7-8-09, first attempt at fiction

I went to a creative writing class last night and the instructor, author Carlene Rae Dater, told us that we ought to write 3 pages a day. I was supposed to do this when I woke up this morning, but I kept procrastinating. Now, I have things to do today…namely call the girls on my pool team and make sure they are going to show up tonight. However, I’ve talked myself into this. No phone calls until I have three pages written down. I got an idea this morning to write something about hearing a smile…so I’m going to give it a shot. I know pretty much the first sentence I will write, the rest I’m going to try as what Carlene called a “pantser.” As in, flying by the seat of my pants. I prefer to think of it as “winging it.” Here goes nothing.

Jen was meddling around under the hood of Mr. Myers old Buick when the phone started ringing. She had the machine set to kick in after 8 rings, but she had done work on this Buick a million times at least and she was tired of looking at it. If only Mr. Myers would take some time once a week to check the fluids and actually bring the old rust bucket in as soon as the brakes started squealing. If only, if only. If everybody in town took care of their cars the way they ought to then Jen would be doing a lot worse than she already was. On the second ring Jen stood up straight. She grabbed a grease rag she kept nearby and tried to wipe most of the oil off her hands on the already drenched rag. Then she picked up a cleaner towel with the very tips of her blackened fingers and attempted to wipe the sweat off her face without clogging her pores with motor oil. As the phone rang a third time she thought of how nice it would be to go to the back and pull some ice cubes out of her mini fridge that sat right next to her old mattress. How nice it would be to rub those ice cubes on her hot, sweaty skin and take away some of the July heat. The fourth ring did nothing to help this fantasy, but the fifth brought her back to reality. She may be taking a short break to pick up the phone, but she had to get this valve cover gasket changed out or old Bill Myers would be very put out when he came to pick up his car in 2 hours. That gave her plenty of time, but better to finish up the job now and save the ice for after her cold shower.
Jen shook her head to get her sweaty bangs out of her eyes and walked over to the phone feeling slightly like a wilting flower. She picked the receiver up just as the machine was about to kick in. “Hello, Buchanan Auto Repair, Jen speaking.” She heard nothing but silence on the other end. Maybe the caller had hung up, but what’s another hello or two? “Hello, anybody there?” More silence met her inquiry and Jen cradled the phone and, feeling just a little dejected, walked back over to the Buick. She had received a few calls in the past week from her cousin in Seattle. Troy didn’t call her very often but the last few times he had called he was sounding rather dejected himself. He was having problems with his current girl friend and just last week had received some very bad news regarding his mother. The first bad news was that she’d had a stroke and was in intensive care. Earlier this week he had received a call with more bad news of his Mother’s death. Although he wasn’t that close to his mom, who had divorced his father and moved to Tennessee when he was only 4 years old, Jen knew it was still hard news to take. At one point he had tried to get her back into his life, but her life always meant a lot more to her than her child did. Jen knew he was feeling like he should have tried harder. She knew he had unfulfilled goals of what his mother-son relationship may have one day been. But those goals were altogether unrealistic when they only belonged to him and never to his mom. Troy was supposed to fly out to Memphis for her funeral yesterday, so if it was him being silent on the other end of the phone he was probably calling from his hotel room. Jen found it hard to talk to him when he was this stressed. She loved him very much and they had grown up almost as close as if they were siblings, minus the rivalry. She remembered days clamboring around behind the bushes next to her Uncle’s house. They had set up little benches back there and called it a club house. Now if she were to try to squeeze back there she would never fit. Not that she was a big woman, not by any means, it’s just a simple fact that 6 year olds can fit where grown ups can’t. Now every time he called her it sounded like his heart was breaking a little more. The last time he had called she could hear him holding back tears, or maybe he was flat out crying. She would never ask him though, she just tried to be there for him on the other end of the phone. He talked a little about his mom, but mostly it was just small talk with that terrible sound in his voice the whole time. She tried to crack jokes and got a few chuckles out of him and quite a few times he told her how much he missed her, but still that sound. Jen was sure it was him on the other end of that silent phone call. It made her nervous that he wouldn’t talk and even more nervous since he had forgotten his phone charger at home so she couldn’t call him back. She lifted a hand to her mouth with the subconscious intention of biting her nails, then her conscious mind kicked in and reminded her that her hands were black with oil. Sure it wouldn’t kill her, but it would certainly taste terrible. She lowered her hand feeling like a fool and leaned over the 4 cylinder engine once more.

Two hours later Mr. Myers had come back for “Old Betsy” and was standing around making small talk about how things were going down at the plastic factory when Jen thought she heard the faint sound of her phone ringing again. She quickly excused herself with little regard to how rude she was being to a regular customer and spun around in her flip flops and clean cut offs to run inside the shop. She had already pulled the Buick out and closed up the front side of the shop for the day and as she walked through the door she was met by the silence of a shop without a ringing phone. She shook her head and wondered if maybe the heat and the worry was getting to her. It hadn’t been the phone ringing after all. Just as she was about to head back outside to continue her interrupted conversation she heard the distinct sound of her old beige telephone. She could feel her heart thrumming in her chest and she sprinted to the back of the work floor to grab the phone. She placed her clean hand right over the greasy finger prints she had left on the receiver and quickly lifted it to her ear. “Hello, Buchanan Auto Repair, Jen speaking.”
“Jen, it’s me.” Troy’s voice came over the line with a new tone to it. This one was even worse than the choking back tears tone. His voice sounded like all the feeling had drained out of it, just a ghost of the voice she was so used to hearing.
“Hey, Troy, are you in Memphis? How was your flight?”
“Oh, it was fine. Your everyday run-of-the-mill plane flight. I had a lay over in Denver and I tried to call from a pay phone, but I guess it wasn’t working. I just had to hear your voice right now,” the choking back tears tone was back again now, and it sounded better to her than the vacancy of emotion, “Jen, I just don’t know what to do with myself right now. Chrissy and I had a huge fight just as I was leaving Seattle. I haven’t called her since I left, I’m too mad. How can she be fighting with me right now when I’m flying across the country for my mother’s funeral. I’ve been emotional and was probably snapping at her, but how important is my morning moodiness at a time like this, really? I’m afraid she’s going to have her shit packed up by the time I get home and I just can’t take this right now. This is so not even worth it, Jen, I don’t know where people go when they die but I’m just about ready to find out. Maybe then I could make my mom see - “
“Woah, hold it right there, babe. Slow down, take a deep breath. Think about what you’re saying for a second. Before we talk about what you just said I want to know something…did you try to call me a few hours ago?”
Troy’s voice was full of tears now, she was sure he was out right crying and didn’t blame him. His heart must feel like it had shattered into a million pieces right now. “Yeah, yeah, I tried to call you. You picked up but I was hurting too much to talk. There was so much I wanted to say and I just couldn’t make the words come out.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ve just been worried sick about you since then and now that you’re talking and confirming my worries I’m probably even worse.” She was pacing the garage. She looked toward the row of windows across the garage doors and wondered if Mr. Myers was still waiting out there to talk to her more about plastic molds gone wrong. Oh well, he would leave eventually. Some things were just more important. Luckily if the Buick really broke down he wouldn’t be able to get it 7 miles to the nearest mechanic, it would be right back in it’s old familiar shop for sure. “Troy, I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, but you have to listen to me, okay?”
“Alright, I’m listening.” The tears had stopped and she could practically feel the emotion slipping out of his voice again. The numbness settling in. Maybe that was a sign of emotional shock.
“You’re in your hotel room?”
“Yes, sitting on the bed”
“Lay down on the bed. Put your feet up and lay back on the pillows. Breathe deeply for me, okay? You’re breathing really hard and that’s speeding your heart rate up so I need you to take deep slow breathes to slow it down so you can think clearly.”
“Okay, I’m laying down but this is ridiculous. I respect the fact that you care about me, but I don’t need to meditate or whatever this is-”
“Deep breathes, cuz, you said you would listen so just shut up for a minute, do what I say, and either you will feel better about things or you won’t. As for caring about you…I don’t even know what to say. I love you so much, Troy, you have no idea. You are my cousin, the son of my father’s brother. You have the same blood as I do running through your veins and that doesn’t mean I have to like you. That’s just what tied us together when our lives first began. Now I need you to know that no matter what is happening in your life right now, it doesn’t effect what me and you have. Your girlfriend can walk out the door before you get back, you are going through a very hard time with your mom passing away and all the hopes you had for your relationship going out the window with that. But when everything is said and done I still feel the same way about you that I did 5 years ago and 5 years before that and so on. I still feel like your mom is a bitch for not giving you a chance and for never giving a damn about her own kid. And I still feel that you are better off without her in your life. As for your girlfriend, if she leaves you then you are better off without her too. You will find a new girlfriend that will love you better than she ever has, whether you believe it right now or not. And as for your life, I don’t know what I would do without you. You are one of my best friends I could ever ask for. You are special and unique and irreplaceable. I want you to know that if you were gone there is no body in this whole world that could make me forget you or make me stop missing you. So, deal with the stress you have right now, do whatever you have to do to get through it without hurting yourself any more than you are already hurt. When you get back to Seattle all you can do is live your life the best you can and time will start to heal your heart, even if it doesn’t feel that way at first. And if you need me you know where to find me. Do you need me right now? I’ll catch a flight to Memphis if you need someone there by your side.”
“No thanks, Jen, I can do this on my own.” Jen could still hear the sadness in his voice, but he also sounded more confident now.
“Do you feel any better?”
“That was a lot to take in just now, but yeah I think I feel better. I need to take a nap.”
“Okay, you get some rest. When is the funeral?”
“It’s tomorrow, then I fly back to Seattle the next day.”
“If you feel like you can handle it call Chrissy later today or tomorrow. If it’s just going to make things worse for you then leave it alone for now though. She’ll either understand or she won’t. Sweet dreams, cousin, and hang in there. Call me any time if you need me, I’ll be here at home.” Jen hung the phone up and sat back in her rolling chair. She let out a sigh and closed her eyes, wishing she could hold him, wishing there were something she could do from so far away.

The next day Jen woke up early to the phone ringing. It was Troy again, not holding back tears this time but still sounding as stressed as ever. He was getting dressed in nice clothes for his mom’s service and he just made small talk with her while he was combing his hair and buttoning his coat. The conversation wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either and afterward Jen went out behind her garage to play around with the old ‘65 Ford Falcon convertible she was refurbishing. The thing looked like a pile of rust, but she had the transmission inside the shop being rebuilt in her spare time and she liked to come out here and sit on its ripped vinyl seats and imagine what it would look like when she finished. She wondered what people who didn’t have goals looked forward to. Did they have things they could look at and dream about? Did they fix things or make things or plan things? Or maybe they just did the same thing every day, going to work and coming home and paying the bills without a thought to what they might do with their spare time if they weren’t so busy being unproductive with it. These thoughts went in circles in her mind. She had always had something to work on since she was a kid. Sometimes she would accomplish the task she put her time into and sometimes she would discard it for something more interesting, but she often wondered what it would be like to not have something to focus her time on. She was trying to avoid thinking about Troy and the problems he was having. Maybe that conversation they had yesterday would really help him. He was usually a happy person and she knew it was just the extra stress that was putting him in such a negative state of mind. She didn’t hear from him at all for the rest of the day.

Jen rolled over on her mattress and looked at her alarm clock. It was 8 in the morning. She wondered if Troy would call before he left his hotel, but she had no idea what time his flight for Seattle was leaving. Just as she was rubbing the sleep out of her eyes the phone in the garage began to ring. “I’ll be right there,” she shouted groggily at the door to the garage. She got up as quickly as she could with freshly wakened motor skills and got to the phone just in time. “Hello, Buchanan Auto -”
“Hey, Jen, it’s me!”
“Oh, Troy! You sound….how did everything go yesterday?” Jen couldn’t help but wonder at this, it sounded as if Troy were grinning from ear to ear. She could hear a bounce in his step as if he were standing next to his hotel bed bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet like an excited kid about to go on his favorite roller coaster.
“I’m leaving for the airport right now. And I just wanted to call you before I left and tell you that I love you.”
“I love you too. Did you talk to Chrissy? Did everything go okay yesterday?” She didn’t want to ask him flat out why he was so happy. But the sound of his voice had put a grin on her face from and closing her eyes she could imagine that he had the same grin plastered to his own face.
“I haven’t called Chrissy. She said she would be there to pick me up and I’ll talk to her about things when I get there. Things went fine yesterday. I went to her service. One of her friends stood up and mentioned how she talked about her son sometimes and she would show my second grade picture around every now and then when the mood was right. Even though it’s been twenty years something about that satisfies me a little bit. I know she left and I know she never seemed to have time for me, but the fact that she acknowledged me in her own life kind of means something. I just, I don’t know what it is, Jen. I woke up this morning and I was smiling. All I did was wake up and I feel like I’m on top of the world and I have my whole life ahead of me, I can’t change anything that’s behind me. I know this is still going to hurt for a long time, but I feel like I can handle it. I feel like I can handle anything right now. I just…wanted you to know that I love you.”
“I can hear the smile in your voice, Troy. And I have to say I am relieved to hear it. Call me when you get home, okay? Maybe next time you can take a trip for fun and come see me in Illinois.”
“Sounds like a plan. I miss you a ton. I’ll call you later.”

Jen ventured back to her Falcon and sat back in the drivers seat with her hands on the corroded steering wheel. She closed her eyes and imagined there was a smooth plastic wheel beneath her hands and new upholstery pressed against the backs of her legs. She imagined the sound of a rebuilt 6 cylinder turning over with the push button ignition she was going to install and the feel of the wind whipping through her hair as she cruised down the interstate with the top down. She wondered where she was heading to. She wondered if she was running from something or to something or just running for the sheer joy of having the freedom to do so. When she opened her eyes she saw her reflection in the windshield. Her short brown hair was a mess and her green eyes were sparkling. Her grin was so big it was almost ridiculous but it felt right all the same.