A Short, Short, Short Story

In the last post I set a goal to write a piece of "flash fiction" each week - I find that's not quite as easy as it sounds. What a struggle to keep it short and sharp. Still I did come up with one this weekend - a rather grim little tale but I promise to lighten up for the next one!

CUTTER
“How you doing back there, Jen?” Her daughter had quit whimpering. That was either good or very, very bad.
Megan kept her eyes forward and away from the rearview mirror. She knew she shouldn’t be worrying about the blood soaking into the car seats but she couldn’t help it. How will I get the stains out? And what does that say about my priorities?
“You okay? If you don’t answer I’m pulling over.”
“Go ahead. What do I care? I didn’t want to come anyhow.”
Megan ran the tail end of a yellow at Boren Avenue.
“Are you all right or not?”
“Peachy. How much longer?”
“Not long if the lights cooperate.”
“You should have left me there.”
“Sure, that was going to happen.”
“Seriously, why bother? I’ll just do it again you know.”
“Look, what choice did I have? What was I supposed to do, leave you bleeding all over the kitchen?”
“I only agreed to come with you because you threatened to call the cops.”
“I wasn’t calling the cops. I was calling 911 for an ambulance.” She changed lanes, signaling a right hand turn. “What did you expect me to do when I find you sitting in a pool of blood?”
“I didn’t expect anything from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Leave me alone.”
Traffic had slowed to a crawl around a two block stretch of pothole repair. Damn, if Jennifer had let me call an ambulance we’d be there by now.
“What did you want anyway?”
“Can’t I visit my own daughter without ulterior motives?”
“For once, just give me a straight answer. What did you want from me?”
“I hadn’t heard from you since . . . well, must have been Christmas. I was worried.”
“If you were so worried you could have phoned.”
“Okay, so I wanted to see for myself you were all right. Which, as it turns out, you weren’t, were you? Cuts all over your arms and judging from the scars this isn’t the first time you’ve done this, Jennifer. Are you on drugs? Is that why you’re doing this?”
“Sure, blame it on drugs, Mother. That way you won’t have to deal with the real reasons your daughter cuts herself.”
“Now who’s not giving straight answers?”
“I’m not in the mood for this anymore.”
Megan followed the signs pointing the way to the emergency room, pulling the car up to the curb near the entrance.
“I won’t go in,” said Jennifer.
“Don’t be silly. You might need stitches.”
“I don’t have insurance.”
“They have to treat everyone who comes in.”
“I’ll go in if you tell me why you really came to see me.”
Does it matter any more?
“I’ve left your dad,” said Megan.
“Good,” said her daughter. “But you’ll go back.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you always do. You can’t get enough of the pain.”
Megan helped Jennifer out of the car, noting that the blood stains weren’t nearly as bad as she had imagined.
###

2009 Blog Goal

In a few hours I will be off down the street to this week's Writers Workshop - which got me thinking that I really had better set my writing goal for this year. Last year I started the blog as a way to bludgeon myself into hitting the computer at least once a week - the theory being that a rock-solid deadline would lock me into a healthy habit of practicing what I preach to my workshop. And I did pretty well, posting faithfully every week (more or less). That's one heck of a lot of words! The initial format was to post a poem, a few comments, and a plant care tip. But after a while the blog developed its own notions and morphed into a grab bag of all sorts of projects - including an entire Summer spent reading and commenting on Jane Austen! I learned quite a bit - especially that I have no desire to read Austen ever ever again.

This year I'll focus on short fiction - my intention is to post a piece of flash fiction each week (around 500 words). To start things off I'll cheat by offering a story I published last year in our workshop collection since the topic relates to last week's post. The story was inspired by an actual telephone conversation between my mom and her brother, Bud, who recently passed away after years struggling with Alzhiemers.

TOAST

Peggy was just waking up in her daughter’s guest bed, anticipating a wonderful two week visit in sunny California when she heard a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Mom, are you awake?” said her daughter. “Uncle Bud is on the phone for you. He sounds upset”
Oh no, thought Peggy. Ever since Bud’s wife of fifty years had died a few months before, Peggy had worried about her younger brother. How would he manage all on his own for the first time?
She reached for the phone, nearly knocking it off the bedside table.
“Bud, what’s wrong?” she said. “Has something happened?”
“Um, Peggy, I think I have a problem.” His voice was tight and small.
Peggy went cold with fear.
“Peg, are you there?”
“Yes, go ahead. Tell me what’s happened,” she said, imagining floods, blood, tornadoes. All sorts of disasters descending upon her poor “little” brother in Oregon.
“Well, I was thinking I’d like a piece of toast this morning.”
Peggy looked at the phone as if it had suddenly grown tentacles.
“I’m sorry, Bud, there is something wrong with the phone. I thought I heard you say something about toast.”
“I was wondering if you could tell me how to do it.”
“How to do what, Bud? What are you talking about?”
“About making toast,” said her brother.
“It’s five o’clock in the morning, Bud!”
“That’s why I thought toast sounded good. So, what do I do?”
Peggy was suddenly quite angry that Bud’s wife, Sigrid, had been such a passionate homemaker she hadn’t let her husband enter her kitchen except to place the weekly grocery bags on the counter.
“Bud, do you have the toaster plugged in?”
Peggy felt it was always a good idea to start with the obvious.
“Uh yes, it’s plugged in.”
“Did you put the bread in it?”
The silence was overlong.
“Mmm. Yes. Got it. But nothing is happening.”
“Put your hand over the slots. Is it getting warm?”
“Uh no.”
“Did you push down the lever on the side?” asked his patient sister.
“Just a minute. Okay. Yep, there’s heat coming out now.”
“Wonderful! Well, enjoy your breakfast, Buddy!”
“Wait, Peg! How do I know it’s done?”
Oh my lord, thought Peggy.
“Bud, it pops up when it’s done!”
The line was eerily quiet.
“Bud, is that all you needed?”
"Um. Peg?,” said her brother.
“Yes, Buddy?”
“You don’t by any chance know where Sigrid might have kept the raspberry jam, do you?”
###

End of an Era

Sorry for my month long absense! And thank you to all who have emailed me with your speculations as to my mysterious disappearance. No, I have not fallen off the earth or wrecked my pretty new auto (whose name, by the way, is SU-Z-Q the Subaru - thinking of getting a vanity plate next year).

What actually happened was my mother's younger brother (at 92 years old) died a few weeks back. He had suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's disease for the last few decades. And though his death was not unexpected, it was nonetheless a trying time for us all. Since last Fall I've been working on a novel roughly based on events and circumstances surrounding his illness - it was the novel I wrote for National Novel Writing Month. My uncle's death has pushed the project ahead - as well as prompted me to write a memoir of my six year stint as his trustee/caregiver. I will be posting some of it as a kind of cautionary tale - the story of a family tragedy. Like Dickens' "Bleak House", it involves a trust fund and the distruction of a family. Here is the first draft beginning:

This is a cautionary tale and a mystery - it’s also a story of deception, confusion, elder abuse, exploitation, and neglect. My part of the story started in the Fall of 2003 when I became my uncle’s trustee.
His wife had died the previous Valentines Day and my mother, his elder sister, began to suspect that the old man was not coping very well on his own. Uncle had always left domestic matters to his wife. She was keeper of the check book and manager of the household. Now that she was gone Mom felt her “little” 87 year old brother could use someone to make sure bills got paid etc. She “volunteered” me, saying that all I would actually have to do was collect rents from Uncle’s rental properties, make deposits, mail checks. Sure, what the heck, I thought. I’m pretty good at financial practicalities so I’d pitch in and do my part. How hard could it be? (You can see it coming, right?)
One thing to understand is that Uncle lived half way down the coast in Oregon, five hours drive from Mom and me. We had seen him at most twice a year during the previous fifty years - talking on the phone and exchanging Christmas cards of course but not much more. In the Spring Mom attended Aunt’s funeral and seeing how lost and flummoxed her brother seemed, she easily slipped back into her childhood role of bossy big sister.
In retrospect it’s clear that we knew next to nothing of Uncle’s true situation. We had accepted as true the elaborate fiction he’d woven around his life for half a century. Not that he had consciously, deliberately lied to us - Uncle was utterly incapable of guile and probably would have been amazed had anyone pointed out that there was a disconnect between who he thought he was and who he really was. He had wanted everyone to think well of him so the image he presented to the world was one of a successful independent business man, owner of rental properties, investor in oil wells - in other words, if not a wealthy man at least a man comfortably well off. He often told us he was making lots of money in the market and his duplexes were producing healthy cash flow. We had no way of knowing none of it was true.
As a child I heard what the family said of Uncle: that he was well-to-do but something of a cheapskate. He never picked up a check at the restaurant even though he could afford to, never left a tip unless someone reminded him and, even when reminded, he was not a big tipper. And he seemed to think no one noticed how slickly he had fumbled his way out of paying. We kids thought it was terribly funny. The adults would shake their heads when they were once again stuck with the bill. Everyone saw Uncle as cheap as Jack Benny - an eccentricity at once aggravating and comical.
There were times though when his perceived miserliness could cause pain to members of his family - times of hardship and trial when a monetary bailout would have saved the day yet he never did offer. Several family members wrote him off as cold and cruel. I learned much later he was neither but it hardly mattered by then. Some wounds don’t heal.
All I really knew that Autumn of 2003 was that Uncle was a sad elderly widower in need of my assistance. Whatever I personally thought of him I couldn’t turn my back on family - nor was I about to refuse when my mom asked me to help. No one turns down Mom. So I signed on as trustee of my uncle’s “Family Trust”, though at that point I wouldn’t have known a “Trust” if it bit me on the behind. (I capitalize Trust, the legal entity, to destinguish it from trust, as in belief in the honesty and reliability of another.)
Most people, even when they are talked into setting up Trusts, don’t understand what a Trust is - how complicated they are, how much work they generate. They are sold the idea of setting up Trusts as a way to avoid probate but, believe me, probate creates nowhere near the misery of managing a Trust.
I called the attorney in Oregon who had set up the Trust ten years before - learning in the process that there were two Trusts, not one. There was Uncle’s, which was a “revocable living trust”. There was also my aunt’s “irrevocable trust”. (When a person dies their revocable trust becomes irrevocable.) My uncle had been trustee of them both - when he passed the baton to me I became trustee of both Trusts. I also found out that every cent and every property Uncle supposedly possessed were held within the Trusts. His only personal income was a tiny monthly Social Security check - tiny because as a self employed man he had paid nothing into the Social Security system. He called this $500.00 monthly check “free money” he could just have fun with - “mad money” - he didn’t understand that he had nothing else.
That was as much as I learned from the attorney because as he pointed out he had no attorney/client relationship with the Trusts - he was my uncle’s personal attorney, not the attorney for the Trusts. And who then was the attorney for the Trusts? I asked. As far as he knew there wasn’t one. Not good news.
He explained that a Trust is like a corporation, a legal entity with its own strict demands and restrictions. A person who sets up a Trust has no further access to the assets of the Trust beyond what the trustee determines is a reasonable monthly or yearly distribution to the Trust’s beneficiary. The purpose of a Trust is to preserve wealth, therefore a trustee is not legally allowed to speculate with assets or divert Trust assets to personal use. In other words if you put your house in Trust it is no longer your house - it belongs to the Trust and what happens to it is up to the trustee, not you. You had better have yourself one heck of a trustworthy trustee!
Unfortunately, for ten years Uncle had not had a trustworthy trustee - though he certainly hadn’t realized it. He had appointed himself as his own trustee. Which is very like a dentist filling his own teeth. No doubt Uncle had been lured by media hype touting the benefits of Trusts as a way of avoiding taxes and probate. He would have thought he was being very clever - kind of like dodging the dinner check at the Olive Garden Restaurant.
The Trusts now squarely my responsibility, I got on the internet to learn everything I could on properly managing them - the first thing being that it was not for amateurs. I would need to immediately hire an attorney and a C. P. A . - especially since I lived a state away from where the trust properties were located. Being an out of state trustee complicated already muddy matters. So, next day I hired an attorney who specialized in elder law and also hired a very savvy accountant - both of which earned their keep from the first day by pointing out that the trusts needed bank accounts to receive rent deposits from the duplexes. (Each trust owned three of the six duplexes, thus splitting the rental income evenly.)
The banker asked me to produce legal documentation of my authority to act as trustee - a one inch stack of legalese which the banker photo copied and stuffed into a matching pair of clean white folders. By the end of an hour I had two checking accounts and a large safe deposit box. I was now ready to deposit rent checks and pay the attorney and accountant - had there been money to deposit. But my uncle’s tenants were still depositing the monthly rent payments into Uncle’s personal checking account. I’d have to contact all the renters and ensure they sent me, a total stranger in another state, their money from here on. How on earth would I do that, I wondered. There was also the issue of collecting the trusts’ financial records, files, tax returns etc. Which, I was beginning to suspect, probably did not exist. I had no recourse but to get into my car and get myself down to Oregon. There are some things you just have to do in person. There was no way I could sort the mess out without sitting down with my uncle for a good long talk. That would prove to be impossible. (To be continued)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO 2009 - AND TO ME!

You might remember that back in the Spring I challenged my car dealership clients to find me a super used car within my plant lady budget. "Little Rusty", my 25 year old Toyota, has decided to retire after a long, useful life. It still runs like a champ but its windshield is cracked, its radio and air don't work, it needs four new tires and its body is . . . well, rusty. The dealers presented for my approval a variety of vehicles. None rang any bells for me.

Then a few weeks ago (when we were up to our rears in snow), my counterpart in West Geekatopia offered to sell me her 1999 Subaru Outback - a car I have been lusting after since she bought it many years ago. Price was right and I love the car, so I'm giving myself a car for my birthday! (Photo above is not the exact car but close enough) Let it be said that I have never actually PURCHASED a car. My first car was a 1965 T-Bird that my mom bought me. It was totaled a few years later by a drunk driver (not me). Insurance paid practically nothing - a friend found me a '62 Dodge Dart so that I could get out and about. I drove it until my dad passed away and left me his '67 Barracuda. Then about ten years ago my sister gave me her 1984 Toyota Supra (Little Rusty). So tomorrow I will buy a car - for the first time! Pretty exciting!

This week I'm seeing Outbacks everywhere. There are apparently zillions on the road - whole herds of them. Every other car in the parking lot is an Outback. It seems I am joining some kind of movement. Will have to change my image to conform - start wearing a lot of L. L. Bean, more plaid. Get myself a pair of hiking boots and a down filled parka. With the weather we have had of late I should be oh so appropriately attired.

Of course now that I am prepared to meet any wild winter weather - prepared to all-wheel-drive-it over mountainous glaciers - we will undoubtedly not see another snow flake, ever! I might have to migrate to Alaska. On second thought . . .

White Christmas Eve!

(Photo 1: front courtyard this morning.)
For the first time in over 25 years Seattle will have snow for Christmas. I got out to Geekatopia for a half day yesterday - though it was touch and go the whole trip. Flipper, my van, nearly lived up to his name as we slid and spun through several feet of ice and snow all over Mercer Island and Bellevue. (Photo 2: Picnic on back deck.) This morning with three more inches on the ground he has refused to move from his nice safe parking space beside the fence. I don't blame him! I am going to start a cheery fire in the fireplace and get on with some serious revisions on this year's NaNoWriMo novel. Cheers!

WINTER SOLSTICE

Happy Winter Solstice!

Every ten years or so Seattle gets a genuine Winter instead of our usual pathetic misty moisties. This morning we are in the cross hairs of a mini-ice age, the forecast warning of high winds, snow, freezing rain. The thermometer on the back deck reads twelve degrees. A recipe for power outages and cold suppers if I ever saw one. By this time tomorrow I may be stoking up the fireplace insert and thanking my lucky stars I have enough lamp oil stored in the garage. But since computers are not oil-powered there is a certain urgency in getting the post up today.

Where was last week’s post, you might wonder. Frozen under a foot of last week’s snow of course. Not one flake has melted off the courtyard, the garden, the deck, or Flipper, my poor work van (see above), since it buried us Wednesday night. Still, Flipper and I managed to make it to all but nineteen accounts before getting stopped in our tracks by this Fargo-like weather. I despair of next week’s route - how on earth will I dig myself out of the drifts and pack forty hours of work into three days? And three days it will be since Christmas is on Thursday! How many offices are likely to be open on Friday, do you think? Pretty much none.

One thing to know about Seattle: we don’t do snow. We have nothing much in the way of snow plows so our tactic has always been to hunker down at the sight of the first flake, halting all activity until melt-off - which is usually a matter of hours. Just as native Seattlites don’t own umbrellas, they also don’t generally possess snow boots, gloves, woolly scarves and hats or thermal underwear unless they are addicted to skiing or snow boarding.

Yesterday I watched two snowmobiles churn their way up my street toward Albertson’s supermarket - I found myself envying them as I dressed myself in multiple layers, located my black kid opera gloves and the wool watch cap my dad wore for decades on the flight line down at Boeing. Garbed like one of the South Park kids, I set off up the hill with a Trader Joe’s bag under one arm and a short grocery list stuffed in my pocket. It was an endless, slippery, bone-chilling two blocks. By the time I reached Albertson’s my glasses had steamed over, my nose was running, and I was kicking myself that I hadn’t hitched a ride from the guys on the snowmobiles.

I bought a package of split peas, a couple of ham hocks, carrots and celery - the prospect of a steaming pot of homemade split pea soup being the only thing capable of prying me out of my nice warm house and up that snowy hill! On the way home I noticed a neighbor trying to clear his driveway by dragging a hand truck up and down the slope - which I thought was pretty creative on his part.
Still, I felt sorry for the poor guy so as soon as I got home with the soup makings I loaned him my snow shovel - the snow shovel I use for spreading bark around the garden. My five year old five-dollar snow shovel is finally doing the job it was created for! Just goes to show.

So, just in case I am stranded in an ice cave until 2009, happy holidays from our house to yours!!

Gobble-gobble

Nope, it hasn't snowed - this photo was taken last year, but this is the weekend I decorate the house plants for the holidays. Our tiny house is too small for a full-blown tree - even if I were someone who believed in killing a perfectly happy tree for a few weeks of glitz and glam. Plant ladies don't murder plants if they can help it.

In many ways this tradition of decorating the family houseplants is more meaningful to me than if I bought a fir tree down at the market. The Christmas cactus at the center of the photo is the one I inherited from my grandmother - she in turn inherited it from her mother, the original Sallie Tierney. The "library table" on which the plants stand was also my grandmother's and appears in Christmas photographs all the way back to the 1930s.

And speaking of traditions, every year my sister calls to ask how to roast a turkey - this Thanksgiving was no exception. I take it as a compliment that she thinks I actually know how to perform this mystical seasonal ritual. Our grandmother (same one who passed down the Christmas cactus) hated cooking - agonized over holiday dinners so intensely that she made herself sick with stress every year. I don't remember her ever just enjoying the holidays. She agonized over every dish - but especially the turkey.

Over the years I must have tried dozens of turkey roasting theories. I've basted, trussed, rubbed, brined, stuffed, unstuffed, herbed, buttered, oiled, smoked and bar-b-qued - roasted breast side up and breast side down - quick cook and slow cook. The only thing I have never tried is deep fried - I'm a total coward when it comes to boiling oil!

I have found only one sure-fire, stress-free, perfect way to roast a turkey - and it is also the easiest method. Here's the instructions for benefit of my sister and all other turkey-intimidated folks:

1. Thaw bird (remembering to remove the weird little packets of turkey guts)
2. Rub olive oil all over the bird. Tuck wing tips under bird - wrap drumstick ends with foil
3. IF YOU WISH, rub bird inside and out with herbs/spices of your choice - I like lemon pepper this year. Think of the turkey as a humongous chicken and get creative. Forget the salt - most turkeys are pumped with salt water these days.
4. No matter how tempted, do not stuff anything at all into the cavity! No onions, herbs, bread - nothing. Why ask for trouble? It roasts more evenly unstuffed.
5. Place bird in roasting pan breast side up. Pour an inch or two of water or white wine or both in roasting pan. DON'T COVER!
6. Place bird on lower rack of an oven preheated to 475 degrees - Yep, I said 475. Roast for 30 to 45 minutes at that temperature until top of bird is starting to brown. This step seals in the moisture, ensuring that the turkey will not be dry.
7. Now, lower oven temperature to 325 or 350. Loosely cover turkey with a sheet of aluminum foil. (Do not use roasting pan lid)
8. Take a nap, go shopping, eat a can of black olives, feed the cat, write a poem. Don't even think about the turkey. It's not going anywhere and doesn't need anything from you.If you just can't stand not peeking, check it after a few hours - add water to the roasting pan if it's getting dry. Baste if it makes you feel noble.
9. After about 5 or 6 hours (for a 20lb bird) the little button will pop up (if you bought one of those button-equipped turkeys) - or you can use a meat thermometer or wiggle a leg to see if the turkey is done.
10. When the turkey is done, remove from oven and let it "rest" for 15 or 20 minutes. Carve it. Serve it. Save the bones for the best part of the meal - turkey soup! (People who know me, know that I have the stock pot going well before anyone sits down to the holiday meal.)

Okay, that's it. Print it up, Mary Ann, so you won't have to call in a few weeks - but call anyway!