She sat there eating her M&Ms one by one, watching me.

We crunch together in silence for a while.

"What flavor do you like the best?" she asks me, pulling a green one across the table with her finger.

And I am stuck: do I tell her that there aren't flavors, or is this one of those things where you are supposed to play along with the child, to let her imagination rule? If I say: "They're just different colors, not different flavors", what damage will I do to her lime-cherry-grape world?

Instead, I take another handful, where they get lost in my thick fist, and shove them all into my mouth at once. Through the crunch of shell and chocolate, I manage, "I like them just like this."

And she nods, satisfied, reaching for a red.

The wedding day.

My mother looked over my shoulder into the mirror as she affixed my veil. Our eyes met in the reflection. “Are you sure?” she asked.

We are not ones for intimate conversations, my mother and I. Her question seems to cross a tacit line. We talk about other things: knitting projects, pets, the people we have in common. She is happy to have me out of the house, and I am happier to be gone. Our relationship is always tentative.

“Of course,” I say. It is the only possible answer.

She just nods and reaches for another bobby pin. The room returns to quiet, with the muffled chatter and giggle from my bridesmaids just barely audible through the wall.

When she finishes, I look at myself again – or, at least, a prettier version of myself. I am a bride. The photographer comes into the room and swirls my white fabric this way and that, tilting my chin, demanding a reflective look. “Now wistful,” she urges, pushing my head down so that I am looking at my bouquet. “Good.” She takes a picture of my shoes and then disappears. My shoes? I find it odd.

My mother has left – she may have offered a destination, but I didn’t hear or wasn’t listening. I can see the requisite limousine waiting outside of the window, and it is like a purer version of a prom.

“Are you sure?”

I still hear her question. I wonder if I shouldn’t feel more uncomfortable. Nervous? Anxious? Something. It is, as they say, the biggest decision of my life. I have had nightmares for months about this day. My dress would be locked up in the alterations shop, leaving me to walk to the altar in my cut-off shorts, or no one would show up, and we’d be left paying for nearly 200 plates of uneaten filet mignon.

Today, though, I am calm. I slept the whole night last night, even in the unfamiliar, uncomfortable hotel bed. During hair and makeup, my bridesmaids marveled at my peace.

What is there to be scared of? I have made the right choices. We courted in college, having met in a study lounge late in our sophomore year. Whispering, he asked to borrow my highlighter, and we laughed about its being pink. He was a business major, an acceptable major. He wasn’t in a frat, and he ran cross-country. Our first date was an on-campus concert with a fizzling band, and we walked to WaWa for coffee afterwards. In college, dating isn’t much about dates; no one has any money, so it is quickly just a companionable thing – hanging out in dorm rooms or apartments, meeting up in the cafeteria, going to movies or parties with everyone else on the weekends.

We continue on our path after graduation. He treats me well. I get flowers on Valentines’ Day, a thoughtful card on my birthday. I do his laundry. We get grown-up jobs and save for down payments. We don’t live together because maybe this isn’t the right thing. We are what is expected. He proposes over the requisite fancy dinner, down on one knee after dessert is served. I, of course, accept. He takes his buddies fishing on a lake for his bachelor party. I invest in lingerie. We meet with a realtor and sign an offer on a respectable Cape Cod in the suburbs.

Am I sure?

What is there to doubt?

This is what it is supposed to be. I have a diamond on my ring finger, and it will gather with several colleagues trapped in a platinum band this afternoon.

I find myself wondering at the future. It has seemed that my life would stop at this moment. I will be married. I will be complete. The tension will end, because – after all – married life is settled and calm. I will have a name change and vows on DVD to affirm my self-worth. On Saturdays, I will scrapbook, and he will mow the lawn. We will meet friends in the evening for beers; the boys will eat grease, and the girls will nibble at salads. It is what is supposed to be, how things should go.

Am I sure?

I check the clock on the wall, and I leave the bridal suite.

A bit of a piece.

I was just looking for my crochet books, as I've got an itch to play with yarn this weekend. Didn't find any stinkin' patterns, but - instead - I found a stack of old papers I once wrote in high school and college. It truly fascinated me to see how my writing has evolved over the years. Where did I learn to write in the critical present? I don't remember learning to write. It must have happened. I see in my writing what I tell my students to include, which makes me wonder how I got where I got in literary analysis.

Huh.

Anyway, totally not where I wanted to go. I have always had a habit of writing vignettes in the margins of my notes. When I read good literature, it inevitably inspires me. I don't know that I create good literature as a result, but I have little phrases and bits and pieces written in the most random places. That's probably why I haven't written much since becoming a teacher - it's not often that I get to listen to literary discussion.

Here's what I just found. I like this:

Falling from rest at the top of her head
His lips careen down her forehead
Slide down her nose
And firmly land upon her mouth to drink
This is how he loves her.

I watch as they dine
He with his eyes
as she thefts a shrimp from his plate and her rings clink against the wineglass
She quenches her thirst by sliding her nylon toes up-up-up
Between them, a smile.

Morning of Manders.

The task: Write a fragment of a story that is made up entirely of imperative commands: Do this, do that; contemplate the rear end of the woman who is walking out of your life. This exercise will be a sort of second-person narration. 500 words. Details can be found in The 3 a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley.

Wake up, wake up! Hear that stomach rumbling?

Snuzzle her gently. Meow a little; see if that works. Knock the cell phone to the floor, and don’t get pushed off the bed in the process.

Lick her eyes; see if they’re open. Any luck yet?

Try a head butt. Or, better yet, break out the claws and go for the hair.

Speak! Make your need known! Do not allow yourself to be ignored like this – oh, the humanity!

Try it one more time – pull at the hair a little.

Ah, now, rejoice in the victory! Go ahead into the bathroom; beat her to her own punch. Wait! Stop! About-face! Change of plans - head straight for the bedroom door and lead the way to the food bowl.

Crap! Don’t fall into the trap and let her -- close the door in your face, like that. Again! Every. Single. Day.

OK, OK, calm down. Get a grip. Just wait a little while. Curl up here. Pay her back later when she wants to cuddle or play. Show her who’s boss. Rule like the majestic princess of the wild that you are. Heh.

Don’t you think an hour’s been a long enough wait? Glare at the stinkin’ dog prancing downstairs to his food bowl, and decide that it’s time to take action.

Evaluate the distance to the doorknob and assess your energy stores. Formulate a plan for attack: Go for the dog and his clearly substandard (yet rather accessible) cuisine, or wake up that lazy bum of an “owner”.

Fret over the difficult life of a cat.

And leap for the doorknob. Rattle it. Try again – get your paws around it. Don’t give up. Hear that movement inside the room? Don’t quit now. Jump and body slam. Ignore the pain – it’s gain or something stupid like that.

Take a break and lick yourself. Take your mind off your hunger. Get that spot right back there – that’s better.

Spring for the knob again. Pause. Listen! Buzzing! Ooh, a fly; where’s it going? Focus on the fly. Stare at it intensely. Don’t let it get away. Crouch down. Rev up those back paws. Be prepared. Wait for it. Wait for it.

Pounce!

Crunch on the fly.

Remain wholly unsatisfied. Attempt to tackle the door again.

Success! Meow loudly, plaintively. Make your starvation known to the world and especially that bratty dog downstairs. Run down to the closet and spin in a circle, lest that blasted owner get confused again about what she went downstairs for. Ensure that she’s opening the closet, and then dash over to the clearly empty food bowl. Lick it so she knows where to put the delectable morsels.

Shoot sidelong glance at owner in a passive-aggressive attempt to demonstrate your frustration over her ineptitude.

Eat! Eat! Eat!

Stop talking to yourself, cat, and eat before the Evil Entity of Canine robs you of your well-earned prize.

Wait. Slow down. Don’t eat so fast. Remember how you threw it all up last time and ended up starving for the rest of the day? Refrain from demonstrating bulimic behavior.

Purr.

Succumb to the exhaustion of your battle for food. Climb back into bed next to apparently lazy owner and allow yourself to be held. Cuddled. Stroked. Bring on the snooze.

Consequences Tomorrow

Consequences Tomorrow

     Ages and ages hence – a sigh.

     I was bored at my college graduation. I couldn’t breathe under the stupid nylon gown, and the frat brothers around me were drunk before the soloist hit her first flat note in “The Star Spangled Banner.” I had felt inclined to be patriotic at this momentous occasion and was more than slightly annoyed in a bored way. The secretary of a state representative was giving the old JFK speech about seeing what you could do for your country, but I’d heard it before, and by the time I crossed the stage to get my diploma, I cared just about as much as the other five thousand people there. I left the stadium thinking, “What now?”
     My parents swept around me with their cameras, and I smiled broadly holding my fake diploma and praying that somehow things might hurry up.
     We did the celebratory meal thing, and finally they left in a whirl of perfumed kisses and snapshots. I tossed the cap and gown into my cluttered backseat and drove back to my apartment. I tripped walking up the crumbly stairs, and I cursed as I tugged at the swollen old door pretending not to want to let me in. I walked through the kitchen full of teacups holding moldy chai and went straight into the living room. I hit the light switch and was rewarded a flickering and hissing florescent flood of light. I pushed a stack of notebooks to the end of the futon and sat wondering what to do next.

     I sat and they sat and we were all very good at silent stares.

     An unmarried husband wondering why why why he is alone and lonely and never to be married and cousins sad sad even though we were never close. The cat mrrows so I know she is there but I knew it before she spoke and she is not enough anyway. Is she? The teacher will mourn the essay I wrote yesterday, a good one all about Gatsby and the futility of the dream. Written with insight beyond my years. That understanding of Gatsby’s pink suit. All in a blue book, the good thoughts that is. With only one spelling error crossed out. The forecast is sunny and clear and I want it to rain. It should rain. You have to do things when you’re young and it’s too late. Not old but too old anyway. I watch the cat watch me and I swallow and I wait.

     I couldn’t help but start thinking about the peach in my refrigerator. There were much more important issues to be dealing with – like the competition of white society in Invisible Man but all I coulde think about was that peach. I wasn’t even hungry, and this wasn’t a craving. I just had to have the peach – like unconsciously lighting a cigarette having just snuffed the last out.
     There is really no reason to want that peach. I was massacring my coffee breath with potent mint gum – not flavors complimentary to peach.
     But as much as I felt that I needed the chilled warm fuzziness of peach, I didn’t want it. I could not find any logical reason to eat the peach. Yet as long as I denied myself the peach, I knew that when I got home, I would eat it.

Hired Help

This exercise is to write from a first-person point of view, while only using a first-person pronoun (referring to the narrator) twice in the entire story, which must be 600 words or less. Details can be found in The 3 a.m. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley.

“Unbelievable,” she snarled, as she flung the door open. “Late? Again? Good Lord, I should fire your sorry ass.” She paused in the doorway. “Well? What the hell are you waiting for? The house looks like shit, and I’ve got a guest coming in twenty minutes.”

“I’m sorry.” These were wasted words, as she had already flung herself back onto the flawless leather couch and was continuing a pointless conversation on her cell.

“Seriously. I know. I know. When you try so hard. You’re telling me. Mmhmm. It’s like, you know, like that one time. Yes. I know.”

The benefit of cleaning a 4,500 square foot house is that it allots plenty of places to hide from such inanity, and it seemed that the furthest corner of the house from where she sat always ended up the cleanest.

“ISaBELla,” she screeched, and no amount of speed could get me into her presence quickly enough. She carelessly tossed an envelope over, not even noticing when it landed in the bucket of water that had just been used to clean the Jacuzzi she used for nothing but the collection of dust. “I’ve docked you three hours of pay,” she hissed. “Perhaps next time, you’ll be on time. And no more excuses about the car breaking down, k?”

Three hours of pay? For four hours of work? It wasn’t enough to pay the electric bill, much less the rent. There was no point in arguing, even over the disparity between the five minutes of being late as opposed to the three hours she claimed.

The doorbell rang, and she breezed past. The nastiness had evaporated from her voice, and a murmured, sultry hello floated into the room.

It was the perfect opportunity to hastily clean the living room before she’d want to use it again. There was nothing worse than trying to please her critical eye. The one day, her wedding picture had to be readjusted ever so minutely no less than thirteen times before she’d concede that, well, it wasn’t perfect but it would have to do.

She was such a waste, really. It was hard to avoid bitterness towards the compassionless woman. The dwindling paychecks were never enough to deal with her degradations. She had nothing over me – the same level of education, similar looks, a comparable upbringing – but she’d married rich. That was apparently enough.

Muffled giggling drifted downstairs. The last task of the day required returning the clean, hand-monogrammed towels to the master bath, so there was no avoiding another potential encounter with her.

“Oh God, I love you so much,” she simpered from inside the bedroom. Had he come home?

An unfamiliar voice murmured sweet nothings and answered that question.
A towel slipped from the top of the stack, and it was just enough to draw her attention to the doorway. Clad in black lacy nothings, she looked up from the man she straddled on the freshly-made bed, suddenly speechless. He whirled to see what was distracting her.

“Babe,” he worried, “shit.”

She laughed – perhaps nervously – and pushed her foil-highlighted hair back. She didn’t seem to notice her almost-nudity. “It’s only the cleaning woman, Jack.”

He rolled away from her, much more aware of his own state of undress. He pulled his grease-stained coveralls back on, pleaded that he had to get back to work and disappeared from the room.

“Good thing you don’t speak English,” she smirked in his absence.

Funny how things work out. Only the cleaning woman had an important call to make that evening.

“Babe? It’s me. I’ve got something to tell you.”

*annoying screech*

This is a test.

This is only a test.

If this were an actual post, there would be a title at the top, as well as an italicized explanation of what I am trying to do with that particular writing exercise.

This concludes this test of the Top-Secret Blogging System.