Six Characters in Search of An Author

"I think it's good for him, to have this modern family. Then he has to learn what we all have to, in this day and age, go with the flow, you know? Not all this, oh, that screwed me up or this screwed me up. No, none of the blame. It didn't work out and that's all. It didn't work out. That's all."

My father.

There's a book that follows me about you. I think about it how most women think about their child; what will he look like? What will he sound like? Will he love me how I love him? 

A man.

I sat in the cab with her, in a city with a different language, talking about her wedding. I said, "But, when will I meet my ...? Like, really? When?" I was joking, convinced the answer was not for a long time, not ever. Two days later you sent me a quote about love at first sight.

Life is just a big fucking joke, isn't it?

My brother.

"Yo, Kate, I'm so proud of you. Yo, man, fuck, shit is hectic in this circus. I'm gonna hang my baboon mask up at the top of the stairs and paint, WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS. Like, shit with people is hurting, too. I'm just too real for a lot of this stuff, you know? You guys gotta be gentle with me now. Real fragile. Yo, still, shit is so hectic. Are you listening? Why are you always working? Easy!"

He says "Easy!" instead of "Goodbye."

My mother.

And when she cries, I don't recognize her face. It looks like her face is breaking, melting, gone. She looks two years old. She's in a state of flux and when I explain that to her she say's that's the difficulty, that nothing lasts.

I am happy when transparency exists with a friend or lover, like child and mother, telepathic, it's magic when you love someone like that.

"It's okay, Mom. You're the child now. That's normal. That's supposed to happen."

My two girls.

We are each other's families now. Let's sit and get drunk and plan our own lives. Let's pick boys and leave for good, never come home. When our husbands die, and when our daughters do this to us, let's search Craigslist and live together in a big house in the east end and pay under eight hundred dollars a month.

Me.

Stick around, some real feelings might surface.

Out Of The Fog/Into The Myst

While it's true that everything ends, some things never really begin, either.

Do you remember when I was with you I couldn't drink coffee? Do you remember how you didn't like it when I drank alcohol, so I was sober? Do you remember how you would fall asleep and I would lay there, trying to tell my heart to stop beating? Do you remember how my eyes looked different? Do you remember how I was too tired to do anything? Only, now, I can't stop. I can't sleep. I don't feel the affects of caffeine. I'm drunk all the time. I feel like I'm flying.

What do you think of me, when you think of me, if you think of me at all? 

Human beings can't end things with dignity; not like trees that change colour, flowering, fading, falling, beautiful, alive. I am acting out but I also feel nothing at all. 

Our dreams, if they were dreams, came and went unannounced.

I don't know how to remember you and that's the saddest thing of all. 

...

There's someone that he loved before and she's probably the me to his you. I feel her, hovering around us. I want to tell her to leave, but I want to know her, too. Is she like me? Would she like me? 

I am trying so hard to stay away from lonely places. 

What happens after the first shot is fired?

You are that scarf I left in my friend's car in London; one thing, sewn together. 

You were something I loved, lost and shouldn't have, left behind without noticing. I knew exactly where I'd put you, but I couldn't be bothered to write and have you sent home.

Have you ever had one of those moments where your future visits you so clearly?

Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt

I leave quickly and my father doesn’t follow. I don’t make a scene. I roll my eyes at him and grab my mickey from the floor. I take a long swig and throw it in the shiny silver garbage. I flatten my dress against my thighs and leave. I press my fingertips against a tattoo that sits happily on my forearm.

Desiderium is written in black Franklin Gothic font. It is the alphabet my father stared at every day for forty years during his career as a newspaperman, the typeface that accepted him, the one set of symbols on earth that loved him as he was. 

I walk down the stairs and on my descent I slip back and forth in my high heels.  I am drunker than I thought, than I expected to be. I take off my shoes and hold them in my left hand, the banister in my right. From this elevated perspective, I see my mother. I drop my shoes, they crash on the wooden stairs and I yell out to her. 

“Mom! Mom! I was looking for you.”

She turns. She doesn’t notice that I am shoeless and braless.

Desiderium; “A yearning desire for something that you once had and now lost.”

Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt

The day John F. Kennedy died, Frank was painting his mother’s window. He had just moved back in with her, having left Montreal, having left Patty, having left everything. In his mother’s old age, he’d wanted to keep her company. He also didn’t want to be alone.

It was November and it was cold. He pulled his windbreaker closer to his chest. He had just cropped his hair close to his skull. The colours had gone and so had the ability to see what ailed people. The leading feelings remained but he ignored them with a willful conviction.

Go away.

What replaced them was an empty, angry sensation that spilled through his organs and lived in his stomach. 
He put his brush in the white paint. The ballgame was interrupted by the following message.

“John Kennedy has died.”

“Fucking Protestants,” he said. He took the brush and put it against the window frame without missing a single stroke.

In following years, although he was fascinated by conspiracies of his death, he wondered why he was not surprised that the President has been assassinated. Why he never felt surprised about anything, not for a moment. He wondered if even though the leading feelings were hidden, hung in shame, it didn’t mean they that they weren’t somewhere. 

Maybe somewhere they were living in full bloom.

Even though he'd never admit it, that was a hopeful thought.

Black Sheep, A Novel Excerpt

We make small talk about nothing for another twenty minutes. As I’m leaving, he asks, “How’s Andrew doing? You know, if he’s ever…unhappy with his management, send him to me.”

I nod. “I will.” I gather my purse.

Andrew was a dedicated student of the Meisner technique in Toronto. The teacher, the guru of his class, was like his second father. Actors sit in chairs and repeat single sentences to each other, sometimes only words.

“Fuck.” “Fuck.”

 “You’re wearing a black shirt.” “I’m wearing a black shirt,” and so on. I never understood the benefit. I always thought it was a cult.

“Doesn’t it get old?” I’d ask him.

But now, having the word “Andrew” said to me countless times a day, I understand. My repeating it back elicits strange reactions that even I couldn’t predict. Pride. Jealousy. Sadness. Heart palpitations.
But strangest of all, is that after saying it a hundred times, it began to feel true.

My reality is now a Meisner exercise of my boyfriend’s name.

“Maybe you should get a tan,” my manager tells my back as I’m walking out of his office.

I ask the cab to drive the long way to my meeting.