I was excited to get a few poems published in the online journal, Ravens Perch. You don’t usually get so many accepted all at once.  This is from a book of poems I wrote called, Building a Fire.  I wish someone would take the book 🙂

Grandfather the Mason

A friend posted this on Facebook today, and it immediately made me remember my short story about my futile attempt to grow tomatoes one year –

Margaret and the Two-Inch Tomato

Margaret has a black thumb. She has never been able to make anything to grow. She transplants all manner of cuttings and they blossom for a day or two, then wither and die. When she plants seeds, nothing happens. They don’t even break the ground. Her house plants, torn asunder by cats desperate for the great outdoors, hang bedraggled and limp, branches broken, leaves frayed.

Every year, she tries to plant the live Christmas tree she buys. Every year it dies.

One spring, Margaret notices that her neighbor across the street has a whole garden full of red, beefy tomatoes. She is so envious. If the neighbor can grow those beautiful fruit/vegetables, why can’t she? She’s an intelligent person. She’s not totally incompetent. The soil is the same on this side of the street as it is on that. She ought to be able to grow freaking tomatoes.

Burned in the past, Margaret knows better than to buy seeds. She buys tomato plants in special pots that guarantee they’ll grow. The tomato plants pop up six inches from their cardboard pots. The soil they are planted in is dark and marled with special ingredients. She plants them on the same side of her yard that her neighbor planted his. He is outside weeding. She waves and he waves back. “I’m growing tomatoes,” she shouts.

He grins and calls back, “Take some of mine. I have too many.”

“Braggart”, she thinks. But she laughs and continues planting her tomatoes.

Immediately, the minute the last trowel of earth is turned, the drought begins. It is the worst drought the southeast has ever experienced, weeks without rain. Drinking water dries up. No one is allowed to water their lawns. Washing your car is a criminal offense. Margaret stares, distraught, at the sticks where her tomato plants used to be. At first, she tries to keep up with the watering. She uses overflow from showers. She puts a bucket in the bathtub and makes everyone in her family produce water after each sojourn in the tub. But the plants are so dry from the record-setting heat, that she knows the effort is futile.

Just when she thinks she’ll mow down the sticks and start over, it begins to rain. From drought to monsoon in one easy session. Every day, she comes home, opens her cumbersome umbrella, drags her briefcase inside and battens down the hatches for the evening. Water seeps into her shoes. Her roof is leaking. Her car is leaking. It is so wet outside, the cats don’t even bother to rush the door. She forgets she ever gardened.

Finally, the rain stops. There is a Disney-esque sunrise. The world looks green and beautiful. She comes home from work in the afternoon and gets out of her car, grateful that she doesn’t have to wrestle the golf umbrella into submission. She is about to go inside when something catches her eye, a flash of red.

And there it is, beautiful as a waxed fruit, a perfect two-inch tomato where a stick used to be. The plant has blossomed with leaves and the 2-inch tomato decorates the green foliage. She bends down and stares at the flawless fruit.

It is the same size the next day, and the next. It doesn’t seem to grow. But it is spectacular. Reluctantly, afraid it will start decaying, she plucks the tomato and takes it inside. Her first home-grown anything.

Margaret wonders if there’s some way to preserve the tomato. She has the first dollar bill she ever made. This could be a decorative item just like the dollar bill. But she can’t find anything on the Internet about permanently preserving fruits or vegetables. At dinner, she cuts the tomato into tiny, perfect wedges and decorates a salad with them. “Do you see that?” she asks her husband.

“Oh, great, you grew a tomato,” he answers.

“If I can grow a tomato, I can grow other things, too.”

“How much did that tomato plant cost you?”

“Never mind. That’s not the point.”

The tomato is fantastic. She hates to eat it, but is thrilled by the juiciness of the taste, so much richer than the flat, boring tomatoes she buys in the grocery store. She wonders if she could grow enough food to feed her family. She has a large backyard. She could start a nice garden.

She could bring in a few chickens and have eggs for protein. She could buy goats for milk. Imagine living off the land. When she first started college she had a boyfriend who tried to live off the land. He was very successful with his marijuana plants but, alas, not so much with the other flora. He frequently came to her house to eat when his crops failed. But maybe he didn’t have her abilities. Maybe he didn’t have her patience.

“What would you think if I quit my job?” she asks her husband. He knows how exhausted she has been, how stressful her work.

Nevertheless, “I’d think you lost your mind,” he says.

Margaret decides to buy more plants. She will plant them and see what happens. If they grow, like the two-inch tomato, this will be a sign. She may have a black thumb, but she’s good at reading signs.
– Published in Bright Lights Cafe:

http://www.brightlightmultimedia.com/BLCafe/ShrtStories-MargaretAndTheTwoInchTomato.htm

I was invited to read for a public event, for the Storytelling Meetup, on the topic of Do Over. I’ve never read for this group before, but I decided to write about my ex-husband, George. I am always a nervous wreck when I read in public, so I wrote everything out and will practice all day. I get so nervous I actually have to ask people afterwards how I did – I have no idea how my writing goes over in the crowd. It’s kind of funny, my friend Marilyn who is a psychologist, says I’ve perfected the art of disassociation for public readings 🙂

Anyway, here is my very rapidly written performance piece for Do Over:

My ex-husband, George, was the funniest, sweetest man on earth. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. So why did I end up leaving him after I had our baby? Well, maybe it was the alcoholism. Or maybe it was because he was the biggest marijuana dealer in the northern realm of Florida. Which I wish I had known before we met 😊…
We’d seen each other a few times at various parties around town and whenever he saw me, he was very attentive, polite, funny, courteous. He made other people move so I could sit next to him. I went to his house, which always seemed to be party central, and he played my favorite songs on his jukebox. Yes, he had a jukebox in his house. And fluorescent lights. You would think that the barroom décor would have set off alarm bells in my nineteen year old brain, but noooooo.

But the first time we really got together was when he invited me to a party at Crescent beach in a huge house right on the ocean. I drove over by myself from Gainesville and when I got there, the place was so packed I couldn’t even find George. Everyone was dancing to the Rolling Stones song Hot Stuff, and I wandered around in the crowd, looking for him. Then I realized that the room was filling with smoke. I started to panic – “We’re on fire,” I told people. “We need to get out – the house is on fire.” Finally, one of the guests took my hand and dragged me over to a nearby hibachi, a little barbeque pit. It turned out someone (three guesses who) had thrown a pound of pot on the hibachi. You could literally not avoid getting high if you were breathing. In no time, it seemed my feet were barely touching the floor.

I had to get away. I went outside and stood on the beach, watching the waves roll in, totally hypnotized. When I went back inside, I drank one beer after another as people handed them to me. Completely lost count. The next thing I knew, I was throwing up in the bathroom, totally humiliated. Imagine my surprise when George came along, threw everyone out of the bedroom, and helped me to bed. I was terrified about what would happen next. Then this craggy forty year old man who knew I was basically paralyzed covered me up with a sheet, lay down on the floor next to me, and slept there all night.
Eventually, I dropped out of school and moved in with George. I was an old soul, one of those people who had never done youthful, crazy things. But with George, I could be totally spontaneous – skip work and go camping, leave class and head to the Ocala National Forest, skip my exam and head to the beach. My parents hated him, but I loved my new life.

Except, it was a little difficult for someone who was an introvert. We were never alone. The party went on all the time. George worked three nights a week at a beer and wine drive through and it took me a while to realize that the way he really made his money was through selling pot. He was always surrounded by a crew of guys. I called them the lost boys. They literally waited on him hand and foot.

One man who moved in with us was a huge, muscular ex-con named Victor. I thought it was so sweet of him to give Victor a place to stay and a job after he got out of prison. Of course, it turned out that the job wasn’t just working at the Beer and Wine mart – he was George’s bodyguard!

George liked jokes. One day about ten of us were coming back from the beach in his station wagon. (Yes, back in the old days, when you didn’t’ have to have a seatbelt). Even though we thought he was crazy, he picked up a hitch-hiker. The hitchhiker was young and handsome and began to flirt with me. George asked him what he did, and the kid said he was a student and a surfer. “And what do you do?” he asked George.

“Me, I’m a shrink.”

“Huh?” the student surfer said. This fuzzy-haired, bearded, balding old man was a shrink?

“That’s right,” George continued. “I wanted to give the kids a little break today.”

“Huh?” the student surfer said.

“Yes, a good beach break is perfect for their mental health. You know, get them out of the facility.”

“I don’t understand,” the student said.

George waved at us “These are my patients.” The kid didn’t flirt with me anymore…

When my daughter was born, I thought George would change. He said he would. He said he’d get a real job, that he’d quit drinking, that he would change his ways. Duh. I believed him. Youth is wasted on the young.

The day we came home from the hospital, George threw a huge party for all his friends. There I was, trying to learn to nurse a new baby, and the house was filled with wild, crazy people, some I didn’t know, who were all there to see George’s new child. George went out to get firewood, leaving me alone with this drunken, celebrating crowd. And he didn’t come back all night.

On her first birthday, George went out to get firewood, and he didn’t come back all night. Now, I’m not always the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to relationships, but I realized that if I didn’t change my life, this was the way my daughter was going to grow up. It’s one thing to make that decision for yourself. It’s another to dump your child into such a situation.

So I packed up my stuff and drove away the next day.

I was never going to get married again. I ended up living with my parents for a while, in Birmingham, Alabama. I dated a few people. One guy said to me, “You know, you could give the kid to your parents.” “When?” I asked. He kind of waved his hands and said, “You know, like – “ Duh. Like permanently? Did not see that one again.

I was very depressed. I had a great job in Birmingham, I was going to college, my parents were very sweet and welcoming. But I felt so out of place there. One day I went to a shrink – a real one. He said, go home and do something you really want to do. I went home and thought and thought. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do. Except move back to Gainesville. So, I packed up and moved back. My mother kept following me around the house as I was packing, saying, “That’s not what he meant, that’s not what he meant.” Whatever. The only thing I could think of that I wanted to do was go home.

I was a single parent, I was not the least bit interested in getting married again. I was doing my best Greta Garbo – I want to be alone. But I had to get out once in a while. After all, I was 25 years old, alone with a 3 year old, and I had no life. So one night, in a bar called Eddy C’s, I met a handsome, bearded young man, and had a one night stand. I never expected to see him again.

The next day, he showed up at my work and asked me out. I was stunned. But I went out with him. And I even introduced him to my little girl. They hit it off right away. It turned out that he and I had gone to high school together. Of course, I didn’t know him back then – he was captain of the football team, prom king, a basketball player. I was on the literary magazine and the newspaper – and two years younger. But we had passed within a few feet of each other for over 10 years. In fact, one of my best friends found a note with his phone number on it in her bedroom!

We kept dating and he asked me to move in with him. Even though by this time I adored him, I was really nervous. But eventually I decided to give it a try. We lived together for two years. During that time, he asked me to marry him a couple of times. Each time, I said no. “Why don’t we just keep things the way they are?” But eventually I gave in and we decided to marry. And then I got pregnant again.

My new husband, Ken decided he wanted to adopt my daughter so that she would know that she was his child just as much as the new baby. We asked George to give up custody, and he said no. We were in a panic. We’d spent so much money on the lawyer, we were in school, both working two or three jobs, and had a new baby and a five year old. The lawyer was very smart. She sent George a letter that read, “We understand how difficult it must be to imagine giving up custody of your child. Therefore, please send five years of child support as soon as possible.” He signed the adoption papers.

Whenever I saw George around town, he was always sweet and wonderful and welcoming. I liked talking to him. But I had finally realized that some things don’t change. Just for the record, a 45 year old alcoholic dug dealer is not likely to suddenly become a pillar of the community, no matter how sweet or funny he is. I’ve been married to my husband for over three decades, but I still appreciate George. He took a fragile, damaged, old-before-her-time kid and showed her how to loosen up, how to live for the moment. And I appreciate that knowledge every single day

Out in the Country – Wraparound South

My essay from Literal Latte comes back to my consciousness today. Thought I am not a huge fan of John McCain’s philosophy, I am a huge fan of his bravery. How dare these people in the White House say such awful things about a man who has been through so much…

http://www.literal-latte.com/2012/09/im-not-writing-about-robin/ From Literal Latte:

I’m Not Writing About Robin
Wendy Thornton
Second Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Essay Award.

We have all heard the old joke about God and the Devil and the glittering jewel on the path. “What is that?” asks the Devil in admiration. “It is the Truth,” replies God. After a moment’s silence the Devil makes a helpful suggestion, “Let me organize it for you.”

— Brent Mitton

The Guru is Not Absent: The Case for Dharmatherapy

My friend, Robin, died recently. I drove across the country to visit her before she died, to remind her that her bravery made me brave. She seemed comforted by this thought, as much as you can be comforted when you know you’re going to die within a specific timeframe.

The chance of our stories becoming intertwined was unlikely. Robin had traveled the world. She’d been a guide in Alaska. She’d been a long-distance trucker. Me, I’m a wage slave who’s lived in the same town for so long I could drive the streets blind-folded. The circuitous route that led us to each other, that brought two people staring death in the face together, began in a writer’s workshop. We both liked to tell stories. She wrote about her travels — I wrote about relationships.

Fiction is what I usually write. This is not fiction.

I’ve told friends, “It’s like bad television.” You’d never see this played out on Grey’s Anatomy because it doesn’t ring true. And of course, there’s the superstition factor — usurping someone else’s story has got to screw up my own karma.

So instead, I’m going to write about the nature of reality and the writer’s obligation. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, ever since James Frey’s dust-up with Oprah Winfrey. Frey wrote a book, A Million Little Pieces, supposedly the true story of his descent into addiction. After Oprah chose it for her book club, the story turned out to have a number of embellishments. Okay, let’s call a spade a spade — he lied. He lied so badly that he even appropriated the tragedies of others for his own gain.

Outed by a website called The Smoking Gun, Frey came to stand for dishonesty at its most venal. His lie was at least as horrible as Herman Rosenblat’s scam, which was based on a story Oprah once declared “the single greatest love story in 22 years of doing this show.” Rosenblat wrote a memoir, Angel at the Fence, describing how his future wife passed apples through a fence to help him survive a concentration camp. Poor Oprah. I can understand her getting sucked in. What I don’t understand is why these writers wrote “memoir.” Why not write fiction?

Fiction is what I usually write. This is not fiction. When I write non-fiction, I make a strict distinction between what is true and what is invented. What I say here, in this essay, is truth — although admittedly filtered through my perceptions.

Ah, but there’s the rub. My husband, the main victim — er character — of many of my essays has said, “It’s not that you lie. You just remember big.”

Or I remember differently. My children accuse me of making up stories about them. I just tell the facts. It is a fact that my daughter swallowed a battery on a bet when she was fourteen years old. It is a fact that, around the same age, my son put his hand through the wall of our house because I wouldn’t buy him new clothes before school started. Yet, when I state these facts, they accuse me of lying. What do I have to do to establish veracity? Show the X-ray of the battery sitting in my daughter’s duodenum? Or show the fist-sized hole in the hallway of my house, strategically unrepaired? (I think it’s a good object lesson for my volatile youngest child to see that hole on a regular basis.)

The fact that they don’t want me to tell these stories gives me pause. And yet — and yet — when I attend family gatherings and try to be silent, someone always eggs me on, sometimes even the perpetrators. As in, “Oh, sure, Mom’s going to tell that story about me punching the wall again.” This is the stuff of folklore, these are family stories, campfire material, sagas I will pass down to my grandchildren who will someday say to their grandchildren, “And once, when your great-grandmother was fourteen, she swallowed a battery because her younger brother dared her…”

I consider these stories to be my stories. They do not belong to my children. My children have a completely different take on the same events, though the events happened exactly as I have described them. They belong to me because I was there, because I was the one who had to call Poison Control and explain that my yes-indeed-fourteen-year-old not fourteen-month-old daughter had swallowed a battery and to tell my husband that yes indeed our youngest child had put his hand through the wall! By virtue of my participation, these are my stories. I am the ultimate voyeur in my own life.

So, I will not write about Robin because I do not want to detract from the miraculous experience of her life. I don’t want to diminish the horror that befell her, and I don’t want to devalue her courage. However, I know that she will not be able to write about it, because she told me she wasn’t going to and because, by the time you read this, she will be dead. So there should be no conflict about me stealing her story. The only conflict is within me, that somehow, by telling her story, I am dishonoring her memory. And I do not want to dishonor the memory of someone so brave.

When she asked me to take her to the hospital, I knew something was seriously wrong….

When you write a piece of fiction, you must make it believable. Robin and I met in a writer’s workshop. Sometimes, we in writers’ workshops have to tell new writers that what they wrote is not believable. Sometimes their response is, “But this really happened.” And we say, “Ah, but nevertheless, it’s not believable.”

Some truths are just so strange they’re not believable. The fact that they happened has nothing to do with their believability.

So I will not write about how Robin called me one winter morning and said she’d been in a minor car accident the day before and how she had some numbness in her hands and feet. And how I offered to take her to the emergency room to be sure she didn’t have a pinched nerve. And how we went to the emergency room on the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday and the ER doc decided she should have a CAT scan, just to be on the safe side. And how, sitting in the CT waiting room, I knew something was wrong because the CT tech came out and said, “You’re going to be here a while. Would you like a blanket?” And how I got goosebumps when he said that.

You see, I had recently been in that same room, waiting for a CT to pinpoint the rectal tumor that was threatening to kill me. Robin and I barely knew each other then — we had just met. As I progressed through my treatment, I talked to her about some of my experiences. Once I asked in amazement, “Do you know I have to take a shot every week that costs $1,500? How do people without insurance survive?”

“They don’t,” she answered. It turned out she was hiding a secret from me. She’d been having intestinal problems but couldn’t afford a colonoscopy. Only when her appendix burst and she was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery did the doctors find the tumor in her colon that threatened her life. We were both relieved to get treatment and recover. We were both gun-shy about going to a doctor for any reason, for fear that something else would go wrong.

So when she asked me to take her to the hospital, I knew something was seriously wrong. Perhaps she’d damaged her spine in the wreck. So, I’m not going to write about sitting in that waiting room wrapped in a warmed white blanket while people bustled in and out, not making eye contact, and how I knew it was bad because this was the Sunday of a long weekend and special people had been called in who normally don’t work long holiday weekends. I’m going to write about how I knew something was wrong because I’d been in that same room a year and a half before and that same tech had pinpointed my own tumor like a butterfly stuck to a corkboard. So, see, this is my story, not Robin’s story. Me, wrapped in a warm white blanket, waiting for my friend to be released, thinking, whoa, déjà vu.

Lord Jesus Christ, by your patience in suffering you hallowed earthly pain and gave us the example of obedience to your Father’s will: Be near me in my time of weakness and pain; sustain me by your grace, that my strength and courage may not fail; heal me according to your will; and help me always to believe that what happens to me here is of little account if you hold me in eternal life, my Lord and my God. Amen.

— Book of Common Prayer (1979)

I am not going to write about the handsome, distraught young ER doc who came into our sterile ER room and gave us the incredible news. I am not going to describe his shocked face as he told Robin, “You have a huge brain tumor and I’m afraid there’s no cure.”

She actually made a joke. “Thank God, now I have an excuse for forgetting things — I thought I was getting Alzheimer’s,” and we actually laughed. I’m not going to describe how we ended up comforting him — got that? — we comforted him! as he tried to explain that the tumor was huge. I’m not going to mention how he looked when she told him she had five kids and needed to make plans.

A few weeks before, we’d celebrated her birthday at a nearby state park, Paynes Prairie. Robin loved the Prairie. She told me the history of this park right outside my own town, how it had once been the domain of Seminole Indians, how steamboats once crossed its grassy savannah. Our writers’ group celebrated her birthday on the prairie with readings of fiction and poetry. It was a lovely, Florida December day, breezy and sunny, and we toasted her sixty years on earth and wished her sixty more. And here it was, less than a month later, and her life was over.

And I’m certainly not going to talk about the cold, hot-shot young neurologist who told her that she had a glioblastoma, the most virulent form of brain tumor, and that without treatment she had less than a month to live. With surgery she might live for six weeks, but might be blind or paralyzed or not know she was Robin anymore. The neurologist asked her all kinds of pointed questions as if she were a fascinating specimen, with no hint of humanity in his face or voice. “Have you ever blacked out? Do you have trouble remembering things? Have you had a lot of headaches lately?” No, no, no, she’d never had any, none, zilch, zip, no fucking symptoms.

Instead, I’ll talk about how my friend Robin wanted a cigarette and how I held the bag dripping steroids into her system as we walked out the front door of the ER and how some nurse practically assaulted us, shouting, “You can’t take her outside!” And how much, how very much I wanted revenge on the entire medical profession, particularly the many people who’d missed my own tumor for so many years (see how we personalize the most ludicrous moments?) by screaming at this rude nurse, “Listen Bitch, she has an inoperable brain tumor. She can do whatever she wants.” And how I managed to restrain myself because Robin was so brave and I wanted to show I could be courageous, too, but by God in Heaven if she wanted a cigarette, that was her right.

And I’m not going to talk about staying with her all day until we got a hospital bed, and how I was there when she called her oldest friend, Beverly, in Texas and her oldest son in Ohio and asked him to tell the other kids what was going on. And how I didn’t want to leave but she needed things from her condo so I agreed to go and tell her roommate what was happening.

But I will talk about the guilt I felt leaving the hospital and how beautiful the sunset was that night and how I cried, thinking it was insensitive of me to even notice such a mundane thing as a sunset when Robin was dying. And how I couldn’t find the notebook she wanted and how I had to sleep before I went back to the hospital and how just being in the hospital, on the same floor where I’d spent the longest year of my life one week, caused me to feel panicked and breathless. When I returned to the hospital, I was absolutely manic. I wanted everyone to treat her well. So I turned into a one-woman comedy routine. For the sake of Robin, how endearing could I be? How many jokes could I tell? How fast could I talk? Could I throw salt over my shoulder?

Repression… the painful emotions arising out of the conflict, are actively or automatically thrust out of consciousness into the unconscious, in which, however, they still remain active, determining behavior and experience, for the most part indirectly and producing neurotic symptoms of various kinds, as well as determining dreams, both night and day, and underlying many types of deviations from normal behavior.

— James Drever

A Dictionary of Psychology (1952), via Columbia Univ.

I can talk about volunteering my home to Robin and her children so they could assemble and decide what their next step would be. What would you do if you had a month to live? Gather your family, go to the woods, walk deserted paths, explore the edges of lakes and swamps, watch the sun come up every day and never watch it set?

Here is where the curse sets in. If I wrote about the things I saw that week, would that trivialize them? Would I commandeer them against their will, hold them hostage, wring the truth from them and leave them dripping wet on the floor, abused and abandoned? When does someone else’s experience belong to you? Oprah, Oprah, tell me true?

Remember, my friend Robin is a writer. But she chose not to write about this. So does that mean the story is up for grabs?

The truth is so complicated. If I say my daughter swallowed a battery on a dare, that’s the truth. But the complication is that my daughter is the kind of kid who never, ever did anything wrong, and the fact that her wild brother bet her she wouldn’t do it means she practically had to do it. Just to show him that she could be a bad girl sometimes. Just to prove she was normal.

And my son, who put his fist through a wall because I wouldn’t buy him new clothes, didn’t tell me that an older girl had taken a sudden interest in him. This was the first time a girl had ever noticed him and he was flattered and frightened by the attention. He didn’t tell me. I didn’t get it. All I saw was that damn hole.

My truth is much more complicated than saying I went to the emergency room with a friend and she had an inoperable brain tumor. Because at the time, I was hiding a major secret of my own, fear that my cancer had returned. I had a mammogram in October, and was told I was fine. Then the doctor’s office called back and said, whoops, we found something, please come back. So, reluctantly, I returned for a follow-up visit, and the second mammogram showed a lump in my breast. I was then given a sonogram and that clearly showed the lump. So they referred me for an MRI. At this point, I opted out.

“You mustn’t avoid me, anymore. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll respect your decision, but you must not avoid me.”

Maybe if they hadn’t told me I was okay after the original mammogram, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated, so furious and so frightened that I went into avoidance behavior. After a year of chemo, radiation, surgery and more chemo, I couldn’t stand the thought of starting again. I began avoiding the omnipresent members of the medical profession. I refused to return phone calls from the mammogram doctor. I tore up certified letters sent to me.

Cancer had become the blight that blurred the landscape of my life, muddying the horizon as it came ever closer. Right before the mammogram, my youngest sister and my dear friend, Susan, had both been diagnosed with breast cancer. The two of them told me about their treatments, their fears, their intimations of mortality. Because I’d been through treatment for cancer, they felt they could confide in me. I couldn’t tell them my own mammogram had come back positive. I thought I’d rather die.

My primary physician, Dr. Ruben, got into the act. He started to call my house, personally. He left messages telling me I needed the MRI. I quit answering my phone at home and at work. I deleted his messages before my husband could hear them.

Miraculously the wolf closed his jaws and lay down at the feet of St. Francis. “Brother Wolf, you do much harm in these parts and you have done great evil…” said Francis. “All these people accuse you and curse you…But brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people.”

— Wikipedia: St Francis of Assisi

So I will not write about Robin having an MRI. I will write about how I felt sitting in the MRI room pretending to read a magazine while Robin was inserted into a metal tube and pounded with noisy waves of magnetism and how I pretended I was fine and made small talk between the horrendous noises to let her know I was still there and how all I could think was, I can’t do that. I will not be able to take that test. And I will not write about standing in Robin’s hospital room listening to her make plans for her death with her children and how the reality of what I was hearing was like an assault and I thought, but I can’t just stay in limbo. So, I told her I’d been avoiding the doctors and that because she’d been so brave I would have the damn MRI. This made her feel better. She said, “If something good comes of this, then maybe it’s been worth it.”

I called my doctor, and I cried on the phone as I told him about listening to Robin plan her funeral. “If I have cancer again,” I said, “I’m not going to have any treatment. But I’ll have the MRI, so I can tell my family how long I have to live.”

This sweet man, who had taken me on as a patient the week I was diagnosed with cancer, the man who had referred me to the experts who saved my life, said, “You mustn’t avoid me, anymore. Whatever you decide to do, I’ll respect your decision, but you must not avoid me.” I agreed to this, although I didn’t believe him. Doctors are fundamentally incapable of letting you deny treatment. But I respect this man. I told him about my claustrophobia, so he prescribed large quantities of Valium to get me through the MRI.

Dr. Rubin had me pick up my records from the office where I’d had the mammograms and sonogram and bring them to the MRI facility. On the way, I pulled out the X-rays and stared at the tumor. The mass in my chest was so clear it looked like I’d swallowed a marble.

In the same room where Robin had been encased the week before, a young kid directed me to change into a gown and take off anything metal. He was very kind, though it must have been clear to him that I was high as a kite. He asked me if I’d like to listen to some music and I said, yes. “Do you like classical?” I made a face. “Rock?” he asked, and I nodded. “Do you want vintage rock and roll? Or something new?”

“Something new,” I said.

“How about Sting?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Sting isn’t new,” I groused.

He looked befuddled. “Coldplay?”

“Coldplay is good.”

Even with the music so loud my eardrums tingled, even so drugged I could hardly stand, being in that tube made me feel like I was in a coffin. Remembering Robin lying there so quietly the week before, I cried all the way through the test.

A week later I received another certified letter. “Your test results were normal.” You’d think the letter would have come as a great relief. Instead, I was furious that they had put me through this absolute hell, when it turned out nothing was wrong. And I was angry that I’d been made to act out a secret melodrama. The letter said, “Please make an appointment now for a new mammogram.” Yeah, that’ll happen.

Robin was thrilled by the news. She believed because her experience had forced me to take the MRI, she’d been responsible for saving my life. That really made me feel guilty. My life for hers? If I were writing about Robin I would say, is it fair to trade my life for hers? I don’t think so. How do you measure the value of a life?

May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free. May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending one another. May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wildernesses – the children, the aged, the unprotected — be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.

— The Buddha

If I were writing about Robin, I would say, I drove from Florida to Texas to visit her. (Remember that claustrophobia? We claustrophobes don’t fly unless we have to.) She stayed with her friend Beverly until she died. When you are a cancer survivor, you spend a lot of time thinking about death and dying. It’s an unavoidable subject, even if you don’t expect to kick off within a month. During my visit, Robin and I spent many hours on the balcony of her friend’s home talking about our different beliefs. She thought she would die and everything would come to an end for her. She was on a journey that would soon be over. I believe she’s on a journey that will continue. I think this life is just a stop along the way. I told her I thought there was so much more to life than we can perceive, that there is a whole world of energy just waiting to absorb us, that we go on in a different state, sans corporeal substance. She gave me that look — the skeptical, slightly pitying look I frequently get from my non-believing friends and relatives.

I did not have the privilege of growing up in a religious household, though my parents were strong, righteous, moral people. My beliefs have been patched together through years of spiritual readings, teachings, and absorption. I believe it’s all true, all real, all there beyond our senses. I absorb and believe it all. I can’t explain any of it.

While I was visiting, I told her she should write to her children and tell them how she feels about them. “They already know,” she said.

And I thought, how arrogant you are to tell this dying woman what she should do, how she should feel. And yet I know if I had a month to live, I’d be writing letters to my family for every day of their lives, till someone ripped the pen from my cold, dead hands. “Darling daughter, congratulations on the birth of your first child.” “Dear Son, I want you to know how happy I am that you finally finished graduate school.” “My loving husband, on this, your wedding day, please remember me as the woman who wanted you to be happy after I’m gone.” “To my mother on her eightieth birthday, thank you for teaching me to be strong.” And I would tell the family stories. “Dear grand-daughter, when your mother was little, she once swallowed a battery on a bet.” “Dear grandson, let me tell you what your father once did for love of a girl.” Lord, through this method, I could go on and on. But that would be my story.

If I were writing about my friend Robin I would say, there are moments I can’t get out of my mind and I have to share them, because they are so painful, so recent, so real. Because this is not fiction, this is not me telling a story. This is reality. And reality demands an out. Fiction can waft away like a random thought — I need milk. But truth should out.

One morning just after Robin had been released from the hospital and her family was visiting at my house, I came out of my bedroom ready to go to work. I saw Robin sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunrise. Her thirty-year old son was on his knees in front of her, his head in her lap and she ruffled his hair like a child. I had to go back in my bedroom and bite my thumb till it bled so they wouldn’t hear me cry.

I’d planned my visit to Texas so I’d arrive the day Robin’s youngest son was leaving, so as not to interfere with his visit to his mother. Robin’s friend, Beverly, drove the son to the airport in Houston, while I stayed with Robin. Beverly gave me instructions on what to do if Robin had a seizure, what medications to give her, how to administer the suppositories if the oral medications didn’t work. I pretended to be calm and unconcerned about the fact that I might have to force medication down Robin’s seizing throat. Or worse. I pretended I could handle anything, even her death.

As Beverly and the youngest son drove away, Robin and I sat on the balcony of the house and waved to him. He waved back. She watched them drive out of sight, and then began to cry, the only time I had seen her cry since this whole ordeal began. “I’ll never see him again,” she said. “Yes, you will,” I answered. The look she gave me, so bitter, so frustrated, so irritated with my simple platitude, made me feel useless. I was convinced I was right just as she was convinced I was wrong. What brought us together? I believe in fate. I believe if I hadn’t met her, if I hadn’t got the MRI, if I hadn’t faced my fear, I wouldn’t be alive now. Or let’s just say, I wouldn’t be living. Yes, there is more than we see, more than we can know. Yes, I wanted to say, our essence goes on beyond this moment. Listen to me, believe me.

But what do I know? This is a woman who was looking death in the eye with more courage than anyone I’ve ever seen, and I’ve spent hours in chemo rooms with people getting up close and personal with the Grim Reaper. I have no proof of my beliefs, other than a certainty that this can’t be it, that God is in the details, in the pond behind Beverly’s house, in the sunset on a frosty January evening, in the red-rimmed eyes of a youngest child saying goodbye to his mother. For now.

So this is the truth. I cannot write about my friend Robin, who believes there is nothing beyond this life, because I don’t understand her. I can’t write about Robin because I want to scratch and claw for every scrap of time and fill every moment I’m alive so I never have to think and never have to feel and never have to deal with that bus bearing down on me. I can’t write about Robin because I’ll never be as brave as she is.

But if I am writing to her instead of about her, if I am addressing this truth to the Robin who may not be part of this earth anymore even as I’m putting down the words, all guilt fades. Maybe they’re all right — the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Christians, the Hindus, the physicists. Maybe there are many paths to “God” or perfection or infinity or parallel time. To Robin I say, I salute your courage and your spirit. Thank you for helping me to be brave. I’m still here, still thinking about you. Maybe that means you’re still here, too.

Defying the best expectations of the best doctors at two major medical centers, Robin Spaeth lived six times as long as she was told she would. She died peacefully in her sleep at the home of her dear friend in Texas where she could look out over the large back yard and imagine it was a prairie.
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Found this story on a Web site from quite a few years ago.  Though the story is fiction, it was based on a real incident.  I was hitch-hiking back from work at Marineland and Terry gave me a ride home. I was too embarrassed to admit to him that I had totaled my mother’s car the first week I moved back to St. Augustine and had no way to get around. Or that I could barely afford my $80 a month apartment under the lighthouse at 38 White Street. Sometimes at night, I could hear the alligators croaking across the road at the Alligator Farm  So I wrote this story, making up details, when I should have written about how difficult it was to see him, how much I loved him, how much I wanted to be back with him, and how much I pretended I didn’t care about him at all.  Idiot.

Oh well, got a story out of it anyway (I always do):

Lying Still

by Wendy Thornton

“A final comfort that is small, but not cold: The heart is the only broken instrument that works.”

T. E. Kalem

It was late afternoon and the sun was beginning to drop lower on the horizon when Rachael walked to the highway and put out her thumb. She still wore her waitress uniform, the little white dress and black apron, but she’d taken off the clunky white saddle shoes that looked old fashioned but were comfortable. She stood on the side of the road in flip-flops, watching cars flash by. It usually didn’t take long to get a ride. She was young, petite and blonde.  Even in the ugly waitress outfit, she attracted attention.

The week she moved back to town, she’d pulled out in front of a telephone truck.  The angry driver told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was lucky to be alive.  Sometimes she wasn’t so sure.

She had no money, no place to live and no way to get around.  So she’d taken a waitress job at a seaside restaurant until she could find something better. Working constantly, she’d finally saved enough for a deposit on a crummy little apartment on the edge of the bay, and though it wasn’t much, it was still a lot better than the motel room she’d been living in since the wreck.

Of course, better days were coming.  She’d been accepted to art school. Being an artist was never going to make her rich, but she didn’t care. At work, customers and staff loved her drawings.  She drew little caricatures of people on restaurant napkins. Everyone laughed when she drew a picture of the manager, Michael, in his cowboy boots and the Stetson he always wore because he was too cool for school. Now all she had to do was wait for fall semester, and she’d feel like she had a reason for being on earth. Right now, she felt extraneous, like an extra toe.

Within minutes of sticking out her thumb, a blue Honda Civic slowed and pulled alongside her. “You want a ride?” someone asked.  Maybe she ignored the flutter the voice gave her.

“Sure,” she answered, getting in the front seat without looking at the driver.  Only after she’d buckled the seatbelt and turned towards him did she confirm that the man who’d stopped for her was the man who dumped her, her old boyfriend, Dennis.

“Hello, Dennis,” she said.  Dennis Raymond Boyd.  She used to write the name in her textbooks.  Mrs. Dennis Raymond Boyd.  Mrs. Rachael Boyd.

“What are you doing out here, yeah? You shouldn’t be hitchhiking.  It’s dangerous.”  So many voices – his soft, sexy voice, his angry voice, his disappointed voice.  But she’d forgotten the self-righteous one.

She laughed.  “This is how I get around.”  No details.  She wasn’t about to explain how she’d totaled her car.

“But what happens if someone picks you up who is, you know, dangerous?”

“Not really your problem, is it?”

“I can still worry about you as a friend.”

“Is that what we are?”

“You know what I mean,” he said.  But no, she thought, I don’t know.  “I didn’t realize you moved back to town.”

“I missed it here,” she said. “This is my home now.”  She wondered if he would object.  He always complained about outsiders moving to his beautiful beach town.  “I tried to move back with my parents but I hate Raleigh. Every day I was gone I missed this place. All I could think of was, when can I get back?”

‘You know I’m dating someone else, yeah?”

She looked startled, then said quickly, “I do. I’m very happy for you.”

“And I’m glad you’re here.  I want you to meet her.”

Magnanimous of you, she thought.

As they approached town she chatted about the restaurant where she worked. “I’m dating the manager,” she lied.  “You’d like him, a nice guy named Michael.”  Michael’s boyfriend, Jason, wouldn’t appreciate her usurping his lover.  But whatever.

The news seemed to please Dennis, though.  “I’m glad you found somebody new. I was  worried about you. For a while there you seemed so, well –” she could feel it coming “so sad.”

“I was,” she agreed. “But I got over it. I’m very happy now.”

“This is where I turn off.” Dennis pulled over to the side of the road at an intersection.  “I bought a little house out of the country.”

Her heart set like a stone. They’d always talked about buying a house in the country. “Did you get some land?”

“We’ve got 20 acres.” Rachael noted that we. “My girlfriend has a couple of horses. I’m not really into horses,” he added.

Dogs either, she thought. She had to give hers up when they lived together. If she had it to do all over again, she’d give up Dennis and keep the dogs.  But hindsight is always 2020.

“Well,” she said, pushing the door open, “Good to see you again.”

She started to get out, but Dennis suddenly said, “Wait a minute. Let me give you a ride all the way to your house. I’d love to see where you live.”

Noooo, she shrieked internally.  How bad was the apartment?  She hadn’t done the dishes, she remembered that.  And the bed was unmade.  What else?  What else?

Still, it would be nice to get a ride home all the way home and maybe, maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that he knew where she lived. Maybe someday he would come and visit voluntarily.

“Okay.”  She closed the car door again.  “I live just off Orange Street.”

“That’s a nice area.”

When they turned onto the road where her apartment building was, he slowed. “It’s this old house up there,” she said, pointing. He pulled up in front of the two story wooden house and looked at silently.  While there were nice houses in the area, this one had seen better days. The wooden house had been split into multiple apartments, and badly needed painting. The shutters listed sideways, the screens were split and patched. The front porch was up a set of five sagging steps. Her neighbor had put a wicker chair outside her apartment, but Rachael’s side of the porch was bare.  “Thank you for the ride,” she said. Then on an impulse she could never explain she added, “Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “Sure, I’d love to. Why not? I’d love to.” He parked the car and she led him up the steps to the apartment. She’d never noticed before how small it seemed, how empty. The kitchen opened into the living room, separated by a counter. She directed him to one of the barstools in front of the counter and went into the kitchen to plug in her second hand coffee pot. Sitting on the stool next to him, she leaned forward her elbows on the counter.  “So,” she said, “How have you been?”

He looked around curiously, “Nice apartment,” he said, and she knew he was lying.  The living room contained a small couch, a television and no other furniture. There was nothing on the walls. From where they were sitting, they had a direct view into the bedroom. He could see the unmade bed that took up most of the space, the open, chaotic closet.  Well, she was busy.  Working all the time.  Trying to buy a car.  And she hadn’t expected visitors, damnit.

Off the living room was a claustrophobic bathroom. She hoped he didn’t go have to use it. She hadn’t had time to clean it yet. The landlord had given her a discount on the promise that she’d clean the place up. But working so many hours, she hadn’t been able to do all she promised when she first moved in.

“This is interesting,” he said. “Good use of space.” She almost laughed at that. “So how have you been?”

She thought about telling him the truth.  I have no life.  I have no money.  I have no friends.  I wrecked my car and now I hitchhike back and forth to my crappy waitress job, but hey, other than that, everything is peachy.

But no, she wasn’t going to let him feel sorry for her.  She’d made her decision.  She was going to live here.  She was going to get it together and make this her home.  “I stay busy,” she said, as she poured him a cup of strong coffee.  “My boyfriend and I like to go on camping trips. He owns a Winnebago.” She almost laughed at the thought of Michael in a Winnebago, Michael whose idea of roughing it was, “the Sheraton without the pool.”

She and Dennis had once talked about visiting Yellowstone National Park, camping out in the mountains.

As she expected, “That’s great,” Dennis responded. “Been to Yellowstone yet?”

“No, but we’re going next month. I’m so excited I can hardly wait.”  She imagined herself leaping into the air, making little squeaking noises of delight.  But that might be a bit much.

“Sounds wonderful.”  Dennis sipped his coffee.  She thought she heard a bit of wistfulness.  He added, “Charlotte and I are supposed to go soon. I’m not sure when. She has a hard time getting off work.”

“Oh really. What does she do?”

“She’s a lawyer,” Dennis said.  He blew on his coffee, avoiding her eyes.

Of course she is.  Rachael remembered him berating her – when are you going to bring in more money?  Why do I always have to pay for everything?  Don’t you have any ambition?

“It’s not what you think,” Dennis added hurriedly. “She does whatever it’s called – not corporate law but the other – where she helps people.”

“Oh Dennis,’ Rachael said, “I knew you would never get together with a corporate lawyer.”

He laughed.  “Yeah, I guess you know my type. Well.” He put the cup down. “I hate to drink and run but Charlotte is expecting me. We’ll have to get together sometime.  Maybe you and – Michael, is it?  You and Michael, can come to dinner sometime.”

“We’d like that,” she answered. She walked him to the door, all two steps, then stood on the porch, smiling as he drove away. As soon as the car was out of sight, she ran back into her apartment, ripped off the uniform and jumped in the shower.  She hoped the neighbors couldn’t hear her shrieks. She stepped out of the mildewed stall, stood in front of the fogged-up mirror. She started to wipe it clean, hesitated.

In the steam she drew an ornate heart.  Then her initials.  And below that a question mark.  She stared at the image for a long time, wiped it clean with a towel.  She slipped into jeans and a t-shirt, then stretched out on the lumpy couch in the living room, and stared out the window where his car had been.  It felt good to be lying still, to be motionless. Soon she would whirl like a dervish, keeping thoughts at bay.  But for one minute, the setting sun streamed through the window, warming her.  She glanced at the barren walls on either side of the window. She imagined a mural on the wall, the sun illuminating a small, ivy-covered house somewhere out in the country.  Maybe a mountain rising beside the glass.  Time to buy some art supplies.  Get the place spruced up.

Wendy Thornton has been published in Epiphany, Riverteeth, Confluence, The MacGuffin, and many more.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been chosen many times as an editor’s pick on salon.com.  She never gets tired of writing but does wish some of her stranger characters would leave her alone.

© 2012, Wendy Thornton

I have an upcoming talk at our local library, and of course, I’m a nervous wreck.  In my opinion, writers shouldn’t have to speak in public. If they wanted to be sociable, they wouldn’t be writers – they’d be musicians :). Back in the old days, I hear you would sell your book to an agent, the agent would sell the book to a publisher, the publisher would do all the advertising for you, and the money would roll in.  That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.

Nowadays, millions of people are trying to get books published. Half the time, agents don’t even respond to your request for representation.  No news is bad news.  You didn’t hear from the agent? You lose. They don’t want your book.

I didn’t even bother with that part of the process. I didn’t even try to get an agent. When I decided to self-publish my first book, I actually had some good feedback from agents, but I decided I didn’t want to wait for them to make a decision, and then for the months, maybe years it would take to sell the book to a publisher. And then maybe the months, maybe years it would take to actually get the book into print. Self-publishing seemed like a nice option. I would have a book completed. It would be published. I could sell a few, give away a bunch, and have some street cred as a writer.

My first book, Dear Oprah: How I Survived Cancer and Learned to Love Daytime TV, was about my cancer experience. At the time I wrote it, I thought I would only be alive a maximum of 2 years.  That was fourteen years ago. If I’d known I was going to be here for so long, I might have considered going through the hassles of trying to get representation. Still, the book has been helpful. My doctor liked it :). Some of my friends found it very comforting when they themselves became sick. My mother liked it – although, being a long-term English teacher, she did manage to find a bunch of mistakes. Oh, well.

Now I am putting out another non-fiction self-published book, Sounding the Depths.  It’s okay, though. I know it’s not going to become a best-seller. I know I’m going to have to promote it myself. That’s okay. It was fun to write, and I have plenty of publications in major literary magazines and anthologies. It’s not like I need to be formally published  to have bragging rights – I already have that. Now I just need to figure out how to stop being such a frickin’ chicken and learn to promote my own work.