My Hero and I thought we had finally reached the end, a conclusion, the last step before starting our new life over. As we looked at each other in silence, waiting for our bankruptcy attorney to finish talking to that other attorney, we both seemed to search for new air, fresh breath, and couldn't quite find it yet.
The glass door separating us from the talking attorneys opened. A tall frizzy woman with an angry practiced stride aimed herself in my direction. Halfway down the hall she held out her hand like the Terminator would hold out a gun, and approached me with laser sharp focus.
"My name is Mrs. Nightmare," she said.
"My name is Trout," I replied with a firm handshake.
"You owe me an apology. I haven't heard one word from you. I demand an apology. Do you realize what it is like being a mother? Have you ever had a mother? Have you ever had children?" Her words flew out of her mouth like a rookie actress rehearsing for a soap opera role. I had no words.
My Hero grabbed my arm and started pulling me towards him.
"You have no right to be talking to her," My Hero growled at the steaming woman.
I had no words.
"You damn right I do. I have a right to say all kinds of things right now."
"We should not be talking without the presence of an attorney," My Hero barked. He had crystal clear thoughts and refreshing diction. "Stay away from my wife. You have no right talking to her. Leave her alone. Leave us alone."
Mrs. Nightmare, otherwise known as His Second Wife, lost her character and shrieked frantic sentences that my ears refused to hear. Piercing tin words rung in the fluorescent lights above, words about killing the father of her child... how could I sleep at night... mothers... After a powerful inhalation she seemed to repeat all those sentences over again, as if we had pulled her string. I did not want to pull the string.
My Hero pulled me up the hallway during her second stringful, at which time I noticed My Hero's voice hollering at an unusual level, "This woman is threatening us and I will not have it!"
The attorneys behind the glass wall suddenly dropped their conversation and came running after us. Did this happen in real life? I never lived in reality before this car accident, so I felt new to these dramatic and painful bouts of reality. Attorneys with navy ties flying up past their shoulder, running down an institutional green hallway, seemed surreal. Still, I had no words.
Our attorney, Mr. Earnest, stood about six-foot-three and had no problem blocking the angry woman's attorney, scooping us back into the bankruptcy hearing room. "She can't come after you in there," he said.
My body shook violently against my control while My Hero and I heard more sad people going through bankruptcy. While I spasmed and sobbed, the entire accident rushed behind my eyes like a silent movie on a never-ending reel.
Lights out, curtain, film rolling...
Scene 1: The Duccati flying towards my car, the feeling in the stomach that we just might miss each other, the smell of disaster, his helmet aiming for my windshield, and his obvious effort to throw himself away from the windshield, so only one of us would die. All that leather and expensive protective gear does not save him. He hits my car at lethal speed.
Scene 2: I stand outside the car, my spirit floating away from my body like an escaped balloon, watching the paramedics come up with the same conclusion, "There is no way he will survive this."
Scene 3: Forty-eight hours later I am wailing, retching, and flailing myself in a crazed frenzy, screaming, "He's going to die, he's going to die, he's going to die!" My spirit long lost.
My Hero holds me, searching inside himself for the unwritten "Guidebook On Traumatic Situations With Your Wife". All he can come up with is, "Please know I love you," and "Please try to find something that makes you happy." This a new plea for him, rather than the old, "Please, just come home. Don't stay in that office another night. Please, just come home."
One image keeps me from spinning and retching- a fish. In an advertisement for Bozeman, Montana, a delicious photo of a man's strong hand holds a fat, wet, rainbow trout. The fish looks so alive and healthy, freshly plucked from a thriving cool water environment, his fertile river.
Exhausted from that violent spell, I realize I am the fish, held out of my element for far too long, suffocating in scratchy dry oxygen. My spirit gone, I feel no desire to live.
The next morning, My Hero tries to raise me for work. I will not open my eyes. I do not care if I ever wake again. Dying, I am already dried up on a sun-bleached boat deck, my skin fried to the splintery wood, stuck like fish skin on a grill.
My Hero rescues me with a bucket of water, a therapist, and love. He peels me gently from my dying place, summons my sprit, and sets me free into a new live river. I sink to the bottom at first, but then my spirit awakens, and I swim far away from Mrs. Nightmare. Green, cool, rushing waters carry me to our fresh new life. My Hero finds me upstream when he is certain it is safe to leave our house and business and studio to the bank. As My Hero reminds me, "As long as we stick together, we can survive anything."
Now thriving in reality, I finally find my words.
Sun sets on the river before fade out.
The End.
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Comments: 21
Thanks for posting!
Hope more is coming down the road?
I knew I had to rewrite this, but it was hard for me to look at again for many months.
It felt good to rework it a bit.
Re: green linoleum - Do any attorney's actually have linoleum in their offices?
You major change, going with the scene definitions is good, as it fits with your shorter paragraphs, and helps the flow of the story. If it were me I would rethink labeling scenes 4 and 5. I think the first three do the device justice, and it might have a better rhythm without the last 2. Just an opinion.
Great rewrite, Laura - you have obviously worked at this quite a bit, and it shows.
A) i should change it to His Second Wife
B) the green linoleum is probably actually vinyl, and its in the hallway outside the bankruptcy hearing room, which is at the courthouse.
C) I thought the same thing about the scenes 4 and 5 but didn't want everyone all confused again.
I think some of the confusion mentioned above may have come from reading this as a non-fiction work, rather than as either a dream sequence or poetry. We are supposed to understand non-fiction, and we want to understand poetry, but we realize (or should realize) that will not always be the case.
If you want this to be a non-fiction work, then perhaps it is confusing. If, however, it is a form of prose-poem, then, there is no problem with it being confusing.
This is very surreal and linoleum in or around an attorney's office would add to the general feel and mood. The attorneys here seem hard, cold and cheap and no matter what the office floor might be, linoleum would suit them, especially in a poetic, surreal work.
To be ushered into a bankruptcy court for safety is also a fitting image, finding safety where the sorrows of those who have lost just about everything is being expressed.
I wasn't able to see this with scenes 4 & 5, but it works very well as it is right now. The accident is an interesting juxtaposition. When we dream there are things that happen that seem to fit within the context of the dream, but if examined in reality, they make no sense. Within this surreal description of what in reality was probably a very stressful situation, the three scenes first create a pause in what is akin to a prose-poem, changing the pace and restructuring the mood.
If we try to measure this work within the realities of non-fiction, it becomes confusing. If, however, it is considered as a poetic work (even though it may be based on real events), then everything here makes perfect sense, because a poem should often be "almost understood."
While our minds struggle for meaning and logic, something we expect in both fiction and non-fiction, that is not the case with poetry. We still struggle to find meaning and there should be some in any poem, but it will not necessarily be the same meaning for everyone who reads it, including the author. A good poem will be like a mirror, reflecting reality, but everyone who looks at it will see different things because they will both look at it from different angles and will either look at different things or place different importance on whatever they see within the framework of the poem/mirror.
I have struggled with whether to cal this fiction or non-fiction, and i am going to stick with fiction, as it is purposefully taken into a, like you say, dream sequence, and illustrated with creative fictional images. Obviously I wasn't a fish, literally, dried up and stuck to a wooden dock.
OK, Fiction it is!
Thank you, Robert. And thank you Tom.
This is beautifully written, and dream sequence is a good way to describe it. It felt like real events in the scrambled, hazy world of a dream.
My only confusion: Identifying with the trout seems to happen after the accident, with the bankruptcy happening after both of those incidents. (where she identifies herself as Trout) Yet we see it in reverse order, and the end has her surviving the emotional breakdown that came after the accident. Yes? No? Where does that leave her in terms of the bankruptcy? For me, she is still standing in that room with other people who filed for bankruptcy, barely hanging onto sanity. In other words, the happy ending is not an ending, it's a middle.
If identifying with the trout happens after the harrowing scene at the court house, then should she identify herself as "Trout" before it happens?
My brain wants to make sense of it (I guess Robert said it well, above) but another part of me just wanted to enjoy the ride and read the pretty words and interesting images. I felt removed from the emotional turbulence. And I think you're an excellent writer.
I lived near Bozeman Montana for 14 years. The photo of the man holding the fish could be my brother-in-law, who posed for a picture used in brochures for Big Sky, in which he held a "fresh caught" trout. Actually, the trout was previously frozen, since they had no time to spend waiting for the fish to bite, so they thawed one out to use for the picture. Don't know if it's the same picture you're thinking of, but it's a bit of irony, nonetheless.
I appreciate you making the changes to this story as people comment. It is turning into a fine piece, and fits well with this group's description.
the guy died, ok, in case that wasn't terribly clear.
HIS second wife wanted me to admit fault to get more insurance money, but that little issue wasn't important to the story.
I added the SCENES to make it too clear that "the entire accident rushed behind my eyes like a silent movie on a never-ending reel."
I wanted this to be creative and different, not a This is This and That is That piece, like too many others.
Perhaps this is one to throw in the fire, so to speak.
This is too sore of a subject for me to be writing about and asking the public to critique.
I should be able to take any comment that comes my way.
I apologize to you. You should feel free to ask the most innocent questions about this, and any, piece. I overreacted, and should probably let this piece rest a long long while, maybe just forget about it. I have plenty other pieces to write.
Thank you for caring.
This is a good read, very emotional I could feel the confusion.
I do agree that we may need to know whose second wife is attacking you. I think most of it thought it was your husband's second wife, making you his third. The confusion that is intentional... the way you use surrealism to keep us at a distance until you're ready for us to have the whole picture come into focus, is very artfully done. This one instance, though, feels more like a mistake and art.
GREAT piece. Thanks for letting us read it!
Sarah
This is really wonderful writing. The central metaphor is beautifully executed and does what I think metaphors should do -- surprise us and yet have the familar ring and shock of learned truth. Very, very nice. I also liked the distance you create with simple use of titles to show a kind of shattered pov, e.g., My Hero, Mrs. Nightmare, etc.
fz