Saturday, November 15, 2008

Idols for Writers Week Eight

This week's prompt was Heroes. Ugh. There are some really great entries - funny, inventive and highly entertaining. Mine was a somber piece, based on some of the stuff I see at work everyday. Basically a true story, but the names and details have been changed.


HEROES


Every weekday morning, promptly at half past nine, Jacob arrives at the Whitby Health Care Centre. On the weekends, he might come a little later, with either a coffee cake for the staff or a fat Sunday newspaper tucked beneath his arm. It’s a fifteen-minute drive each way and he’s been doing it twice a day every day for the last nine years. In the morning, he parks his metallic blue Mazda near a row of stunted pine trees, but in the afternoon, he prefers the shelter of the indoor parking garage. The lighting is better there—at eighty-two, his eyes are still bright blue, but his vision isn’t what it used to be.


As we drink coffee together in the sunshine outside the front door, I ask him whether he ever gets tired of the daily trip. Jacob has a trick of looking at you over the top of his glasses, which are Coke-bottle thick and held together with a bit of tape on the side. He squints at me and shrugs. “Of course,” he says. “But what else can I do?”


He’s a tall man, a little thick round the middle now, with tufts of white hair surrounding his bald patch. With his corduroy pants and patched-elbow jackets, he exudes the slightly rumpled air of an absent-minded professor. We chat easily as we finish our coffee, the conversation flowing from Barrack Obama’s victory at the polls, to the weather, which is surprisingly good today, and to his sleep last night, which wasn’t quite so good. Then we walk back down the hall to Room Five. Jacob knows his way around Whitby as well as he knows the hallways of his own home. In some ways, this is his home away from home, because here, in Room Five, is where Ruby lives. And Ruby, a chubby woman with iron-gray hair, a whiny, nasal voice and multi-infarct dementia, is his wife.


I shake hands with Jacob and tell him goodbye, then I peek inside the room next door, Room Four. This is Carole's room. Fifteen months ago, Carole was a high-flying advertising executive, a mature single woman with two dogs, loads of friends and a love of travel. But when a routine insurance physical produced an unexpected diagnosis of rapidly-advancing cancer, chemo and radiotherapy left her with no eyebrows, a head of patchy, graying hair and severe depression. Right now, I’m looking for Maya, who was Carole’s next-door neighbor until three months ago when Carole was moved to Whitby for what the staff call ‘terminal care’. Although the room is full of sunshine, flowers and classical music, Carole is snoring, mouth wide open, and spittle coating her bluish lips. Maya, a young married woman in her thirties, is changing the water in some of the flowers and she’s happy to take a break to talk to me. We’ve been spending time together now for about a week, and finally I’m ready to ask her some of the most important questions.


“What happened to all Carole’s other friends?” I ask. Throughout my week at Whitby, I’ve seen only Maya in her room. “You seem to be her only visitor.”


Maya looks at her hands and spins her rings. “Her friends visited a lot in the beginning,” she says. “When Carole was having surgery and during the chemo, people brought meals and gifts and stuff. But then …” she shrugs. “Carole got very depressed, very angry. She wasn’t pleasant to be around, you know. I guess people don’t like that too much. And when she got admitted her, when it seemed the end was close, they kind of stopped coming.”


“But you didn’t,” I say. “You weren’t even friends, back then, you were just next-door neighbors. So how come you’re the one who’s here for her now? Why is that?”


She smiles and shakes her head. “I wish I had a good answer for you. All I know is she’s alone in the world and she’s dying. I don’t think its right for anyone to have to die alone.” She shrugs, a little embarrassed. “I like to think maybe she’d have done the same for me, if our positions were reversed.”


“Kind of heroic,” I tell her, but she denies it immediately. “If anyone is a hero” she says “it’s Jacob—you know the guy I mean, Ruby’s husband?” As if on cue, we hear Ruby calling out as she does so often during the day. Help me, help me, nurse, nurse, help me, help me … The staff do the best they can, but there’s no real treatment for her persistent and meaningless vocalizations. Maya shakes her head.


“It’s really sad,” she says, “especially when you know their history, that it has come down to this.”


I have to agree. Over the week, I've also spent a lot of time talking with Jacob and I know now that when he was a teenager, he and most of the people in his little village in Holland were deported by the Nazis to concentration camps in Germany. “I was lucky,” he told me once, a rueful smile on his ruddy, wrinkled face. “I managed to escape and when I got caught again, I ended up in a work camp instead of a death camp. I survived.”


Lucky, I think. For most of us, luck is getting off work a few hours earlier, or finding a ring you thought you’d lost. For Jacob and Ruby, it was survival. They met after the war, at a hiking club. They’d married and when Ruby was in her forties, they’d had a child, a daughter who now lived far away. “You should have known Ruby when she was still well,” he often said to me. “She was never a great beauty, but what a fine woman! And what a fine mind she had. She taught physics at university, did you know that?”


It’s hard to imagine. Whenever he’s there, Ruby, with her dull skin and rough cut hair, reaches for him anxiously, demanding his attention. She has the concentration span of a two-year old and I’ve even seen some of the staff getting a bit annoyed with her. But Jacob is patient. Day after day, he comes in and reads to her, talks to her, takes her for short walks. He never leaves her without a quick kiss to her brow.


I see him now, pausing at the door of Carole’s room. He gestures with his newspaper toward Carole. “How is she today?” We all look at Carole, thin, drawn, and still snoring. “No change,” says Maya. Her smile is sad, her eyes full of compassion.


He nods and for a moment there is silence in the room. But it’s not an uncomfortable silence. There is a strange camaraderie here, a bond between strangers built on nothing less than decency and love and the willingness simply to be present and to care, day after day after day. They might deny it, I think, but heroic is the word, for both of them.


“I’m off then,” says Jacob. “Would anyone like the newspaper? I’m finished with it for today.”


“Thank you,” says Maya. “Carole likes me to read to her sometimes and there’s lot of good news today. It makes a nice change, doesn’t it?”


“It does, it does indeed.” Jacob adjust his glasses, tips his cap to us and then he’s gone.



Idols for Writers Week Seven

Week Seven and the prompt this time was Utopia. This week I used an old story I wrote about three years ago. Upgraded and revised it and voila! It came in third, but the winner of this week;s round is my buddy Kels!! YAY!!


THE ROAD TO UTOPIA


"I'm ready. I’ll go."

There’s a slow intake of breath at the other end of the line. "You're sure?"

The hesitation is clear and I know why. I come from a long line of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. But this time, it’s different. I'm going to do this. I won’t think anymore, I’ll just do. End of story.

"Yes, I’m sure.”

“Twenty minutes. This is right, Sam. You won’t be sorry."

I replace the receiver, pull on my boots and find my jacket, keys and cell phone. The dog, who thinks he knows what's going down, starts running in circles, claws beating a furious tattoo on the tiled floor. His eyes are bright as he stares at me, eager for our evening walk.

Not today, buddy.

I trudge down the hall, push open the door to the study and, not for the first time, I tell my kids a little white lie.

"I'm going out for a while, guys. Walking the dog. Tell mom I said goodbye." The words sail over the heads of my children, who are absorbed in some psychedelic cyber world. It's a reality they seem to prefer these days and suddenly, it annoys the shit out of me.

"Didn’t you hear me?" I raise my voice, then cringe at the irritation in my tone. God knows when I'll see them again, and I'm yelling at them?

Shame on me.

But they’re not bothered. Tom flips a distracted hand in my direction. Fourteen and already he's pushing the limits of civility. Katie executes a neat pirouette and ends up facing me. Her eyes are on fire.

"I totally cracked Level Three, Dad, but Tom is taking forever¾"

"Am not." Tom doesn't even turn his head, his hands flying over the keyboard

"Yes, you are." She spins back to the screen as yet another missile explodes in a cacophony of red and gold noise.

"I'm going now," I say. But there’s no response—they’re bent towards the screen, bodies tensed and expectant. A burst of colour surges across the scene and Tom's virtual self splinters into multi-hued shreds. He groans and slumps backwards in the chair.

"My turn, my turn." Katie shoves at him impatiently and I'm in despair. They have no idea what's about to happen, so how can I make a big deal out of this goodbye? I hesitate. Tom's face, all angles and acne, is tight with disappointment, so I step forward and pull him against me in a quick, hard hug. My son..

"Chill, Dad, its okay. I'll crack it next time." He grins wryly at me and pulls away, oblivious to the breaking of my heart.

"Sure you will." I let him go and step towards the door, steeling myself to leave. "Your mom will be home soon. Be good, guys. I¾I love you."

"Love ya too, Daddy." Katie sing-songs the way she always does but Tom is already slouching off towards the kitchen.

In the hall, the dog stares at me, head cocked to one side, tongue hanging out. I stare back at him. There's no air in here, and I feel as if I'm choking. The dog whines, as if to say 'one last walk for old times' sake?' To the field and back will only take ten minutes. And that way, my lie won’t actually be a lie …

I leave the house, locking the door behind me. The dog tears off towards the end of the road and I follow, breathing deeply. The air is cool and I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jacket, hearing the steady crunch of gravel beneath my boots. The sun is dying, sinking below the horizon and the earth lies dark beneath the rain-sodden weight of the clouds. I shiver, thankful for my heavy jacket, then step up the pace and soon I'm on the field. The dog is a distant blur, speeding across the darkening wasteland, barking joyously as night birds scatter before him.

I stop walking, lift my fingers to my lips and whistle. The dog, however, is a no-show. I walk faster, searching the shadows, almost glad that this is the last time I'll play 'hunt the dog' in the dark.

I wonder who’ll walk him when I'm gone? Sherri? At the thought of my wife, tides of guilt surge through me. Sherri’s a fine woman, and a good mother. But we married too soon, too young—no! Enough with the excuses! Just tell the truth, Sam.

Lilly liked to say that—just tell the truth, Sam. I pause as I hear the dog barking in the distance, and for a second, it's almost as if I can hear her voice again, those lazy, seductive tones that¾

Oh dear God, I mustn't start thinking about Lilly now.

But the memories won't stay buried. I'm lost, carried back to the moment a year ago when she sashayed into my lecture hall and, with her hip-rolling walk and sassy grin, tore my life apart. Ten years younger than me, high on dope and life, she exuded a dangerously hypnotic and totally irresistible appeal.

I groan, remembering the terrifying, heart-breaking weeks that followed, as I discovered what falling in love was all about. Flying high, and falling, falling, falling¾and then doing it all over again. My life became a roller-coaster of danger, desire and desperation. Without her, I was miserable. But with her, I soared, turning cartwheels across the top of the world. Life seemed full of light and risk and adventure. She took me to a world I'd never dreamt existed, and she taught me how to fly.

The dog barks again and I stop, rooted to the ground as pain rages through me. This is not how it should be. I'm angry now¾an irrational anger that chews at my gut. Where the hell is that mangy hound? The sun is gone, fallen below the horizon, and the dark presses close around me, squeezing me in its treacherous embrace.

A sudden explosion of paws and panting, and there's the dog, slathering dust and spit all over my boots. I grab his collar and snap on the leash, and he tugs and strains, desperate for one last adventure, one more wild flight to nowhere. I keep the leash short and my throat closes as I realize my desires are no different from his.

Through all those months of intoxicating highs and soul-destroying lows, I tried to keep them all in the dark. I spent less and less time at home. Sometimes I caught Sherri looking at me, saw the pain and confusion in her eyes. I used to look away, pretending everything was all right. We both ignored the shadows beneath my eyes, the trembling of my hands.

Oh, God, I think. Can I do this? Can I really just walk out on my family?

I clench my fists in my pockets, torn between unfulfilled need and unbearable shame. Get a grip, Sam! I have to believe I'm making the right choice. I stiffen my resolve and repeat my mantra of hope. I'm making the right choice. Leaving now is better than staying…..

We're back at the house now. I undo the leash and let the dog into the garden. Sherri will see to him when she gets home. I hear the deep rumble of an engine and lift my head in time to see an old Ford slide to a halt outside the gate.

Right on time.

I straighten up and suck air, trying to quell the sudden panic in my chest.

Good bye, house. Good bye, kids.

The door pops open and slip into the seat. I sit tight, staring straight ahead.

Good bye dog. Good bye life.

"You all right?"

“I will be. Let’s just go, OK?”

We accelerate down the road and for a minute, I think I'm going to die. Whatever comes next, my life will never be the same again. As if he can hear the silent screaming in my head, the man behind the wheel turns his gaze on me.

“You tell the kids?”

I shake my head, look out of the window. “Sherri will do it.”

I feel him staring at me and the sweat breaks out on my neck. My hands are shaking now. He laughs.

"It's going to be okay, Sam. You're going to make it." The unexpected compassion in his voice stabs me and I cover my eyes with my hand as we drive on through the dusk and into the night.

How can he know I'm going to make it? Lilly’s been gone a month already—walked out and left me with a broken heart and a monkey on my back. I’m a mess of grief, and need, and fear. How will I live? I've been drowning in a sea of darkness, doubt and despair—I groan, and wring my hands….

“Whoa, Sam. One thing at a time, one day at a time. Remember?” He spins the wheel and we turn into the grounds of Utopia Rehabilitation Centre—the answer to all my problems, apparently.

“Dumb name,” I say, distracted for a moment, and the man at my side chuckles. He’s done his own time here, wrestling with the demons, and he knows this is no paradise. “Did you know,” I tell him, “that in Greek, utopia also means ‘no place’? Outopia means nowhere. Sounds about right for me …”

"Uh-uh.” He shakes his head. “Not true, Sam. You’re not nowhere, buddy. You’re back at the beginning, right at the start of the rest of your life. You just have to take hold, to fight it.”

He sounds so sure. All I can do is hope that maybe, just maybe, time will prove him right.


Idols for Writers Week Six

My entry for Week Six was done in a heck of a hurry - I wrote it on the fly and squeaked in just under the deadline! Whew! NOT funny! But still, I liked it and it did pretty well in the voting, coming in third this week! :-) The prompt was HAUNTED.


Sudan, March 2004.


We enter the camp soon after sunrise and by 10 o’clock, I’m done in. The heat, the dust, the endless flow of pain and loss—it never stops. So after a while, I tell Abdul I’m taking a break and I slip away out the back of the medical tent, canteen in hand, cigarettes in my pocket. I pull out my iPod, light up a quick one, and for a little while, it all goes away. BeyoncĂ©, Britney and Avril Levigne, reminding me of home, a world outside Darfur, away from the endless cycle of need, fear, pain and misery …


Searching for strength, I open my eyes and take a long, slow drink from my canteen. The iPod shuffles again and now it’s the haunting strains of Evanescence and My Immortal.


I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears


Yes, I think, that’s me. Tired, afraid of so many things, afraid of not being able to do enough, not being able to heal them, of not being able to cope … and that’s the moment when I see her.


Sitting in the midst of a sea of dust. A woman. Despite the searing heat, she’s covered from head to toe in black. The child in her lap is small—maybe four years old, maybe seven? It’s hard to tell. His shoulder blades are sharp and prominent; the skin on his arms wrinkled. His belly bulges outward, a taut, shiny drum as hollow as the promises that fall from his mother’s parched lips.


“Hush, hush,” she whispers, brushing the flies off his face with fingers that are nothing more than bone now. “Soon, it will be well. Soon, soon …” He cries, but his eyes are tearless and his voice hoarse, cracked and full of dust.


These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

I stand up and walk slowly over, crouch next to them. I offer her a drink of water. She shifts onto her side, bony hip digging deep into the dirt and I can see that even that small movement causes her pain. The boy pushes in closer, like a baby bird restless in his nest. She takes the canteen from me, and tilts it to his lips. Water flows unheeded over his chin, splashes to the ground in long, muddy streaks. He stares up at his mother, his eyes empty, glazed.


She lets the canteen fall, and her hand drifts down, caressing his body. She traces the curved abdomen, passes skinny fingers lightly over the protruding bump of his belly button, that reminder of a time long, long ago when all she had to do to nourish him was simply to be there.


When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears


All she has to offer him is herself. I have more, I have equipment and medicines and food. But I don’t know if we’ll be able to save him, he’s so far gone. Should we even try? But she turns her eyes towards me, a final, silent plea, the kind of look that haunts my dreams at night.


So I pick him up and carry him inside and she follows me.


And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me.


Idols for Writers Week Five

Week Five - not my best work. :( Came in joint fourth but there were other joint winners up ahead of me ... it's ok. All writing is good and you always learn something new!!



MY ADDICTION



I’ve always been a one-woman man. So it scares me to tell you that I think I’m falling in love with somebody else, somebody new.

I never expected that this could happen to me. We’ve been married for nearly four years and my gorgeous wife—well, to put it simply, she owns me, body and soul. She’s the one I fell in love with in high school, she’s the one who dried my tears when my dad died unexpectedly, and she’s the one I plan to spend the rest of my life with. I don’t think I even know how to love more than one woman at a time.

But these days I find myself consumed, and I mean totally consumed, with thoughts of—her. Day and night, at work and at home, in the car, on my bike, while swimming, walking, sleeping, she’s right there with me. I’m even dreaming about her, and that makes me afraid, because deep down I know—know with every fiber of my being—that this relationship is going to be the one that changes everything. How do people cope with something like this? Just the thought of loving two women at the same time scares me silly. But this new love of mine is like an addiction—I can’t seem to it let go.

And to tell you the truth? I don’t want to let it go.

It was my wife who first told me about her. She sat me down one day and told me all about her, told me when she’d be arriving, what she’d want to eat, where she should sleep—you know, all the basic, practical stuff you take care of when a stranger moves in to share your home. To tell the truth, I was a bit nervous about the whole thing to start with but gradually I found myself getting more and more interested. But it wasn’t until I saw a picture of her that this whole falling-in-love thing began.

It wasn’t even a particularly good picture, mind you. A bit grainy and out of focus, none too clear at all. When I was alone, though, I used to run my finger down the curve of her back, trace the delicate outline of her hands, and imagine I could see sweetness on her face. There was just something about that picture that gave me a glimpse into the true heart of her, of who she really was as a person.

And bam, just like that, it happened. I fell in love.

I tried to cover it up, tried to pretend it was just ordinary interest I was feeling. But in private I started counting the days until her arrival. I worked hard getting her room ready, making it special. I thought about her constantly. Imagined walking with her on a beach, cuddling with her on the sofa at night, making her feel special and loved and adored. Yes, I know its all fantasy, an idealized version of how I’d like things to be, but still. I’m utterly addicted to the idea of her. I can almost see her at times, smiling at me across the breakfast table or holding my hand as we walk down the street. Sometimes at night, if I hold my wife close and run my hands over her body, it’s as if I can feel her, right there with me and I have to I hold my breath as the longing sweeps over me

I know things won’t be easy when she finally gets here. Likely as not there’ll be yelling and screaming to start with—real blood, sweat and tears stuff. Later, there’ll be late nights and early mornings, missed meals and rushed conversations, tiredness and misunderstandings and angry retorts—all the upheaval that comes when three lives are blending into one. But I’m quite sure we’ll weather it and I’m even more sure that in the end, we’ll be fine. All three of us. Because there’ll also be love. Lots and lots and lots of love, and joy, and fun, and a goofy, delirious happiness.

You probably think I’m delusional, right? Living in a dream world? Well, let me tell you that—oh, hold on a moment, please. I see my wife is here, standing in the doorway looking both excited and scared.

“I think it’s time,” she tells me, pulling a wry face. “She’s on her way.”

My God, I think, it’s happening at last. I try to stay calm, but inside I’m absolutely throbbing with excitement. I cross the room, kiss my wife long and hard, then, dropping to my knees, I press my cheek close to the distended bulge of her belly.

“Hey my darling,” I whisper and plant a kiss where I think my daughter’s head might be. “I just can’t wait to meet you….”