fiction

Finish My Story Start: Miss Lucy Adams

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I felt Lucy come up behind me and hug me.  Both of her arms wrapped tight around my abdomen as she squeezed.  Warmth suffused me.  I loved Lucy’s hugs.  So much better than her rage. 

Photo by Marisa Harris on Unsplash

Lucy was usually all hugs and gentle caresses.  A curtain billowing on a still summer day.  The sofa cushions plumped when I came downstair after a night of good sleep. But she hated men.  Every man.  If I had a repair person in the house, she was all slamming doors and breaking glass.  Gusts of ice cold.

Lucy was a ghost.  She came with the house.

There wasn’t anything of Lucy to see.  She was nothing but a change in the quality of the air.  An occasional fragrance now and again.  She wears Tabu which I hate, but I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything in the world.  She is my ghost and I had wanted one since watching the Ghost and Mrs. Muir as a child. 

Would I have preferred a good-looking sea captain?  Maybe.  But instead, I ended up with Lucy.  I researched my deed one time.  Unusual for a house the age of mine, it had only been deeded to women ever.  The first one being Miss Lucy Adams. I assume that is who watches over me.

I don’t know anything about her other than the 1850 census lists her as a spinster school teacher.  She is the first owner of the house and presumably, she had it built.  The deed just appears as a transfer from The First Huntington Bank.

I had a roommate for a short while.  A gay gentleman who was quite lovely to me, but scornful of his lovers.  He could do a wicked impersonation of his then-current paramour.  Robbie needed to vent his spleen to love.  I often felt sorry for his conquests.  Not Lucy.  She hated Robbie and would trash his room.  Over and over.  Each day he returned home from work I could hear the sound of “Damn it, Lucy!  I’ve done nothing to you.”  After six months or so of Lucy’s bad behavior, he moved out.  He was an otherwise ideal roommate.  Gone most of the time, on time with the rent, and handy with a hammer, and taking out the trash.

I got lots of hugs when the cab came and carried him off for the last time.

Lucy was pleased.  I found the couch cushions continuously plumped with a soft indentation where Lucy had sat waiting for me to get home.

Things were idyllic at home until I met Roger. 

We worked together at the university—he was new to the English Dept.  I was in Classical Languages.  Our paths crossed now and again.  Then it was lunch together.  Then he asked me out.  I thought of Lucy before saying yes but arranged to meet him somewhere.  We went out for a while.  When I would come home with the smell of him on me, Lucy would slam doors and rage.  She broke my favorite vase the night I finally invited him over for dinner. 

Roger saw the vase rise from the center of the foyer table and land on the African sculpture hung over the fireplace.  The hearth was littered with jagged cobalt blue glass and ebony.

What the hell was that?  He exclaimed.

I replied, “That was Lucy.  My ghost.  She doesn’t like men and I don’t  know why.”

Roger looked at me with a visage I couldn’t read…

The Night Marla Did ,You Know, That Thing

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Marla had been precocious as a child. She had been almost a caricature of the precocious child. Sure in her diction, composed in her movements, confident in her thoughts.  People had wondered at the time what her future held for her.  They predicted great things. President, neurosurgeon, astronaut.  Nothing average for her.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

But Marla discovered boys at 15 much to the displeasure of her parents.  “Boy crazy,” they said with hopes this would soon pass, but never in Marla’s 15 years had she had a passing fancy.  She grabbed on tight and learned everything she could.

In this instance, she grabbed on tight to Dylan Roberts, 16-year-old heartthrob. She studied Dylan like he was a particularly irregular Spanish verb. Dylan was just as taken with Marla for he’d had a crush on her since first grade when she wore that yellow sweater. To his credit, he had some precociousness under his belt too.  Yes, he was the star quarterback but he was also on track to be the class’s valedictorian just as Marla was on track to be her class’s.

Marla took to wearing smokey eyeshadow and ripped jeans.  Her father was dismayed. Her mother thought to say something but then thought better of it. Marla had always been strong-willed especially if pushed in a corner.  Her grades were still good.

The normality of being a 15-year-old girl in love invigorated Marla to ape the behavior of her peers.  She became increasingly concerned with fashion, cut and permed her hair, and spent hours in the bathroom straightening those expensive curls into soft waves.  She was blossoming into a bombshell and her father took to a nightly scotch.  He was worried.  He knew 16-year-old boys.  He’d been one.

It seemed a fleeting moment but in reality had been several months that their studious, possessed, and driven daughter was the popular girl at school, was glued to her boyfriend every waking moment, and earned her first B which did not distress her. “It was just one of five tests, Mama. I’ll make it up. Besides, advanced biology was a mistake.  Fashion consultants don’t need advanced biology.” 

Marla’s mom started joining her husband for the nightly scotch.

Marla’s father decided to have a talk with her.  Over breakfast, he said, “Marla, I would like for you to be home at 7 tonight.  Your mother and I wish to talk to you.” He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he was going to say it.

“Sure, Pops, I need to talk to you two too,” she said spooning yogurt into her mouth.  Marla’s father studied the rusticity of her outfit – flannel shirt tied at the waist revealing cleavage and midriff with tight jeans and a rope belt.  Marla said it was spirit week at school as if that somehow explained the Daisy Mae costume.

At 7 pm, the family gathered at the kitchen table.  Marla took the lead. 

“Mom, Dad, before you start there’s something I want to discuss. I’m turning 16 next month and I want to host a party here at the house.  One with minimal parental influence.  In the basement.  No drinking, no drugs, no adults.  We just want to be able to be ourselves.

I also made an appointment with Dr. Clark. Dylan and I have talked. It’s time I was on birth control.

Marla’s father stood up and retrieved the decanter of scotch and two glasses.

Her mother rushed to the bathroom to throw up.

This became known as “The Night Marla Did, You Know, That Thing.”

Peas and Broccoli

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My name is Gus.  Gregory named me.  Gus.  No last name.  Gregory is only 3. He’s not up to speed on the concept of last names.

I’m a superhero accountant and Cheez-Its bring out my powers. I wear them in a pouch around my neck. I can climb like Spiderman, but I can also fly.  I am often blamed for not eating the mushrooms when they’re served.  Gregory does not like mushrooms. His parents insist he try them each time, but he doesn’t have to finish them. Gregory so hates mushrooms that even a taste makes him shudder. He tells his mom and dad that I will just spit them out. I wouldn’t. That’s bad table manners. So, Gregory spits them out.  Well spits it out. He will find the smallest one put it in his mouth with a grimace, wretch, and then spit it out.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

His parents think he is overreacting. He is not. Gregory simply cannot abide the texture. 

Gregory likes Miss Rachel on YouTube and his life-sized Cody doll. Cody is very soft and squishy.  Apropos of nothing, Gregory will holler, “Peas and broccoli” and then collapse into peals of giggles. It always makes his parents laugh. Me too. 

Gregory loves me.

I do not make his parents laugh. They think I’ve gone on too long.  They are concerned.

I think it’s unfair that they try to shoo me.  I’ve done nothing wrong. I am Gregory’s friend. His best friend. His only friend. Maybe when he starts preschool or daycare he will be done with me, who knows.  I hope not. He is my best friend too. 

During nap time, we whisper to one another in our secret language.  This really concerns his mom and dad.  It’s clear that it’s a secret language and it’s clear that we use it to keep the adults out.

Even Grandma isn’t allowed to know the secret language either and he tells Grandma everything.  Even about me. She knows there is a language, but Gregory will not translate for her.

“Peas and broccoli” in the secret language is a phrase of complete exasperation. Oh for peas and broccoli. You get the idea.

But when I’m not around, Gregory doesn’t use the secret language.  At those times, the phrase is just nonsense.

I love Gregory, but he will soon be done with me.  I have served my purpose.  I am similar to his dad, but I always have time for Gregory.  No household tasks or homework to interrupt our time together. His mother is just a lost cause.  She is so stressed.  Trying to keep the home neat and orderly. Trying to get a promotion at work.

Perhaps they are right to be concerned.  They are blowing it. There is only this one time that Gregory will be three. Will believe in me and my ability to climb skyscrapers or fly from one to another. Will make me spit out mushrooms and holler Peas and Broccoli.

Isobel

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Isobel scrubbed out what was left of her third cigarette of the morning and drained the dregs of her second mug of coffee.  Black of course.  No sugar.  Of course.

She’d been chain-smoking Marlboros and shotgunning coffee since she joined the Academy at 14.  It was the only way to keep her profile long and lean.

Sacramento portrait photographer Mayumi Acosta aims to share the many facets of the women she photographs. https://lnkd.in/gsamcc7r

Isobel was famous for the lines she could make of her body.  She preferred modern dance in nothing but a leotard the exact shade of her skin, but when you are called to dance, you go where your talent takes you. 

And so she was the prima for the New York Ballet – a position envied by many.

Today they had her costumed in swirls and twirls of scarlet silk and chiffon. Madame signaled that it was time to begin.  She walked in her toe shoes, that distinctive walk that only ballet dancers with years of experience can duplicate, to the center of the backdrop.  Simple black. The scarlet of her costume, the pale peach of her skin, with her dark hair — oh the photos would be extraordinary if the photographer had even a drop of skill.  En pointe, she lengthened her neck, pulled her arms into position, and rotated.  She heard the photographer gasp before she heard the camera shutter start its incessant chatter.  She always strained for that sound. When her audience gasped, she knew her body was telling her true.  She had arranged the lines perfectly. The veins and arteries of her neck reaching upward as did her arms and fingers – balanced perfectly on her toes and the wooden blocks inside her shoes.

Would Claude be in the audience tonight?  She wondered as she pirouetted and her skirts billowed to the background rhythm of the shutter clicking.  Claude was pursuing her with diligence and finesse. She had learned he was a podiatrist early on.  She was dubious that she could allow herself to be at ease with him.  Surely, such a doctor would want beautiful feet.

What most didn’t know was that professional ballerinas had the world’s most god-awful feet.  Isobel was vain.  She did not see her ugly feet as the vehicle for her talent.  She saw them as grotesque appendages never to be exposed to a curious world.  She never wore sandals and only went to the beach with water shoes. She could not fathom exposing her naked feet to a connoisseur. 

Claude’s interest was likely to be rebuffed.  Again.