Working Notes for a Novel Drafted by an Iowa Writers' Workshop Alum
Lights up on a dinner table. In the dining room. The family’s house somewhere upstate. Upstate on an island in a state that you didn’t even know had islands.
Part 1: Time is a Parasite That Grows Above Your Lips
Here’s the chef with a roast and an endive soup. Someone has a mustache. It’s new. Or has it always been there? Mustaches are like cigarettes for above your lip. The aloof sister’s aloof boyfriend smokes a cigarette. The cigarette is aloof too. He likes smoking them because they keep time. Cigarettes are like a minute hand for between your lips. That makes a mustache like a minute hand for between your lips above your lip. And that makes time – a thing which a cigarette keeps – like women away from you since the mustache is like a cigarette and if a cigarette keeps time and a mustache keeps women away from you then therefore, so it follows that women away from you must be time.
Part 2: Adoration and Other Shiny Things
The brothers and sisters touch each other's hair for some reason and it’s not weird or is it and that’s just the way their family is I guess. They just haven’t seen one another in a while. Now someone’s crying. She has a troubled past. Painkillers. She didn’t abuse them. Her arm was just really sore one time so she took them. But that was hard. Lights down on the dining room.
Part 3: The Trouble With Charlie
One of the sisters hates her mom but she’s just like her mom. She’s pregnant. With self doubt? No, just a baby called Self Doubt. They got away with calling a streetcar Desire. This should work too. They’re not going to talk about the pregnancy. It’s impolite. Birth is so foreign. Looking at a newborn is like looking at a peeled almond. You recognize it but it’s simultaneously unrecognizable. Also, it’s gross.
Part 4: A Nod to Chaucer
Introspection, introspection. Charlie’s just arrived. He’s late and didn’t make it in time for the chapter named after him. That’s the trouble with him. They’re still at dinner. Someone threw a lamb chop at the wall. Weren’t they having roast? Time to connect it to something in their childhood. Summers in the mountains. At the lake. In Cabo in the mountains at the lake. The sunshine coming in through the window – catching on her eyebrow in the way it only did in Cabo. Money, money, something with their grandfather. Someone finishes their endive soup.
Part 5: The Fifth Act
A spoon falls to the ground but it’s so quiet in the room it sounds as if one thousand spoons have fallen to the ground. Or as if one very large spoon has fallen to the ground and crushed everything and everyone in the room beneath it. Or as if one thousand very large spoons have fallen to the ground crushing everything and everyone beneath them and creating a mass so large in the center of the room that the universe is forced to expand to accommodate it. Or as if one very small spoon fell to the ground. But with a heaven-splitting force. And the sound of the heavens splitting was such that it sounded as if one thousand spoons had fallen. Everything feels so goddamn consequential. Everything is so goddamn consequential. Introspection. Catalytic converters. Spoons.
The end.
Flip to the back cover — my author photo. They’ll praise me for my gentle humor and skewed outlook on life. Black and white photo. I’ll be frowning because I’m serious and deep in thought. My writing is worthwhile. If I was smiling they wouldn’t be curious about me. Everything you need to know about a person you can learn by looking at their teeth. But I’ll be frowning and I’m not one of those people who frowns with her teeth, so they will be curious.
They’ll wonder why my perspective is skewed. And why my sense of humor is so gentle. Whether I was the sister, the divorcee, the dog sitting under the table, the lamb chop that was thrown at the wall. They’ll see me in everything.
They’ll feel so much. They’ll cry. They’ll be crying so much that they’ll cry straight through the book and have to buy another copy. They’ll cry through their shirts. And through the shirts of the guys next to them. It’ll start to rain. I used to think the rain was God crying. Maybe they did too. They’ll still be crying. They’ll be the town criers. They’ll google “Are tears perspirants.” They’ll google “Would an antiperspirant work on tears? Like get them to stop?” They’ll google “Would an antiperspirant work on God’s tears? Like the rain? To get it to stop raining?” They’ll google “Deodorants safe to use on eyes.” They’ll google “Is deodorant antiperspirant? Like are they the same?” They’ll google “What to do if I accidentally put deodorant in my eyes.” They’ll google “Manisceto.” They’ll be trying to type “Emergency” but mistype because they won’t be able to see very well given the deodorant in their eyes.
It’s perfect. Manisceto is coincidentally the title of my debut novel. It means nothing but it sounds quite nice. Advance copies on sale now.
Sorry for being inactive. The people who pour concrete over sidewalks to make them look brand new came to my neighborhood while I was standing right in the middle of the sidewalk. I told them not to worry about me – to just continue pouring. I didn’t think they’d actually listen. I thought this would be one of those things where we both insist back and forth for a while and then in the end I give in and move. But I never gave in so now there’s concrete all over and around my feet. I’ve been stuck. Come find me in Media, Pennsylvania. Thanks, Gableburger.