Rejected Writers Take the Stage

by Suzanne Kelman

  Flora hurriedly put down the phone. A horrible heat spread across her cheeks. “Where did you find these?” she asked, flustered.

  Gladys was jubilant. There was no way to calm her enthusiasm. “Over there,” she said as she held her treasured hoard high in the air. “You had it hiding in the front of the shop.”

  “Do you mean in the window display?” asked Flora. A horrified thought was rising in her chest.

  “Yes.” Gladys’s eyes danced, and for the first time that morning, a grin crept to her lips. “I had to move a whole bunch of Easter crap to get to it, but don’t worry about me. I managed to crawl into the window all on my own.” Then, as if admonishing a small child, she added, “How is anyone supposed to find what they need when you’ve hidden it like that? It’s no way to sell things.”

  Flora stepped from behind the counter and scooted toward the window. She couldn’t help but let out a tiny yelp as she took in the full extent of the aftermath of Cyclone Binkley.

  Just moments before, what had been Bunny Heaven, an Easter oasis of hills and brooks magical enough to rival any of Beatrix Potter’s greatest achievements, was now ground zero. Watership Down had just been well and truly depth-charged.

  Flora took in the whole sight. Bunnies and baskets were tossed hither and thither, their fluffy little tails poking out from under pots and plants like casualties of some horrendous carrot war. And all around them, scattered like luminous linguine, were large heaps of shredded pink Easter grass that left a stringy trail all the way to the counter.

  Flora found her voice, though it was more of a squeak than a speak. “That greenery is—was—part of our Easter display, Gladys. We can’t sell it to you. We need it for the window.”

  Gladys snorted. “This is what I want. You’re a shop, aren’t you? Don’t you want to make money?”

  The doorbell tinkled again, and a mother and her young daughter walked in and started looking around.

  Flora acknowledged them and then turned her attention back to Gladys. “But we use this plastic greenery all year-round. It’s an important foundation of our display.”

  “It’s the perfect thing to hold up to my asbestos hoarder. I’d like to see the walls of doom kill this stuff. How much do you want for it?”

  She wasn’t going to leave without a fight, Flora thought as she eyed her customer, whose face was set like a wall of wrinkled concrete.

  Flora caved. “Why don’t you let me talk to the owner and see if we can order some plastic greenery in for you? She’ll be in later. I can ask her then.”

  Gladys’s eyes twitched through the clearing fog of her glasses, and she growled in a low tone, “So I can’t take this home now?”

  Flora answered softly, “It’s just not mine to sell you.”

  Flora picked up one end of the greenery and tried to ease it over the counter. With dogged determination, Gladys pulled back, and for a minute, Flora thought she wasn’t going to let go. Flora gently but firmly tugged back, but Gladys hung on even tighter. The two of them locked eyes like a pair of strays fighting over a string of sausages.

  Eventually, with great theatrical bravado, Gladys flung the greenery down with disgust. “Weird kind of a shop that doesn’t sell stuff. You’re not going to be in business long like that.”

  “Come by later,” continued Flora. “I’m sure Mrs. Bickerstaff will be happy to figure something out for you.”

  Totally miffed, Gladys wound the scarf tightly around her head like a bandage and shoved her hands into her pockets. Her muffled voice once again fought its way through. “I’ve got the lunch shift at the Crab. I’ll be back around four to see what you’ve decided.” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Perfect,” said Flora, the relief obvious in her voice.

  And with that, Gladys sulked despondently toward the door. She nudged the mother and daughter as she passed, tapping a bony finger on the mother’s arm. “Make sure you find things in here they’re actually selling, and don’t get your heart all set on anything until you’re sure they’re willing to part with it.”

  The bemused mother nodded weakly, then continued to admire the potted spring bulbs she had in her hand.

  “I will be back!” Gladys threatened over her shoulder, a formidable terminator in mismatched wool. Then, with a jangle of the bell and a crash of the door, she was gone.

  Flora tucked the plastic greenery under the counter and hoped it wasn’t going to be a Gladys Binkley sort of day. Then she remembered the letter from Dan and felt her stomach flip-flop. Nothing, not even a horde of Southlea Bay’s most eccentric residents, was going to dampen her spirits today.

  Chapter Three

  BEAR TRAPS & BULLDOZERS

  Lottie Labette perched awkwardly on the very edge of her window seat, chin high, back straight, and legs crossed stiffly at the ankle. Being old-school from the South, she had never sat comfortably in her life. Still in her starched cotton nightgown and with her hair bound neatly in blue curlers held in place by a pink net, she sipped her peppermint tea as she stared out her window. Normally, there was an incredible 360-degree vista of the Puget Sound, but this morning, all that greeted her was a heavy, drifting fog. She was mesmerized by the stark, icy blandness, the mood dramatically enhanced by the eerie echoes of a distant ferry horn signaling far offshore.

  Raising the delicate china teacup again to her lips, she took a sip and sighed. The sitting and sighing were the tail end of a long-established morning ritual that included a full hour of prayer and reading her Bible and then, if the weather permitted, drinking peppermint tea while seated on one of the wrought iron patio chairs with the little tapestry seat pads her momma had made. Today was far too cold for the patio, so she did the next best thing, which was to sit on their prim red velvet window seat instead. She sighed because she didn’t like the way her body was starting to feel and had informed her twin, Lavinia, on numerous occasions, in no uncertain terms, that aging was killing her for sure.

  As the swirls of mist billowed, she turned her attention to what she could see of the garden. She took in each flower bed, making mental notes about what needed doing. Her eye was drawn to the far end of the property. The garden would need mulching pretty soon, she thought, and the roses would need pruning before the spring. All at once, something caught her attention, just beyond her property boundary. It couldn’t be, could it? Standing up, she slammed the delicate teacup onto its saucer and dropped it unceremoniously onto the highly polished mahogany side table. Moving closer to the window to get a better view, she peered out through the white-veiled landscape before being sure. Yes, it was. Her breath caught in her throat. She placed a hand to her chest as she called urgently to her sister, whom she could hear making coffee in the kitchen.

  “Lavinia!” Then, knowing once was never enough, automatically called again, “Lavinia! Lavinia!” Her usual Texas drawl was high-pitched, urgent, and repetitive.

  In Betty Boop pajamas, an identical version of herself shuffled into the room, a mug of coffee in her hand. Even though the cornflower-blue eyes and mop of thick brown hair, streaked with more than a few wisps of gray, were just like Lottie’s own, once someone met the twins it didn’t take long to know they were two very different people.

  “What are you hollering about?”

  “Look out there, Lavinia,” she said in her older sister (be it only by two minutes) tone. “Look out there and tell me what you see.”

  Lavinia screwed up her eyes, which were a little sensitive due to the half a bottle of wine she had finished off the night before. She adjusted them to the bland morning light.

  “Not much,” she said, staring out into the swirling mist. “Oh yes, now I see something: the water. Somewhere in all that rice pudding, I see the water, as always.” Her obvious irritation showed in her shortness of tone.

  “Not there,” answered Lottie, exasperated. “Over by the gate, coming up Marsh Road.”

  Lavinia squinted and looked toward the road that led up from the village. Her eyes strained to
make out a looming figure in the distance. Then surprise registered on her face.

  “A bear,” Lottie vocalized her thoughts. “It’s a big brown bear, isn’t it? Marching up Marsh Road, bold as brass.”

  “Impossible,” responded Lavinia incredulously. “We don’t have bears on the island. And why would it be walking on two feet like that?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Maybe it hurt its paw or something,” said Lottie, the panic obvious in her tone. “But it’s heading right toward our gate. Look. We have to stop it.”

  “Stop it?” retorted Lavinia. “What do you mean, stop it?” Lavinia placed her coffee down and started to hunt through the drawers in the front room. “What are you planning to do, have me wrestle it? Or do you want me to get Daddy’s twelve-bore down from the attic?”

  Lottie headed toward the phone in the hallway. “Of course we are not going to shoot it. What do you think I am? I’m going to call the sheriff. Surely the authorities have their own bear-trapping equipment.”

  Lavinia found what she was looking for and headed back to the window.

  “Bear-trapping equipment? You think they have bear-trapping equipment hiding somewhere in that pokey little stationhouse in town?” Lavinia lifted a pair of her father’s old binoculars to her eyes and trained them toward the distance. He’d always kept them in the drawer for whale watching and identifying his friends’ boats on the water.

  Her sister frantically dialed the telephone and asked for Sheriff Brown. As she did, she tucked in a curl that had worked itself loose from a curler.

  “This is Lottie Labette over on Bay Road. Yes, tell him I have spotted a bear heading up from Marsh Road, and it’s heading right toward our property. Tell him he needs to bring up his bear-trapping equipment right away. It’s urgent. Yes, I can hold.”

  Still feeling hungover, Lavinia finally managed to focus the binoculars on the bear, and just for a fleeting second, the veiled mist cleared. A look of amusement crossed her face.

  “I would wait on getting the sheriff to find that trap if I was you, Lottie,” she said with a chuckle. She continued to observe the odd, lumbering sight moving toward them through her father’s field glasses. “That’s a bear, all right, sister dear, but not one you can easily entice into a trap.”

  “What do you mean?” said Lottie, covering the receiver with her hand and coming to her sister’s side.

  “Look for yourself,” said Lavinia, passing the binoculars to her sister, who tried to juggle them and the phone before becoming exasperated and handing the receiver to Lavinia so she could place the binoculars to her eyes.

  She stared in silence for a moment, then let out a long, slow, exasperated breath.

  “Oh my. I don’t believe what I’m seeing. Surely that can’t be . . .”

  In Lavinia’s hand, an animated voice came on the line.

  “Hello, this is Sheriff Brown. You have a bear sighting, is that correct?”

  Lottie dropped the binoculars from her eyes and looked sheepishly at her sister.

  Lavinia, an expert at getting herself out of her latest fixes, lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello, Sherriff Brown, this is Lavinia Labette. Yes, the other twin. Just a little false alarm, I’m afraid. It is a bear of sorts, but the human kind. It appears that Doris Newberry is heading from town wearing her papa’s old beaver coat.”

  “Doris Newberry!” the voice spat out on the other end of the phone so loudly that Lottie heard it even though the telephone was right next to Lavinia’s ear. “We don’t have any trap strong enough to hold that Newberry woman.”

  Then, much to Lottie’s relief, the sheriff dissolved into peals of laughter.

  Lottie took the receiver back from her sister and added, “This is Lottie again, Sheriff. I’m so sorry to have taken up your time. It was my mistake.”

  “Taken up my time?” he echoed back enthusiastically. “You just made my morning. If that bulldozer is stomping around the town, it means she has some scheme up her sleeve, and I don’t want any part of it. I was heading to the Crab for a sandwich, but I think I’ll wait a while until some other unfortunate victim has been corralled. If she’s heading your way, it looks like your number’s up. Good luck, ladies.” He continued to laugh as he hung up the phone.

  Lottie smiled sheepishly at her sister and replaced the receiver.

  Then they both burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  Chapter Four

  BEAVER WITH KETCHUP & THE RETURN OF THE SNOW QUEEN

  At five minutes to one, Doris led a march toward the Crabapple Diner. They were an odd sight as they paraded their way down Main Street. Doris was striding forward with determination as if all she was missing was a bandleader and a tuba. Beside Doris ran the tiny figure of her best friend, Ethel, her sticklike legs reminiscent of a preschooler’s first family portrait. She clipped along in a scissored blur in order to keep up with her fearless leader in fur. Then, way behind them both, floating down the road in a world of her own, was Gracie. Looking a full ten years younger than her eighty-nine years, she traveled elegantly and wisp-like, humming to herself as she glided along on her tiptoes. With apparently no care for her daughter Doris’s urgency, she stopped to wave to small children and admire the ice glistening in the library tree branches along the way.

  Inside the Crabapple Diner, Gladys Binkley had slipped off her shoes and was huddled over the welcome desk, taking her own little private break while she sucked noisily on a stripy peppermint sweet. As she readjusted her bra to accommodate the note pad she always kept neatly tucked down around her left breast, her face registered amusement as she saw the parade reach the diner.

  They all strode in and up to her desk. Gladys stopped sucking on her mint to take in the full sight of them.

  Doris bristled a little when she saw Gladys. There was history between them, but in small towns, you had to have a long fuse and a short memory in order to survive, and Doris was in business mode.

  “Our usual booth, please!” she snapped as she strode forward.

  “Your usual booth,” said Gladys indignantly as she slipped her shoes back on. “Do you mean the one you and that crazy bunch sat in before? You mean that usual booth?”

  Doris glowered at Gladys from beneath her molting fur peak and was matched eye-for-eye with a long, hard stare back. Ethel stood between them, looking helplessly from one to the other.

  Finally Doris sneered, “Is it available?”

  “Oh, it’s available,” said Gladys, eyeing Doris up and down, “but there’s more chance of me getting discovered as a supermodel than you fitting in there wearing that front room carpet.”

  Doris sniffed indignantly, snatched a menu, and waddled her way back into the restaurant. Her faithful brood and Gladys followed in mild amusement. As they reached the booth, Doris tried to slide in, but right from the start it was obvious that the Crab’s oldest living waitress was right. They all watched helplessly, yet riveted, as Doris repeatedly tried to heave herself in as her coat continued to rise above her ears. It was like trying to squeeze Sasquatch into a matchbox.

  Gladys folded her arms.

  “Why don’t you let me take that out to the kitchen and give it a bowl of food and some water?” she commented dryly.

  Doris tried one last almighty shove, but the coat just rose above her nose. Reluctantly, she stood up, unbuttoned it, and handed it to Gladys.

  Gladys shuffled off to the kitchen, making kissing noises at the coat, saying, “Come on, Fido, Auntie Gladys will find you a good home.”

  The ornate antique clock in Stems chimed an elegant one p.m. Flora was already wearing her coat, held her hat in her hand, and had a small pink flowery umbrella by her side in case the heavens opened. It had been a very slow morning in the florist shop, and that had not helped Flora’s disappointed mood. Following Gladys’s departure, the Doris Newberry encounter had forestalled her letter opening plans. Doris had stormed the florist, accosting Flora and appealing to her on behalf of a desperate community member.

>   “Flora,” Doris had said, fixing her with a beady glare, “it will take all of us to sort out this mess of things. All of us working together for the betterment of good.”

  Flora had agreed to the lunchtime meeting at Doris’s beseeching. Sitting selfishly to read a letter seemed to pale into insignificance compared to “working together for the betterment of good.”

  She would just have to wait till she got home to read Dan’s note. She realized, with a sigh, how much she missed him. They had been dating for four months, one week, and three days, but she had hardly spent any time with him. He lived in Portland but had broken his leg not long after they had started dating, slipping on the ice just before Christmas, and that had totally incapacitated him. She was terrified to drive on the freeway, so Skype and the telephone had been their main way of connecting for months. She could have traveled down by train, but the only time he had off was on the weekends, and that was the busiest time at the florist. It had been exasperating for them both.

  “I’m off, then,” Flora said toward the office. Her boss was deeply engrossed in the paperwork that was spread in huge piles across her desk. She sat hunched over a calculator, adding up amounts, and didn’t look up as she nodded her acknowledgment.

  Flora looked out at the weather. Again, it echoed her mood perfectly—not unlike the rainy first day of a summer vacation. As she lamented, she caught sight of Janet running across the road to the diner. They had all been summoned, then, she thought to herself. All of the road-trip girls, as the rejection group had nicknamed them. Flora remembered, fondly, their road trip of a few months before. It already felt like a lifetime ago now. But if she hadn’t agreed to go on that crazy road trip to convince a San Francisco publisher to reject Doris Newberry’s book, she would never have met Dan.

  She thought about their first encounter. The group had been having problems with their car in Oregon and had limped their way to a garage. The minute he slid out from under the car he had been working on and towered over her with his emerald-green eyes and thick black hair, she had been smitten. But never in a million years had she expected him to be interested in her. But through a lucky coincidence, he had joined them on the road trip, and a sweet romance had blossomed between them.