1. The Day After
Survival Ain't Pretty (1 of 6). Milestone 4
(In opening up the novel into novellas, I can expand on parts I sacrificed to the velocity of plot. Earlier, I made the decision to take Maria off-island with her father after her assault. These chapters catch up with her while the Inspector is closing in on Tommy. In a novel, I might alternate it. Now, Maria has her own novella.)
On the day after, Maria woke up shaking.
The room was wrong, the light was wrong, the window was wrong.
The dream was slipping from her. She held onto one image.
The top of the windmill and the ocean behind it. She spoke it into her memory.
“I dreamed of you on a windmill, with the ocean in the distance.”
She reached for the Krugerand under her pillow.
She took ten breaths.
She and her father had driven to Leominster. He had taken her off the island in his pick-up truck, but he hadn’t taken the tools, the old shingles, or the trash out of the bed. So, the mess started shifting and rattling when they hit seventy on the highway. They couldn’t go to Boston. He would lose thousands of dollars in tools overnight.
So they got off the highway and made their way to Leominster.
Aunt Belinda lived alone in a little house in a dead end on Joyce Street. At three in the morning, she was driving an ambulance. She did not decorate much, nor did she have many guests. In the living room, she had a 60-inch TV and one La-Z-Boy chair. Her refrigerator had cream for coffee, ketchup, pickles, and a container of lo mein. Her cabinet had five boxes of Cheez-its and five packages of Oreos.
She was a Gold member at Costco.
She had a huge refrigerated cup in a cup holder at the arm of her chair. Rick was asleep on it right now.
Maria was in a guest room that had no pictures on the wall and no sheets on the bed. She slept under a blanket.
Outside, the night glowed orange. A half mile away, Route 2 buzzed and roared.
It was a safe house. Not a home.
But she couldn’t go home.
Maria rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The Krugerand was warming in her hand.
He was on top of the windmill, with the ocean in the distance.
It came back.
She had seen him again. Julian had sat with her on the bench at the Old Mill.
They had kissed and touched. He had said his sweet things to her, again. He had stroked her belly, then, as he had before, he climbed the long steering arm to the top of the mill.
He raised both his hands.
The mill was now perched on the edge of the harbor.
Julian waved once more, then he dove. His dive was more of a long glide. His body soared out over the waves and entered the water without a splash. He treaded water for a second and waited for the now heavy and now very pregnant Maria to waddle over to the edge of the cliff. He waved once more to her, and she back at him.
Then he swam out into the channel.
She sat on the edge of the cliff, watching him swim away, and hoping that that moment would just stretch out into the rest of time.
He was gone.
She knew it. The knowledge came to her as the word of God. It relieved her and it saddened her.
She reached for the Krugerand under her pillow.
And she remembered. Again.
Milestone 3: Snitches Get Stitches
Chapter One: The Monster is in the Building
Chapter Two: We are in the Elvis business
Chapter Three: The Man He Would Become
Chapter Four: One Red Hair
Chapter Five: A Knock at the Door
Chapter Six: We Take A Beating Everyday
Chapter Seven: Snitches Get Stitches
Chapter Eight: Swinging on a String
Chapter Nine: Outbound
Chapter Ten: Shall We Come to a Conclusion?
Milestone 4: Survival Ain’t Pretty
2. She Could Recognize Trauma When It Woke Up in her House.
Some of my writing…
Barr’s For Life: A substack of essays and claptrap
The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane
(NEW) The Girl Who Ran the Polpis Road
The Inn on Brant Point (Novella)
Her Lover on Monomoy Road. (Novella)
Her Father Came Home to Deacon’s Way (Novella)
Winter: A Collection of Island Living Essays set between January and April 1.
Autumn: Essays about Nantucket in Autumn.
Holidays: Essays about the holidays in November and September
The Boys: A collection of essays about my two sons, written as they grew.
Rolling in the Surf: Essays on Teaching.
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The longer I write fiction, the more landmines I find. In these seven chapters, the story is focussing on a rape survivor. I have absolutely no personal experience of this and only a very limited experience meeting this situation in other people. I am indebted to first person accounts, especially Lacy Crawford's book "Notes from a Silencing". But I am not going to pretend that reading makes me an expert, only an ignorant man, aware of all he does't know.
In past versions of this novel, I tucked Maria into a corner of her parent's house and drove the plot right past her window. In that, I did the story a disservice. So, I felt it needed to have a place in the story. She has been badly hurt. The rest of her life (and another novel) will feature more of her recovery, but it did her part of the story wrong by silencing her. Further, by giving this section of plot more air, Rick's motivations become more clear.
Stylistically,. I chose to have the character embrace silence, not the Ellen James silence of accusation from Garp, but the silence for recovery. By giving it words, she would relive the act and give it life. So she chooses to suffocate it. Hence the image of the box.
Stylistically, one of the moves I make for traumatic acts is to leave them in silence and darkness. I put them in a black box and let the reader's imagination take over. The death of Petey, Henry Coffin's son, is referred to by others and is hinted at, but never fully written out. Same here. Hopefully, that makes the mostrosity more terrible by relying on the reader's imagination. It also gets me out of the mess of my writing about a personal and devastating event as if I was there.
Sorry - didn't mean to unsubscribe! Still figuring out how Substack works. Haven't really touched it since we spoke last summer though I DO receive your emails. You are prolific!