by Maryl Jo Fox
During this chaotic time, Clara and Frank go for long walks in the desert. They spend a lot of time at Salmon Falls Creek. He tells her about escapades he had wandering the country. She tells him just a little about her parents, and he feels he has gained some new understanding of his mother. Talking to him, feeling the thick ties of mother and son, helps her more than anything else to feel she has finally joined life again. They share Samantha and Darrell stories—they laugh and cry, almost as if the two family members were alive again. The days are precious. Buyers hear about Frank’s sculptures through word of mouth. Orders pile up. One day at the creek, when Frank goes to the trailer cab to get his cigarettes, Clara opens her purse, slides open the Chlor-Trimeton box, and scatters Lenore’s remains in the tall grasses. She smiles as her eyes fill. “Thank you, Lenore.”
Haskell sells his loft to his sister and joins Clara as a friend. He gets commissions for environmental shots around the country, fashion layouts in New York. He travels a good deal. Sometimes Clara goes with him, more often not. In the fall, she will tutor and substitute teach at the Jackpot Middle School and help the after-school kids at the Jackpot library. There is talk of the four of them moving to Ketchum, near Sun Valley, where Frank’s sculptures could do well in a gallery. The big excitement is that Stella and Clara want to start a theater company. And Clara is realizing that families grow every which way, regardless of blood.
Acknowledgments
I have worked on this novel for twelve years. I couldn’t let it go, even though I struggled for several years to find the focus. Finally, I did find the focus—and now I have to let it go.
I am so grateful for the friends, classmates, and colleagues who have offered feedback and encouragement along the way. Stephanie Hammer saw a place where I was stuck and casually mentioned a direction where I could take it. Much later, her suggestion became the turning point of the novel. Laura Taylor Kung read the manuscript as a careful reader would, seeing my novel through her own predispositions and teaching me much. Walter Kirn’s encouragement was a lifesaver when I still had not found my direction. Diana Wagman taught me invaluable lessons about pacing and structure, and Aimee Bender had a way to bypass the conscious mind and uncover the richer material that lies in the subconscious. She would say something like this: “Go home and find a book with a green spine in your bookshelves. Pick it up and turn to page 34, second paragraph, sentence 3. This sentence is the first sentence of your new story. Come to class tomorrow with at least five pages.”
You can’t write ordinary prose with this method. You’re going to get an unusual point of view, an unusual character or event—a bump that will let you write exciting prose. That is how the purple wasp came about, that is how I made Clara steal a friend’s car, and so on.
Last but not least, I couldn’t have written this book without my husband Bernie’s help. His unfailing support saw me through this long journey. The final gift is that our two children have become fine adults. We are so grateful that we have them in our lives.
And I thank Brooke Warner for writing to me for the second time, asking if I wanted to consider SWP. Her first invitation got stolen by the computer gremlin. So I said yes, and here we are.
About the author
photo credit: Rick Beltran
Maryl Jo Fox grew up in Idaho and studied music at the University of Idaho before transferring to UC Berkeley for a BA in English. She went on to earn an MA in English at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Her short fiction has appeared in Passages North, Bat City Review, and other journals. Her writing has also appeared in LA Weekly and the LA Times. She is a former president of the L.A. Drama Critics Circle. She has taught literature and composition at Pasadena City College, Glendale College, and others, and currently leads a novels discussion group at Vromans bookstore in Pasadena. She discovered her focus in a UCLA Extension Writers’ Program class, “Master Sequence in Magic, Surrealism, and the Absurd.”
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
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Eden by Jeanne Blasberg. $16.95, 978-1-63152-188-1. As her children and grandchildren assemble for Fourth of July weekend at Eden, the Meister family’s grand summer cottage on the Rhode Island shore, Becca decides it’s time to introduce the daughter she gave up for adoption fifty years ago.
Tzippy the Thief by Pat Rohner. $16.95, 978-1-63152-153-9. Tzippy has lived her life as a selfish, materialistic woman and mother. Now that she is turning eighty, there is not an infinite amount of time left—and she wonders if she’ll be able to repair the damage she’s done to her family before it’s too late.
A Drop In The Ocean: A Novel by Jenni Ogden. $16.95, 978-1-63152-026-6. When middle-aged Anna Fergusson’s research lab is abruptly closed, she flees Boston to an island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—where, amongst the seabirds, nesting turtles, and eccentric islanders, she finds a family and learns some bittersweet lessons about love.
What is Found, What is Lost by Anne Leigh Parrish. $16.95, 978-1-938314-95-7. After her husband passes away, a series of family crises forces Freddie, a woman raised on religion, to confront long-held questions about her faith.
True Stories at the Smoky View by Jill McCroskey Coupe. $16.95, 978-1-63152-051-8. The lives of a librarian and a ten-year-old boy are changed forever when they become stranded by a blizzard in a Tennessee motel and join forces in a very personal search for justice.
South of Everything by Audrey Taylor Gonzalez. $16.95, 978-1-63152-949-8. A powerful parable about the changing South after World War II, told through the eyes of young white woman whose friendship with her parents’ black servant, Old Thomas, initiates her into a world of magic and spiritual richness.