writing

The Tree on Williams Street

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The crab apple tree in front of our Williams Street house wasn’t imposing or even all that old, but it was perfect to climb and hide in.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Actually, I wasn’t all that hidden when sitting there, but most people didn’t look up to peer for children amongst the branches.

I clocked a lot of hours in that tree.

Williams was a dead-end street so there wasn’t much to see other than the occasions when the neighbor’s teenager would climb onto their roof and play his trumpet.  Weird kid. Bad trumpet player, but I suppose he should get credit for practicing.

I’m sure that I dragged a book up there with me now and again, but I don’t remember reading in the tree.  Of course, I read everywhere.  I read like most people breathe – everywhere all the time. 

I was older—12, 13, 14 – on the cusp – living my life, but also waiting for it to begin.

I do remember one vivid day at 14 when I waited for my boyfriend while sitting in the tree and there he came, bepopping down the middle of Williams, carrying the largest heart-shaped box of candy I’d ever seen.  Whitman’s.  It was Valentine’s Day – a special occasion.  I usually did my tree-sitting in the summer.

I liked being in the tree. I felt hidden and the configuration of the branches made climbing easy.  The trunk and major limb were in such a position as to make reclining in the tree very comfortable for my lithe teenage self.

One summer I took to making caftans out of old sheets.  I’d waft around in yards of white percale dragging behind me and eventually climb the tree –no mean feat in an oversized sheet and sit there pondering the universe. Feeling spiritual and Egyptian in my badly sewn caftan.

Kenny-the-roof-trumpeter had nothing on me in the weirdness department. 

I do remember dragging bags of Doritos into the tree with me. I carried the bag in my clenched teeth reserving both hands to scramble up the tree.  Doritos were the new snack and took the country by storm.  There were two flavors – plain and taco.  I loved the taco ones and considered the bag a single serving.  I was always hungry in those days. A bottomless pit of hunger and volatile hormones.

I’d wipe my orange-stained fingers on my caftan when done. 

So, there I was, a long gangly teenager in a bedsheet streaked with orange stains perched in a tree going through puberty one long summer day at a time. 



























Another Start to a Story: Vivienne

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One doesn’t usually think of a priestess as vivacious, but Vivienne was that and more.  In a future lifetime, she would have been the perfect cheerleader for the local high school team.  She was pert, petite, cheerful and possessed a giggle that could make even curmudgeons laugh aloud.

Photo by Tolga Ahmetler on Unsplash

But as the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, her path was foretold in prophecy and her parents had no choice but to turn her over to the Temple at Ivance.  She was not sad for Vivienne was excited as always was at the thought of a new adventure.  Her father, however, was bereft.

He had hand-built her trunk for her.  Wiping a tear he hoped no one would see, he loaded it into the cart the temple sent to carry Vivienne off. It weighed next to nothing because it was filled with nothing as instructed.  She would arrive at Ivance with only the trunk and the clothes on her back. This felt wrong to him.  He was a fortunate and proud man.  He could provision his daughter.

 She was his favorite child.  The last of 13 – all who had survived. But Vivienne was the only one who had thrived.  She was the life of the household, and he knew things would be very different without her.  He was filled with a type of remorse he couldn’t admit to. He wished one of the other girls had been the seventh of the seventh.  Agnes perhaps.  She seemed more temperamentally suited to the life he imagined the temple would entail—not that he or anyone knew. The temple was self-sufficient and cloistered.  The daily routines of the women there were shrouded in secrecy.  The only glimpse the villagers had was on the holy days and then all they saw were well-practiced rituals with everyone silent and in step.

It was hard to imagine Vivienne silent for any length of time.  She’d been chattering nonstop since her first word.

Vivienne bounced around from sibling to sibling stopping to nuzzle the horse’s neck now and again.  The women sent to fetch her stood silent and dignified.  Vivienne was a bird flitting from branch to branch. She understood that it would be some time before she saw her family again, which concerned her, but what an adventure awaited her!  Rumor had it that she would be taught to read. She couldn’t even imagine the wonders about to unfold.

As she said her goodbyes, punctuated with giggles and exhortations to live a good life, the priestesses began moving about checking the reins and adjusting the cart contents when one of them finally said “Vivienne, the time of fulfillment has come.  Let us leave.”

Vivienne hopped into the back of the cart and sat amidst the bags of wheat—offerings from the village folk—and her empty trunk.

As the cart made its way down the rutted path, the villagers came out to wave goodbye.  They too would miss Vivienne.  Everyone’s heart was heavy, but Vivienne’s eyes sparkled.  

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.”