I Will Always Love You Because

I meant to submit the following entry to a Romantic Friday Writers challenge, but unfortunately too many things conspired against it. I just can't seem to get my act together these days. The challenge was to include the phrase "I will always love you because..." So flash fiction lovers, here goes.

When my Aunt Loverne died of old age many years ago, her relatives were quick to remind us that we were not family since Loverne was the sister of my father's stepmother. Perhaps they were worried that we would want a share of the inheritance. We could have cared less. By our reckoning, she was family. To me, knowing her was gift enough. She was one of the most important people in my life.

Loverne always looked the same to me no matter what her age. She was a tall, slender, blue-eyed Swede with white hair. She spent all her life in a Danish farming community in Iowa and lived many of her years with her sister's family while working at the local bank. She loved fashionable clothes, travel, and family. At the age of 65, Loverne married for the first time to the town rogue, a Dane with a reputation for taking financial advantage of widows. It was a happy marriage.

Through good times and bad, Loverne was my guardian angel. She doted on me from the day I was born. She made certain that I and my brothers had new clothes for school every fall. When I wanted to go to France in my junior year of college, I never thought to ask her, but saving bonds she had bought when I was a child miraculously appeared. Once in my teenage years she told me that I was the daughter she never had. Imagine someone who loves you as a teenager when you are a half-baked, narsacistic brat.

On a recent morning, I awoke from a dream, but my memory of it fell away like shards of broken glass. The only piece I could recall was Loverne standing in the middle of the room and the glowing white of her hair. When I ran to embrace her, she felt so solid, and her skin was so soft to the touch. I pressed my lips to hers.

"Don't cry," she said. "I will always love you because you are you."

They Thought He Was God

Below is my entry for the Romantic Friday Writers Challenge No. 32: The Perfect 9.5

They thought he was God. So did he, but Stella wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, when Stella sat in that first class of advanced fiction writing, she vowed to learn everything Colin Harmon could teach her. He was an author of several novels, a screen writer, and a successful New York publisher. As a teacher, he was a Machiavellian task master who quickly identified the vulnerabilities of his students and wielded that knowledge like a sword. No ego was safe. His vulnerability was that he had never quite achieved the fame of his peers—Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Elia Kazan. It grated on him.

Stella took in every word that Colin Harmon uttered, but she would not sit at his knee in rapt adoration like the other acolytes. She ignored his subtle overtures, his determination to reform her writing style in ways that were contrary to her own heart. He labeled her one of his most resistant students, not because she didn’t understand his teaching, but because she refused to implement those teachings that didn’t feel right. Colin’s spare prose and insightful knowledge of character and plotting was missing passion. It troubled Stella’s writerly sensibilities.

Not that Colin Harmon wasn’t capable of passion. Stella and two other writers had inadvertently discovered his secret passion for one of their very attractive fellow writers, a 9.5 on the Richter scale. Weekly critique sessions at his home became a source of amusement for the three as the lovers attempted to conceal their involvement. But Stella observed on more than one occasion that Colin Harmon’s sweet wife, who drifted in and out of the room like a shadow, seemed to be drinking quite heavily. She had born him a half dozen children, ran his household and publishing business, and accommodated his writing career in every way. She was the woman behind the man and she seemed to be in trouble. Perhaps she suspected his betrayal. When would he tell her?

During one evening writers’ session, while Stella and all the writers were seated at the long dining table, Colin’s wife came flying out of the kitchen, her face flushed with anger. A cold chill ran down Stella’s back as the woman’s furious eyes locked on Stella. Colin Harmon's secret love life, the source of so much gossip, was about to explode. Sweet Jesus, Stella muttered. She thinks I’m the one. 

Romantic Friday Writers Challenge #31: The Long, Cool Aphrodisac

Romantic Friday Writers Challenge #31 is a tough one. All I have to offer is a very short poem that is posted to the website I've been working on--off and on (more off than on). Please indulge me and click here to view my poem, I See You There. Enjoy.

Ship of Fools

After dinner, I plop down in my easy chair in front of the TV. I can feel the indigestion coming on as I watch the paunchy, white-haired man rant. Next to him stands his dutiful wife with the blond helmet hairdo, not a human hair out of place. The man has been roundly defeated by his opponent in the Florida primary race, but he has not a modicum of grace to congratulate the victor. His ego is as bloated as his belly. He wobbles wildly in orbit around the moon. He spins so many lies that he has come to believe them himself and viciously accuses others of the sins he himself has committed over and over again. He is the ultimate fraud. When a man promises he will give you his life, his fortune and his sacred honor, you got to know he's lying.

I admit I also listened to the other clowns that have been inflicted upon us--the smarmy, cardboard, flip-flopper with beaucoup bucks who plans to buy his way to the presidency; the ultra-conservative with all his holy social issues and beliefs that he wants to jam down our throats; the crazy man who almost makes sense and who is at least honest, but has no hope of ever being president. A strong wind would blow his frail body away.

This is what we have been offered as presidential choices after they have winnowed out the even crazier people. We, the American people, must have done something grievous to deserve all this mediocrity.

I'll take my chances with the man who took out Osama bin Laden and who can channel Al Green.

Romantic Friday Challenge #30: Learning to Dance When It's Over

This my 400-word submission for this Friday's challenge. Full critique is welcome. 
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When her only child Jonathon enlisted in the army as soon as he turned eighteen, Marie fell into a deep depression. In the hospital, she came to the realization that she had lost not only her son but her protector.

Now that she had been released from the hospital, all she had to deflect her husband Michael’s rage was a handful of prescription drugs. She wasn’t well enough yet to return to work. Angry because she couldn’t even cobble together a simple meal, Michael stormed out of the house most evenings to meet his best friend Izzy at a local bar.  The bar owner, Dino Ricci, was their neighbor. Marie couldn’t remember the last time she had ever seen him. He worked late hours, slept most of the day. Michael said he must be a damned fairy because he gave dance lessons.

One afternoon Marie managed to get off the couch and venture out into the backyard. She leaned over her neighbor’s fence to admire his roses and inhale the sweet scent. She experienced a lightness of spirit she hadn’t felt in ages. She caressed the blooms.

“Go ahead. Pick whatever you want. They’re for you.”

She looked up to see her handsome neighbor standing on his back patio. That was the beginning of their friendship and her recovery. She never spoke to Michael about him; she swore Dino to secrecy. One afternoon, drawn by the music coming from his patio, she accepted his invitation for a dance lesson. She loved the feel of his firm hand on her back, the sureness with which he directed her bare feet across the cool grass. When the lesson was over, she buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder and sobbed.

“Run as far and fast as you can,” he told her.

That evening when she joined Michael at the bar, a drunken Izzy challenged her to a dance. Michael sneered. From behind the bar, a concerned Dino kept a watchful eye.

Izzy led Marie onto the dance floor. It wasn’t the same as dancing with Dino.

A week after the bar fight between Izzy and Michael, the local news reported finding a man’s severed head, hands, and feet on a hiking trail in a nearby canyon.  Marie accepted the key to Dino’s Montana cabin, threw her suitcase in the car, and headed down the road.

Death in Hollywood Hills

Since breaking my arm five weeks ago, I've been living in a twilight zone, well, actually it felt more like a hole in the ground. Now that I'm past the surgery and pain and I no longer have to wear a cast, I returned to work this week and also started physical therapy. I'm crawling out of my hole and glad the worst is behind me. But I've come to the conclusion that being so focused on self for five weeks kind of dulls your senses. Until today.

There are always murders in Los Angeles County, but a recent murder roused my curiosity. Two joggers on a popular hiking trail near the Hollywood sign in Hollywood Hills came upon a grisly scene. Two dogs were playing with a plastic bag near the trail when the severed head of a middle-aged man rolled out of the bag. Investigators later found two hands and two feet--so far, no body. With this little snippet of a story, the mind tries to imagine who committed the murder, why, and how. What sequence of events led to this man's death? We all love untangling the riddles of a shocking story, don't we?

I think I'll tuck that story in the back of my brain and let it percolate for a while. Who knows, maybe it will inspire a twisted tale one of these days. In the mean time, I keep working on my novel, Laughing Hawk. It's sort of "done," but there are parts that don't satisfy me yet. I dare not let a death in Hollywood Hills distract me.

Romantic Friday Writers Challenge No. 28 – Ties That Bind

I’ve been laid up with a busted left arm and I’m finally feeling like doing some writing again. Following is my 400-word submission for the year-end challenge at Romantic Friday Writers. (FCA)

Patricia was a spirited, seventeen-year old beauty with blond hair and blue eyes. My grandparents had high expectations for their youngest child, especially after the tragic death of their son and the grief that haunted them. Instead, she disappointed them by eloping with a farm hand that worked for my grandfather. He was what my mother referred to as a shanty Irishman. He was old enough to be my aunt’s father and he was a widower with a baby daughter. The story whispered between my mother and grandmother was that he had caused his first wife’s death by failing to heed the doctor’s advice to avoid a life-threatening pregnancy. He was a big, lazy, boisterous, barrel-chested man, content with his own ignorance. My mother said he had killed a recalcitrant horse with a single punch to the head. I only remember that he always smelled like manure and that no one could ever unravel the mystery of my aunt’s romantic attachment to him.

Despite her family’s disapproval, my aunt defiantly raised five daughters in near poverty on a Wisconsin farm. My uncle was no farmer. My father said the cow shit was so deep in the barn that you could hit your head on the ceiling. Everyone expected that one day my aunt would finally have her fill of a very hard life. A devout Catholic, she remained with her husband to the end when he succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. I suspect she was probably tempted a few times during her life to change course. My grandmother and mother always hoped she would come to her senses one day. In the end, no one or nothing could dissuade my aunt from the path she had chosen in life.

My grandparents and mother have been gone for several years, but my Aunt is still going strong at 82, living alone, unbroken, proud, and unafraid on a Wisconsin farm with a dog and a couple of cats. She is happy. We have never spent enough time in each other’s company over the years to fill a week, but this holiday we talked by phone for over an hour. We both laughed when she told me she doesn’t understand why she can no longer lift an 80-pound piece of farm equipment into her truck. We may be bound by family history, but mostly we are bound by her improbable, unfathomable, defiant romance.