Authors: J. J. Murray
And ultimately pathetic.
At least
I
read.
The only things that give this room any kind of order are Post-it notes. Affixed to every flat surface are more fluttering Post-it per square inch than any office has ever seen, each a piece of the puzzle I grandiosely call my “works in progress.” So many scribbles and hieroglyphics. I guess it’s my way of keeping my ideas a secret, even from me. These cryptic notes blot out most of the pictures on the shelves behind them, photographs of Stevie, Noël, my family, Grandma Ella, Noël’s family, Stevie again, a few cousins, my nieces and nephews, Noël again in one of those Glamour Shots, my parents, Stevie again…and again.
Visible atop a speaker attached to no visible stereo is my first baby cup, the silver now a dark black, and inside that cup is a two-dollar bill, given to me by my maternal grandfather after a particularly good day at the dog races in Juarez, Mexico. Next to this less-than-sparkling cup is a baseball autographed by Ted Williams, the Splendid Splinter, who, sadly, has passed away recently.
I would have more room if this office weren’t also the guest room (complete with full-sized bed overflowing with files, newspapers, magazines, and books, each with numerous page corners turned down) and the catchall room. An old Tandy computer, its pride wounded from neglect, serves to keep the closet door closed, and a gargantuan monochrome monitor sporting a TV antenna for a hat stares blankly from atop a TV stand where once sat a thirteen-inch TV with no remote control.
I haven’t opened the closet since 1999, when Noël had heard a rustling sound in the walls. I had located the rustling inside the closet where empty computer boxes and warranty cards (and other things manufacturers told me not to
ever
throw away) lived in harmony, evidently, with mice. I had played the mighty hunter that day, pinning one of the mice to the baseboard with my shoe. I thought, of course, that I had solved the “noises-in-the-walls” issue, but, of course, I hadn’t. That one mouse dragged itself around in the closet using its front paws, struggling to chew through another warranty card or the corner of another computer box, just wanting to make its way in the world that is the closet.
I don’t plan to open that closet anytime soon.
Other than the laptop on top of the desk, there are several coffee cups, each with brown residue at the bottom and at the top edges, each crying out to be rescued with a semiannual visit to the kitchen sink. In the “97.1 WQMG Smooth R&B…Classic Soul” cup, with the residue covered with fluffs of dust, are several red pens, their tops chewed to the quick or missing. And under my most recent cup, a broad yellow smiley cup in the very best seventies tradition—a Father’s Day gift from Noël—is a stack of paper ripped from a steno pad.
I hardly remember writing this…rambling set of paragraphs, notes, and squiggles, in no certain order, that formed the basis for the remarks I had planned to make at Grandma Ella’s funeral over a year ago. I had written some of them while stuck in traffic outside Philadelphia on I–76 the night of the funeral service. The rest I composed in the pew at the church.
I never read my remarks. I was too choked up, too intimidated by other family members making remarks, and simply too scared to speak in front of 500 people. But for some reason, I saved these notes.
Intro: Start with last lines from Robinson’s “Lucinda Matlock”: “Degenerate sons and daughters…It takes life to love life.”
I smile. I had scratched out “Degenerate sons and daughters.” That wouldn’t have gone over too well with my father, aunts, or uncles.
The ideal Ella was a fisherwoman, a fish cleaner, an outdoorswoman in flannel shirts and funny hats, a pianist, composer, and writer.
Grandma Ella was a true Renaissance woman. Noël said that Grandma Ella was really my muse.
She sure could cook.
Yeah.
She survived polio, open-heart surgery, a late baby, a Catholic president whom she thought was the anti-Christ, knee replacement surgery, and cancer. I lived most of my life scared of this woman, This saint who once washed out my mouth with a bar of Camay for saying “dang,” which she said was a derivative of “damn.”
I doubt I would have read all of that. Saying “damn” in a church would have doomed me from attending any future Browning reunions.
I remember so many things:
…The way she drove her Oldsmobile station wagon with one foot flat on the gas, the other foot bumping the brake, as if she were late for heaven or something and everybody had better not stop her from being first in line to see Jesus
…The birthday cards she sent me, 40 in all, each with $2, the last card mailed from what would be her deathbed
…I remember Red Rose tea and the gingersnaps, pretzels, and saltines in the big tins up at the lake in Canada that she swore would “never rot or spoil” since they were made in Pennsylvania
…Her telling me, “can’t is spelled w-o-n-apostrophe t.”
Grandma Ella, who had called me from her deathbed and asked if I had gotten any of my books published; Grandma Ella, who had asked me to write her story one day…The stories she told of her father, George T. the evangelist, who once patched a canvas boat using Teaberry gum and despite a raging thunderstorm stopped to pick up a fallen branch of colorful leaves for his wife Dessie, the best definition of love I’ve found so far…
Maybe I can work some of Grandma Ella’s personality into one of my characters, maybe my main character’s mother? She’d definitely be unforgettable.
The rest are notes I wrote at the funeral while listening to other speakers. I had thought that I knew everything about Grandma Ella, but I was wrong.
Grandma Ella:
*Put envelopes in the freezer so she could remove any uncancelled stamps later
*Cleaned and reused aluminum foil
*Put out half napkins on the table
*Had a list for just about everything; said Post-its were invented just for her
*
Believed that a messy desk was the sign of a
working
mind
*
Couldn’t eat chocolate or ice cream because of allergies most of her life; in the end, the allergies went away, and at 89, she ate her first ice-cream sundae and loved every bite—“it’s
so
delicious!”
*
Of the three Stephens girls, Helen was the prettiest, Charlotte the smartest, and Ella—“Well,” Uncle Bill said, “Jack got his money’s worth.”
*
Had the ability to get folks to do things simply by asserting: “You will do the electrical work” or “you will make this shawl” or “you will sing a solo”
*
Got a high school play cancelled in the 60s—play had rape scene—and received angry phone calls and death threats
*
Gave “Are You Saved?” tracts to door-to-door salesmen
*
Favorite line to her 5 children: “Do you really need it? Or do you just want it?”
*
Dad’s story: “Coach said to eat steak before the game.” Mom asked, “Are you on the first team?” I said, “No.” Mom said, “Then you’ll get hamburger until you’re starting on the first team.”
*
Planned own funeral; said: “It will be next Friday” (and it is!)
*
On deathbed in last moments: “What time is it? I’m still here. This isn’t heaven. Why am I still here?”
*
She’s having a reunion with her son, her parents, her husband—“But I’ll see Jesus first”
*
Once ran away from home (I didn’t know this!); Left North Carolina for Philadelphia to play piano in a speakeasy during Prohibition; changed her name to Helen Brown; called the “best pianist in Philadelphia” found by father and taken back to NC…later ended up founding a church with Grandpa Jack in Philadelphia…
Grandma Ella was quite a woman, but when I asked my agent if her biography had a chance to be published, Nina said no. “She isn’t famous enough,” Nina said.
I should still do something with this.
Yes, you should
.
I return to my “five hundred–millimeter stare”—the distance from my eyes to the laptop screen—and reread my novel so far. I want to intrigue readers into thinking there is something seriously and fundamentally wrong with the scene, yet in the end, everything is seriously and fundamentally
normal
.
Normal is good.
Not when you’re supposed to provide dramatic, guilty pleasures on every page!
No writer can do that!
The narrative begins harmlessly enough, though the average reader might be thinking, “I may have picked up the wrong book.”
That’s what I thought
.
The novel opens with an interrogation, the interrogator trying to piece together the mystery of the “blood on the floor,” the “stains on the walls,” and “the muddy footprints all over the kitchen.” Noël was never an interrogator like that, but I want my heroine to be like that. It’s more dramatic, more…tense if she has an accusatory voice.
It isn’t until the word “ashy” that the reader has a clue to Arthur’s identity, and I’m sure Arthur’s “calloused” and “scarred” hands will get me in trouble with the critics. A white man’s hands being calloused, as in actually having to work so hard as to cause calluses to form on his hands? Not on our lives! Callous, maybe. “Scarred” is an equally puzzling description of a white man’s hands. Unless, they will say, he is a farmer, an NFL lineman or a quarterback (two of a few positions white men are currently able to play in the twenty-first century), a lightweight Irish boxer, or an assembly-line worker, he can have no physical scars.
Now you’re thinking too much!
So, what does the reader know about Arthur? The reader knows he is possibly an NFL lineman/Irish lightweight who works the land by day and the assembly line by night, the typical hardworking American white man. The reader knows that he is in trouble, but that doesn’t worry the reader at all. The reader knows that though he may face a hail of bullets, a nuclear bomb or two, and the evil that naturally plagues white men wherever they go, our white man hero will be triumphant in the end. This is, after all, only the opening page.
My critics are going to skewer me! Maybe the interrogator will take the heat away from Arthur. No, they’ll find fault with her, too. She’s too angry and rude, and—
You think far too much. Let it flow. You haven’t even had reviews of your first book yet. They might be wonderful reviews
.
Of a book I don’t recognize anymore?
I reread the chapter again. Geez, it’s almost as if I’ve created a serial killer.
Yeah, I was sort of wondering about that…
The evidence against him is heavy, his responses weak and unresponsive, his choice of “interesting” to describe a day of “blood” “stains,” and “mud” completely creepy. The reader will begin to lose sympathy/empathy for Arthur until he asks for mercy and folds his hands “prayerfully” and “hopefully.”
He’s not such a bad sort, a few bricks shy of a load in the verbalization department, but an okay Joe (though you’ve named him Arthur) who knows when to pray for deliverance.
But is he a good father? The critics will say, “No, he isn’t because he let his boy play in a lightning storm.” The critics
won’t
say that Arthur is a good father because he remembers what it was like to be a boy and knows that a little thunder, a little lightning, and a little mud made us all.
You’re thinking too much again.
I know. I can’t help it. I have all this time to think.
When Arthur’s wife—whom I haven’t even named yet? Geez, I’m slipping. I’ll call her Di for now.
Why “Di”?
I have my reasons.
Ah, Diane the librarian. You’re going to name a character after her because she touched you?
Shh.
When Di asks, “Are you that…unaware,
Mister
Jefferson?” I’ll bet the readers start nodding.
I was nodding
.
Shh.
They’ll think that he is completely unaware. He does not hear the thunder, he does not know it’s raining, and he most likely doesn’t know where his son is. But are these traits of the average father? Can the reader really fault Arthur for being clueless? Or for being a writer? My main character doesn’t work,
per se
, though writing is, of course, a job
someone
has to do.
But so is doing the dishes or taking out the garbage or trimming fingernails and toenails
.
Yeah, you’re right. The reader will lose respect for my “would-be author” almost immediately.
I’ve created a puzzle, a conundrum inside a poser folded into an enigma, a man whose mind is “three parts stew and one part broth,” the results of his living in the “melting pot.”
It’s not so bad. It has
your
attention, right?
Oh, it does all right. It has me criticizing my own novel before I’ve gotten ten pages into it! Who does that to his or her first draft? No one!
I’ll bet all writers do this.
I’m…I’m not a writer. Gaines, Morrison, Ellison—they’re writers. I’m just a…storyteller.
Then tell a story. Let it flow.
But they don’t want a story! They want drama! They want guilty pleasures! They want…they want everything I know
nothing
about!
Tell a story anyway.
I sigh deeply, take a sip of lukewarm tea, and shake my head. “This will not do.”
I toy with deleting my first chapter, such as it is, with a single touch of a button.
Keep it. You might need it.
When will I need it?
It might make a nice
last
chapter.
You know…you might be right. But what author writes the last chapter of a book before he or she writes the first?
They said they wanted three chapters and an outline. They didn’t specify
which
three chapters, did they?