Gothic Blovel: Prologue

PROLOGUE

1952

630 2nd Street

Traverse City, Michigan

Sometimes when Ray is busy working on the car, or pushing the mower across the long blades of grass in our front lawn, I step silently into the bathroom and close the door. I turn on the shower and I sit on the edge of the bath and I cry. It is not only the changes that are happening in me because of the baby, or that I’m hysterical or something. It’s because I have a sense of the way things should be and it’s a kind of ache because my life is not the way I imagined. I imagined my parents coming over with casseroles and Jello molds, and Mother would crochet blankets and booties for the baby, and Dad would try to fix things with Ray only he’d fumble things up, and I would watch from the kitchen, and run my hands along the slope of my abdomen, and sometimes I would laugh at our simple happiness.

Our weekends, though, are much quieter. We live in a two-bedroom house in Traverse City, just blocks away from the bay. It’s a small house, brown, part of a city project of housing for veterans. The houses are close together, so close I can hear the neighbors fighting, and I can hear their gentle moans as they make up. I can also hear the water calling at night, and the wind sometimes smells of rain. Days like this, when it is dark and cloudy, when there is a stillness in the air of something about to happen, that is the time I sneak quietly away.

I cry because crying helps. And then later, I cry some more. I do not want to hold the tears because I do not want them to change my baby. Surely what a mother thinks and feels affects her child? My daughter is kicking now and I imagine that she is happy. I intend to keep her that way for as long as possible.

*

“Do you think a person is fully formed at birth?” I asked Ray one night over dinner.

“Of course he’s formed. Otherwise it’d be like a monster or something.” He scooped mashed potatoes into his mouth. I tried not to think of monster children, of babies misshapen.

“No, I mean the personality. Are you born who you are or do you become who you are? I mean, do your parents matter in the grand scheme of things?”

He chewed awhile, dipped the meatloaf in ketchup, took a chug of milk. “How do I know, Beth? I turned out okay. You turned out okay. Our kid will turn out okay. That’s all that matters.”

I nodded and tried to eat a little. What I did not voice was, “What, exactly, is okay?” There is the surface of things and then there is the truth beneath the surface. There is the city that is beautiful and ornate, and underneath are the tunnels and machines that make it operate.

Of course, all of this is just me, thinking of my mother. And my father of course. Am I who I am because of them, or in spite of them?

It’s my mother I think about the most. Still, all these years later, I haven’t been able to piece together who she was. She was my mother and a stranger. She was beautiful and a monster. She was, I guess, who my father created her to be. So maybe it isn’t our parents who shape us. It’s our spouses.

This, I guess, is why I sit in the bathroom sometimes and let the water run. It’s so that I can cry without being afraid.

Summer blovel is about to begin!

Thanks to everyone who voted on what I should write for my Summer Blovel. It's the 1930's moody gothic suspense, and I've just started writing it. I'm going to post a few pages starting today. You may decide to hold off reading for a bit until there's more, or maybe you want to try it bit by bit. I'm not sure where the piece is going, but I have a couple of guesses. Try to give me a few posts to get it going.

I'll ask for more input later on. You can help me title it, name characters, decide what happens next. Like I said, it'll be like Choose Your Own Adventure...only the adult version.

And, yeah, there's a good chance it'll suck. But I'm going to give it a decent try, and already the characters are starting to form. This week, you'll find the Prologue and then meet Dr. Kinney, a new doctor at the Norethern Michigan Insane Asylum (its original name before becoming the Traverse City State Mental Hospital). Hope you like what's coming. I hope I do too.

Best,

Tanya

Vote 1986 Romantic Comedy--Or 1932 Gothic Suspense

Wow. I didn’t realize that so many of you would actually give me suggestions on what to write for a blovel. I feel very puffed up right now. Not in a way a hot dog puffs up on the grille, because that’s gross…but how a peacock puffs out its chest and is all “Look at my feathers”. Yeah. Like that.

So reading through the suggestions, I’ve come up with two different pitches. I wish I were smart enough to incorporate every single suggestion, but I’m just not. You get two choices. Cast your vote and I’ll start writing…hopefully post something this week. I’ll write a page a day and post a couple of times a week. This is the plan anyway. Oh, and both stories are set in Michigan. I’ve got to Represent, you know. It’s sort of a big deal for me that all my books be set in Michigan.

#1 1986—Backstage Romantic Comedy

Imagine a group of awkward punks hanging out in Monroe Mall by the waterfalls. They’re depressed. Desperate. And just aching to have an artistic outlet. One girl, 21, joins a local theater company. She’s strictly backstage, working on lights and sets. She feels invisible. And when she’s dressed in black and hiding in the shadows, she really is invisible…which is just great, because she can watch the love of her life onstage. He’s a local star, destined for Broadway, and he’s Not Gay. When the leading actress gets mono, our heroine is the only one obsessed enough to have learned all the lines. She’ll have to trade in her Sex Pistols shirt and comb out her dreadlocks and become a leading lady. But it’s not going to be easy. Or smooth. And maybe being a star and onstage isn’t quite what she imagined. Funny. Quirky. Beach read.

#2 Historical Gothic—Suspense/Mystery

This one is set in Traverse City in 1932 (or late 1800's), but it’s an imagined Traverse City. There may be elements of the supernatural. The story begins in the State Mental Hospital where a new doctor on his rounds sees a woman in the tunnels cleaning. There’s something about her. Something familiar. He examines her and after closer inspection is startled to see that she looks just like his dear wife, who died two years earlier. The doctor tries to rescue the patient by bringing him to his home: a gothic, Victorian era mansion. But he has ulterior motives. He’s so desperately in love with the spitting image of his wife that he tries to brainwash the woman into believing she IS his dead wife. And eventually, she is just confused enough to believe him, even confused enough to hear her ghost child calling out to her. Literary-ish. Moody. A little scary.

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