(no subject)
i stopped posting my fiction on this thing because i write much more effectively if i know nobody will read it until it is finished. the stuff on here is always first draft nonsense, and i get discouraged. anyway, i am posting this because it needs help, and if anyone reading this has the time, help it.
jake: don't worry.
maggie: let's write poetry together, and let me read the one you wrote.
Beth started collecting things after her husband died. She was twenty-six and Mitch was twenty-seven when he drowned in a river in Colorado while rafting through white-water. They were class three rapids, and he had never been on water like that before.
He was the type of man who would never let anything go, holding onto it all for fear of losing the moment or the memory. He had all sorts of figurines and action-figures from when he was a child, plus a long list of items ranging from jewelry to nametags that he had picked up later in life. Beth let Mitch keep them all in the spare room in their two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a building situated between a thrift shop and a vegetarian café. There were boxes everywhere in that room, but no labels or direction. It was all storage, just in case it would ever be needed.
While rafting on the day of his death, Mitch had been paddling on the side, near the front of the raft. The leader yelling frantic directions at him, he had become determined to perform accordingly, despite his lack of experience. When he lifted and then proceeded to bring his oar back down into the strong current, the momentum pulled him backward, over the side of the raft and into the water. It was either the shock of the strength of the water or the determination he always knew that took Mitch back with the rapid, under the surface and gone forever, but the oar never left his hand. Nobody really understood why it had all happened, so quickly and easily, and when the incident and the oar were explained to Beth, she only looked down for a moment, sighing, and then said “You should see the spare room in our home; the man was a packrat.”
Since then every Wednesday and Saturday, on her days off from work at the restaurant downtown, she stands outside her building to wait for couples to pass by her. She follows them home to their buildings, waits for them to go inside, and then searches through their dumpsters for trinkets and items. Sometimes she is lucky and finds a mover or a clearing-out, a place with “trash” everywhere outside, piled up and ready for picking. Other times, she simply goes to the thrift shop next door. It is more fun to search for the pieces, but Beth doesn’t mind purchasing them at the store; it doesn’t lessen the significance of what she finds.
The items and things were always neatly arranged when Mitch was around, but since the death, it all has piled up in the apartment. There are wristwatches lying face-down on the carpet. Old superhero figures are taped to the drapes and the walls. Beth has covered herself with what made her husband who he was: a collector.
Mitch’s favorite item was a horse carved out of soap that Beth assumed his father had given him. She knew nothing of the story, and when she asked, which she did frequently, he would only respond with “Did I mention how talented a carver my father was, Beth? He really was something incredible.” Beth knew Mitch lived on a ranch in Montana when he was young, and that he had ridden horses in the local rodeos. Beth also knew it wasn’t the horse that was especially meaningful, but the deed his father had done. It was the only item that was allowed access to their room. It still stands, a bit misshapen, on the headboard of their bed.
On her most recent search, Beth saw an alley overflowing with things. There was a mattress, almost brand new, thrown carelessly onto the concrete. “Someone must have died,” she had thought to herself. She had, that day, been following an old couple along the street that had eaten at the restaurant where she works, but the alleyway jumped at her, and she couldn’t refuse. Beth had always wondered at the custom of leaving things outside after a death. She always thought it seemed crude, but she was calmed by the fact that the victim’s things would be cared for and remembered, most of all by her.
While wrestling with stoneware and boxes full of old, rusted tools, she came across a leather bag full of carving utensils, and a half-finished wooden horse, just a bit bigger than the one Mitch had always loved so mysteriously. She cried immediately when she found it, thinking to herself that she had finally uncovered the last piece of Mitch that she had never known. It was the one thing she never fully understood, and it held a certain mystic nature in her husband. Her friends had never understood the dual frustration and curiosity she had for the idea and the object. “It is just a horse,” all of them would say, but after finding her own twin for that last important part of her husband, she knew she would no longer have to acknowledge a distance between them. The last piece was, she had thought, in place.
When Beth arrived home her father was waiting for her outside the door to her apartment. “Where have you been?” were his first words.
“I was, uh, shopping,” she told him. She didn’t look him in the eye for fear that she would give herself away.
“I see. In garbage cans again,” he had said, not as a question but a statement. He said it with a sigh, but it was the sort of sigh he’d also give to a dog or an aging father: “Cute pet,” he’d think, “poor thing’ll never learn.” Her sisters and mother had never really viewed her obsession positively, but her father had always tried to meet her halfway. She was married to Mitch, after all. “Did you forget I was stopping by?” he continued.
“No,” she said. “Sorry, Dad, I just got held up.”
Beth opened the door and her father’s eyes widened. The mess of things had become significantly larger since the last time he was there, which was months earlier. “You know,” he said, “do you think it is healthy to do all of this. Why do you collect all of this stuff?”
“You know why,” she had replied, smiling at him. “I am happy, Dad, and this isn’t keeping me from accepting Mitch’s death. I know he has to go; I just think that his memories don’t.”
“Yeah,” he laughed forcefully. “It is just strange that a yo-yo can remind someone of an entire person. Or an Incredible Hulk doll, or counting blocks.”
Beth considered what her father had said, trying to understand his and the rest of her family’s point of view. Does it really feel so good to keep these things around, or is it an attempt to avoid whatever will happen when it all is gone? She picked up a necklace with a locket attached, and looked inside, knowing that the picture was taken out of it by whomever had originally owned it long before she had found it. “Yes,” she whispered to herself. “It certainly does feel good.”
While she was looking at it, her father interrupted her, saying “What is that you have there. Is there a memory there, too?”
“Yeah, Mitch gave me one of these before we were married. It was one of those cheesy and romantic things that, even though you both know it is something of a joke, informs you both that you will be together for a long time. The one he gave me had a picture of his grandmother in it. It was his mother’s.”
“I see,” he said, “and in your other hand, what is it that you bought today while you were out?”
Beth pulled out the wooden horse, cracked on the back end and partly painted black. She set it on the table and let her father examine it.
“What’s the story here? Another piece of Mitch?”
Beth looked down at the horse, smiling and closing her eyes. “Only the most important part,” she thought to herself. She turned and looked back at her father, deeply for a second and then the smile vanished. “Of course not,” she told him, looking at him in the eyes. “That is just for decoration.”
jake: don't worry.
maggie: let's write poetry together, and let me read the one you wrote.
Beth started collecting things after her husband died. She was twenty-six and Mitch was twenty-seven when he drowned in a river in Colorado while rafting through white-water. They were class three rapids, and he had never been on water like that before.
He was the type of man who would never let anything go, holding onto it all for fear of losing the moment or the memory. He had all sorts of figurines and action-figures from when he was a child, plus a long list of items ranging from jewelry to nametags that he had picked up later in life. Beth let Mitch keep them all in the spare room in their two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a building situated between a thrift shop and a vegetarian café. There were boxes everywhere in that room, but no labels or direction. It was all storage, just in case it would ever be needed.
While rafting on the day of his death, Mitch had been paddling on the side, near the front of the raft. The leader yelling frantic directions at him, he had become determined to perform accordingly, despite his lack of experience. When he lifted and then proceeded to bring his oar back down into the strong current, the momentum pulled him backward, over the side of the raft and into the water. It was either the shock of the strength of the water or the determination he always knew that took Mitch back with the rapid, under the surface and gone forever, but the oar never left his hand. Nobody really understood why it had all happened, so quickly and easily, and when the incident and the oar were explained to Beth, she only looked down for a moment, sighing, and then said “You should see the spare room in our home; the man was a packrat.”
Since then every Wednesday and Saturday, on her days off from work at the restaurant downtown, she stands outside her building to wait for couples to pass by her. She follows them home to their buildings, waits for them to go inside, and then searches through their dumpsters for trinkets and items. Sometimes she is lucky and finds a mover or a clearing-out, a place with “trash” everywhere outside, piled up and ready for picking. Other times, she simply goes to the thrift shop next door. It is more fun to search for the pieces, but Beth doesn’t mind purchasing them at the store; it doesn’t lessen the significance of what she finds.
The items and things were always neatly arranged when Mitch was around, but since the death, it all has piled up in the apartment. There are wristwatches lying face-down on the carpet. Old superhero figures are taped to the drapes and the walls. Beth has covered herself with what made her husband who he was: a collector.
Mitch’s favorite item was a horse carved out of soap that Beth assumed his father had given him. She knew nothing of the story, and when she asked, which she did frequently, he would only respond with “Did I mention how talented a carver my father was, Beth? He really was something incredible.” Beth knew Mitch lived on a ranch in Montana when he was young, and that he had ridden horses in the local rodeos. Beth also knew it wasn’t the horse that was especially meaningful, but the deed his father had done. It was the only item that was allowed access to their room. It still stands, a bit misshapen, on the headboard of their bed.
On her most recent search, Beth saw an alley overflowing with things. There was a mattress, almost brand new, thrown carelessly onto the concrete. “Someone must have died,” she had thought to herself. She had, that day, been following an old couple along the street that had eaten at the restaurant where she works, but the alleyway jumped at her, and she couldn’t refuse. Beth had always wondered at the custom of leaving things outside after a death. She always thought it seemed crude, but she was calmed by the fact that the victim’s things would be cared for and remembered, most of all by her.
While wrestling with stoneware and boxes full of old, rusted tools, she came across a leather bag full of carving utensils, and a half-finished wooden horse, just a bit bigger than the one Mitch had always loved so mysteriously. She cried immediately when she found it, thinking to herself that she had finally uncovered the last piece of Mitch that she had never known. It was the one thing she never fully understood, and it held a certain mystic nature in her husband. Her friends had never understood the dual frustration and curiosity she had for the idea and the object. “It is just a horse,” all of them would say, but after finding her own twin for that last important part of her husband, she knew she would no longer have to acknowledge a distance between them. The last piece was, she had thought, in place.
When Beth arrived home her father was waiting for her outside the door to her apartment. “Where have you been?” were his first words.
“I was, uh, shopping,” she told him. She didn’t look him in the eye for fear that she would give herself away.
“I see. In garbage cans again,” he had said, not as a question but a statement. He said it with a sigh, but it was the sort of sigh he’d also give to a dog or an aging father: “Cute pet,” he’d think, “poor thing’ll never learn.” Her sisters and mother had never really viewed her obsession positively, but her father had always tried to meet her halfway. She was married to Mitch, after all. “Did you forget I was stopping by?” he continued.
“No,” she said. “Sorry, Dad, I just got held up.”
Beth opened the door and her father’s eyes widened. The mess of things had become significantly larger since the last time he was there, which was months earlier. “You know,” he said, “do you think it is healthy to do all of this. Why do you collect all of this stuff?”
“You know why,” she had replied, smiling at him. “I am happy, Dad, and this isn’t keeping me from accepting Mitch’s death. I know he has to go; I just think that his memories don’t.”
“Yeah,” he laughed forcefully. “It is just strange that a yo-yo can remind someone of an entire person. Or an Incredible Hulk doll, or counting blocks.”
Beth considered what her father had said, trying to understand his and the rest of her family’s point of view. Does it really feel so good to keep these things around, or is it an attempt to avoid whatever will happen when it all is gone? She picked up a necklace with a locket attached, and looked inside, knowing that the picture was taken out of it by whomever had originally owned it long before she had found it. “Yes,” she whispered to herself. “It certainly does feel good.”
While she was looking at it, her father interrupted her, saying “What is that you have there. Is there a memory there, too?”
“Yeah, Mitch gave me one of these before we were married. It was one of those cheesy and romantic things that, even though you both know it is something of a joke, informs you both that you will be together for a long time. The one he gave me had a picture of his grandmother in it. It was his mother’s.”
“I see,” he said, “and in your other hand, what is it that you bought today while you were out?”
Beth pulled out the wooden horse, cracked on the back end and partly painted black. She set it on the table and let her father examine it.
“What’s the story here? Another piece of Mitch?”
Beth looked down at the horse, smiling and closing her eyes. “Only the most important part,” she thought to herself. She turned and looked back at her father, deeply for a second and then the smile vanished. “Of course not,” she told him, looking at him in the eyes. “That is just for decoration.”