by Craig Cliff
When she finished the list of American authors, she broadened her horizons.
Dear Midlist Author,
Someone told us to check out your most recent short story collection or novel, which we did. Unfortunately we here at Xyzphage do not consider your writing to be an appropriate fit with the current direction of our publication.
Yours in pre-emption,
Editor X
Then she began trawling the internet for e-zines, noting down the contributors and rejecting them when they least suspected it.
Dear Emerging Writer,
We here at Xyzphage have noticed your writing around various journals and websites but you have a ways to go before you should think about approaching this publication.
Yours in pre-emption,
Uncle Xyz
To add sting to these rejections, she created a website for Xyzphage, complete with submission guidelines, and posted some of her less than perfectly crafted stories under various randomly generated pseudonyms.
‘They think this is good?’ she imagined the Emerging Writers thinking. It made her feel warm. Physically warm. The word that seemed to fit best was chuffed.
But then Xyzphage began to receive submissions.
Mitzi Visitacion was forced to stop sending out random rejections and focus solely on rejecting Xyzphage submissions. Soon she didn’t even have time to read what she was rejecting — there were that many.
So she sent out acceptance letters instead. What was stopping her? She accepted anyone who sent her an email. Even eBay’s ‘Summer Savings’ and Rudolfo Zurich’s ‘Cheap Cheap Cialis’ made it onto Xyzphage.
But why stop there? She went into her Sent Items, retrieved every rejection letter and changed a few words.
Dear Writer,
We here at Xyzphage have noticed your writing around various journals and websites and consider it an appropriate fit with the current direction of our publication.
Yours in prevarication,
Uncle Xyz
For some reason, this got her more irate replies.
Writers emailed asking to have their stories removed from the site. Submissions dried up. The hit counter for Xyzphage stopped ticking over.
The flare-up had fizzled.
And all Mitzi Visitacion was left with was her perfectly crafted, unpublished stories.
4.
When the power went out, the writer’s sister went to bed early. The writer did not. She lit a candle and dusted off the old Underwood Five typewriter someone had given her as a joke, or perhaps as an objet d’art.
But it worked.
She found herself clacking out a story about a woman roughly her own age — which was forty-two — who lived alone — as the writer had until her sister moved in — preparing for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween. This woman had purchased a wide variety of candy for the occasion and placed it all in a glass bowl with a wide circumference so the children could select their favourite types without having to dig around too much. The woman in the story, who had not been given a name and perhaps never would, feared that digging around could lead to children knocking pieces of candy onto the floor and then, as she stooped to pick them up, the children — dressed as pirates, werewolves and stormtroopers — would surge into her apartment and begin listening to her record collection with unimpressed werewolf faces, grinding black pepper from her ornamental pepper grinder all over her salt-and-pepper shagpile carpet, unzipping the backs of her sofa cushions and changing her answerphone message:
The lady with the big butt is not home. Press 1 for the Pirate. Press 2 for the Werewolf. Press 3 for the Stormtrooper.
Even with a bowl with the widest circumference she could find, the woman in the story no longer felt comfortable opening the door to trick-or-treaters. She sat on her sofa in silence, waiting for the doorbell to ring and, when it did, she would let them ring and knock until they gave up and went to the next apartment. To calm her nerves while the trick-or- treaters hounded her, she ate candy from the bowl with the wide circumference.
The writer, punching out this story on a typewriter by the light of a candle, suddenly had an incredible urge to eat a Mintie, which is a hard, white candy popular in Australasia. The first time the writer had had a Mintie she was on stage for a panel discussion at a book festival in Sydney. She had been rendered mute by the chewy mass in her mouth while several topics she was dying to discuss arose and sank, only finishing the Mintie as the chair brought the session to a close. She was then ushered by festival staff wearing headsets to the book signing tent. If it wasn’t for these people wearing headsets she would have slipped away to the airport.
Despite her silence during the panel discussion, there were six people already lined up in front of the signing desk. A woman in a headset waved the man at the front of the line forward. The writer asked the man’s name after he placed the opened book before her, and he said, ‘You can just put, “Dear Reader”.’
The writer looked up at this man. He was wearing a blue baseball cap which said ‘Seaworld, Gold Coast’ and had not shaved for many days. She looked back at the book he had placed before her. She closed the cover and looked at the spine.
‘This is a library book,’ she said.
‘Yes it is.’
‘And you want me to sign it.’
‘Yes please.’
She looked at the bag of books the man was holding. ‘You’re going to take this book back when it’s due?’ she asked.
‘I’m the librarian,’ he said.
The writer read over what she had written so far of her Halloween story, pulled the current page from her typewriter and inserted a fresh one.
5.
Paul and Heidi’s relationship had devolved to the point that they only saw each other at open homes.
It began when they decided to buy a house together — or at least start looking for a house to buy together. But houses are not discrete entities: they are a collection of objects and obstacles, spaces and enclosures, acute, obtuse and reflex angles, which no two people will ever see the same way.
Every new home Paul and Heidi stepped into threw up new points of difference.
Paul liked the colour aubergine, Heidi did not.
Heidi liked front lawns that were bigger than back lawns, Paul did not.
Paul couldn’t stand showers combined with bathtubs, Heidi didn’t mind.
Heidi couldn’t live without a dumb waiter in a two-storey house, Paul had never heard of a dumb waiter until the love of his life mentioned it.
‘Maybe we aren’t that compatible,’ Paul said a month into their search for a house.
‘Maybe we just haven’t found the right house,’ Heidi replied.
After another month of searching, Paul no longer slept over at Heidi’s house on weeknights. It was impractical, they both agreed.
Then Paul stopped sleeping over on weekends. Paul claimed he needed his sleep for the open homes the next day. Heidi agreed.
When Paul answered the phone, the first thing Heidi would say was, ‘This could be the one.’ They would then discuss the particulars of the advertised house until Paul was tired of talking. He would then say, ‘This could be the one,’ and Heidi knew it was time to hang up.
After three months, they no longer spoke on the phone. Their only communication was via text message.
Heidi: Wareemba, 3bdrm, 12-1?
Paul: $675K?
Heidi: This could be the one
Over time they developed a shorthand to pinpoint which open home in the classifieds they were talking about.
Paul: P61, C3, 14D, 10am
Heidi: K. TCBT1
They drove their own cars to the open homes, meeting at the front of the property they were about to view without saying anything. Once inside, they would take turns alone with the real estate agent and ask the same questions.
Then one Sunday they met to view a three-bedroom cottage which backed on to a disused tract of railway. The exterior was painted the colour of
hulled buckwheat which, from a distance, made it look like untreated timber. Baskets overflowing with a plant Heidi recognised as lobelia hung from each corner of the veranda. Inside, the wallpaper had a large floral motif which repeated only two or three times per strip. The carpet was a salt-and-pepper shagpile. The fridge-freezer opened from the left-hand side and had the freezer at the bottom. The elements were electric. The light switches were all old up-and-down-style toggles. The shower was separate to the bath, which was elevated above the ground on four feet which looked like lion’s paws. The master bedroom had a fireplace.
When the real estate agent opened the door to the third bedroom and gestured for them to enter, Paul and Heidi forgot their well-established protocol of letting one person enter and appraise a room first, then exiting to let the other appraise the room in solitude. They found themselves looking at each other with arms crossed rather than looking at the room.
Paul said, ‘This room is tiny.’
‘Narrow,’ Heidi said.
‘Could you even fit a bed in here?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I know,’ Paul said, and lay down on the salt-and-pepper shagpile carpet, placing his feet flat against the skirting board. He put his hand on the top of his head then pushed it out until it struck the wall.
‘So?’ Heidi asked.
‘I’m not sure.’
Heidi also lay down on the carpet, but placed her head against the skirting board and tried to imagine whether the distance between her feet and the wall was greater than the normal distance between her feet and the end of her bed.
They both lay there trying to imagine themselves in bed, staring up at the ceiling, which was plain white except for a few spots which Heidi called fly-dirts but Paul did not have a name for.
The real estate agent came in after a few minutes. She brought her hand to her mouth when she saw Paul and Heidi lying side by side on the carpet, both with distant, remembering expressions on their faces.
The real estate agent went outside for a smoke and remembered the time she won a Richard Marx CD in a phone-in competition on the local radio station.
After a long time staring at the fly-dirts on the ceiling while thinking about other things, Heidi said, ‘I like the bath.’
‘Me too,’ said Paul. ‘And I like the wallpaper.’
‘Me too,’ said Heidi. ‘I didn’t at first, but I like it now. It’s kitsch but not camp.’
‘I just like it because it’s different.’
‘What don’t you like?’
‘Nothing. I don’t like nothing.’
‘I don’t like nothing, too,’ said Heidi.
She rolled her head to the left at the same time Paul rolled his head to the right.
Fat Camp
… on the hills the shepherds trample the hyacinth under foot, and the flower darkens on the ground.
— Sappho, Fragment 94
(H.T. Wharton’s translation)
It was as if Sophie’s whole life had been building towards it. The two summers spent as a camp counsellor in the States. The semester at teachers college. The five years as a personal trainer. The night classes in Human Nutrition (Danny always wondered if there was a class in Animal Nutrition and, if so, was it for animals or humans?). And running alongside her hours on the treadmill: the growing obesity crisis in the nation’s youth.
Even after she laid out the facts, Danny was sceptical.
‘A fat camp?’
‘It’s perfect. We can do it together.’
‘It may be perfect for you, but —’
‘Come on. There’s a lake. You love fishing.’
‘I went once, with Sig, and we caught nothing.’
‘But you’re always saying how much you hate working in an office.’
‘So you want me to work with you at the camp?’
‘Yes. I run it, you handle the accounting.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not an accountant. I’m a business analyst.’
‘But you studied accounting.’
‘Yeah, well, your job for me still sounds like office work.’
‘But we’re living at the camp.’
‘An office is an office, even if it’s in a log cabin.’
‘Just come see the place Claire has found. You’ll come around.’
‘But a fat camp? It’s just so … American.’
Claire, Sophie’s best friend, picked them up that Sunday in her red Rav4. Until six months ago, she was a hairdresser. Now she sold real estate. There must be something about twenty-ninth birthdays, Danny thought, that compels people to change careers. Except me. He tried to remember his twenty-ninth birthday, but couldn’t. He couldn’t even remember what they did for his thirty-first, two months ago.
‘You don’t mind the back seat, do you, Danny?’ Claire asked.
‘Where are we going exactly?’
‘The Borders.’
‘The Scottish Borders? That’s like a four-hour drive.’
‘It’s only three and a half, max. And we’ve got TomTom.’ Claire tapped the GPS attached to the centre console.
Sophie kept staring straight ahead.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I choose the radio station.’
‘Driver has veto,’ Claire said, and proceeded to veto all his stations until he gave up and the radio settled on a station called Pizzazz, or perhaps that was the name of the disc jockey. It reminded him of the one time Claire cut his hair: he still couldn’t listen to Beyoncé without thinking of the one hundred and fifty pounds it cost, and that was at mate’s rates. After that it was back to Sophie giving him a number three in the bathroom with the clippers she’d bought from Boots.
As they sped along the A66 — Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ playing near full volume — he looked out the window. There wasn’t much to see except other cars and the occasional hill. Somewhere to his left was the Yorkshire Dales. Somewhere up ahead lay the Borders and the campground. At least, he decided, Sophie only permits herself expensive dreams when there’s money around. Her Uncle Grant — a lifelong bachelor; his cross-dressing was the family’s open secret — had passed away six months ago. Danny was never comfortable around Aunt Grant, as Sophie’s brother called him. Everything sounded like innuendo once he’d heard the stories, but Sophie was Grant’s favourite niece, and now that he’d left a sizeable sum to her in his will, Danny wished he’d given the old duck more of a chance.
‘Should we not have taken the A1?’ he asked when, having crossed the border into Scotland, they started heading east again.
‘I’m following TomTom,’ Claire said.
‘We’re doing a big loop.’
‘We’re avoiding the traffic.’
‘It’s a weekend. The A1 would have been quicker.’
‘Yeah, well, this is the scenic route.’
The scenic route, he thought. Is that what opening a fat camp was? Goodbye fast track, hello Sunday drive.
Finally, the GPS, set to sound like Margaret Thatcher, said, ‘Turn right and you have arrived at your destination.’ Only then did they notice an old, peeling sign for Camp Christopher, almost entirely covered in overgrowth.
‘It used to be a Christian camp,’ Claire explained as they bobbled up the long gravel drive lined with Scots pines.
‘What happened?’ Danny asked, hoping for asbestos in the cabins or toxic algal bloom in the lake.
‘People stopped going to church,’ Claire said.
‘And ate more instead,’ Sophie added.
‘God is in the casserole,’ he said, then wondered what the hell he meant.
The camp consisted of a large dining hall-cum-activities room with attached kitchen, two toilet and shower blocks, and eight sleeping dorms, all positioned around the perimeter of an overgrown lawn.
‘This’ll be great for morning aerobics,’ Sophie said, walking out into the long grass.
Danny picked up a broken bottle of Newcastle Brown. ‘Careful you don’t aerobic your
self to A&E.’
‘Nothing a working bee wouldn’t clear up,’ Claire said.
‘Where’s the boss sleep?’
Claire led them behind the dining hall, past an old — hopefully disused — long-drop toilet, through a waist-high patch of honeysuckle, to a small shack with bricks scattered on the corrugated iron roof.
‘Are they to keep the roof on?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Claire said. ‘That was the chimney.’
‘Ah. Maybe we should make a list: For the Working Bee?’
‘Danny, please,’ Sophie said.
‘It’s nicer inside,’ Claire said.
‘I can believe that.’
After being shown through the other buildings, Sophie suggested she and Danny walk to the loch, alone, to discuss things.
‘I know it’s a heap at the moment,’ she said. ‘But the price is good. We can get contractors in. We’d probably need help with the confidence course anyway.’
‘Don’t forget you’ll have to hire staff. Counsellors or field marshals or whatever you’ll call them.’
‘I know. And I want you to run the numbers when we get home. I value your input. But I love this place.’
They came to the loch. Three fibreglass canoes lay upturned on the stony beach. The water was still and smooth like a tabletop.
‘It looks like you could walk to the island,’ she said.
‘Maybe in a month’s time. It’ll be frozen over.’
‘No. You could write your novel here.’
‘I’m never going to write my novel. It’s such a cliché for a thirty-one year old to have an unwritten novel. I want it stricken from the record.’
‘But this air.’ She took a deep breath.
He sighed. ‘I concede that this is a nice view.’
‘Right now, Danny, any concession will do.’ Within a fortnight Sophie and Danny had purchased Camp Christopher and were trying to arrange contractors to renovate before winter.
‘I have a list of potential names for the camp here.’
‘Hit me.’
‘Camp Slim.’