Rejected Writers Take the Stage

by Suzanne Kelman

  I continued to sip my tea, thinking this was a better conversation.

  “Well, you know your father and I are planning on coming down in a couple of weeks or so to see you, so you take care of yourself and our grandbabies, do you hear?”

  As I shifted on the sofa, our cat came to sit in my lap. We named him Raccoon after catching him in a raccoon trap that Martin had made. Raccoon was now a full member of the family, and he knew it. He pawed at my lap as I talked.

  Stacy and I wound up the conversation and hung up. Martin sat on the sofa opposite me.

  “Nice deflection,” he said, smiling over his mug. “Now, Neil Simon, what were you saying about a Broadway show?”

  I told him the whole story. He listened with concern to Annie’s situation, then said something I hadn’t expected.

  “I think you should do it,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

  I looked at him like he had gone completely bonkers.

  “I mean, how hard can it be?” he continued. “It’s like building an airplane model. You have a blueprint—the script—and you put everything in its right place. Then make sure everyone gets on and off the stage at the right time, and voila, you have a show.”

  “Voila, you have a show?” I echoed back to him sarcastically. “If it sounds so easy, why don’t you do it?”

  “Oh no,” he said. “You know I’m just here to observe all the tomfoolery you’ve gotten yourself into over the years, but you will not be dragging me into any of it. That’s how we’ve stayed married so long. We have never needed TV because your life and lack of boundaries have been a constant source of entertainment for me.”

  I picked up a pillow from the sofa and threw it at him.

  “Seriously,” he said as he spun the pillow in his hand, “it sounds like Annie is pretty desperate. And you couldn’t meet a more kindhearted lady. Look at all those dogs she takes care of.”

  As I finished my tea, I thought for a minute. “You don’t happen to have a spare twenty thousand dollars you keep stashed away, do you? Something we could just use to pay her off and be done with it.”

  Martin beamed broadly. “Sorry, chickadee. I used it all up on fast cars and loose women.”

  Chapter Eight

  OLD FLAMES & NEW BEAUS

  Flora walked into town at 9:30 a.m. Plenty of time to drop off a letter at the post office, she thought. She couldn’t wait to get another letter off to Dan. His letter had been filled with tales of his days in the garage, and at the end had been very cryptic. She still had the important words he’d written memorized:

  Flora, I have a big surprise for you, but I can’t reveal it to you just yet. Be prepared for something amazing in the next week or two. All will be revealed soon, but until then, I want to keep it a secret. But I do have some very exciting news. All my love, Dan.

  She had said the words at the end of his letter out loud to herself over and over again—“All my love, Dan”—because even though both of them had hinted at it over the last few months, neither of them had actually said the words to each other yet. Those words, those important shifting-the-relationship-to-the-next-level words that she had waited to hear with a mixture of excitement and anticipation. She was glad he hadn’t just said them over the phone as some glib, good-bye salutation, but maybe, not unlike her, he was waiting to say those words to her in person.

  She hoped there wasn’t a line at the post office. It was getting close to the Easter holiday, and she didn’t want to be caught behind people with big packages of Easter goodies needing to be mailed off to the East Coast. She walked through the door and was relieved there was only one old man in front of her with a small parcel. However, that was where any post office sensibilities ended, as behind the counter, Mrs. Barber, the postmistress, was dressed as an Easter chicken.

  Always a fan of celebrating all the holidays in style, Mrs. Barber, a perpetually round woman, was now a perfectly feathered tennis ball. Her enormous bosom only overemphasized the multitude of multicolored feathers on her chest. As she talked to the elderly gentleman in front of her, Flora was struck by the comical nature of the postmistress talking serious post office business with her face poking out through the bill of an orange beak. And on top, a plume of red spiky feathers bounced from side to side with every bob of her head as she discussed the finer points of sending a parcel internationally. As the older man shuffled out, Flora approached the counter.

  “Cluck, cluck, cluck, what would you like, duck?” squawked Mrs. Barber in a high-pitched, birdlike voice.

  Flora wasn’t quite sure how to respond to a tennis ball–shaped woman dressed as a chicken who looked like she was hiding two very large eggs under her chest feathers.

  Mrs. Barber laughed at her own joke and then said, “What can I do for you, Flora, dear?”

  “I have a letter to post, and I need a roll of stamps,” Flora responded as she placed the letter on the counter.

  Mrs. Barber picked it up and eyed it, forcing her beak wider with one hand to get a better view.

  “Dan, eh?” she said with interest. “This is your new man, then? The one I’ve been hearing about all over town?”

  Flora blushed and stuttered, trying to recover from such a forthright question, but Mrs. Barber didn’t miss a beat.

  “I will take that as a yes,” she said, tapping Flora with a yellow-feathered hand attached to her wing.

  It was well-known in town that Flora didn’t date and had never had anything that remotely resembled a boyfriend. Flora was speechless, and Mrs. Barber gave her an all-knowing look.

  “Good for you, Flora.” The chicken picked up the letter and examined it carefully, as if doing so would give her some vital clue as to who the mysterious lover could be. After turning it over and scrutinizing the address, she said, “Oregon, eh?”

  Mrs. Barber was apparently enjoying herself. However, Flora was not. As she shifted from foot to foot nervously, she willed time to go faster. She was also aware that people had started to form a line behind her.

  “Don’t forget the stamps,” added Flora, trying to change the subject, but Mrs. Barber was not having any of it.

  As she stretched forward, her enormous feathered bosom slid across the counter. She placed the letter in front of her and ran her fingers in little circles over the top of it as she disappeared into her own reverie.

  “I once had a young beau from Oregon,” she said thoughtfully, her tone slow and winding. “A farm boy, all fresh-faced and freckled. He was lovely. Jimmy was his name. He was all burnished and bronzed from working on the land in the summer. We met while I was on vacation down there, and it was love at first sight for me. We spent all our time swimming and fishing. It was the time of my life, for a sixteen-year-old coming into full bloom. My father didn’t like him, thought he wasn’t for the likes of us. Wanted me to marry somebody educated, he said, and I did what my dad wanted. We all did back then, but oh, he was lovely . . .” She stared out of her beak toward the window, in her own reverie as she looked for the right words. “Earthy,” she eventually managed. “Is yours a farm boy?” she inquired, moving her beak in close to Flora and fixing her with an inquiring look over her reading glasses.

  Someone coughed in the line behind Flora, and she felt even more awkward. Every local knew that going to the post office in town could take anywhere from five to twenty minutes, depending on the topic of conversation stirred up at the counter.

  “No, he’s a mechanic,” she blurted out quickly, hoping that would be the end of it.

  “Lovely,” said Mrs. Barber, still in a deep trance. “Someone who works with their hands. You’ve got to admire that, Flora.”

  Flora reached for the letter. That seemed to jolt Mrs. Barber from her daydream adventure.

  “Was that it, now, Flora?” she inquired. “Is it just a letter to your Oregon beau?”

  “The stamps too,” added Flora again.

  “Ah, yes,” Mrs. Barber said, pulling herself together and twitching her tail feathers as s
he fished into the file drawer for a new packet of rolled stamps. “Twenty or fifty?”

  “Better make it a hundred,” said Flora, secretly thinking that she didn’t want to make it back here for a while.

  “A hundred, eh?” said Mrs. Barber, opening her drawer and surveying her stamps. “This sounds serious. I’d be careful, Flora. Oregon isn’t close, and long-distance relationships can be difficult.” She found the stamps she was looking for. “I would shop local, if I were you.” She nudged her and motioned toward a young fresh-faced youth who had just joined the end of the growing line.

  Flora was beside herself. The lad was a good five years younger than she, and Mrs. Barber was holding the stamps hostage in the air in her feathered hand.

  “You know what you’re getting locally,” added Mrs. Barber with a giggle. “Homegrown is always best.” She punctuated her statement by letting out a huge guffaw that made the whole bottom half of her shimmy like feathered jelly. She finally pushed the roll of little naked cupids toward Flora and said under her breath, “We don’t normally give away the Valentines stamps after February, but I think we can make an exception, bearing in mind the occasion.”

  Flora flushed again, grabbed the stamps, shoved them in her purse, and, putting a fifty-dollar bill on the counter, hastily tried to leave the post office.

  “Flora, love.” Mrs. Barber flapped her wing at her. “Don’t forget your change.”

  Flora was not going back in for the life of her and pointed at the charity jar.

  “Oh,” shouted Mrs. Barber, putting the change in the jar. “God bless you, love.” As she closed the post office door, Flora heard her shout, “I hope your young man knows what a gem he’s got.”

  Doris had a lot of nervous energy. She’d already been to the stationery store and bought a couple of legal pads, different colored pens, and two clipboards, and Ethel had followed her around like a puppy.

  “I have a friend,” Doris stated with a sparkle, once they were both buckled up in the car. “I think he can help us with the building.”

  She put her car into reverse and backed out of the lot to the main road. In a few minutes, she was parked outside a white townhouse with a neat, well-kept garden. She took a minute to check her hair in the mirror as she continued to speak.

  “A long time ago, when Jesus was a boy and before I met my husband, this fella was sweet on me,” she informed Ethel as she bobbed at her appearance. Ethel looked horror-struck.

  She pulled a comb through her hair, and she thought of a time gone by.

  She remembered this string bean of a boy who had been no more than a lick of leather. As she had come down the stairs he was perched on one of her mother’s pink parlor chairs, an awkward teenager in a tuxedo that seemed to be wearing him, holding a lovely boxed corsage in his clammy, unsteady hand. They were going to the homecoming dance and were both terribly nervous.

  She applied a liberal coating of lipstick to her plump lips. She would never forget the riot act her father had given him before they had even left the house. All about bringing her home on time and treating her like a lady.

  They had gone off to the dance and sat there like two bumps on a log, neither of them having the courage to speak. About halfway through, he suddenly got up, like he’d been thinking about it for a while, and thrust out his hand, saying, “Do you wish to dance?” She’d blushed down to her toes for sure and, putting down her ginger ale, had taken his hand—a strong, warm hand—and walked with him toward the dance floor.

  She giggled to herself as she remembered that night.

  “Okay, I think I’m presentable,” Doris then said as she shut her bag and opened the car door. They walked to the blue painted door, past the neat row of bushes and manicured plants.

  Doris continued to recollect as she waited for the door to open. She realized that it had been more than four years since Catherine had passed away, four years in the fall. She knew it had been that time of year because at her funeral there had been leaves swirling around the graveyard as the minister had delivered his final eulogy.

  She remembered the sadness in his eyes and the grief buried deep in the crevices of his face, the sort of pain there could only be after forty years of marriage. She took his strong, warm hand again and said how sorry she’d been, and something had passed between them: a knowingness, the familiarity of a time long ago when both their partners had been alive.

  The door opened.

  A tall, distinguished older man with gentle gray eyes stood in the doorway. He wore a light-blue shirt and smart beige pants, and his full head of hair was only just starting to gray at the temples.

  “Doris,” he said, appearing taken aback. He had obviously aged, but there was still that cute twinkle in his eyes, and the spindly youth had filled to a well-rounded, good-looking man.

  “James, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Not at all,” he answered, eyeing them both with interest. Doris introduced Ethel, and he asked them to come in.

  Pamela, who also worked at the cinema in the evening and did a little cleaning on the side to make ends meet, had told Doris that he had been one of her regular clients for the past few years. It seemed to pay off, for the front room was spotless, Doris observed, as he invited them inside. His house was bright, warm, and clean.

  “Well, what can I do for you?” he asked encouragingly.

  Doris, not wanting to beat around the bush, launched into the story of Annie’s problem and the plans to put on the show.

  James listened for a while and then said, “Why don’t I get you ladies a drink? Then we can continue our discussion.”

  He flashed that warm smile again.

  He served them tea and listened intently to Doris’s story as he quietly stirred sugar into his coffee.

  Then he said thoughtfully, “I’d love to be able to help, but the thing is, the theater needs a lot of work to be ready for anything that could resemble a show. I mean, it hasn’t been used on a daily basis since the late eighties. The last show in there was, I believe, in eighty-nine. I’ve been working with the historical society, but we need elbow grease and willing volunteers to get it where it needs to be. We’ve had work done on the roof, and it’s pretty much structurally sound now, and we have managed to keep the critters from moving in, but it’s in a pretty poor state as the rest of it goes.”

  Then he continued, more wistfully, “I know I probably shouldn’t have bought it, but there was talk about a gas station going in its place, and I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing a beautiful old theater and a piece of our town heritage just disappearing like that.” He sipped his coffee and chuckled, “I used to go there as a boy, you know, when it doubled as a cinema. Spent many a happy afternoon on a wet Saturday morning watching a Buster Keaton or a Laurel and Hardy flick.”

  Doris joined in his reverie. “Do you remember that woman who used to work on the candy counter? Margie or Mary or something.”

  James chipped in. “May,” he said with gusto. “May Barker.”

  They both laughed together.

  “Horrible woman,” continued James, “and she seemed to hate children. I remember her bending my ears once because she was convinced I had been the one to stick gum under one of the seats, when, in fact, it was Johnny Barton. And even though I pleaded my case, she never seemed to trust me again and always had her evil eye on me.”

  They both laughed freely, then Doris was straight back to business.

  “Well, I’ll put together a team,” she decided in earnestness. “A group that could work together to get the place cleaned up. Would you consider having us work to get the theater in shape in exchange for the rent for three weeks of performances?”

  James sipped his coffee slowly as he contemplated the idea. He looked unsure. “There’s a lot to do,” he said. “We have some money in the budget for a new stage, curtains, paint, and carpet in the main theater, but there’s still more to be done to clean it up.”

  “Let me worry about th
at,” said Doris. “But would you be willing to let us have the space for free?”

  A broad smile spread across James’s lips. “You’re still hard to resist, Doris, when you’re on a mission. There isn’t anything that can stop you.”

  Doris colored slightly at the personal turn the conversation had taken but recovered quickly. “Would you?”

  James didn’t seem to be in any kind of rush, apparently enjoying the banter.

  “Your husband always used to say, ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t be giving my Doris bright ideas, because once she has one of those cooking, there’s nothing that can stop her.’” He then stared at her for a long moment and said, “Okay, if you can get it cleaned up, I think I can foot the bill for getting everything up to code. And you’d be doing our community a huge favor in the meantime.”

  “Great,” said Doris, putting her teacup in her saucer and slapping her thigh. “I’ll get started on putting together a team right away. Maybe we could organize a weekend work party. ‘Potluck and Paintbrushes,’ we can call it.”

  Ethel immediately wrote that down on one of her yellow legal pads. James watched them and seemed charmed by the whole picture.

  “Okay,” said Doris, jumping up, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I’m sure you have more important things to do. We have to go. We have a lot to organize.”

  “Of course,” James said, gathering the teacups and placing them on the tray he’d brought them in on.

  Doris and Ethel walked toward the door, and James followed and opened it. As Doris left, he smiled and waved, and she waved back.

  James Graham, she thought to herself. He still gave her a little sparkle, which, at her age, she thought, was no easy feat.

  Chapter Nine

  CRAZY BATS IN STRANGE NEW HATS

  The next day, I made my way to Doris’s house for a meeting.

  The Rejected Writers’ Book Club had been getting together for several years now. They were an assortment of women of different ages all brought together by a common purpose: reading their awful manuscripts to each other. All were rejected repeatedly by traditional publishers, and they now chose to celebrate their rejections in style with tea and cake and by collecting their rejection letters by the bucketload and putting them in a leather-bound album they called The Book. The Book was now stuffed full of well over five hundred letters that they had been collecting over the last few years, the last twenty-five obtained on a crazy road trip that we’d taken to California.