After a while Elisa stopped wanting the same things as everyone else—the husband, the house, the kids—and she started wanting different things, like alcohol and pasta. Not that she was a drunk, or an alcoholic, or a wino, or a lush. Rather, at thirty-eight years old, she was simply learning what to expect from life and what to put away in the garage, behind the old sofa bed from the Salvation Army and the dried out cans of house paint. So far this is what she’d learned:
1. Life’s not fair.
2. People who expect life to be fair are extremely tiresome.
3. I still expect life to be fair.
4. I am extremely tiresome.
She knew # 1 in her head, but couldn’t force it all the way through to the back of her brain. It stayed in the front, like a kid in the playground who didn’t want to come in for dinner. The mother would be saying “Lionel, you better get in here for dinner right now, your papa’s coming home and he’s gonna be mad if you are not inside this house!” But Lionel would be just ignoring her; playing on a fiberglass police car, his favorite toy in the playground, bouncing up and down on a giant spring. Life is fair, look at this car! Lionel would think. I’m not going anywhere!
Elisa had never been very good with getting certain facts all the way through her head, like when her hamster died on the same night as her fourth grade band concert, or when she was finally completely finished with college, or when her husband Matt said “I’m leaving you Elisa. I’m in love with another woman.” How did people do it, digest new information, what kind of special skills did they have? Especially information that’s on fire?
“Clearly, you should have seen it coming,” said Elisa’s dad, just weeks after Matt left, when she was still throwing up. “Nobody just gets up and walks out on a ten-year relationship without ample provocation.”
The phrase “ample provocation” made Elisa think of “ample bosom,” something she definitely didn’t have.
“I can’t believe you are saying that to me right now.” Elisa stood in the hallway of her dad’s house in New Mexico, wearing her step-mom’s fleece bathrobe with blue and red stripes. “You can’t possibly be saying I brought this on myself.”
“No, of course not! That’s not what I’m saying, Elisa.” Her dad was up on a ladder, fixing the turquoise colored tile in the bathroom, where the grout had rotted away. Every third tile had an image of that little southwestern symbol, the spirit figure who looked like he was dancing and playing the saxophone. “I’m just saying every man leaves little signs, clues, you know, some indication about what he is going to do.” Her dad turned back to the tile.
Her step-mom, Louise, yelled from the kitchen, where she was making pork and carrot stew. “Peter, leave it alone,” she said, and Elisa didn’t know if she meant the conversation or the bathroom tile. Years ago, Louise was the other woman, slithering into Elisa’s parents’ union, breaking up their marriage. Now she was in the kitchen making stew.
“I just fixed this same wall last year, can you believe it?” said her dad. “I can’t believe how cheaply they make houses these days. Piece of crap.”
Elisa had to stay with her dad for three weeks. She had to give Matt time to get his stuff out, his video games and his extensive sneaker collection and his film theory books, Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, or Godard on Godard, the books she loved having around but never read herself. His e-mail said a weekend would be plenty of time to move it all, but she gave him three weeks, to let the house air out. Their little rental home back in San Diego would certainly be confused—all of a sudden half its contents were gone? The house would be saying—wait a second, I have only nine hundred pounds of stuff to contain now, after all this time? What happened to the other seven hundred and fifty three pounds? Elisa felt sorry for the house. How could she explain it?
“Well, 1843 San Pasqual Street,” she would say upon her return, “sometimes these things just happen. It’s very common, actually. People get together and get married and live happily for ten years ever after, and then one party meets a dopey, slutty, dim-wit chick at the video store, and then it’s over. It’s very common, 1843. So common it’s dull.”
But when she got home from her dad’s, and Matt’s stuff was really gone, his pictures off the wall, gaping holes in the bookshelves, she was the one confused. The house was fine.
Pros (benefits) to the husband leaving:
1- A whole bunch of people calling her out of the blue.
2- Mom offering to send her money
3- Excuse to buy new furniture
4- No more dumb movies.
Cons:
Elisa picked out a yellow sweater to wear on her first day back to work, teaching 10th grade English at William August Cleaver High School. Yellow, new beginnings, fresh start! But under the fluorescent light of the teachers lounge, she looked washed out and sickly.
“Well, Elisa, all I can say is you were lucky to miss that faculty meeting with that new district administrator. They are trying to kill us with these new paperwork regulations, you know.” Ken Murdoch was one of only two male teachers in the English department, and he lived with his ill mother until she passed away last year. Elisa had heard that when she expired, county health officials found their suburban house filled with seventeen cats, plus birds, chickens and pigs.
“Well, I guess that’s just how it is these days, huh,” said Elisa, unloading an enormous pile of mail from her cubbyhole. A bright pink flyer reading “Book Fair- February10th!” fell onto the floor. “Contest for this year’s poster!”
“Yeah, the paperwork around here is getting ridiculous! We hardly have time to invest in what we do best anymore—teaching!”
Elisa had a quick flash of what it might be like to date Ken Murdoch, how his pale round hands would look flipping through the menu, or waving in the air desperately trying to get the waiter’s attention.
She nodded at him, tried to say something like “uh huh” but it came out like a grunt, “uh”. She crammed the pile of mail into her bag and went to her class.
“And the theme of The Great Gatsby has to do with what?” she asked her first period students.
No one did any work while she was gone. The substitute, Mrs. Kennedy, said the kids were great, but she was famous for negligence. Elisa pictured her, static in front of the class, and the tenth graders fidgety without meaningful assignments, all their cells still expanding—muscles being built, hair sprouting, breasts growing, voices dropping—all during first period English Literature, and Mrs. Kennedy like a giant dead redwood, sitting behind her desk reading USA Today.
“Um, is it something about how you can’t trust people?” asked a freckled boy from the second row.
“Hmm. Could be. That’s a good start.” She scanned the room, but her vision settled outside the window of her classroom, where a handful of birds, finches maybe, were chasing each other all around the bottom of an oak tree, chirping, almost yelling at each other. “Any other ideas?” she asked.
Elisa hadn’t read the book recently either. She’d planned to review it again in New Mexico, but whenever she saw the paperback in her suitcase, the cover disturbed her—a woman’s alluring facial features, superimposed on an evening sky, with some kind of glowing, industrial amusement park in the distance. Instead she’d read her dad’s “Darwin for Dummies” all night when she couldn’t sleep. “Visible non-miraculous causes should be preferred when seeking explanations.”
“I think it’s like how Gatsby only wanted Daisy and this, you know, really fancy life, but he was never really going to get it, and his pursuit was like, a waste.” That was from a delicate brunette in the back of the class, with giant sunglasses perched on her head.
“So what would the theme be, in that case?”
“Something about how life doesn’t give you what you want just because you want it?”
“Close.” None of these answers were close. Elisa turned her back to the class wrote the word THEME on the board, in perfect, slanted, teacher-style letters. She wrote “THINGS AREN’T ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM.”
“Take note of that, everyone,” she said. “It’s going to be on the test.”
“I don’t know if I get it,” said Andrew Yates after fourth period. “I mean, I get what people are saying in class, about the book, I just don’t get what Fitzgerald is trying to do.” Andrew stood opposite her desk, his blue knapsack drooping off his shoulder. Andrew was one of those boys with beautiful features, large brown eyes and long lashes, a sturdy nose and round lips, but socially awkward with his peers—the kind of kid your mom would look at in the yearbook back when you were in school and say, “How about him, he’s handsome?” and you’d say, “Oh, God, no, Mom, that’s Andrew!”
“Why doesn’t Daisy just leave Tom?” he asked. “And why am I supposed to care about a character who, you know, who doesn’t even seem very deep, who makes such stupid choices?” Andrew was gesticulating, waving one gangly hand up and down while his other arm curved inward, clinging to his belt loop.
“Well, Andrew, I think that’s a good question. Why would you care about someone who makes bad choices?”
“I just can’t get into it, with her being such a ditz.”
“How about developing this idea for your paper?” Elisa usually enjoyed talking to Andrew, but today she just wanted to leave the building. New Mexico had bleached out her brain, the sun and the dry air and wide open sky extending the length of her synapses, so that a thought took a long time to get from one place to another. “Give it some thought, Andrew. I’m sorry, but I’ve actually got to get to lunch.”
“Oh, okay, sorry. Anyway, welcome back, Ms. Franks. I’m glad there’s someone around who wants to talk about literature.”
Elisa walked out of the solid brick building to her car, and ate her sandwich sitting in the front seat. On the local public radio station she heard a segment on technological improvements in prosthetic limbs, and how a woman who had been in a horrific boating accident was not only able to walk and run again, but she could actually high jump almost as well as she did in college. I’m supposed to be that way now, resilient and optimistic, Elisa thought as she drank her diet Snapple. That’s how you manage drastic, horrific change. But optimism, this idea, it didn’t suit her. It felt like a stranger who showed up in her house, all chatty, making himself comfortable, not even noticing that no one was talking to him, until she had to call the cops and say, officer, I don’t know this person. Make them leave.
Elisa had told the students her three-week absence was for a family emergency. It was an emergency, she thought—I don’t have a family anymore! She had stopped wearing her wedding ring, and she knew the teenage girls would notice, rumors would spread. She felt herself slipping into a new category, out of the “what a nice life she has with her handsome husband” category into the “thank god it’s not me” category. Elisa felt certain that among her colleagues who knew, in between the statements of empathy and sorrow, people would be scanning her whole self, her whole personality, looking for the reasons, the flaw, the intolerable thing. There must be a reason he left her. Things happen for a reason, right? Cause and effect is how the world works. Oh, Elisa’s great and all, but there’s this one little thing…
She wiped her face with her napkin and switched off the radio. No one would say these things out loud. These were the hidden thoughts, that you couldn’t stop people from having. “Slow gradual cumulative change over a long period of time can produce great effects.”
“Have you heard from him?” asked Elisa’s dad on the phone. It was Saturday, a bad time to talk, a bad time to do anything but lie on the couch wait for the day to be over, or maybe turn on the TV and watch “Flip this House!”
“Who?”
“From Matt.”
“No. Just a few e-mails, finalizing things.” Elisa tried to straighten out the curly phone cord while she talked to her dad. She knew she’d have to unplug the cord from the phone base in order to do it correctly, but she couldn’t do it while she was talking to her dad. Wasn’t this Matt’s old phone, left over from college? Why didn’t he take it with him?
“Seriously? Nothing, not missing you, not regretting his choices, nothing?”
“No, Dad. Just logistics.”
Her dad sighed. “God, I can’t believe it. Ten years. Who was this idiot woman he ran off with?”
“I don’t know dad. All I know is her name is Irene and she liked ‘American Beauty,’ and I hated it.”
“Maybe you were too opinionated. Men like to be the ones with the strong opinions.”
“Yeah, well.” What would happen if Elisa took out the cord, twisted it around quickly, and put it right back in? Would her dad notice if she disappeared for a minute?
“All I know is, you’re a wonderful woman, and you deserve better than that jerk. I can’t believe I spent so much money on that wedding.”
Matt and Elisa had had an amazing wedding. Their best friends Helen and Alex read Rumi poetry and e.e. cummings, and they had a string quartet in a garden, and even a moment of silence that Elisa put in the ceremony, so she could take it all in. This was her own idea, not from the wedding books, to stop all the music and the words and everything in the middle and take a deep breath, so she could say in her heart – This is really happening, it’s happening to me right now. It’s happening to me right now.
“Matt—he’s got serious problems. Honestly, we had our doubts about him, Louise and I, from way back, if you want to know the truth.”
“Uh huh.”
“Like he was too polite all the time, you know, not relaxed. Or hiding something. That must have been it—obviously, hiding something.”
Elisa’s dad hid his affair with Louise too, of course. Elisa was only eight when it happened, and she didn’t remember much about the whole thing, besides her very religious mother, who wouldn’t allow Elisa to say ‘crap’ or ‘darn’ or ‘jeez,’ coming into the TV room from the garage where she’d been cleaning out her husband’s car, and say the word “fuck” over and over again, in a tight, unrecognizable voice.
Now that it was April, Elisa decided to take down the Black History Month bulletin board, but she couldn’t decide what to replace it with. There was no excellent student work. She’d already posted up quotes from famous authors, back in November. Elisa decided it would be okay to use sections of Darwin for Dummies, printed out on white paper and surrounded by a purple border. “Only survivors pass on their form and abilities. Their characteristics persist and multiply, whilst characteristics of those that do not live long enough to reproduce will decrease.”
“I couldn’t print out my paper last night, Ms. Franks.” said one of her students, an overconfident blond boy, interrupting her free period. Or was the free period over? “I don’t know if it was the ink cartridge, or what. But it’s all finished, I swear. Can I just e-mail it to you instead?”
“E-mail?” asked Elisa, turning away from the
board. “Do students and teachers e-mail each other?”
“Some of them do. Ms. Davis lets people email her.”
Annette Davis was petite, highly organized and pixie-like. She had a Blackberry and taught AP English.
“Really? Well, I don’t think I can do that. Just bring it tomorrow.”
What a nightmare that would be, Elisa thought, student e-mails, papers and questions at all hours, invading her living room on 1843 San Pasqual Street. Hadn’t her living room had enough invaders? She couldn’t imagine getting an e-mail from a student, filled with silly questions, trendy abbreviations she didn’t understand. Besides, e-mail was for other important information, such as lots and lots of unsent drafts saying “Why the fuck did you leave me?” and “I am going to kill you and that stupid dimwit bitch.” Imagine if that stuff went to her students by mistake? To the lanky soccer player with the slightly bad skin, or the quiet girl from fist period who had missed two weeks of school, most likely due to a pregnancy? A misrouted email from the quiet girl’s English teacher would certainly mess up her head at a time like this.
But when she got home and sat on the couch and looked at the gray outline on the wall where Matt’s Metropolis poster used to be, she wished she had given the student her e-mail after all. She wished someone would send her something.
She never called Matt when she was drunk, though she did dial his number to hear the message. He hadn’t changed it since he left, which she simply didn’t understand. “Hey this is Matt. Leave a message” it said, the same exact message she had heard for about two years, and then ordinarily she would hear the beep and say “Hey, honey, I’m going to Trader Joe’s, and I can’t remember if we need half and half. Can you check and call me if you get this in the next twenty minutes?” Now there was an enormous wall after the beep on Matt’s phone. A place that had been fluid, natural, invisible, not even a space at all, like the space in bed between two married people, or maybe two people in love before they were married, now suddenly there was a giant, steel wall in that space—cold and tall and echoey, but without any holes, any way to get through.
“Ms. Franks, I think I’ve figured it out,” said Andrew Yates after fourth period. “Do you have time to meet later today, after school, and talk about it?”
“Today?” she repeated. “What day is it?” Elisa strained to picture her afternoon, surely there was something, a trip to the dry cleaners, an important cooking show on TV? “Okay,” she said. “Today’s fine.”
“Great!” he said, his clenched fist moving slightly up and down like he had scored a victory. “See you then!”
Elisa hadn’t been avoiding Andrew for the past few months, okay, maybe she was. Her meetings with him belonged to a different era. The person that used to talk with him for hours about the animal imagery in “The Pearl”, or Flannery O’Connor’s use of cleansing violence, that was a different version of herself, more alert, more aware of the nuances of a beautifully written sentence and its power to heighten experience, to make one glad to be alive. How magical that we can witness this transcendent creation of art! What a world we are so lucky to live in!
Now all she noticed were the birds outside her classroom window, how even in the uncharacteristically extreme June heat they ran around and squawked and chased each other all day. She’d actually stopped towards the end of 6th period, and considered telling her students about the birds, what was really going on with them. “Look everyone, this is how it’s going to be. There is a new worm in town, a new species, that’s about to change everything for the birds, change the lengths of their beaks, and the old, short-beak birds are going to slowly die off, chirping alone on some rock with nothing to eat. You should know this,” she wanted to say. But then bell rang, and the students left, and Elisa realized she’d forgotten to give them the homework.
Typically at the end of the school day Elisa would throw her stuff in her bag and get out to her car and the freeway as soon as she could, always bringing work home rather than staying at school with the echoing walls and stiff conversation in the teachers’ lounge and the birds outside her window still jumping around not knowing school was over. Today she waited for Andrew for five minutes, then ten minutes, then fifteen, then decided he’d forgotten and went to her car. This was better anyway, to keep things as they were.
But just as she turned the keys in the ignition and was about to pull out of her parking spot, she saw Andrew running towards her across the teacher’s parking lot.
“Ms. Franks!” he yelled. She waved, turned the motor off, and rolled the window down. “Ms. Franks, I’m sorry I’m late.” He was out of breath. “You probably have to be somewhere right? Is it too late to meet?”
Elisa didn’t have to be anywhere, but now her mind had already shifted into going home, from public to private, to the cocktail awaiting her, her helper in grading papers.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I do have to go now. But we can meet again soon,” Elisa said.
Andrew couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Oh crap,” he said. “Oh well. Wait just a second though, I have something for you.” He put his backpack on the ground and started rummaging around in it. He was going to give her another rough draft, the second one for his Gatsby paper, which was already quite good. Elisa turned on the car’s air conditioning, still a blast of hot air.
“Its not my paper,” Andrew said, standing up.
“It’s a present.” He handed her a small thin cardboard box, and inside the box was cream tissue paper, and inside that was a necklace, a gold necklace, with red beads. “I was in the teacher’s lounge last week and I saw the staff birthday list, and saw it was your birthday today. So I got this for you, because you’re such a great teacher. So you’d know how much you’re appreciated.”
She held the necklace up. It was lovely; she didn’t know what to say. “Wow. It’s beautiful, Andrew.”
“I’m really glad,” he said. “I thought it would look nice on you.”
Her birthday wasn’t until September. It must be Mr. Franks’ birthday, the 9th grade science teacher. And certainly there was a rule somewhere against a teacher taking a gift like this from a student; it would send the wrong message. You can’t accept this, she said to herself. You have to hand it back to him.
“I wanted to make sure you got it today,” Andrew said. “I’m sure you have plans for tonight, but I wanted to make sure you had a nice birthday,” he said with a giant grin, and he wiped the sweat from his creaseless brow.
It must have been 95 degrees outside, and the parking lot was radiating heat, squiggly waves off the pavement. But Andrew continued to stand there in his thick blue sweatshirt, still panting a little from running, one hand on his belt loop, grinning, while Elisa sat in the car holding the necklace. Andrew stood there for the longest time in the heat, smiling at her, and then the air conditioning began to blow cool air.
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-“Not that she…” => Don’t really need ‘or a’ before each different name. Have it as ”...was a drunk, an alcoholic, a wino or a lush.” Says the same thing. The ‘or’ just drew away from it.
-“knew #1” => This paragraph doesn’t really seem to fit. Who’s Lionel and what does he have to do with the story? The next paragraph works the same, saying the same thing, but doesn’t have the obscure child.
-““ample bosom,”” => Nice line.
-“signs[.] [C]lues, you know[?] [S]ome” => Sounded out, that seems like the pace that he’s speaking. But, I could be wrong.
-“kitchen[,] making”
-The house => Not really sure about the house having thoughts. If you write in that Elisa thought about it at the beginning (rather than the end, where you have it), I think it would be a bit clearer. Otherwise, it seems like the house is actually thinking for itself.
-‘dim-wit’ => ‘dim-witted’
-“that’s Andrew!” => I think that sums up a character more than anything else you could’ve done. Everybody goes through that in High School. Either they know the kid or they are the kid.
-“Elisa was only…” => Run-on sentence. Also doesn’t really make sense at the end. Her overly religious mother wouldn’t let her say those words, but the f-bomb was okay? Or the mother would be saying ‘fuck’ in a tight, unrecognizable voice? Didn’t really come out clearly.
-“fist period” => first?
-Interesting start to the story. I feel like I know Elisa and have a firm grasp of who she is. Andrew seemed to come out of nowhere and the interaction with him seemed a little forced to start with, but then fleshed itself out. I’d be interested to see where this goes.
Thanks for sharing.
I really enjoyed this story & not only because I’m going to school to become a high school English teacher. There was a flow to it that drew me in, even though it did take a while for me to warm up to the style (I found it strange that a story like this was being told in third person at first.)
Anywho, a few prrofreading remarks:
At the beginning you say ‘would be just ignoring her’. I figured you what you were trying to say would be more along the lines of ‘would just be ignoring’.
Also towards the middle you say ‘Make them leave.’ after you’ve used he & him, so it should be ‘Make him leave.’
Basically this was very well written. It flowed along smoothly and the character of Elisa was well developed.
What this the whole story? It didn’t seem to have an ending. The story just cuts off in the middle of action. She’s sitting there in her car with the student grinning at her. It didn’t seem like a significant ending.
I liked the Darwin for Dummies theme running through out. It was a nice touch.
That was a beautifully written piece. I really enjoyed the different imagery you weaved into it and the subtle nuances that gave your character such a depth of emotion. Wonderful, wonderful job!
The beginnng, right through to the end of the funny syllogism, starts the piece off so well. It’s quirky enough to be interesting, yet still decipherable enough to get the reader quickly engaged. My only objection regards the reinforcement in your “drunk, alcoholic, wino, lush” moment. It’s not that funny. It’s not artful. More importantly, you loose your chance to elaborate on your character’s other new focus, “pasta.” Otherwise, I love the way you lead the reader into this world emotionally through the garage.
The playground similie that follows essentially introduces two new characters, albeit unwittingly, and I think they distract from the meaning of the similie and certainly, however briefly, from the movement of the story. I vote for the elimination of the subjunctive “would be” and petition for the synthesis of the two sentances: ”...playground (with) the mother saying…” You’ll have to see. The next paragraph introduces a similar situation with a litany of reinforcing ideas intended to swell the meaning of your point about the character’s intellectual quandries. I like them all, but my bland point is simply to say that one of them is far more interesting than the others, the hamster dying on the night of the band concert. I like the way it fuses excitement and loss. Perhaps this type of dichotomy alludes to a far more complex universe than just the moments where information is new? I wonder if your transition into the husband leaving might be made more striking with a similar comparison allowing for excitement and loss. I wonder, too, if such points would further highlight the character’s dilemma at this point in the story too, that of processing new information, given the push and pull of the information itself. I hope that makes sense.
Moving on, miscellaneously. I LOVE the non-sequitor “ample bosom” moment. The understated allusion to the God of (is it fertility?) whatever, Talacapeki (whomever), is a nice touch too. And I am not sure that the yellow sweater rutine works right where you have it: the reader expects a more emotional insight and I think you should provide one. The groaning moment--precious. The dead redwood evocation--perfection.
Moving on. Optimism: ”optimism, this idea…” seems too wordy for me as well as too wordy for the pacing in that series of sentances, especially since you already provide such a perfectly hilarious metaphor right afterward. And so I vote for a subtle change: ”but optimism felt like a stranger…” There is a quote shortly after this section, something regarding “subtle changes can produce great effects.” If this is another quote from Darwin, cudos!
The student teacher email paragraph is a nice moment. It already contains funny thoughts. I cannot somehow think that it needs to be reconfigured, though, in order to enhance its hilarity. The quiet house that follows is a heartbreak, a very strong touchstone moment in the piece that resonates strongly if only because of its juxtaposition with the funny emails. To me, this moment smacks of truth much more than some of the dialogue. In fact, through this section and the next I find my reading pace picking up. I think your toggling between the character’s inner thoughts and her student interactions work very well here, both for narrative and theme development, the dusting of Darwinian references providing a haunting third overlay.
The end. The duel symbolism of the necklace and “cool air” from the car end this section of your story nicely. On the one hand, if it is the intended end to a short story, I don’t think your theme has been flushed out enough to rivet the mind. The Darwin concept hovers in the story’s air, but it could go anywhere still, not to mention the Gatsby stuff. On the other hand, if this is only a chapter conclusion or the introduction to where you are going, perhaps it is best to say that I have a sense of the character’s world, find it interesting, and the theme complex enough to be worthy of a story. Apart from all that, I can see where, potentially, the classroom dialogue about Gatsby could move forward to add even more layering of young/innocent assumptions onto the top of the teacher’s experience. The sublime Gatsby-Darwinian grandiose ideas “slithering” into the mundane seeming-simplicity of a divorced teacher’s story keep my mind focused and engaged. I liked it very much.
I really like the voice of the character. She sounds powerful and cynical. However, the listing itself gets tiresome by the the third page. Maybe there is a way to convey this more in a dialog or just through the character’s thoughts. You’ve already conveyed that the character is taking herself too seriously, but is desperately wanting not to. I think you should use your same ability to convey these thoughts to the reader.
It’s an interesting psychological piece of a person undergoing a break-up trauma. Quite honestly, one of the more interesting characters is the father – Louise is sort of a non-entity, seemingly added only to prove that dad has had break up experience so that he can empathize with the ex-husband.
While overall, I enjoyed the piece, I found it difficult to follow in at least a few places. There were some really l-o-o-o-n-g sentences, e.g., ” Elisa felt certain that among her colleagues who knew, in between the statements of empathy and sorrow, people would be scanning her whole self, her whole personality, looking for the reasons, the flaw, the intolerable thing. There must be a reason he left her.” that seem to have about three different pieces of thought in them.
Also, I don’t know when you discussed the Pro’s and Con’s of the ex leaving if there were no Cons or if you simply missed adding them. If none, then state Cons – None.
The most fun character was Andrew, the guy with the obvious crush on a teacher. As for the protagonist, herself, while she’s interesting overall, I never really felt that I got to know HER! I know what’s happened in the past few weeks because of her stream of consciousness tale, but I don’t know her. Frankly, after the first six pages or so her “woe is me and life” gets a bit tiring. It’s almost like you want to reach in and slap her. Most of us have been through major changes in our lives. Even in the midst of depression and our hurt, there are SOME good things that we can focus on. Let her find something.
BTW – I thought the touch about her wanting to strangle the phone cord when her dad called was cute—it might have been cuter too, if she’d imagined it was dad for a brief second instead of just cutting off her voice from the line.
This could easily be the first chapter of a novel or novella if there can be some hope for resolution or change at least impled. Otherwise, it can only bring you back to the first page ideas: #2 (is often the reader’s idea when he/she picks up something and unless they get at least a hint of that fairness coming up, they often put the story down.)
Starts out well. Good specific details when talking about the garage.
‘But Lionel would be just ignoring her’ don’t need the just, or put it before the ‘be’
her father is logical. he sounds right on for a dad. good characterization.
slithering? i don’t know, i think there’s a better word out there for that sentence.
good use of personification when considering the house’s feelings.
yeah, yellow was Bukowski’s favorite color, and i think green would be more appropriate (for the character, yellow works fine in the story) for a fresh beginning.
‘and he lived with his ill mother until she passed away last year. Elisa had heard that’ take that ‘had’ out of the second sentence and put it in front of lived.
I know that Great Gatsby book cover! great detail! uh oh, good looking student, lonely teacher…oboy. Saturday’s for people with broken hearts – i know that feeling. The story is very accessible and communicates universal experiences.
‘Elisa’s dad hid his affair with Louise too, of course.’ i think could get rid of ‘of course’ or put it at the beginning of the sentence.
‘out her husband’s car, and say the word “fuck” over and ’ use saying instead of say
so, you save as drafts, huh? i wish i had that self control. again this is another way to identify with the character. you’re doing really well.
uh-oh, the narration just switch from third person to first, then back again. just add a ‘she thought’ to that sentence that decries the joy of literature.
good job tying in Darwin’s theory with her own personal survival.
my main criticism is the length. it needs to be longer! thank you for brightening my day. every poem and short story i’ve read on this thing today has been a struggle, every review i have to bite my lip not to be mean, which is hard cause i’m a jerk.
The opening paragraph sparkles. It simultaneously introduces us to the protagonist clearly and vividly (almost like shaking hands with her) while introducing the narrator’s spiky sense of humour and fondness for unusual description and glorious narrative deviation. The list underlines Elisa’s character perfectly and we can skip ahead to the story and get to know her right away.
The metaphor in the second paragraph some might take issue with, but you did introduce your fondness for glorious narrative deviation in the previous one, so I was more than willing to picture this kid/rule refusing to come in and get his afternoon sustenance. If nothing else, it was exaggerated so much as to be very funny.
Yes, yes… I am thoroughly enjoying the beginning of this story. I am falling in love with the phrases “information that’s on fire” and am I delighting in the ample bosom joke. You are developing an instantly empathetic character, sketching in her situation and life AND making us titter a great deal. My expectations are high for the rest.
The father character is well-rendered and practically in the room with the reader. How you refer back to the list alludes to the anal quality of this character, and seems also to be something of a checkpoint for laughs should the reader be in need of a little more.
I think it is clever how you swing into snippets of dialogue and then swing the reader into a new scene. These little jump-cuts are canny as they pull the story along very quickly. The prose is hip-swivellingly clever and sparklingly witty. Reading this is not much of a problem for me.
At first I thought Elisa was exacting revenge on her pupils, then I realised she was trying to make sense of her boyfriend loss. Dragging the issue into the class is hugely amusing and even believable to a certain extent (recalling a teacher who used to similar ploy to get the class talking about the morality of speeding).
The story rises above “single girl” clichés in writing and is in its own plateau of wit and likeability. The conversations she has with her father as the story progresses are amusing but also convey her continual frustration, and introduce the “melting pot” angle to the piece. The story depicts school life in one of the most original ways I have read in a story from a while.
All this is astutely observed. Your characters are incredibly vivid and lifelike, your writing style is incredibly addictive and the ideas are slick, original and fresh.
I rather enjoyed this.
Harold
Your prose is natural. The dialogue is very readable. The talent does jump off the page. You manage Elisa’s inner monologue deftly throughout.
Elisa talking to the house is a nice touch. Original.
. . . that’s Andrew!” Perfect description.
The twisted cord is a good action to accompany the telephone conversation. Excellent.
A good ending: the air conditioning somehow providing comfort or relief to Elisa. Of course this ending leaves a lot open (some of the best endings do).
Proofreading notes:
4. I am extremely tiresome. (The wit in this list would be sharper without number four.)
I don’t understand how “finally completely finished with college” fits into the list. How does one not get this fact through one’s head? College, for lots of people is not a pleasant time. Perhaps “when the carefree college days were over”? Or better?
step-mom’s = stepmom’s or stepmother’s
teachers lounge = teachers’
he lived with his ill mother = had lived
No one did any work = had done
Make them leave. (You’ve established this person as a male, so why them? Why not him?)
Why didn’t he take it = hadn’t he taken
know dad. = know, Dad. (Dad in caps when substituted for a name.)
e-mail or email? (choose one)
dim-wit or dimwit? (choose one)
first period / 6th period (choose one)
But then bell rang, (the missing)
teacher’s parking lot . . . teacher’s lounge = teachers’
“Its not my paper = It’s
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