l LOVE YOU SPRINGTIME. NOW … BUH-BYE
We concluded the first springtime post with the question: “Is there a downside to internalized springtime for the creative mind?”
So… is there?
Oh, you bet there is! I’ll give you an example:
Insurance agents (and I’m guessing it would be the same with all salesmen), are notorious for summarily ditching what works for them: a perfectly successful phone technique, a dynamic sales presentation, or flawless methods of turning nos into yeses. Suddenly, they just stop using them. Then, midway into their commission’s downward spiral, when their manager asks them why they stopped doing what was successful and made them money, most will sheepishly admit: “I knew that it worked, so I wanted to try something new.”
To try something new …. And, that, dear reader is the lure—the siren—of springtime!
Let me ask you this:
How many of you have amputated stories, or sheaves of half-worked melodies lying in the bottom of your desk drawers, or blocked out sketches on canvases stacked in our closets? How many of your past creative impregnations—after a rough winter’s labor—become pre-term-stillborn when challenged by springtime’s new shoots? To try something new.
Let me start the survey myself:
I have two unfinished novels and about eight or nine truncated short stories. No songs, I’m afraid. No canvases.
How about you painters reading this? Or songwriters? You other writers? 
Personally, I don’t know the first thing about technique in painting, only a little more about songwriting: I can hum a ditty. But I do know what all three have in common. Throw in playwriting and sculpting, and I’m still in familiar territory. And so are you!
I know they all began with an idea, which I’ll call a vision—however unarticulated the vision was.
If the vision was true there was a powerful, if not burning, desire to bring that idea or vision to completion. Dare I say it? I shall: To give birth … to the novel, or the short story, or the painting, sculpture, stained-glass window or architecture, or the song, tune, opera, or symphony!
Of course the all-important medium between Vision and Birth is Time.
Could it be simpler? If the vision produced a desire that was consistently powerful enough over time there would be a joyous delivery.
For the formula lovers amongst us, I offer:
VISION + SUSTAINED DESIRE + TIME (GESTATION) = BIRTH
* * *
The Challenge: Visit the graveyard of projects past. Let’s do a little disinterring.
For the purposes of discussion let’s say it’s a writing project you pulled out of the graveyard of your drawer.
1. The beginning-to-unravel point: At what point did you start losing interest in your project? You didn’t just one day say, “Okay, I’m no longer interested in this.” It came by degrees. And, there was a reason for it. Chances are the reason is going to take you right back to the vision.
I’m sitting here in my office chair, at my office desk, my hands cupped to the back of my head, elbows up and to the side, staring out the glass office door where the stenciled letters spelling AUTO, HOME, BUSINESS & LIFE INSURANCE are backwards to me so the passersby on the sidewalk heading down to the 7-11 can properly read it and perhaps come in and spoil my reverie while I am thinking, “Well … another springtime is here.”
I’m also imagining how someone, staring at me from one of the apartment windows in the complex across Columbus 
Street, might wonder at my hands so placed behind my head, my elbows high and out, my well-toned lats filling that part of my Hawaiian shirt and at the glazed look in my eyes, whether I might, instead, be a huge Monarch butterfly fresh-slithered from my chrysalis, which he can’t see, owing to the distance and also the fact that my former springtime home lies like a discarded garment at my feet, hidden behind my big, impersonal insurance desk.
Oh, yes it is most definitely spring.
My imagination flutters me about the room, dipping and rising and soaring and fluttering, and the man in the apartment has now vacated his window falsely believing he had not been staring at a butterfly at all, but an old insurance man sitting in his chair behind his desk.
* * *
I’ve experienced probably sixty springtimes, nearly all of which I might remember the magic of, if I really put my mind to it. Even if I were to try to recapture the memory of the springtimes earlier than that, it would be irrelevant. Why? Because you don’t need springtime when all of childhood—assuming it is not meddled with—is tender and fresh. All life is magic, or should be, to the pre-teen child.
My reality is that I’m 73 years old. But, then again, no one who’s reading this is likely to be cavorting around in the tender, fresh wonder of childhood, either.
So, I’m thinking we all need our springtimes. Am I right? What does springtime conjure up in your mind? Spring cleaning? Or, Easter?
And, isn’t springtime the most popular season to marry? How about planting time? And, dare we omit nestlings chirping in the trees, or, butterflies flitting from flower to flower? What have I forgotten?
One doesn’t have to go too far to find the common thread running through all these? Springtime is a time of new beginnings.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious with the above statement, I’d like to take it a step further and suggest that the first day of spring should be the true New Year’s Day. Sure, a few things would have to be tweaked, but I’d wager that once done, the rational mind of man would have a closer association with the truth of new beginnings that reside in man’s soul. And, because of that … I’d wager another thing: our New Year’s resolutions would have a far better chance of succeeding because our souls are already geared toward change, improvement, betterment.
We’d have to do something about the college bowl games. I’ll put my people on it.
* * *
How do the seasons play out in our creative life? As a writer I wonder, is it just me, or do the fresh sprouts nudging the soil of our creative minds seem more abundant now? Notwithstanding, we may be still pregnant with undelivered projects of springs and summers past that we’ve been pushing through one more exhausting winter of fitful contractions.
No one said creative project-bearing would be easy!
And, now, as if to confound us, these new ideas are germinating in our minds with surprising ease and are as fresh as a peach-blossom-wafted breeze. With that tingling in our nostrils who could be blamed for wanting to take a break from all the pushing and grunting?
(Can I hear some of you complaining that the old coot is waxing awfully poetic? Well, you young whippersnappers, springtime’s the reason. Blame it on springtime!)
Complaints aside, though, are we beginning to see there just might be a downside to springtime for the creative mind I hope you’ll explore that with me next time.
Until then … be kind to old men and young butterflies.
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My April 19th post of THEN & NOW (The Writer’s Life), was a comparison of the writing/submission process THEN (circa the 1930s), with typewritten Mss, manila envelopes, stamps and snailmail … and NOW, with the computer, internet and email. I was pleased with its reception. A few days after its introduction, I read a brilliantly written blog post by Barbara Rogan which stands as a kind of counter-point to THEN & NOW in that it gives insight to the publishing business from the other side of the desk, so to speak, and offers thumbnail portraits of some of the great editors and publishers.
I offer it now as a reblog, for your enjoyment. After you experience the richness of her prose and the subject, I invite you to check out her latest novel, A Dangerous Fiction.
Please enjoy:
The Best Part of Publishing
Posted 9/12/12, by Barbara Rogan
The problem with living in the golden age of anything is that you never know it at the time. It is what it is, that’s all. Only much later, when it’s over, do you realize in retrospect what anextraordinary period it was.
I thought about this the other day when I came across a piece in the New Yorker, “Editors and Publisher” by John McPhee: an affectionate appreciation of his two great New Yorkereditors, William Shawn and Bob Gottlieb, and his publisher, Roger Straus Jr. It occurred to me that I had known and worked with two of these men, Bob Gottlieb when he was editor-in-chief of Knopf, and Roger Straus Jr. during his long tenure at the helm Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I was, at the time, a young literary agent based in Tel Aviv, representing Israeli writers abroad and American and European writers in Israel. I had moved from New York to Tel Aviv at the age of 22, worked for an Israeli publisher for a year, saw a niche into which I might fit, and at the ripe old age of 23 launched the Barbara Rogan Literary Agency.
THE HOW OF REJECTION
Over my Saturday morning treat of biscuits ‘n gravy and coffee at Carl’s Jr, I happened to be reading a short story by William Saroyan. The story is called Seventy Thousand Assyrians, and typical of Saroyan, it has a humongous title with very simple content that seems to go nowhere but goes everywhere, if you know what I mean.
He writes about a young man (the writer, William) needing a haircut; having little money, he goes to a barber college where he can get one for 15 cents. While he is waiting for his turn he strikes up a conversation with a sixteen-year-old lad, also down on his luck, and waiting for a haircut. The young man tells him he is heading to Portland, Oregon since there is no work in the lettuce fields of Salinas, which is in California. And, that brings me to Saroyan’s narrative. And, I quote:
“I wanted to tell him how it was with me: rejected story from Scribner’s, rejected essay from The Yale Review, no money for decent cigarettes, worn shoes, old shirts, but I was afraid to make something of my own troubles. A writer’s troubles are always boring, a bit unreal. People are apt to feel, Well, who asked you to write in the first place? A man must pretend not to be a writer. I said, ‘Good luck North.’”
A fine short story, worth every writer’s perusal. But, it was just the reading of that one paragraph that set me to thinking about the life of the writer then (1933) and now. And, it got me thinking philosophically about the writer then and now. About their psyches. About the subtle deeper layers, then and now. And, I’m way out of my own depth here, I know that. But has that ever stopped me before?
Thinking about it, and including it in my blog, are two different things, though. The decision maker was that my Kindle Fire alerted me I need to charge it now! I had just enough juice left to type out the above quote before the screen went gray.
The electronic age — how apt is that?
“I wanted to tell him how it was with me: rejected story from Scribner’s, rejected essay from The Yale Review.” 
I’ll go back and pick up the rest of the quote later, but right now the keynote difference between the two parts of the quote is not the results of rejection but how one is rejected. And, the very important impact that time has on rejection. Very important!
Many writers are not old enough to have experienced the submission/rejection phase of which Saroyan speaks. I am, and some of you are. What Saroyan had to do was write, edit and put in its final polished form the manuscript he wanted to submit. He knew there was protocol. The editor, or his lackey, would be looking for a reason not to have to finish a piece to its end. There were hundreds that had to be waded through before closing time. The writer couldn’t fold it and slip it in a regular size envelope. Folding not allowed. So, he had to purchase manila envelopes. He needed two for each manuscript — one in which to put the Ms along with the second, folded, stamped manila envelope — alas! for the returned Ms. With the returned Ms would be the rejection slip, suitable for framing, wallpapering or wadding up. If Mr. Saroyan were fortunate there would be no coffee stains or other tale-tale signs on it, so he would be able to use the almost virgin Ms to send to the next on the list.
Each submission represented about a month out of the writer’s life. Thirty days. Maybe even longer. And, each successive, unsuccessful month meant a little more abrasion to his soul. But, I promised not to talk about the effects of rejection just now. Only the process, the how, of rejection.
Effort. Money. Time. These always have been and always will be the constants. How they are allocated will differ over the years.
Mr. Saroyan had a typewriter. While he created, he had to x-out the offending words, writing the corrected ones above or below the lines. But, for his finished Ms he needed perfection (back in an age without white-out or correcto-tape) and if that meant tossing an otherwise perfectly good page because in the last line he wrote to instead of too … so be it! Effort. Time.
Then came the computer age!
Just having the ability to make all the editing changes on the screen (with spell-check, insert and delete, cut and paste) before the Ms is printed, the computer presented an enormous saving in time and effort. And, then, with
the advent of the internet, all of a sudden Scribner’s, The Yale Review and a hundred-thousand other magazine and many book publishers have moved right next door. So to speak. There goes the neighborhood! — again, so to speak.
Now the writer whips his Ms into near perfection, pulls the publisher up on-line, pastes or attaches the Ms, pushes the submit button and, voila!, he is about ten days, instead of thirty from rejection — or acceptance, lets not forget that, with the payment sent to his Pay-pal account.
This first segment of “THEN AND NOW: (the Writer’s life)” focused on the submission/rejection process of Magazine Fiction and Non-fiction writing. For this blog, it is a stand-alone piece. I hope you enjoyed it. I also hope you will be inclined to sign up for my free newsletter where the series will continue with a close look at the results of rejection on the writer; after that, the third in the series will branch off to what I hope is a fresh exploration of brick ‘n mortar vs. E-book publication . You may sign up on the upper right sidebar. I hope you take that journey with me!
M’ bud, Seumas Gallacher , tossed me the gauntlet. wp.me/p2pTaK-rg He actually tossed five gauntlets to five receivers. I’m sure the other four caught theirs. Congrats, but I missed mine!
Steel gauntlet and big toe do not a merry meeting make.
But … not allowing a throbbing hallux to daunt this fisherman’s challenge, I cast the net of my memory out into the teeming sea of literature and snag my personal five favorite books.
These are the books whose special dog-eared pages can still tease out of me a smile or a tear after the third or thirtieth read. They might not be the critic’s choices. They may not be your favs. But dare you say they are not worthy of inclusion on Jay’s Doggone good Reads bookshelf, I want to cordially invite you to my boat. I have a dandy little plank I would like you to test out. Arrrrrrrrg!
So, here goes, dear readers. The selections are in no particular order. And, you writers out there … I reserve the right to revise the list after I’ve read your masterpieces. But, at this moment here are my choices:
A Child’s Christmas in Wales, By Dylan Thomas: This little book (I’ve seen it under its own covers, but it’s so small it’s usually included with his poems. But, it deserves its own sovereignty.) is meant to be read aloud—and in a Welch accent, I might add! Wanna know what a Welch accent sounds like? Listen to Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales. http://binged.it/ZbasXw If you’re like me, after to hear it you’re gonna want to have your own copy. Why? So you can read it aloud. Children especially love hearing it. I said Thomas’s words are meant to be read aloud. It’s truer to say they’re meant to be eaten! Like fine cuisine. Oh my! I’ve said it and it feels so good!
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, By Tom Robbins: In my opinion Robbins is a dangerous writer for a fledgling writer to read. Just sayin’. He breaks all the rules with his rendering of characters and plot and breaks them so seamlessly, so easily, so freely and with such astounding craftsmanship that an impressionable writer might easily come under his spell. I know I did! After reading this very book, I was a miniature Tom Robbins for my next 300,000, or so, words. I say “miniature” advisedly. I could never bring off the outrageous panache of the original. Mine was always a diluted, “miniature” version. But, to his favor, only greatness can bring about such an effect!
Look Homeward Angel, By Thomas Wolfe: I need to remind some of my readers that there are two Thomas Wolfe’s. There’s the one who wrote in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Then there’s the real Thomas Wolfe (he says with a wry smile). The author I’m speaking of was contemporaneous with Hemmingway. Anyway, I cut my newbie teeth on Thomas Wolfe. He was a literary steamroller. There is sheer power in his words and nowhere is that more representative than in Look Homeward Angel. I’ve heard it said that Wolfe will never be found in the Pantheon of American writers because they lack a certain “finished” quality … and I tend to agree with that assessment. But the emotional honesty and rawness that’s found in his prose is more a monument to me because of the lack of polish. Sometimes the excitement in one’s writing can only be spontaneous and polishing dulls its fine edge. And Besides, Wolfe stood over six-and-a-half feet tall and scrawled his mighty words on a tablet which was laid on top of the refrigerator. While apocryphal, it’s been said he used to beat his head against the wall to slow the pace of words that bubbled & frothed out of his brain. You just gotta love that!
Tropic of Cancer, By Henry Miller: Lawdy, how naughty I felt reading Tropic of Cancer in the 60s when it was declared to be “non-obscene” by the Supreme Court. I was about 20 at the time. Being “non-obscene” didn’t mean I wouldn’t be umbrella’d by a little old lady who watched me leering at the pages in the park, but at least I had no fear of being arrested. By today’s standards the book would raise nary an eyebrow. Both the Tropic books were important to me as a living document of life in the 30s and in Paris. Important literary and art figures wandered in and out of the pages—with their literary and artistic idiosyncrasies. Also, lest we forget, Henry Miller was not a shallow thinker. He helped bring sexuality out of the closet and cast it in an almost spiritual light.
The William Saroyan Reader, By William Saroyan: This is a compendium of some of William Saroyan’s best short stories along with a play, The Time of Your Life that won him the Pulitzer Prize. He declined the Prize because he believed that “commerce should not judge the arts.” I admire, so much, the integrity of the man behind the artist. William Saroyan (I think I’ll call him Bill) lived just up the street from me—well, 70 miles up the street, in Fresno, California, from which his stories derive their inspiration as well as their energy. Saroyan is sheer joy to read. His rambling yet organically controlled sentences, his down-to-earth characters who strike such a chord of reality, his settings that scintillate and drag you into the present moment—this is what makes Saroyan one of the most seminal writers in the twentieth century.
And, now, I’m going to wish the following five bloggers better luck than I in gauntlet catching. This is your assignment if you choose to take it (and, may I say you were chosen because of your high intelligence—to be sure—but also because you’ll do anything to take a day off your present project. Also, you dread with a dread the world’s never dreaded before of being invited to my boat.) When you’ve published your five favs make sure it includes at the bottom the five bloggers to whom you are going to toss your gauntlet, spear or grenade.
Without further ado, readers, put your gauntleted hands together for:
Clive Eaton http://www.cliveeaton.com/
Sonia Medeiros http://doingthewritething.wordpress.com/
John Betcher http://www.johnbetcher.com/index.html
Teresa Cypher http://dreamersloversandstarvoyagers.blogspot.com/
Hamilton C Burger http://hamiltoncburger.com/Hamilton_s_Blog.php
Pssst! You made it this far so why not pop over to the right-hand side bar and subscribe to my FREE newsletter? Until I get other people to voluntarily rave about it, I’m gonna have to be the first one you’ll read as saying: “Jay’s newsletter’s a hoot!” and “Chock-full of writing tips, it’s information rich, while entertaining and funny!” and “You’re gonna wanna jump aboard before Jay discovers how great it truly is and starts charging a huge subscription fee!”
There is a lovely young lady
(you know her), the one
In whose soul you’d swear
Ambition speaks in such muted whispers
You might take it for selflessness,
Until, she deems you, like me, benign
Enough to offer a glimpse within,
And then you’ll see…
(As I saw, you shall see)
How, in fact, her soul shrieks,
Indeed, incessantly shrieks
For its elusive reward;
Pitched, though – as from one
Of those curious whistles -
So high that only dogs
And I (and, perhaps you) respond;
Still, she fancies those sacred vibrations
Resonate in her alone.
Oh, never do I tire of studying her:
Obliqueness and indirection
Are essential to the game -
Detachment vital. For it would be
Like studying the foam on a wave
As it swells to sweep over me,
If I am passive to the charm
Of her lassitude.
So, ensconced behind doorways
Peering from many a discreet angle
And at carefully chosen moments
I watch her loll
Her solitary body on her solitary bed
With that indolent sensuality
That one lover for another reserves.
How wondrously curious she is:
Savoring through distended nostrils
The warm fragrance of her mouth’s exhale!
How thoroughly content:
One moist inner thigh coupling the other.
Pssst! You made it this far so why not pop over to the right-hand side bar and subscribe to my FREE newsletter? Until I get other people to voluntarily rave about it, I’m gonna have to be the first one you’ll read as saying: “Jay’s newsletter’s a hoot!” and “It’s funny while information rich!” and “You’re gonna wanna jump aboard before Jay discovers how great it truly is and starts charging a huge subscription fee!”
[A Tale Plucked From the Trick Or Treat Bag]
Lillian prayed that there would be no more murder, but even as she prayed she deeply felt the uncontrollable forces of retribution had already begun to unravel her future — and Ben’s.
She watched Dr. Jacobson keenly through the two-inch gap she pulled back from the closed drapes, watched him as he got out of his pearlescent Lexus, his ever-present binder tucked under his arm. He began to navigate gingerly up the slick sidewalk, still iced over from last night’s late October freeze. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her. The way he seemed self-absorbed as by some secret thought that set the corners of his mouth twitching into a nervous smile — a smile that he just as quickly stifled — she doubted that he had.
Not that it mattered. And, it really didn’t matter to her.
She pushed her face more into the opening, the better to see his profile at her door. He fiddled with the knot of his tie while the forefinger of his other hand poised at the doorbell. He wasn’t bad looking. Not drop-dead gorgeous, as Jean thought, after commenting on the news photo Lillian had clipped from the paper and mailed her. Lillian happened upon picture the Monday after his first visit. In the picture, he was standing beside the mayor who was cutting the ribbon outside the ultra-modern office building Dr. Jacobson paid to have erected. One whole floor of it, according to the accompanying article, would house his practice. She could kind of see where Jean was coming from. He had a big, brassy, confident smile, and she found him pleasant to look at, though she would stop short of gorgeous. It wouldn’t be the first time she and her kid sister would disagree over matters of taste. The good doctor did know how to dress; she’d give him that. She was no authority on fashion, but you could always tell the suit that was bought off the rack and one that was tailored. This black serge was not off the rack. A jeweled cufflink caught the afternoon sun and glinted on the sleeve, just below the wrist of the hand that pushed the doorbell.
She wasn’t sure she’d even open the door. She continued to watch him. He blinked, and then glanced at the door knob. He blinked again, looked over his shoulder at the street, then back again. Something caught his attention on the porch, near his feet. He smiled — but it was a grim smile — and he nodded slowly, knowingly. She had told Ben last night it wouldn’t hurt him to take the pumpkin off the front porch, to put it in his room ’til after the visit. Why draw attention to it? Wouldn’t've hurt him. He could’ve put it back out on the porch again tonight. Once again he pushed the doorbell and she heard the chimes a second time behind her. Should she wait until he pushed it a third time?
She pulled back from the drapes and took a moment to tug the hem of her canary-yellow skirt evenly to her knees. Of course she had to open the door. She really had no choice. The school wasn’t going to let the incident go unaddressed. And, now that they had the CPA involved, if it wasn’t this person it would be another. He did seem nice enough at the earlier visits — oh, a bit full of himself, certainly, and he did have his agenda. But still … there could have been worse choices. She brought her tongue across the front of her teeth and she tested her smile.
She pulled the door part way open. He stuck his head through the opening, peered around it with a puzzled smile. “May I come in?” She opened it the rest of the way.
* * *
Across the kitchen table, she watched his face as he studied a page in the binder, spread out in front of him. Weren’t his eyes blue the other times? Now, by God, they were gray, almost silver! They seemed to twitch in their sockets as they crossed the page. His palm faced up from the under side of the page and she could see, through the paper, the shadowed imprint of his fingertips and the flat edge of his thumb just before he turned the page.
“May I call you Lillian?” He looked up so suddenly that he locked on her gaze before she had a chance to avert it.
“Whatever for?” she asked, but she couldn’t hold his silvery stare and dropped hers to the tablecloth where she set herself to brushing some of the wrinkles over the table’s edge. She was vaguely aware she wasn’t controlling a fatuous grin that now trembled at the corners of her mouth. Why was she smiling? The last thing she wanted to do was smile.
“Because I really would like to be your friend. We both have an interest in what’s best for Ben. Isn’t that true?”
Now she could control her mouth, but not the filling-up of her eyes.
“And, we do have a bit of a problem there, don’t we … Lillian?”
She brought herself up straight in her chair and with a resolve that surprised her, and pointed her finger at him. “If you think they’re going to take Ben away from me –”
“Oh, but I assure you, Lillian,” he said, plucking a handkerchief from his breast pocket and holding it out to her, “if Ben’s Principal has anything to do with it, I guarantee you … After all, he does have that gash on his forearm that, well…”
“But he took away…” She realized the irrationality of what she was about to say and stopped. She held the proffered handkerchief to her eyes.
“Exactly! Mr. Murray took away his pumpkin. Ben had been carving on it all morning in the hallway, using a steak knife he had secreted to school. And, for doing his job, enforcing the rules — I’m telling it from Mr. Murray’s viewpoint, Lillian, not mine – what does he get for insuring the safety of all his children by wrestling away a half-carved jack-o-lantern from a nine-year-old child, then going after the knife? What does he get for his selfless act? His reward is a three-inch slash on his arm. I heard from a reliable source he shrieked in a most un-principal-like manner and raced to his office where he slammed and locked his door! If he’d just glanced before he took flight, he’d have seen the knife lying on the floor, blood and pumpkin on the blade, and little Ben already going out the door.”
“He’s only nine, Doctor Jacobson.”
“Paul … Call me Paul, Lillian. Oh, understand — I’m on your side, my dear. You must be just frantic, thinking they have the power — and they do have the power. Sad to say they do — to take him away. But I’m on your side!” He put his hand, with his manicured nails, atop hers. She stared down at it, tanned with stiff, black hairs on the knuckles, over hers. There was no thought. She could only stare at the hand, the knuckles. “Of course,” he went on, “Being a practicing Psychologist, I’m being retained by the Child Protective Agency. You didn’t think I was with the CPA did you? No, I’m here to study the allegations brought against little Ben, to study them in light of the vast body of knowledge of the Mind Sciences and Sociology. You know what I’m saying, Lillian? The CPA thinks they have little Ben’s best interest in heart, too. Now, I have to tell you something that I don’t want you to take — I would be horrified to think you didn’t… take it in the right way and think the worse of me.”
“Just tell me, Doctor Jacobson.”
“Please… Paul… What I have to tell you is the CPA, well, well, they think you may not be a fit mother for Ben … I know, my dear, I know. But, they look at you as — how to phrase it — a mother whose husband had died under — under, well, under suspicious circumstances…”
She slowly withdrew her hand from beneath his. “They’re saying I –”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no! I’m not saying… Well, yes, I guess I am. They think that you somehow might — but, dear Lillian, they have no way of knowing you as I have over these past — past – my goodness, has it been three weekly meetings?”
“They think I killed Jerry?” She hadn’t said his name in over a year. It sounded strange to her ears. It seemed now to reverberate in her mind. Jerry … Jerry … Jerry ….
“No, Lillian. I’m sure they don’t exactly think that. In fact, it was even speculated by a few that, well, that — you know — that little Ben might even have, I don’t know, resented his father’s closeness to you … I mean, you’ve heard of the Oedipus complex –”
“Oh my God! I think I’m going to be sick!”
“Well, of course, Lillian. And, please know I wasn’t one of those. He was only seven then — and while there are cases of atrocities committed at even younger ages, the youngest I’ve heard of at five years –”
“Just — just shut up!”
The doctor sniffed. “I understand. It’s not easy. And, may I say that only a small minority even thought that you had anything to do with it. I mean, there was no reason to assume — there was no indication… Certainly, that rung could have been — how can I put it? — artfully weakened? But, that’s the stuff of Hollywood, isn’t it? I’m sure a detective might have wondered what the odds were. You know, that the lower seven rungs were solid as a rock while only the third rung from the top, the rung that a man of average height would put all the weight of one leg on while he was about to swing onto the roof — that rung would be weakened. A Columbo or A Monk would have sneaked out to the accident scene late at night to examine that ladder.” He tapped the open notebook with his forefinger, smiling distractedly. “Don’t you get a kick out of them, Lillian? Columbo or Monk?”
She didn’t answer. She watched him sitting across from her, seeming for the moment not to even notice her, smiling an inward smile, slowly shaking his head.
“I’m just picturing Columbo or Monk,” he went on, “sitting on the walkway, right where the base of the ladder had stood leaning against your house and not two feet away from where your poor husband’s head slammed into –”
“My God! Doctor Jacobson! Don’t … How could you!”
A look of absolute horror seemed to flood over his face. “Oh, dear, dear Lillian,” he said, “Forgive me! I can’t believe I was so crude! I got carried away with my own thoughts and words and images. Please, please forgive me!” He made a comical attempt at grasping both her hands in his; she pulled away; he tried again. Finally, he withdrew his hands and, like wounded birds, they fluttered to his lap. He lowered his head. “I’m truly, humbly sorry, Lillian. I — I want so much, so desperately much, to have us both on the same side. But, for that to happen you need to know just how strong the forces are out there who want to remove little Ben from you. It’s not just the CPA and the school — you know that, Lillian. How long has Ben — been — hearing voices?”
This last, he said pointedly and without pause.
“Voices?”
“Voices, yes …. Damn it, Lillian! Now is not the time to be coy. Ben certainly isn’t. He makes no secret of them, now does he?”
“Lots of nine-year-olds have their — their invisible little friends, Dr. Jacobson.”
“Invisible friends who tell him something horrible will happen if he doesn’t do certain things? Friends like that?”
She knew she should have taken the pumpkin off the porch herself, when he hadn’t. “I’m not sure I know –” But, of course she did ….
“Lillian!” He brought the flat of his hand smartly to the tabletop.
She shot to her feet, then seeing him smiling up at her, she slowly sank back to her chair. After a moment of watching his unchanging expression she said, “Halloween is just a few days away.”
“Precisely! And, so mama buys him another pumpkin to carve, yes?”
She looked down.
“To silence the voices? To appease the spirits? Is that why, Lillian?”
The tears were starting to come again.
“I saw the pumpkin when I was on the porch. Who crushed it?”
“It couldn’t be! It wasn’t crushed when he left this morning. I saw it.”
“Well, it was in the flower-bed next to the porch, when I came. Crushed. You think the voices told him to do it?” He half-turned in his chair and looked through the kitchen doorway behind him. “Where is Ben, Lillian? I’d like to speak to the lad.”
“No!” she said suddenly.
“But, why?”
“He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
He was pressing her for an answer. She was confused. “He’s, um…”
“You don’t know where he is, do you? You’d leave a nine-year-old child to his own devises? The CPA’d have a field-day with that!”
“He’s, uh”he’s down the street… playing… with a friend.”
“You do know I find that hard to believe, don’t you, Lillian? Still…” A smile crept to his lips. “Still, I guess it’s just as well.”
“Just … as … well …” She meant it as a question, but she wondered at how flat and dead the words sounded to her ears. And, now he was looking at her so strangely?
“You agree, then? Excellent!”
“I…”
“My dear Lillian, you must listen to me very carefully. Ben’s future holds in the balance. You know we both want the best for Ben, don’t you?”
She stared at him, puzzled. He kept saying that. Of course she wanted what was best for Ben. She wasn’t sure that he knew what was best for him. “Doctor”"
“No, no… Paul!” His name seemed to burst from his throat. And, now his lips trembled slightly before he clamped his mouth shut. She watched him, curiously, as he closed his eyes a moment. And, when he opened them again, he was smiling a small complacent smile.
“Okay,” she said. “Paul. What do you think is best for Ben?”
“To be with his mother, of course.”
“Well, then…” She shrugged. “You have all this power you wield with the committee. Can’t you just –”
His laughter stilled her words. She stared at his mouth. Behind his teeth she saw a white coating at the base of his tongue and behind that the dark opening of his throat with a kind of trigger hanging down. “You’d have me just sign a clean bill of family health, right? Like a prescription?”
“Well, you said he should be with me…”
“If it were a perfect world, my dear. Now, I’m sure you’re a good mother. But the fact is Ben needs, Ben desperately needs, a father”at least a father figure. Consider the facts, dear Lillian. Ben was seven when his father died. That would have been shock enough for most. But, to have been the one who saw his father fall ten, twelve feet to the concrete –”
“Doc –Paul… My God, Paul! Is that — Must you –” She felt the tears spilling out onto her forearm. Holding the handkerchief to her face, she sobbed into it, breathing back the moist trapped warmth. She tried to gather in her emotions, to get some order to her thoughts. Look at him, smiling at her, studying her! What was he doing? He seemed to get her to the point where she felt some hope, and where she even had some feelings toward him, where she thought there might even be a future with him. And, it was like he waited for that moment… so he could pull the rug out from under her. Was he trying to drive her crazy? Was he trying to play good-cop, bad-cop with her mind? But, why?
He went on as though nothing had happened. “Fact is, my love…”
She pulled the handkerchief away from her face and stared at him, but he seemed undeterred.
“…Our little Ben needs a strong, masculine presence in his life. I see the pattern forming. He is anima directed. No, not directed! He is possessed by the anima – the female psychodynamic. It’s all there… The voices. The internal commands. The obsessions, and the feeling of impending doom if he doesn’t follow their anima-driven dictates. I’d give him seven years, ten at the most, without some masculine balance in his life, without a defined structure, a disciplined emotional life – in other words, the animus function — without it, Lillian, my love, be certain our Ben will be institutionalized… at best.” He paused to stare at her. He’ll be dead… at worst!” There was silence while she assumed he was looking for the right words. At last, he put his hands on the table, tentatively, palms up. “Lillian,” he said, “please.”
She hesitated a moment then placed her hands on his. He wrapped his fingers around her hands and closed his eyes, letting his chin drop to his chest. Racking sobs escaped him, followed by a fluttery inhale. Somewhere in the background, through the doorway behind him, miles, seeming miles away, she heard a rustling sound in the front room. She glanced in that direction. It was over an hour before dark. Ben was told to come home by dark. She always had to go get him. Surely now would be no different. She looked back at Paul. His eyes were still closed, his chin still on his chest.
Then, he spoke: “I want you, Lillian. Please…”
“No… You can’t!” His jaw was trembling, and it confused her. Everything was mixed together. Ben… Paul… Paul helping Ben… Paul wanting her… Wanting her! She didn’t want him to want her! But, she wanted him to help her — her and Ben. Was he adding a price tag to it? But, no, she saw the cold, calculating part of him. He knew how to manipulate people, deliberately, efficiently. And, she was an easy mark for him. He knew which of her buttons to push. But, what she was seeing now was different. He was making himself vulnerable. He couldn’t look her in the eyes. He was shaming himself to her — all because — because he wanted her? Dear Jesus! It had been so long since anyone wanted her. Jerry had wanted her… once. Jerry… Jerry… It still sounded strange to her. But, even with Jerry, there was never the desperation she saw now in Paul. Her hands were still wrapped in his. He had been massaging her knuckles with his thumb, but now he tightened his grip, and strange, guttural sounds where coming from his throat.
“Oh, Lillian,” he said through a sob, “say something… You have to know how much I love you — you have to!”
“I can’t … It’s not right. It’s for Ben. You’re supposed to be here for Ben.” She tried to pull her hands from his, but his grip tightened more.
“And I am, I am, my love — my sweet love. Ben needs me — needs us and I need you. You don’t know how much I need — how much I’m burning up inside for you!”
Her hands were hot inside his, and now his hands moved up to take a tighter hold on her wrists. Sudden panic seized her. “Paul … you’re hurting me!”
“Tell me you love me! Tell me you want me, too!”
“No! No! God dammit!” From under the table she heard his feet tapping, then scuffing against the linoleum floor, then a louder tap or a thud almost simultaneous with a pressure against the inside of her calf, up to her knee, and before she had a chance to bring her knees together, she felt his foot, the toes of his stockinged foot flush against her panties. Her body stiffened. He held her hands imprisoned in his. And, now — now he was trying to slip his toe under the elastic of her panties! She wanted to scream out — to shriek! But, the moment she opened her mouth she saw those vacant, glazed-over silver eyes, his flared nostrils, and she could feel his hot breathing against her face. Instead of a scream, laughter bubbled out of her, grew so strident that she thought she was going crazy. Now tears streamed from her eyes and she flung them right and left as she shook her head. “No… No…” And then she laughed until she was breathless and the tears again crowded out her laughter… “No…Oh, God, no… Ha-Ha-Ha.” Laughter and rage and violation all boiled up out of her until she could no longer see him — only a kind of liquid shadow of him and another shadow to his rear, smaller, but elongating behind him, and above that elongation, a glint, sparkling in the gray mists, and dropping, falling like a comet, rising and then and falling, rising and falling, now like the prismatic zigzag of lightning through the rain, ripping into the earth.
The soft, warm weight of him slammed forward onto the table, onto their hands. She was able to extract hers easily now. Reaching beneath the table, she pushed the foot away from her crotch and off the end of the chair, his knee bumping the underside of the table before his foot fell to the floor. She put her knees together, and pushed the chair from the table and stood up. She rubbed away the tears with the heels of her hands… and when she pulled them away from her eyes she saw what she knew all along she would see.
Behind the chair that once held the now slumped over Paul, the knife’s handle protruding from between his shoulder-blades, a very diminutive Ben stood, his thin shoulders hunched over, his arms at his side. He was staring down at Paul whose neck showed two other puncture holes from which dark, almost black blood oozed. Blood was also puddled and spreading on the tablecloth by his open mouth.
Lillian bounded around the table to Ben, who still stood unmoving. She wrapped her arms around his body which now began to shake uncontrollably. He sank into her, trembling. With one arm she pulled the chair back from under Paul, and as she swung it around for Ben to sit in, she heard the muffled thud of Paul’s body followed by the sharper crack of what was probably his head against the linoleum.
“Ooops,” she said, and giggled. He wore one of his designer shoes; a pumpkin seed and orangey pulp adhered to the heel. The other shoe was under the table. She giggled some more.
Ben slumped into the chair, his head bowed. She came around to face him, getting down to her knees, her hands resting on his bony shoulders. She stared up at his closed eyes for a full minute, not speaking. Then, bringing one hand to rest under his chin, she gently raised it, and he opened his eyes. She smiled.
“He was a bad man, mama,” he said through trembling lips.
She nodded. She needed to be strong for Ben.
“They s-s-said I had to do it. He would — would’ve hurt you. They told me not to think about it, just to do it… ’cause he was gonna hurt you. They said he was a bad man and bad men shouldn’t live. I did right, didn’t I mama? Didn’t I?”
She nodded, swallowed back the rising emotion, and sniffed.
“He didn’t believe in them –I could tell. They said it was ’cause he was afraid of them. He was afraid they’d get inside his head until there wouldn’t be enough room for him. They’d squeeze him out like pimple juice.” He laughed, and then stopped short. “They thought that was funny, mama…squeezing him out like pimple juice.”
Feeling the tears coming, and knowing she couldn’t stop them, she reached out and cradled his face in her hands and pulled him forward to her. Her tears wet his cheek. Wrapping her arms around him, she rocked him forward and back. “Oh, my little Ben. My lovely little Ben.”
“Don’t cry, mama…”
“Ben… Ben… You did save me, darling. He was a bad man, and you saved me from him.” She pulled away from him a little, held him from the shoulders, kneading them as she spoke: “But, now I’ve got to ask you to be a big boy, okay? Will you try to do that for mama?”
“Yes, mama.”
“It won’t be easy, Ben… Are you sure? You’ll be a big boy?”
“I’ll be a big boy, mama.”
“As hard as it will be, darling, I don’t want you to ever tell anyone about this. I mean never! You did what was right, Ben — you did! But, Ben, no one else will understand. They’ll think what you did was wrong. But I know it was right, and you know it was right. It will be our secret, okay? Just the two of us.”
“The two of us.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
“Say it, Ben. Tell mama you promise.”
“I do. I promise, Mama.”
“Tell me what you promise, Ben.”
“I promise I won’t — tell anyone about what happened.”
She looked away, took a deep breath, and then looked back. “Good… Good. Here’s what else I want you to do. I want you to go up to your room and empty out your laundry basket. And I want you to put five of your most favorite toys in it. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m going to pack you a few things and then you know what we’re going to do?”
He shook his head.
“We’re going to drive down to Anaheim.”
“We’re going to Disneyland?”
“We’re going to Aunt Jean’s. You’re going to visit her for a while. I’ll give her some money so she’ll take you to Disneyland. You always liked Aunt Jean.”
“But, I want to go to Disneyland with you…”
“I know, sweetheart. I do know. It’s just that I’ve got some things to do first. Then we’ll go to Disneyland together, okay?” She looked away. She didn’t want to have him see her eyes lying to him. “Now, go get your toys together. I’ll be there in a minute.”
* * *
After Ben left the room, she stayed on her knees, her hands on the seat that still held Ben’s warmth. She closed her eyes, hearing his door click shut. Jean would understand. No two minds were more enmeshed than hers and her sister’s. Of course she would have to brace herself not to let her sister get even an inkling of the real truth. Even though she claimed she understood about Jerry — when she told her, “Lillian, when you’re put through all that you were put through, you sometimes just have to take matters in your own hands.” But this was different. She just couldn’t make her a confidante in this. She smiled, imagining Ben being raised to manhood sound and strong under her sister’s Christian tutelage. She was so grateful that Jean signed the papers, shortly after Jerry’s death, agreeing to guardianship of Ben if anything happened to her sister. Of course, who’d have guessed?…
She got to her feet and looked over at Paul. He was on his stomach, his left arm akimbo with his hand under his thigh. His right arm was stretched forward as though he were swimming in mid-crawl. His mouth and eyes were open as if he were gawking at her. She feigned shock. “Why, are you — sir, listen to me! Are you trying to look up my dress?” She retrieved his handkerchief from the table and, squatting down in front of his face, began wiping the knife handle clean. Then, bending forward to get in a better position, she grasped the handle tightly. She had the urge to pull it out and ram it back in, but the thought that she even had this urge disturbed her. “You are better than that,” she said to herself. She loosened her grip on the handle and pulled her hand cleanly away.
“Mama,” she heard from Ben’s room, “You said you were gonna help me pack. Oh… can I buy a Coke to drink in the car?”
“We’ll buy Cokes and maybe even some chips to eat on the way. I’ll be there in a minute, sweetheart.” As a final gesture, she scraped the pumpkin pulp and the seed from the heel of his shoe into the handkerchief, rolled him enough to his side to expose his suit pocket, and jammed the handkerchief, slightly used, back inside its comfy little black serge home and let him fall back to his stomach. She started to leave, but then she cocked her head, looking down, one last time, at her handiwork. On a final whim, she withdrew his left hand from under his thigh and stretched his arm down beside him. Now it was metaphorically complete. She left him there, swimming across the linoleum.
Before closing the kitchen door she stuck her head back through the opening. “Now, you be good, Paul, you hear? I’ll be back tomorrow — or maybe the day after, if Ben and Jean can talk me into going to Disneyland.”
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