I seem to have finished three novels. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Now, I’ve got to decide what to work on next. One of the unfinished novels listed in the sidebar or something new?
the first book
I’ve turned my novel’s pages into art. Why not do the same for the entire book? I’m going to make my own books. Some books will be available as PDF files and others will come handmade with original art. And who knows what else I might come up with. We’ll see where this goes. And if you are interested in reading the entirety of my novels, please let me know.
mapelba at gmail dot com
Thank you.
Novel number three begins here.
Chapter One
When Deva turned nine, a package from her dead grandmother arrived. Deva’s mother, Maryl, reminded her that nothing came by accident, especially from the dead. Everything was fate. An omen or a symbol was ignored at one’s own risk.
Of course, her father, Jay, said that one cousin or another must have found it hidden away in the old lady’s house and put in the mail as a final gesture of reconciliation. But when he made the effort to call the cousins whose numbers he could dig up, each and every one of them hung up on him.
“You never did understand where I came from,” his wife said.
“You never wanted to explain it to me,” he replied.
So Deva was given the package and the adults didn’t ask her anymore about it for some time.
Inside the package was a box of watercolor paints. Perfect ovals of color slipped out onto the table. Deva knew something about talismans, and she knew that one way to give meaning to the meaningless was to keep hold of it. Time bestowed value on many useless things. Her mother taught her that.
She put the flat, plastic case in her purse and resolved to say nothing else about it. “Well,” Maryl said, “at least you don’t have to send a thank you note.”
Deva carried the watercolors with her everywhere, but didn’t use them. Until one fall day, sitting the backseat of the car, she pulled it from her purse, popped open the lid, and lifted out the paintbrush. Twirling the brush between her fingers, she pointed it out the window at a decrepit house, and she imagined a beautiful and welcoming home filled with warm colors and soft light. A moment later the car reached the next block.
*
Mrs. Montrose woke up late that morning. She did her best to wake up late every morning to put off living the rest of her life. The house, ugly and neglected, was the one thing her late husband left her. She didn’t keep it because she loved him, but because of a land developer who talked about community development and urban decay. As much as she hated the house, she hated anyone who bothered her about words like community. Her house and her pension allowed her to ignore community.
But on this morning, the morning when on her way to school Deva Martin pointed her cheap, plastic paint brush at her front door, Mrs. Montrose didn’t wake up to the same house. Everything was as it was meant to be when a young man first laid out blueprint paper and began drawing plans. No cracks went up walls. No paint peeled away. No floor sagged. No windowpane was gray and chipped from BB pellets.
Furniture stood straight. Frayed edges mended. Cabinet doors covered shelves the way cabinet doors should.
“Where am I?” She grabbed her glasses and pulled the sheets close to here chin. I’ve been kidnapped, she thought. “Well, you’ll get nothing out of me. I got nothing and now you got more of the same!” She shouted through her house that she didn’t recognize. She could tell the silence that met her back was of nothingness, of no one there to listen, not the silence of being rebuffed or unheard by someone really there. This made her brave. It also cleared her head.
A photo of her son sat on her bedside table. Her comb. Her alarm clock. All of it dusted. All of it like new. Now she took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, and knew she had to be dreaming.
When she got to the front yard, she learned she wasn’t hallucinating.
“Why, Mrs. Montrose,” called her neighbor Betsy Worthington. “What’ve you gone and done to your house?” She looked like a woman who wasn’t only seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, but who’d never known canyons even existed. Her newspaper hung in its plastic sack from the tips of her fingers. “I mean…”
Mrs. Montrose didn’t like Betsy. The sight of her clenched her guts with guilt, but the woman insisted on forgiveness, and so Mrs. Montrose gave in as much as she could stand, and pretending the past didn’t exist made accepting forgiveness easier. “I don’t know. I was hoping somebody’d explain it to me. This ain’t your idea of a joke, is it?”
“No, ma’am. I mean, sure it might be a good joke, but I don’t got no way to pull off something like this. You know that, Mrs. Montrose, sure as I’m standing here.”
“Have I been sick? I been in a coma and nobody’s done anything about it?”
“Well, I think they’ve done something.”
“To my house, but not to me.”
Betsy shook her head. “We talked yesterday, if you recall. I told you about my Sean making us proud by getting himself put in one of those gifted classes and all. Can you imagine? It’s more than I hoped for from any youngun of mine, but Harold, he don’t hold much to such la-di-da classes, and he said—”
“And I said I didn’t want to hear about that boy of yours, didn’t I?”
“I know you don’t mean nothing by that, Mrs. Montrose. You ain’t gone and forgotten our agreement now, have you?”
Mrs. Montrose had tried to forget. “Course not, Betsy. How’s your daughter?”
“Hard to control as ever. Don’t know how she’s gonna end up—don’t want to know if I’m honest. And your son? Any news?”
Mrs. Montrose turned around to get a better look at her house in the late morning sun. It gleamed and shone and she was possibly more surprised by the tears that came to her eyes than by the house itself. “Ain’t nobody ask me about…well, ain’t no matter.” She said, not really to Betsy, and not in a voice much more than a whisper.
“They’s lots of things none of us want answers to,” Betsy answered. “You and I got that in common, don’t we now?”
Mrs. Montrose shook herself. She didn’t want to talk about Daniel. They didn’t talk about too much or too honestly about Betsy’s daughter or her son. Vague references were as close as either got. “I meant to say I was thinking about this house.” She avoided Betsy’s eyes. “I don’t understand it. I’m almost frightened of it. If I go back into that house, it’ll not be mine and it’ll not be good.”
Betsy rubbed an eye with the palm of her hand. “Don’t be silly Mrs. Montrose. Look at it. It’ll be grand. And where else you gonna go?”
“Why don’t…” Mrs. Montrose focused on Betsy’s collar, the frayed and yellowed lace. She tried not to remember how she felt responsible for Betsy giving up on her looks. Years ago Betsy had been a beautiful woman. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”
Betsy was too shocked at this invitation to say no. She had long ago promised herself not to hold onto her anger and to treat Mrs. Montrose better than she deserved. She’d never said she’d be the old woman’s friend, and her husband would like as kill her if she set foot in that house. All the same, Betsy also believed people were judged by how well they treated the people who didn’t deserve to be treated well. So easy to be kind to babies, kittens, and children holding tight to soft animals. Too easy. And too easy never got anybody into heaven.
The entire neighborhood took note of Mrs. Montrose’s house. Everyone on the street walked over to see, to stand on her front walk and gawk. Before they knew it, they found themselves going up Mrs. Montrose’s front walk and knocking on her front door. Soon more people crowded into her house than had ever been in the forty years she’d lived there. There were as many people in the house as that young architect had envisioned when he first imagined the house for him and his new wife. They were going to be that popular and grand and hold soirees, teas, and dances, and everyone would clamor to come. But none of that had happened and Mr. Montrose had bought the house for a criminally low price, and the neighbors all agreed that the decline of the house and the neighborhood began on the day he signed the papers.
Now the rooms were full, and when Mrs. Montrose and Betsy opened the fridge and the cabinets, food was there, always the certain something somebody wanted, just the right thing. The feeling stirring in Mrs. Montrose was so foreign to her that for a moment, she thought she was having a heart attack. Of course, a few people pilfered and stole, thinking anything easily and magically given could be taken, too. Mrs. Montrose didn’t care.
Read Chapter Two.
Mercie put on a bright red lipstick. Red was, after all, the best color for lying and that night she had three lies she’d promised to tell. Her mother didn’t think she kept her promises, but she always did.
Josie Winters didn’t think much of her adopted daughter—the salvage project that went wrong. Tonight was Mercie’s chance to make up for her sins to Josie and the rest of the family. The sin was only one, but to Josie one sin was as good as hundred.
Their agreement seemed simple. Mercie would help Josie win back a denied inheritance, and Josie would finally reveal the name of Mercie’s real father.
Her bedroom door opened, and Lin, her hair piled high and held up with chewed up pencils, poked her head in. “They just pulled up. You ready?”
Mercie dropped the lipstick in her purse. “Who wouldn’t be ready for a night of deception?”
“I told you not to go along with this.”
“She’s never going to tell me his name if I don’t.”
“Cora said—”
“I did exactly what Cora told me to do, but, you know, it might not work.” The night before, Mercie had written her wish on a scrap of paper, burned it outside under the stars, and held it up for the wind to scatter.
“Or it might.”
“I don’t want to wait. It could take an age.”
Lin pulled a pencil out of her hair and absentmindedly pressed it to her neck. “I see you’re wearing the lipstick.”
“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”
“Knowing what your mom thinks about lipstick? I thought you weren’t trying to make your mom mad.”
“Suddenly you’re worried that my mom will disown me?”
“I wish she would and get it over it with. No. I’m worried that you want to go through with this.”
Mercie walked by Lin and into the narrow hallway of their tiny house, a rental that creaked in the wind and sagged in summer heat. “Unless you’ve found his name scratched under the floorboards, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“No you won’t.”
“Try me.”
“How do you know she can really tell you? She only met your birth mother, right?”
“She promised.” There came a knock on the door.
“I can’t believe you’re letting your mother turn you into a liar.”
“Yeah, like it took her to do that.”
“But isn’t there something in Bible about, oh, I don’t know, lying be kind of, like, wrong? And doesn’t your mom go to church, let’s see, is it twice a week?”
“Twice.” Mercie tugged at the waistline of her sweater. “How do I look?”
“You look like a night out with me, not like a nice time with the family. Isn’t that sweater a bit red for playing saved?”
“Matches the lipstick.”
“But not your story.”
Mercie put her hand on the doorknob. “But it’s just so dreary. I need the color, all right?” She flung open the door to the gray November light. “Mom!” she said cheerfully. “So glad to see you!”
Her mother tilted her head to one side. “A cold front’s moving in. Don’t forget your jacket. Why hello, Lin. How are you? Your bra strap’s showing, dear.”
“I’m just grand, Mrs. Winters–thank you for asking.” Lin left the strap where it was. “And how are you?”
“Lovely, dear. You’re still working with Mercie, is that right?”
Mercie looked down at the shoes. The girls both knew how much her mother hated her working at a grocery store.
“That’s right,” said Lin. “Paul hasn’t fired me yet.”
“Well, that’s wonderful. Good for you, dear.”
They all smiled awkwardly. “Did you want to come in for a minute?” Lin asked. “Have a cup of coffee before the fun begins?”
Mercie coughed. Her mother avoided coming into their place as much as she politely could. “No thank you, Robert’s waiting in the car. Oh. Do you know that we saw gypsies on the way over here–gypsies!–just a few blocks away. What’s this neighborhood coming to? It used to be so nice.”
Mercie and Lin exchanged glances. The neighborhood had never been nice. “Gypsies, Mrs. Winters?” Lin asked. “Really?”
“That’s right. A ghastly wagon pulled by a horse–a horse!—trotting down the street as pretty as you please as if we’d all be happy to see them. I bet those people don’t even have a license for the thing.”
“Do you need a license for a horse?” Lin asked.
Mercie looked up and down the street, which was wiped clean of everyone. “I’d love to see some gypsies.”
Mrs. Winters shook her head. “Of course you do. Now then, are you ready to go?”
“Completely prepared,” Mercie said.
Lin snorted. Picking up her jacket from the chair by the door, Mercie gave her friend a peck on the cheek. “See you later.”
Mrs. Winters stepped back and tripped over a cat, and the girls had to catch her arm to keep her from falling. “Good heavens,” she said, straightening her scarf. “You got a cat?”
“More like he got us,” said Lin, shivering from the cold coming in. “But we’re calling him Piwacket.”
“Pi-what?” Mrs. Winters stood stiffly as the cat brushed against her legs, leaving black hairs clinging to her gray slacks.
“Come on, Mom. Dad’s waiting for us in the car, and temperature’s dropping already.” The wind hurried and miserable clouds lowered above them. “Don’t worry about the cat.”
Mrs. Winters almost fell off the top step again, but steadied herself and gave Lin a stern look. “Yes, well, I shouldn’t let him in the house if I were you, dear.”
Lin scooped the cat into her arms. “A little late for that since he’s taken to sleeping in Mercie’s bed.”
Mrs. Winters sighed. “Yes, well, lovely to see you, Linnette.”
“And to see you too, Mrs. Winters—as always.” With that she waved the cat’s paw at them before she shut the door.
“She’s always been a silly girl.”
“Very silly,” Mercie said, walking to the car. “But I like her that way.”
“Of course you do.”
*
The northerly wind cartwheeled the brown leaves over the grass and mud until they caught in the azalea bushes along the side of the house. Mercie’s heels crunched in the gravel of the drive, and before she got into the car, she darted to the mailbox. Her relief to find it empty ended when she saw the mailman at the apartments across the street. He hadn’t gotten to their house yet. Well, at least her mother wouldn’t get to ask about the bills.
“Mercie, please hurry yourself.” Her mother stood at the car, tapping the roof of her Lumina.
Hanging back, she glanced down the street to The Sunlight Grocery where she worked. She wished Paul had been less accommodating about giving her the day off.
“Mercie, honestly. What are you waiting for out there?”
Magic and a knight in shining armor—maybe several good-looking knights to choose from.
Putting her head down, she walked back to the car. “Sorry.”
“You’re ready for your grandmother, aren’t you?”
“I said I was.” Mercie jerked open the car’s back door.
“You promised.”
“Yes, I know. Look, I’m getting in the car already. See? Here’s me. Here’s the car. Here’s me getting ready to lie to grandmother.” She pitched herself into the backseat. Her father sat in the front passenger seat and she paused to catch her breath before leaning over to the front and kiss him on the cheek.
Her mother got in on the driver’s side and made a show of fussing with her hair in the rearview mirror.
“Hi sweetie,” he said, and went back to his fishing magazine.
“You’ve done something with your hair?” Her mother sniffed.
Mercie buckled her seatbelt. “No. Same as ever.”
“You didn’t want to get a little trim?” Mrs. Winters backed out onto the street, barely missed the already well-dented trashcans and hit the pothole. “I told you I’d pay for a nice cut.” Her mother sped down the street as if to keep from seeing this part of the world she didn’t care for. Most of the world struck her that way.
“I like my hair the way it is right now.”
“But all those split ends, dear.” She patted her own hair and took the turn onto the highway too quickly and gripped the door handle.
“Josie, there’s no need to bother the girl now. Far as I know there aren’t any salons out on this here highway. Um, you might slow down, dear,” her father said. “I never have known where that fire is.” He went back to his magazine.
They passed the giant red sign advertising The Red Moon—palm readings, Tarot cards, and glimpses into the infinite, and it was just five miles down the road, past an orange grove and ratty field, this side of the flea market. The oranges would be good soon, and they glowed bright in the overcast shadows of the late afternoon. “Could always stop at The Moon. Cora cuts my hair, you know.”
Her father cleared his throat and her mother frowned. Mercie leaned back in her seat in satisfaction. Her mother would leave her alone for a while. Mentioning The Red Moon was a sure way of ending any conversation because they all knew fortunes were not the only things sold in the back rooms. Josie didn’t like to talk about anything that risked reminding her that Mercie’s birth mother had worked there twenty-two years before.
Mercie put her head against the window and watched the wind bend the trees. Lightning startled the sky and she looked forward to rain and the end of the night.
