Nicola Caroli

it’s a very readable piece up til the religion part, then I don’t know where this has come from or where it’s going. It’s like two separate texts.

Convincing dialogue, good sense of pace and the dynamics created by those two people talking. I didn’t find the people or the scenario particularly interesting but it was so well written that I was drawn into it and wanted to read on. I imagined it quite quickly as a film/tv script. Even though the characters are only making small talk there’s hardly a word that’s amiss here, which I’m impressed by for a first draught.

my comments are underlined, stuff in brackets I’d leave out

We grow up loving our parents. We soon start to judge them. Sometimes we forgive them.

– Oscar Wilde I’d leave that out, it weakens your beginning

It was half past five and L. stood near the fountain with her faced pressed into her pink phone. I don’t immediately get this picture, elaborate a little She could hear a two dog owners in the adjacent grass, exchanging their dogs’ names. “Joshua and Jennifer. What kind of names are those?,” she thought. She raised her phone voice to drown them out.  “Sweetie, looks can only take her so far, and she’s not even that pretty. She’s not going to make it as a writer or a singer or a photographer unless she gets more fire under her belly.”

L. held the leashes tight. Her two Cocker Spaniels were light but strong and they pulled her toward the grass. She almost regretted wearing her two-inch sandals. As she talked into her phone, Joshua stopped to greet the Spaniels, and his owner asked if the dogs could say hello. “Sure, sweetie,” said L. As the dogs sniffed, the man moved his eyes slowly from L’s metallic orange toes, to her tall gold sandals, to her khaki pedal pusher slacks, to her leopard print blouse that snuggly fit her small, lazy breasts. His eyes continued to move up her face, past the full orange lips, the ivory cheeks hidden by too much Mary Kay cream cake foundation, the large lids with blue eye shadow, and the yellow-white bouffant hair held in place by a thick gold bow. “Have a great day,” he said, and walked on. great build up to an intended anticlimax

L. noticed Michelle walk up the park steps and waived her over in excitement. L. hung up her phone, now covered in cream cake foundation really? is it not just smudged or smth like that?, dropped it in her bag, and dug for her orange lipstick. “God bless it, I can never find anything in this bag,” said L.

Michelle laughed to herself as she walked up. She liked L.’s  southern accent, and how L. was always getting mad at herself. They’d met in the park several months before, when L. had just arrived to San Francisco from Oklahoma. L. had moved to be near her daughter, but then her daughter had recently moved to Los Angeles for a job.

“Hi, sweetie! You ready to go look at that couch?”, L. said.

“Sure. Where is your place?”

“See that big ugly high-rise right there? That’s me”, said L.

“I love that building,” Michelle thought, “but it’s probably very different from her house in Oklahoma.” As they moved toward the high-rise, L. told Michelle that she was leaving for her “Mary Kay reunion” in two days, and needed to get the old couch out and a new one in before her daughter arrived after the reunion.

“Mary Kay reunion? As in cosmetics?”, asked Michelle.

“Yes, it’s something we’ve been planning for a while, me and the girls. All of us who worked the Dallas Fort Worth territory in the 70s. It wasn’t just about pink Cadillacs, you know. We put those book clubs you girls have to shame. We’d meet twice a month to talk about what we’d read. About sales and strategies for pushing our products.”

They entered L.’s building. Michelle mumbled under her breath that book clubs were annoying, and she’d rather be living in the 70s. L’s hearing was surprisingly good for a 69-year- woman. “I’m not sure what that means, sweetie, but ok.” Michelle wasn’t really sure what she meant by that either. Her opinions (and frustrations) tended to change depending on the moment.

The inside of L.’s apartment was covered in brown paper and sheets—the cabinets, the floors, the furniture, everything. Except for the couch she was selling. “Don’t mind the sheets and paper. It’s for my husband. If I don’t cover everything up he’ll make a big mess, and then when I come home I’ll have to clean it all over again. And I want things to be nice when Christina arrives after the reunion. We’ll fly in the same day and drive back from the airport together.”

“Christina your daughter?” Michelle asked. (And then in the same breath she said, )“Your husband doesn’t mind?”

L. chose to ignore the question about her husband and answer the one about her daughter. Yes, she’s the one in L.A. She’s my baby. I just wish we could all live together, in the same city. I thought when she got her divorce she’d want to be near her family, but I guess not. She’d rather live in L.A. where that stupid Sandy, her friend lives. I mean, L.A.’s ok. At least you can drive there. And park. And people appreciate fashion. I wish she’d told me she was moving to L.A. before we sold our house and moved here. I don’t think she realizes what it took for me …to do that or smth like that. But oh well.

“Pumpkin! You leave my sheets alone!”, L. said. Pumpkin was L’s orange Cocker. It was the third Cocker with the name of Pumpkin in L’s family.

“You know. I went to the vet last week,” said L., “and I just happened to ask how much he would charge to de-claw Pumpkin and Midnight. I don’t want them scratching up my tile floors. Well, he looked at me with this look, and he started talking to me as if I was an idiot, telling me about the tendons and the pain it would cause. They do it to cats, I thought, and how was I supposed to know? We’ll, I’ll never take my dogs there again. I swear.”

Michelle listened to L.’s story, tried to sympathize with her, but couldn’t, and ended up siding with the vet. She changed the subject and said, “Let me try out the couch”.

As she hit the couch with her weight she smelled a flowery, powdery smell,  rising up from the cushions. Probably something to do with Mary Kay, she thought. She wasn’t crazy about the smell, didn’t really like the paisley print fabric, but told L. she’d take it because it was comfortable, free, and would be delivered that evening by L.’s husband. He had a truck with a bumper sticker that said, “Yes, this is my truck, and No, I won’t help you move.”

Michelle left L’s apartment and walked past the park. “I need a drink,” she thought. “I’m in the mood for…what am I in the mood for? Not scotch. Not beer. Not wine. I think I’m in the mood for a vanilla vodka on the rocks.”  Michelle looked up at Grace Cathedral. too quick, cos I don’t know where you are, where you’ve come from Huge, gothic, pale, stone and beautiful, the church confronted her with the guilt of not being pious enough in her teens and early 20s, with the dissonance created by reading Bertrand Russell in her late 20s, with her anger about the too-close relationship between religion and American politics in her mid 30s, and with an appreciation for the symbols, comforts, and traditions it offers to the world, now, in her late 30s.

But religion still caused problems for her, especially when she went home. Something Michelle had always thought, or at least something she had come to think in the last ten minutes, was that her mother was like most mothers. They all played movies in their heads that defined their realities. And Michelle could recite her mother’s movie scripts by heart. Michelle’s father was one of the staring actors in those movies. Whenever Michelle tried to open up to her about her own relationship problems, it was a cue for a scene from one of her mother’s movies. And it was never relevant. you move very fast from one big subject -religion-to the next big subject-family-they seem to be connected in your mind, lead me there a bit

Michelle blamed her mother for most of her failures. For not encouraging her to read beyond the requisite Are You There God It’s Me Margaret?, for not talking enough about politics at the dinner table, for not using colorful vocabulary around the house so that she might comfortably use words like proselytizing during informal conversations. Even though dad was absent, completely absent, Michelle’s mom got all the blame.

I guess this is a temporary ending

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