keep it a secret from her sisters. Important because if she told them, she would have to do something about it. And she couldn’t bring herself to call the exterminator, to arrange to have them killed. That would put her in bad stead with the whole of the arachnid kingdom. And then one of them would surely bite the child out of retribution. Ants, roaches, flies she was happy to spray, stomp, gas. But spiders…there was something special about spiders. Something deserving of her respect. Besides, she needed all the friends she could get…

It was a 1958 Steinway Grand. Model M—the big one. Ebony finish. Art Deco case. Though the bench had worn upholstery and broken hinges, the piano appeared to be in good condition. Mike scribbled the serial number on his inventory form and paused for a moment to admire the instrument.

It was positioned in the southwest corner of the living room, the vast, open room that served as the central axis of this classic, mid-century ranch house. From here the house rambled off in two directions: one wing for the bedrooms, the other to the library and the study. In the back the kitchen and breakfast room shared a pass-through fireplace with the living room.

Through floor-to-ceiling windows, Mike could see lush stands of palms and birds of paradise, exotic aloe trees, pocket gardens of colorful succulents around the edge of a cool, green lawn. An amoeba-shaped pool opened up in the middle, the whole ten acres backed up against the golden rocks and chaparral of the Malibu canyon walls that hugged the place on three sides. Heaven.   […]

I grant you this place isn’t the most elegant firetrap in the world, but I like it. It’s the place I start my days. I’m not sure what it’s called officially. I call it Jerry’s because Jerry’s the bartender.

He’s a good egg, doesn’t hassle me. Lets me smoke cigarettes at the bar with my coffee and my paper until noon or until somebody else comes in. He puts the coffee in a proper cup with a saucer, then tops it off with a generous splash of his cheapest vodka, just like I like it. He even puts a spoon on a napkin for me as if it’s a fine dining place.

Jerry must be about a thousand years old. The bartender time forgot. I guess you might say he looks after me. Not that I demand much. Just some peace, quiet, and anonymity to wind down my wasted life.

For instance, a couple of evenings ago, this guy comes in asking about me. Linen suit, shined shoes, cloying cologne slicing through the stench of this old barroom.  […]

One summer, some years ago, I was called back to Illinois for a few weeks to help Mother pack up and move out of the old house—a rambling, three-story job on a tree-lined street near the university. Since I’d moved away, I’d rarely spent more than a long weekend in my hometown—at the holidays, a visit for her birthday or Mother’s Day. For me, it was a place stuck in time. I’d left it long ago and now lived another kind of life out on the West Coast, a life that had seduced me as a young man but for some time now had seemed to merely tolerate my presence.

Giving up the old house was a melancholy task, but maintaining the place had become for Mother a worse kind of chore. Neither of us was looking forward to it, but the time had come to move her into the smaller, more manageable condo she’d picked out for herself in an upscale area near the new
hospital, an area where many of the university’s emeriti had settled.

Mother has always been well-informed about local matters. She reads the paper each morning from front to back and knows every small-town scandal. Though retired, she still enjoys attending university functions and events at the Unitarian Church—partly for the free white wine and the canapés, but mostly for the fountains of gossip.

We were in the attic packing up some things of mine from high school. Mother was paging through my senior yearbook, pointing at little square black-and-white photos of classmates I barely remember, and giving me detailed, sometimes lurid updates on the members of the Class of ’76 who still lived in town—colorful tales about their children, their divorces, their afflictions, their accidents and crimes.   […]

The kitchen is cold this January morning, but that doesn’t matter: Kay sits there in her chair bundled up in an ancient housecoat, layered over yesterday’s sweat suit, just like she would if it were the hottest morning in August. This is her uniform. Don calls it her ‘mantle,’ a kind of cloak of security.

“Is there any coffee?” she asks. I pour her a fresh cup, open the spout of the pint carton of half-and-half, set the sugar bowl next to her, and lay a teaspoon on a napkin.

“Did you sleep well?” I ask.   […]

Never wear white shoes or carry a straw purse after Labor Day.

Moisturize daily. Find a face cream you like and stay with it no matter what. And whatever you do, don’t neglect your throat.

Two-dollar bills are lucky and silver dollars are magical. Keep them in the false floor of your jewelry box. Don’t forget they are there.

Put away glasses and cups upside down on shelf paper. Change that shelf paper every spring when you take the winter coats to the cleaners to be put in mothballs.

Make green beans in the pressure cooker with bacon, sliced onion, peeled potatoes, and carrots.   […]

Maizie stood at the vanity in the women’s lounge at the Downtown Marriott staring at, but not really seeing, her reflection. She was thinking about how Bob was nothing like her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, Sid.

Sid was a handsome man with well-proportioned features. He’d traveled widely and appreciated the finer things of life. He was charismatic, successful. People said he was sharp, in the know. It seemed he had everything on her list.

Since the age of 15, Maizie had been crafting the list—titled “The Ideal Mate,” tucked away in her top dresser drawer—with equal parts pencil and eraser. Through the years she had been misled by rebels and bad boys, outdone by workaholics and strivers, and exhausted by thrill-seekers and hedonists. On the day Sid parked his sleek black car in front of her shop, the time had come to lift up the quality of her life and settle down.   […]

When she heard the loud thump and saw a dark thing hit her picture window, Faith thought someone had thrown a rock at her house. She put down her pen and the crossword puzzle, took off her reading glasses, and rose from her chair, ready to give the damned kids a piece of her mind.

“Damned kids!” was what Frank always said in response to the unexpected incident, the annoying accident, the blameworthy episode—even when whatever had happened was clearly her fault. It was an expression that stayed with her, comforting her, through the years since Frank had been gone.

She ran to the window and looked up and down the street, but there was no one there, no tracks in the snow, not in her front yard, nor the neighbors’. Then she looked down, and there it was on the hard frozen dirt of the neglected window box: a smallish blackish brownish bird, a wild bird, a wintering bird. Faith did not know its genus or species. To her it was a poor little dead thing, lying there perfectly still.

She felt tears welling up.

It was her fault. The window was too big. She’d wiped it too clean. The light inside was too inviting. The house was in its way—the house she picked out and urged Frank to buy. The house they’d bought for a song twenty-eight years ago. The house built decades before that—directly in the path of this fated bird.   […]

I’m no expert on canine behavior, but I do know a few things about dogs.

I make it a point to catch the Westminster Kennel Club finals each February on Animal Planet. I know my breeds and have my favorites: the spaniels, the poodles, the beagles, and the terriers. Each one carries its own singular message confidently around the ring—tail held high, a bounce in the step, a sly grin on soft black lips, as if to say, “Pick me. I’m the one.”

I say, “as if to say” because those dogs aren’t actually saying the words. They are putting ideas in our heads. Which is no small feat in itself.

When I was single, I had a cocker spaniel-poodle mix. Like most clever dogs, Jorge could tell me when he needed to go out, when there was a stranger in the yard, or when it was 5 p.m. and time to stop working. But he could also say, “this water is funky; please change it,” and “yes, I’d like some of that steak but a smaller piece,” and “let’s walk on the other side of the street where it’s shady,” all without speaking a word. Projecting mental pictures with those wide set brown eyes, using cockapoo telepathy alone, he commanded a remarkably precise vocabulary.

What’s more, he was such a good listener! As evolved and self-contained as any Bodhisattva, that suave little guy would proudly squire me around the park—an attentive witness to my innermost thoughts and a quiet, constant advocate in spite of all my failings. Adoring my every iota.   […]