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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

LOVE STREET - The Midnight Burglar


By Liz Zuercher


EMILY

            It was way after dark when Emily pulled into her driveway and into the garage without looking over at Eddie’s house, so she didn’t see the carousel horse that was new since she left for work in the morning.  She wasn’t even thinking about Eddie’s house.  Her day had been a disaster, and she had other things on her mind than her neighbor’s ridiculous yard. 
The company president had called a general meeting and told everyone that business was way down and they were going to have to downsize in order to stay afloat.  That meant layoffs, and though Emily still had her job, she’d had to lay off seven of her accounting staff people.  Two of the women had actually cried in Emily’s office, begging to be kept on, offering to work for less money just so they could keep their health insurance, and it was all Emily could do not to dissolve into tears herself.  She kept her composure and remained professional, but it hadn’t been easy.  On top of the upheaval of letting staff go, she’d had to figure out how to redistribute the responsibilities of the ones who weren’t going to be there any longer.  They were all going to have to work harder and longer hours.  Sadness and fear and uneasiness and that sick to your stomach feeling that you might be next – all that hung over the accounting department today as people packed up their belongings and hugged their former co-workers goodbye. 
And then the phone calls started – vendors who had heard the news of layoffs and were worried that their bills wouldn’t be paid, and Emily was the one who had to deal with the calls and reassure the people that they’d get their money when she wasn’t even sure herself that she was telling them the truth.    She was worried for herself, too. Would she even get a paycheck?  She had money to get by, but she didn’t want to have to dip into her cushion, as she called it, if she didn’t have to.
So all Emily wanted to do was drive directly into her garage and shut the door behind her without thinking about Eddie’s offensive yard.  She wanted to give her kittens some loving and get some back from them.  She wanted to pour herself a big glass of wine, fill the bathtub with hot water and bath salts and soak until her skin looked like a prune while soft music played and candles flickered.  She didn’t want to check her phone messages.  She didn’t want to get her mail from the mailbox.  She only wanted to soak in the tub and forget the world outside her bathroom even existed.  She fed the cats, then she turned out all the lights downstairs and climbed up the stairs.  She was so tired she forgot to set the alarm.
As the tub filled up, Emily examined her face in her bedroom dresser mirror.  Tonight she looked way older than her forty-eight years.  Her face sagged and she looked pale.  Her usually neat light brown hair drooped around her cheeks and strands of gray looked more prominent to her tonight.  She went to the closet, took off her green silk blouse and hung it up on one of the beige satin padded hangers she’d bought to pamper herself.  She hung up the black suit skirt and jacket and unclasped the emerald necklace she always wore, laying it gently in the jewelry drawer built into the closet.  After slipping off her underwear, she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door and looked at the woman staring back at her.  She felt like she was looking at her mother.  When had aging happened to her?  Everything about her seemed to be sagging toward the floor.  She pulled open the closet door so she wouldn’t be able to see herself anymore and before she got into the tub, she shooed the cats out of the bathroom and closed the door.  


THE MIDNIGHT BURGLAR

            They were calling him the Midnight Burglar, though he usually wasn’t out on his excursions that late.  But he did appreciate the cover of darkness, and he did dress all in black, as had been conjectured in the newsletter accounts warning Cantata Del Mar residents to be watchful.  He had been dismayed to see the newsletter reports, as his hope was always that his visits would go undetected.
            He was never in a house longer than five minutes.  It was a matter of pride – enter quietly, locate a trophy, leave quietly.  It wasn’t about loot like most robberies.  It was about skill.  He had no use for the smash and grab style of those desperate insensitive oafs who threw bricks through glass doors and made off with all the electronics they could carry and all the jewelry or silverware they could stuff into their black gym bags.  That was low class and usually drug driven.  He was not a drug user.  He was not low class. 
            For him the burglaries were as much an intellectual challenge as anything else, a test of his ability to find the right house at the right time and to enter it without leaving any evidence that could implicate him in any way.  It was the challenge of getting in and out in those five minutes with one perfect small trophy that would symbolize the personality of the house, the sense of the people who lived there.  And it had to be something they wouldn’t miss right away, but something they should miss if they were paying attention to their surroundings. 
            In those five minutes he would move quietly from room to room, sizing up the people who lived there, deciding what small token to take from them, some object that, when missing, would only slightly tilt that world off balance, but only enough to make them feel a little off, make them wonder what wasn’t right about the living room or the jewelry drawer or the china cabinet or the table in the front hall that held all the knick knacks that used to be in Grandma’s house.  It didn’t have to be valuable – he had plenty of money – but it did have to say something about the people who lived there.  It was all about stealth and skill and sizing up people, and it was about time, a timed test of his prowess so to speak. 
            Tonight he had failed that test for the first time in years when he’d misjudged the house he entered.  It was dark, so he thought the people weren’t home. It was quiet, so he didn’t expect animals.  But when he crept inside, the cats were scratching at him and he lost his composure and tossed them outside before he went through the house.  Then upstairs, in the master bedroom he was opening the dresser drawer when he noticed a soft glow of light coming from under the bathroom door and then he heard someone slosh water in the bathtub.  His concentration broken, he grabbed the first thing he saw in the drawer – a gold pocket watch on a chain – and he left the house before his five minutes was up.  His heart was pumping hard as he made his way behind the houses back to his own home, and when he got back inside his house he was shaking.  That was an abject failure.  Unacceptable.
            He opened the safe in his master bedroom closet and put the watch in with his other trophies. Perhaps he was losing his touch.  Perhaps he needed to reconsider this activity.

EMILY

Emily woke up shivering in the bathtub.  The candles had burned down to nothing and the only light in the room was the glow of a shell-shaped nightlight next to the sink.  In that low light she drained the tub and toweled off before putting on her nightgown and climbing into bed.  She felt like something wasn’t quite right, but she was too groggy and too cold to try to figure it out.  She pulled the comforter up to her chin and fell asleep.

* * * * *

Emily overslept and woke with a start as she felt the warmth of the morning sun on her face.  It was usually dark when the kittens started licking her face to wake her up, just before the radio went on.  She looked over at the clock and was shocked to see it was already 7:30.  She had to be at work in half an hour and she had a twenty-minute drive.  The panic of that realization was like a slap in the face that brought her fully awake and made her sit up straight in bed. 
Where were the cats?  She reached around the bed even though she knew they weren’t there with her.  She would have felt them there.  They would have complained when she sat up so fast.  She looked around the room to see if they were in their little beds by the window, even though she knew they wouldn’t be there either.  The beds had been an exercise in futility.  The kittens never slept in those beds.  They liked to be with her in the big bed.  Even if they started out the night apart, they always were together in the morning.  Maybe they’d tried to wake her but she didn’t wake up and they went downstairs to play, or went to the litter box in the laundry room.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.  Surely there was a logical explanation.  She pushed the covers aside and got out of bed, put on her slippers and started to look for her babies.
The kittens were her heart she told people.  They were her children, her family.  After the divorce she had been so lonely and so frightened.  A friend gave her the first kitten, Sammie, an Abyssinian with a sweet nature and an adventurous personality.  Where she lived before, in the middle of town, Sammie had been an outside cat and came and went as he pleased.  Sometimes he would scare her by staying out several days at a time, but he always came home.  After a while she found out that Sammie had lots of human friends and that he visited them all regularly, sometimes sticking around for a day or two.  Everyone loved Sammie and he loved everyone.  Since they’d moved to this house, though, Sammie had had to become an inside cat.  There were too many dangers for a cat who ventured outside at night here. 
“He’ll be coyote kibble,” Cassie the sales counselor told Emily.  “You’ll have to keep the cat inside.” 
So Sammie had become an inside cat, but he still longed to roam the neighborhood, and Emily often found him sitting at the French door looking out at the hills longingly.  He was lonesome when she was away at work, so she had found him a brother.  Pete came into their lives six months ago and had brought joy to both of them.  While Sammie was a mellow seven years old, Pete was still a playful, mischievous one-year-old, and he loved to play tricks on Sammie, stealing his toys and running around the house with them.  Emily was amazed that Sammie put up with Pete’s antics, but Sammie was a patient older brother. 
Emily could only imagine what went on during the day while she was working.  Sometimes when she came home there were cat toys strewn all over the house and the two cats were curled up together on the wood floor in a shaft of sunlight.  Other times they were at opposite corners of the house, avoiding each other. 
With all his youthful spirit, Pete could be a little lover, too, and he could sense her moods just like Sammie did.  He would sit there and look up at her, his black fur gleaming and the white paws perched delicately, and she could swear he was telling her everything was okay when she didn’t feel like it was.  It was like he was smiling at her, urging her to smile back.  And she would, because she couldn’t help smiling at him.  She had come to depend on both of them to keep her company, lift her spirits, give her life purpose and bring her joy – to be her heart. 
And they depended on her and were never far from her, so it was especially disturbing that they weren’t in the bedroom with her.  She called their names and expected to hear their collar bells ringing as they ran up the stairs. 
Silence. 
She called their names and searched the other bedrooms upstairs.  Sometimes they curled up on one of the other beds or sat on the desk chair in her home office or played with the computer keyboard even though she scolded them when they did that.  But she couldn’t find them.  She started to worry now and headed down the stairs to look for them.  She looked in the kitchen and the family room and the laundry room where their water and food were.  Nothing.  She looked in the living room, under the sofa and behind the curtains and she called their names over and over.
They couldn’t have gotten in the garage, she thought, but she checked there anyway.  She’d been so distracted last night, maybe she left the garage door ajar and they managed to get out there somehow and the door closed behind them.  A flutter of hope filled her chest.  That must be it, she thought with relief.  But when she opened the garage door no little kitties ran to greet her mewing frantically. 
“Sammie!  Pete!” she yelled.  “This isn’t funny.  Come out!  Where are you?”
That’s when she glanced out the window and noticed a black mound in the back yard.  A black mound with clumps of white.  Oh, no, oh,no.  And she held her breath as she opened the French door and went out to investigate.  She approached the mound and looked down to see an eviscerated black cat with white paws.  The sound that escaped her was less of a scream and more a keening cry, as she sank to her knees in the grass next to her baby.  Poor sweet Pete.  Oh, Pete, how did this happen?  How did you get out of the house?  She picked up the collar and bell that lay beside the cat’s body and held it to her chest and sobbed.  
And Sammie.  Where is Sammie?  She stood up and turned around full circle, looking around her yard for signs of her other baby, but there was nothing.  Sinking to the ground she let out another scream that set all the dogs in the neighborhood to barking and howling.


KAREN

            Karen Hooper from down the street was walking her dog, Clifford, deep in thought, replaying her doctor’s appointment yesterday.
“It’s not time to worry yet,” the doctor said.  “You’re young and healthy and there’s plenty of time.  Just relax,” he said with an easy smile intended to put her at ease.  “You’ll have a baby when you’re meant to have a baby.”
When would that be, she wanted to scream at him.  Instead she put on her stoic face, put away her hopes again and left the office.  She was glad she hadn’t said anything to her husband, raising his hopes like hers had been.  Still it had been a difficult conversation last night when he called her from New York.  He could sense it and asked her if something was wrong.
“No,” she told him, “I’m fine.  I just miss you when you’re so far away.”  And she had gone on to tell him about how she’d been running late all day and her tutoring students had been late and she was glad to be home with a glass of wine and Clifford curled up next to her.  He told her about his day and they exchanged I-love-yous before hanging up.  She held the receiver to her heart for a long time and stared out the family room window at the twinkling lights of the distant houses.  So many houses.  So many families with so many children.  When will I have mine?
She had called in for a substitute before dawn this morning.  She just couldn’t face five classrooms of kids today.  She decided to take Clifford for a walk.  They could both use the exercise and the distraction.
 The woman’s scream sent a chill up Karen’s spine and set Clifford, to howling like the hound dog he was.  She hardly ever heard this sound from Clifford.  He barely even barked, he was so mellow.  But clearly he was agitated now, howling mournfully and tugging at the leash as they neared the alligator house. 
Instead of staying on the sidewalk like usual, Clifford pulled Karen toward the house next door to the alligator.  She didn’t know who lived there or why Clifford wanted to go there, until she heard the horrible wrenching wail again coming from the back yard of this house.  Clifford howled in reply and pulled Karen along the side of the house to the back yard, urging her to investigate.  She was frightened, but she quieted her nerves, telling herself that Clifford was a big dog and would protect her at all costs. 
As they turned the corner into the back yard, Karen saw a woman in her nightgown on her knees next to a mound of black fur streaked with blood, something clutched to her chest.  Clifford went right up to the woman and started licking her face, trying to comfort her.  Karen stood watching and couldn’t stop the tears from cascading down her face.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Garage Follies from "The Lady Business"

                Daddy is not what you’d call an enthusiastic or involved homeowner.
                His expertise includes an ability to make the sweetest little golf chip and bunker sand shots you ever saw. During the summer, he spends most his weekends and several weekdays at the golf course. If mama or one of us calls his office looking for him and his secretary says he is “out in the field,” then we know he’s on the golf course. Daddy’s other talents include a Dead-eye Dick aim with a shotgun that gets him more than his fair share of whatever game is in season and a graceful knack for fly-fishing. He’s also a born storyteller and can quote lines from Shakespeare or various long-dead poets to suit any occasion.
                But a dedicated homeowner or handyman he is not. Still, he devotes himself to one annual project every year and that is to clean up the garage, which involves recruiting the whole family to do the work while he stands around issuing commands like Robert E. Lee.
Every year, he manages to achieve one major garage re-organization. Last year he collected twenty or more windshield snow scrapers lying around, put them in a box, and wrote “scrapers” on the side in crayon. I wonder what this year’s achievement will be.
                My job is to sweep the floor while Cammie, my little sister, holds the dustpan for me. My brother, Robert John, the most annoying person I know, is to pick up the stray golf balls and tees that have fallen out of daddy’s golf bag and put them back, but he spends most his time exclaiming over spider webs, dead crickets, and other bugs. He is mostly useless.
                Mama’s job is to be daddy’s assistant. That means when he needs a glass of water, mama runs into the house to get it. She also has to stand by on alert to hand him whatever tool he might decide he needs at any given moment. The only tools he can identify are a hammer and a screwdriver; everything else he calls a thing-a-ma-jig, so mostly she has to try to figure out which thing-a-ma-jig he means.
                This year daddy decides to organize his many golf caps that are scattered around the garage. So, he hammers up a 2x4 stud and pounds nails into it to hang the caps on. Mama’s job is to stand by his elbow with the box of nails and hand him one when he needs it.
                Cammie and I have been sweeping steadily, but, like last year, we have no trashcan or sack to dump our debris in, so we just sweep it all in the same corner as we have every other year. Robert John has found a fly caught in a spider’s web and is sitting on the ground waiting for the spider to arrive and eat the fly. Like I said, he is mostly useless.
                Daddy hangs his caps up, declares the garage clean up done, gives us each a dollar, and congratulates us on our hard work. Then, he heads for the golf course.
The golf caps look great lined up along the back wall, even though the stud is crooked and slopes down two inches and the nails are unevenly spaced so the caps hang awry, some of them perilously dangling and ready to fall. That snow scraper box from last year, well, it’s empty, no sign of them. They may re-appear eventually, so I put the box on a shelf, then I hide the dirt pile in the corner with the dustpan, all ready for next year.

                

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

A Rant on Writing by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

Why is it that it takes 6 weeks of hard core dieting and watching everything that goes into my mouth to lose 10 pounds, but less than half that time to find those vacationing pounds and have them comfortably park themselves back on my quickly expanding body?

Why is it that sometimes I have the will power of the titans and other times behave like a voracious non-thinking organism who can eat non-stop from morning till evening.

And why is it I can write for 10 minutes at a stretch relatively easily and as many times as we decide to when I’m with my Peeps in our writing group, but put me alone at my desk with hours to spare and I will do everything but write (well, not everything – mostly eat and play games, though I do sometimes actually accomplish things I need to get done).

It’s amazing how many times I've made deals with myself only to break them. I get up in the morning and tell myself today is the day I will spend an hour writing, but by noon and certainly by 6:00pm, that resolution or decision is toast even though I continually perseverate on it in my head.

Truly, my self-trust level is into the ‘I’d freeze if it were a temperature’ level – and I don’t mean get a little frost bite – I mean full on frozen on impact.

I wonder if the truth is that I really don’t want to write, but if that is true, why do I keep trying to do it or at least keep trying to talk myself into doing it, and why does every psychic I've ever gone to tell me I should be writing?

I love the IDEA of writing. I LOVE the idea. But I don’t love the action, usually, unless I’m on a roll. Truth be told, I really have nothing to say – my life has been relatively boring and mild and I have little in my past to call upon. I don’t have the crazy childhood and life of a Jeannette Walls or the crazy wonderful imagination of a J.K. Rowling. I like to pretend that I do. I wish I did, but I don’t, and it’s frustrating, and I would love to be talented like that. I would love to have ideas just pouring into my head from the great somewhere and out onto my keyboard or paper.

I recently went to a talk at South Coast Rep before going to see their main stage play Rest. I listened with rapt attention and obsessive interest to Michael Roth talk about soundscaping and composing for the play and I heard him say, and this just hit to the core of me – I heard him say that if he could do anything at all, he’d just sit in his room and compose.

God how I wish that were me. How I wish that there was so much alive inside of me that wanted to come out that all I wanted to do was fill up notebook after notebook with ideas and thoughts and characters and situations. I am constantly in awe of bookstores and libraries. They are filled with the results of people whose passion for writing just won’t let up.

I love reading great writing and by great, I am not in the nose in the air camp that says that it has to be Chekhov to be good. It can be Stephen King, or Robert Craise, Fanny Flagg, or Jeannette Walls, or dozens and dozens of other people with a story to tell who tell it with authenticity, passion, and, often, humor.

I love a good story. I would also love to be known for telling a good story and there is a part of me that will never give up hoping that I can turn out a story that makes people laugh or tear up or at least feel something. So, like the Barenaked Ladies say in “Odds Are,”

“So get up, get up
No it’s never gonna let up
So you might as well sing along”



And I will keep writing or thinking about writing, even if it kills me.