More Novel in a Paragraph

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No Emily Rabbit today. She is busy writing her guest column for Marion's blog. Meanwhile, book # 2 continues with fervent joy. Hopefully, these mini 'novels' are short and to the point. Or as you may know by now, you can also follow along to see how they fit together, more or less.

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Purr
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After twenty plus years and three near severings, they slept together like kittens.
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Moleskines and Paintings

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Which came first, the moleskines or the paintings? Casey couldn’t exactly remember, but she took that first moleskine everywhere, showed it to anyone with the faintest interest, all those Bic pen drawings scattered on random pages, especially The Best Friend Tree, Catherine and Casey standing there in their celestial pajamas, arms outstretched, looking pleasantly surprised that best friends could indeed grow on trees.
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“My best friend is an artist,” Casey would say. And she would beam.
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In her honor Catherine planned a series of five paintings and completed four. The first was of Casey and Maggie, early on, Catherine’s bold colors punctuated by the characteristic sharp angles of her faces and shoulders and hands.. The second was of Casey alone, ‘Casey The Writer,’ Catherine called it, Casey with pen in hand, surrounded by characters rising from the canvas, including Catherine herself, huddled in black, curled tight within the protective space of Casey’s arm.

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The third painting even afterwards would remain one of Catherine’s favorites. It was an exquisite rendering, a purple nude sitting on an orange velvet love seat, book in hand, perfect breasts, salacious smile. Even afterwards the painting still hung in Casey’s bedroom and sometimes she would stare at it, hoping for answers that could not be there. Catherine finished the fourth painting but only barely. Neither she nor Casey particularly liked it: a panicked woman buried in rubble, another woman extending a hand, ready to rescue.

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“My hand just flows when I have you in my mind,” Catherine would tell her. Casey would beam at that too.

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Catherine did not finish the fifth painting and later destroyed it, a colorful hopeful scene of Casey’s dog Stella Dora, her tail in midair, standing over and kissing a small content Asian woman lying in grass. Even afterwards, when Catherine went public with words like ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘the biggest mistake of my life,’ it was her objectified reference to “someone’s dog” that packed the worse sting.

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In the subsequent gallery of her paintings, Catherine would include only the Purple Nude. The others, she omitted and deleted with a firm finality consistent with her erasure of everything else, even the truth.

More of a Novel in a Paragraph

I am writing. Regularly. Passionately. What great news for me.

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Please remember that what I am writing is not strictly or always about me. (For example,Casey is a narrator, not necessarily kj.) Otherwise I am going to feel vulnerable and awkward every time I share. I am going to try to post two or three snippets each week. So far your comments have been wild winds for my sails, and I thank you each so so much. You have no idea how much your support helps. I only hope I give it back as richly as I receive it. ♥

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Every Day
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The first time the topic of sex came up Casey and Maggie were sitting under a wide blue sky at a small outdoor table, sipping wine and Sambuca in Newport, Rhode Island, not yet aware that in three months they would fall in love with one another after spending a wild wonderful night together, surprisingly. On that day in Newport Casey asked Maggie how often she made love.“Everyday,” Maggie replied, “When there is someone to make love with.”
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At the time Casey had successfully, finally, bounced away from the sting of a two year impossible relationship, her first ever with a woman and characterized by heated sex everyday and sometimes several times a day, the first time, despite a marriage of twelve years, that Casey understood the physics that allowed two people to merge into one, orgasmically speaking. Casey loved sex after that, sought it out, not recklessly, screening for at least some emotional justification.
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So when Maggie said, “Everyday,” Casey understood. And how they began everyday and in time that became every month and then seldom in the years and decades that passed between them was anybody’s guess. But on that day in Newport, Casey just smiled at Maggie and said, “Me too. Everyday for me too.”
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Lina & the Green Shaggy Coat
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The therapist has not planned well so by the time she gets to the house, now two days before Christmas, she has only one plastic purple hair band and one bag of gold coins left and she holds them out, asking the two girls who wants what. Lina stares at her, stares down at the hair band. “You did this for us?” she asks, looking to her mother and sister, wanting them to agree.

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When the therapy work is done and the therapist is ready to leave, Lina approaches her, reaches for her shaggy winter coat, places both hands on the bottom button, then moves up to the next, one by one, until the coat is tight and snug around the therapist's neck. . Lina takes a small step back, pats the top button, smiles. “There,” Lina tells her. “Now when you go outside you won’t be cold.”

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Later when the therapist thinks about it, she is glad that she let Lina her touch her, glad that she did not tell her to keep her hands to herself. And from nowhere she understands that in return for the plastic purple hair band, Lina has given her a Christmas gift.

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In that moment six year old Lina becomes a loving Mother, making sure the therapist is ready for the cold.