Archive for February, 2016

Later…

February 6, 2016

I am calling this one later for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s late.  I should have written and put it up yesterday and it’s later in the story.  It’s late because I wasn’t sure exactly what the next scene would be and had to think through some ideas.  I also had the joy of spending yesterday with my niece, her husband, my two absolutely adorable grandnephews and my sister-in-law.

It’s interesting writing a story using the prompts.  I do find it spurs my creativity.  It is also “seat of my pants” writing because this wasn’t a story I had planned to write and I only have a vague idea of where it is going.

Today’s scene doesn’t have any prompts because I had used those we came up with this week and Keziah Fenton’s scene used the words in yesterday’s post.

So later in the story….

            Jake tossed his keys onto the table by the front door and hung his jacket on the oak coat rack.  It had been a long night.  Some people in Virginia freaked at even the mention of snowfall and any accumulation meant accidents.  Lots of fender benders and cars in ditches.  A few injuries serious enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but thankfully, no fatalities. 

            He’d driven by Ivy’s house before coming home.  There was a light on in the back of the house.  He hadn’t stopped.  He needed sleep before he saw her again.  He wanted—needed—to be alert and focused when they talked.  There was something she needed to know.  Something that affected both of them equally.

            He walked into the bedroom, toed off his shoes and flopped onto the bed fully clothed.  Snow still fell outside, but soft light shone through the uncovered bedroom window and glinted off the piece suspended in front of it.  Blue, green, white, brown and crystal chips of glass floated in a web of multi colored strings.  It swayed in the heat rising from the vent below the window and some of the glass clicked together.  Back and forth, meeting and pulling apart.  Light and shadows flicked across his face and he closed his eyes thinking of dreams lost and dreams found.

 

 

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Scene 4–The Closed Door

February 3, 2016

     “Your brother’s a cop!”  Ivy held her cell phone between her ear and shoulder while she painted the canvas with quick slashes of blue paint. “How the hell did that happen and why didn’t you tell me he was living here now.”

      “ “I don’t’ want to talk about your brother.  I don’t want to hear what he’s doing and I don’t care where he is.” ” Sue said.  “Sound familiar?  I don’t remember you telling me you had changed your mind on any of that, Ivy. If you want to know how and why he left hockey and went into the police academy, you’ll need to ask him.  Then you can tell the rest of us because he hasn’t.  We’d barely recovered from the shock of learning he’d been a cop in Buffalo for three years when he took the job here.”

            Ivy stepped back from the canvas and decided it was enough.  Switching her phone to the other ear, she carried the brush to the sink and turned on the water to rinse out the paint.  “You should have told me, Sue.”

            “And give you another excuse to could put off dealing with your parents’ estate?”  Sue snorted.  “I’d have been a bad friend and a worse lawyer if I’d let you do that.” Her voice softened.  “It’s time, Ivy.  You can’t move forward until you have put the past behind you.”

            “So you keep saying.”  Ivy set her brush in a ball jar bristles up.  “I still think having a moving company come in to box everything up and move it to a storage unit would have served the same purpose.” 

            “You can still do that if you want.  No one is stopping you.”

            Ivy freed her phone and rolled her shoulders to ease the stiffness.  “I’m here now so I might as well go through it and get rid of anything I don’t want to keep.”  She looked around the arid landscape of her mother’s kitchen.  Beige.  Everything in here was some shade of beige.  Her gaze went to the canvas on her easel and the bright orange Gerber daisy in a sunny yellow pot she’d placed on the kitchen table.  Well, not everything.  Not any more. 

            “I’ll be there bright and early Saturday morning to help,” Sue said.

            “Thanks, Sue.”

            “Look, my next appointment is here.  Don’t worry about Jake.  Unless you plan on robbing a bank or spraying graffiti on the train overpass, you won’t even need to see him.  Bye.”

            “Bye,” Ivy said and stuck the phone in her pocket.  She hadn’t told Sue Jake had come by the house today. Or about his insistence on talking to her.  She wandered down the hall and stopped beside one of the closed doors.  She’d been here almost a week now and she still hadn’t been inside.  She touched the knob and a shiver passed down her spine. 

            Feeling like a coward, she spun around and walked to her old bedroom.  Reaching down into one of the boxes littering the floor, she pulled out a stuffed giraffe.  Ivy cradled it in her arms and sat on the edge of the bed.  It was a souvenir from happier times.  She’d been nine when her brother won it for her at the county fair.  He’d groaned when she pointed to the bright purple one with lime green spots.

             “Are you sure that’s the one you want?  Mom’s going to hate it,” Donny warned her.  “The pink and white one would match your room better.”

“Pink is boring.  I want him.”

He shrugged his shoulders and handed her the giraffe.  It was half as tall as she was but she hugged it tightly and insisted on carrying it back to the car herself. 

              “So does your new friend have a name,” he asked once they were settled in his pickup.   

“His name is Magners.”

            “Magners?”  He swiveled in the seat and stared at her.  “Where did you come up with that?”

            “It’s the name of that stuff you and your friends like to drink and he looks like a Magners to me.”

            He looked at her and then at the giraffe and started to laugh.  “Magners.  Yeah, he looks like something you might see if you drank too much of it.  Just don’t tell Mom and Dad where you got the name, ok.”

            Neither one of them had ever explained the name to her parents, but looking at Magners had always made Donny burst out laughing.  Even at the end, when the cancer was killing him, she’d bring Magners with her into his room and he’d smile. 

            “I guess that’s why I’ve dragged you all over the country with me, you poor old giraffe.  Every time I look at you, I hear Donny laughing and remember the fun we had that day.  He never blamed me, you know?  He told me that.  He said it wasn’t my fault my bone marrow didn’t match his.”

            A tear ran down her cheek and plopped onto the rubbed plush neck.

http://writeiam.blogspot.com/  Keziah Fenton’s story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

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