Tunnel Vision--CHAPTER SEVEN--Creating

Letter addressed to Board of Directors, 1912:

There have been rumors circulating the facility that an inmate gave birth to a child in the tunnels. This is a fallacy. Yes, a young woman was found in an exhausted state and she had signs of a physical attack, but she shows no signs of having been pregnant at any time. The woman has been transferred to another location and is recovering. Her family has been informed. The breech in the tunnels has been fixed. Dear fellows, rumors circulate, you must know that. Especially in an asylum for the deranged.

-Signed, P. Callahan

Letter addressed to Doctor Grooms, Superintendent, 1912:

I am writing because I cannot live with this secret. You know as well as I do that the woman in question had a child. Where has that child gone? If the child has been taken, it is kidnapping. If the child…if the child is dead then perhaps it is murder. How am I to cover this up? You cannot ask it of me! I no longer wish to be a part of this establishment. I cannot continue in this subterfuge and so I am taking another position. Please allow me a two weeks pay stipend, in return of which, I promise not to speak of this. I have written to the board as you requested, but that is the last of it. I wash my hands of this affair, sir. I beg you never to speak of it to me again.

-Signed, P. Callahan

On the walls of the tunnels in green crayon:

A m A

***

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932

The ice storms of November slipped into the soft snowfall of an early winter. And in the cool fresh air, Kinney was renewed. He slept deeply. He woke quickly. His movements took on a vigor that he had lacked for so many years. When he polished his shoes, the brush snapped across the surface. When he shaved, his blade was quick and did not shake. He walked briskly as if his feet could at any moment propel him into the air. He saw his patients and monitored, tended. He ate lush meals with the board of trustees and his fellow doctors. He found a new way to laugh, deep from his belly. His eyes sparked. And every day he used his energy to propel him into the next moment, the next second, because every second that clicked by was another second closer to seeing his Rose.

Of course, he knew that the woman that came to him at night and slipped into his bed was not his wife. He had buried his wife, seen her eyes sewn shut. But this woman, when she whispered his name, when she kissed him, when he trailed his hands along the curves of her breasts to the flat of her stomach, this woman in the darkness and the quiet might as well have been his wife. She was his wife in every way but one. She was his wife in the shadows; in the daylight he was still a widower.

She would tell him nothing. She knew nothing. “Where were you born?” he asked her one night after making love. Their bodies were warm against the clawing cold of the night air.

“Here,” she whispered and then kissed his chest.

“Here? You  mean here, here at the asylum. But how?” He tried to pull away, but she kissed him again, the side of his neck, his ear.

“Yes, here. Here. Everywhere.” She kissed him again and he lost all sense of himself.

He could not let go of not-knowing. “What do you know of her, Mallie?” he asked while following Mallie to visit the women’s ward.

“I can’t speak of it, sir,” she said. And she would not.

So Kinney took it upon himself to discover the origin of this woman, a woman of his dreams, surely, who came to him at night and loved him fiercely and then disappeared with the morning. He searched records and files. He dug through other patients’ paperwork. And then he began to talk to the patients themselves, probing tenderly with questions to find the truth. What do you know? He’d ask. And sometimes he’d say just her name, just Ama, and see if there was a flicker in their eyes. A flicker that said they knew.

He gathered truth like berries. He held them close to him and in time he discovered the truth. Ama had been born in the tunnels of the asylum. Her mother was an inmate. She had no parents, no wards, except for the people who visited her and tended to her. There were four patients she looked to as her family, although over the years there had been many others. Two mothers, two fathers, all of them, all four of them inmates of the asylum. And yet Ama was nearly perfect in every way. She seemed not to exhibit any psychosis at all. How could a child born in an asylum and raised, it seemed, by a collective of lunatics, have survived at all let alone flourished into such a woman?

Kinney could not understand. He wanted to. He wanted to crawl into the tender pieces of her mind to discover the magic of it. How was it possible? It wasn’t! But, of course, it was.

Ama was perfect in nearly every way, except she seemed to have no concept of time or place, of memory. She lived fully in the here and now.

It was this, along with her striking resemblance to Rose, that gave him the idea. If he could give her some memories, implant them if you will, if he could change the inflection of words, make her say certain phrases, if he could get her to say to him how much she loved him, the way that Rose had said so many times before she slipped away from him…wouldn’t that be a way of bringing Rose back? Ama was a blank slate, a personality that had not been shaped or formed. She was a child trapped in the body of a woman he loved.

“I can free her,” he thought. “I have the power and the knowledge to do it.” In the past, he’d attempted to free lunatics of their diseased spirits by cutting out portions of the brain. To transform Ama would require no surgery, though. Just a steady hand in manipulation, an understanding of the brain and memory. He could do it.

“Ama,” he said and pulled her on top of him. Her smooth skin warmed him. Like this, their bodies pressed tight, there was no space between them. Not even air could separate them. “I want to call you something else. A name. A pet name. A name I will whisper to you and you will know is yours.”

“Yes,” she whispered. Her body moved against him.

“I will call you Rose,” he said, and this time he kissed her. Drank of her. Breathed her in. “Rose,” he said again. It was as if her silence accepted him, pulled him in. Then he was lost to all thought…at least until the morning dawned.

Women, Friendships, and Dancing on the Ceiling

I’m having trouble coming up with a focused blog topic. I thought I’d write about women and friendships with them. I had a wonderful/awful week with women friends…just showing the complexity of these relationships…and then I went and used the word relationship, and my mind spun off into an entirely different direction. Then I started thinking about men. Then Biff. Then me and Biff. Then the many, many reasons why at 37, I am willing to drop him and our relationship at every little bump in the road.

I tell my students not to use clichés, but I’m too tired to be clever.

I can’t make sense of this. Not all at once. So. Back to women and friendships. Here’s what I know: I used to hate women. Growing up, I never had many friends and then when I had a girlfriend, I’d grow dependent on her and then she’d break my heart. Katie Horvath and Rachel Schwartz did this to me in 6^th grade where they took me out into the middle of the playground and Rachel fluffed her feathered hair and told Katie to say it. Katie didn’t want to, I think because I would go over to her house after school. We’d dance to Madonna videos and she’d play the piano and I sing whatever Lionel Richie song she had sheet music for.

But I looked into her blue eyes and she said it anyway “We’ve decided you’re not cool enough to hang out with us.” I was devastated. Heartbroken. You’d think I’d gotten  divorced. Hadn’t we had a relationsip? Didn’t we eat sundaes together and sleep on the floor in sleeping bags watching MTV. Didn’t I tell her that she could be Madonna’s younger sister? I didn’t trust women for a long, long time after that.

Why? Why are my friendships with women so intense? They’re like this with men sometimes too. When you trust your self…Your Self…with someone, you open your heart to love but also disappointment. It’s like you’re Achilles and you say “If you want to kill me, strike me right here on this here soft heel”. Trust is like that. Love is like that. “I’m going to trust you with this because it will bring us closer, and in the end you can use it to destroy me”. Katie Horvath did that to me. I did it to other people. Women…we’re great…and we’re mean. And we’re extremely loyal.

In college I had another close/torturous friendship with a roommate. I loved her. I loved her platonically but wholly and then when I started dating a guy, I gave more time to him and I broke her heart. She and I could’ve been the kind of friends that lasted a lifetime. We lasted one year.

Over the years, I’ve gotten better at being a friend. And I like women now. I get them. We can communicate with just a blink and say everything from “Cute shirt” to “You step anywhere near me and my man and I will kill you and suck out your soul.” We also understand all the nuisanced rules of dating so we can commiserate when a guy fucks up…and he will fuck up because our list of rules is gigantic.

When I’m broken and bruised, I call my girlfriends. I call Rae who I’ve known since college. We don’t see or talk frequently, but she’s always there, and she always supports me. I call my sister. We didn’t talk for 7 years…but that’s nothing. We’re close as ever now. I have other women friends (and a few gay guy friends) and I know that no matter what choice I make or decision I fuck up, they’ve got my back. They’ve got my back because they love me.

That’s what a true friendship is. It’s singing Lionel Richie songs with them and forgiving them for sucking. It’s growing old together and telling each other every time you see them “You look amazing”. It’s listening and when a friend is confused saying, “Whatever you decide, I’m here for you.”

I like women now. I love them. They’ve taught me to be a better person, and a better partner to the men I’ve had in my life. Now, of course, not all women are great influences on me. I’ve had to say goodbye to friends that brought out more of a darkness in me than a light, but I don’t think that’s because they’re women. It’s just that our friendships grew and changed and then we moved on.

Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to be vulnerable again, how to love again, how to protect my heart but leave it open too. And my girlfriends are right along with me. They don’t tell me what to do, exactly, they just sort of walk along with me, even if I’m wearing totally wrong shoes. They know I’ll figure it out eventually.

What I’m saying here is that somewhere along the way in growing up, I went from hating women to needing them in my life. There’s no great moral here or anything, just a general shout out.

As for relationships with men…that’s a whole different blog post. But I’m learning there too. And I’m trying not to sprint for the door at every available opportunity. I’m trying to…as a fortune cookie said…just enjoy being happy for now. And on Wednesday night, I’ll be hanging with some new girlfriends gluing sequins to sombreros to promote “Blunder Woman” because this is what girlfriends do. When one friend is need, everyone comes carrying a glue gun and vodka.

Look at that. There’s a moral in here after all.

Tunnel Vision CHAPTER 6-Dreams

Chapter Six

Dreams

Traverse City State Mental Hospital, 1952

My mother says that so much has changed on the grounds of the hospital, and not just the name. It used to be, she says, that there were patients everywhere. At first everything was lovely, she says, that Irish lilt in her voice weakened but still present. My mother speaks musically even when she doesn’t want to. She says: Patients working on the cow farm, tending gardens. It was beautiful really. It was peaceful. Then things changed, slowly at first, as they do. There was all that trouble with the money and overcrowding and then a special ward for folks with TB. It became a different place then. I don’t like to tell you. Walking the grounds, you could hear moans and cries. And in the wards, it was sometimes a scary place. You’d have to read a person’s sickness by looking in their eyes. A person’s eyes will tell you everything you need to know, the way you can look at a dog and tell if it’s rabid or not. Sometimes patients will smile, but their eyes tell you they’re about to bite. Now, those people on the edge aren’t on the edge anymore. They take parts of their brain and it sends those people into some other world. I can’t say that’s a good thing because now it’s like they’re not even there and this place, this place has become so quiet, but it’s not a quiet of rest, is it? It’s more a quiet of pain.

She says this to me as we walk the grounds together. And I try to look into her eyes to gauge what she is feeling, but she keeps her gaze focused just ahead of her. I do not often come to see my mother at work, where she has been for as long as I’ve been alive. She is only thirty-seven, but her shoulders have widened over the years, her belly has grown too, evidence that she has borne children. Her hair which as a child was fiery red has dulled and it is laced with grey. After my father passed away, my mother’s body seemed to drift out of her control. She is solid now, with little shape to her. She walks briskly forward, as she does in all things. And she seldom looks in my eyes.

Lobotomies, she spits it like a curse. Why, if you take the time to get to know a person and recognize that their illness is just that…an illness…you wouldn’t need such a fool thing. If there were more money and more beds and more staff…She drifts here. She cannot finish the words. She pauses and then says, There’s not a one of them that is possessed by a demon or uncontrollable. I nod as if I agree with her.

We are at the tunnels. She doesn’t pause or look at me to see if I am sure I want to do this. My mother, especially when things are difficult, plows straight forward. Energy and momentum, I suppose. We walk. The tunnels are brightly lit. Clean. Not at all what I imagined.

I don’t know how long we walk or how many turns we take. I know that I grow tired and I can feel every bit of my daughter’s growing weight pulling on the muscles of my back. Finally, we reach a small room. Not a room really but rather a false end to one side of the tunnel, as if they were building a tunnel but did not connect it to anything. Here my mother stops. She turns to look at me and her green eyes are almost grey and it is true I can read what she is feeling. She looks at me for a long time and then takes my hands in hers. Her voice is soft and fragile. This here is where they met, she says, your father and your real mother. The words pain her. I can see that.

You are my real mother, I say.

My mother hugs me then, tight, and I can feel my daughter between us. It is a hug of holding on. I think she whispers thank you but I can’t be sure. She doesn’t want to talk to me about these things but she does this for me because she is strong, and fierce, and she loves me as if I were her own.

Still in her arms she says the words I already know. Your mother’s name was Ama and she called this place her home.

*

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932

Images came to Kinney in waves, violent as the lake in a storm. Water rushed and he felt his hand press against the lean muscled chest of Kostic. With a firm push downward, Kinney forced him under the water and held. Kostic thrashed, churning the water like a great sea beast. Kinney held. The water was so cold he soon lost any feeling at all in his arms and this was a comfort.

Then he walked on a beach, studying the sands in search of Petoskey stones, fossils that would not show themselves unless touched by water. His arm ached and it was still cold. He turned the sand with his bare toes searching, but found nothing—and then, out in the water, a flash of white caught his eye. Perhaps the crest of a wave mounting. No. Not a wave at all. No. It was Rose, floating in the lake by their house, fully clothed, her white dress spilling around her, her hair reaching out and bleeding with the water. Kinney called to her, ran into the water but could go no further. The water pushed against him, held him back.

He was under water, being held, Kostic laughing as he pushed him under again and again. Then he was breathing. “Look at him, he’s sick,” said a man with long white hair. White? Yes. And the pale eyes of an albino. His skin the color of a ghost. “Sick like us?” Said a woman. A lovely woman with large breasts in a too-tight top. She licked her lips. “Get away get away don’t touch don’t touch.” Fingers tickling him. “I’ll touch him. Get him Taste him.” Then the fingers pulled back and Kinney’s arm began to heat. There was pressure too and he realized it was because someone held onto him.

Rose looked down at him, touched his forehead, her smile deep with sympathy. “Poor baby,” she said. “Poor baby.” She kissed him.

And then singing, softly at first, and then with growing force as if he were walking closer to the source of the voice. But he was not walking, was he? The sound carried him. Mallie. Mallie Lyn Peters sang a lullaby to him. The voices called to him. Mallie’s voice and Rose’s beautiful and harmonizing, but the others…the others delayed and discordant and sharp as razors.

Rays of light and shadows shifted and oozed and took human shape. Hands grabbed him, dug into his shoulders and waist, lifting him. He was carried, floated through the air, tumbled without touching the ground. He could not scream. He could not talk. Someone had stolen his voice, his very breath.

It was a dream. Of course he was dreaming, but he was also half-awake. So he floated in the netherworld between the dream state and reality and he could not cross over. When Kinney finally awoke, he awoke to rain thrashing the windows. An ice storm. And he awoke to a sound of someone choking, and the slow realization that the someone was himself.

“You’ve had a fever, Doctor Kinney,” Mallie murmured to him. “Take a deep breath now. You’re all right. All is well. You are well now. You collapsed you did. Underneath.”

Kinney tried to speak but his voice was hoarse and not his own.

Mallie nodded as if she understood. “How long were you down there? You were missing for a time. Overnight maybe? Chilled, feverish. And then you were helped up here and I’ve been taking care of you ever since. It’s been a week now. We thought we’d lose you, but Ama said no. You were a fighter, and Ama is one to know.”

“Ama?” It was the only word he could manage to speak clearly.

Mallie Lyn leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear. “She’s a secret, Doctor Kinney. One you must keep. Please, sir. If you could.”

He nodded his head and noticed that Ama was in the room with them even now. She sat in the corner, her face hidden in shadow, but clearly the mirror image of Rose. Kinney was not a religious man, but at once he believed in a power greater than himself. He nodded again and Ama rose from her chair to come to him. “Yes,” he said. He would promise to keep her.

Ama stepped into the light. “Hello, Kin-ney,” she said softly and reached to touch his face.

He burned. Suddenly. Fiercely. And with a different kind of fever. She was Rose and not-Rose, but without question, Kinney knew one thing: this Ama would belong to him. He would own her. Completely. “Hello, again,” he said, and then with that he slipped back into sleep but this time, he did not dream.

Where's the line between promotion and desperation?

One of the problems with blogging about your personal life, is you’re…well…blogging about your personal life. Over the last year I felt like it was a really good thing. I felt really connected to other women (and men) going through a divorce and it gave such a great outlet for finding humor within the painful experience. It also gave me a way to write about real things instead of just imagined ones. I don’t know. It was liberating.

And I felt supported. Loved.

So maybe when I received a message from a friend today that my constant Facebook status updates and blogging are a cry for outside validation, it hurt because it’s partly true. I have been looking for it. For me though, the validation has come more through the process of writing through my own experiences and finding meaning within them. I didn’t really think I was looking for that from other people.

Then when I had trouble in my dating, I did the natural thing. I wrote about it. Was I looking for help and validation? Yes. Was that wrong? Maybe. I’m starting to think maybe it was. I’ve enjoyed sharing my life through words. Not because I want to be in a spotlight but because so many people have written to me and said  “I feel the same way you do” or “life is hard but you somehow find a way to laugh through it”. And everyone in the publishing business has encouraged me to connect through the media, to use social networking sites because you’ll find new readers. You’ll get your work out there.

Now it’s out there. Today though, I’m not feeling too good about it. Are bloggers and people who tweet and do Facebook desperate? Do they need attention? Is there something wrong with them or is this a new way to connect with people and share life experiences and laugh through the suffering? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know a lot of things.

I know I work hard. I work to keep writing because I feel a deep need to create for whatever reason. I work to connect with people. I work to support my family. I’ve enjoyed my blog and tweets. Of going through the day and trying, every single day, to find the funny within it. I don’t always succeed, but most days I do.

I guess I need to think about this. Where’s the line between putting your work out there and being a writer, and when do you just come off as sounding desperate?

I’m sincerely grateful for all the support I’ve received. For anyone who reads my blog or my books or any of the work I put out there, thank you. It is validating. Writers write, and until their words are read, it doesn’t feel like the process is done. It’s like baking a cake. You mix everything but it’s not a cake until that baby is baked, cooled and frosted. THEN and only then can you eat it.

(I’m so close to saying “EAT ME” right now, but will refrain.)

I don’t know the answer to any of this. Do I NEED validation? Do I NEED input from others? And if I do, am I okay with that?

Part of me wants to stop writing, stop promoting. But you know…I tried that in my marriage and it nearly killed me. I disappeared for a long time. I don’t really want to disappear again.

So maybe that’s the truth. My truth is I write because it helps me connect with people and it helps me feel alive. And I’m not ashamed of wanting to share my work with people. If you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to. Many don’t. But if you do…it’s here. I’m here. And my words continue the way my life does: awkwardly, full of errors, and deeply, deeply human.

Progress With a Big Ol' P

Nine days since I blogged. Nine days! I feel like I should get a coin or something. Trouble is, I don’t really want a coin. I like blogging. It keeps me off of antidepressants.

So…The Great Steak Showdown is done. That’s a relief. But it doesn’t mean that Biff and I are done. Now, before you react and start wagging your finger at me with “Ohhhhhh, girrrrl” hear me out. I’ve learned a lot this last year. I mean I joke and all about wearing a cape and being an average superhero, but sometimes—more and more lately—I do feel so strong that I could wear a cape and actually get away with it. I imagine myself walking down the street, chest out, chin up, with my cape furling behind me and someone says “Now there goes a chick in a cape” instead of “There goes a chick with a serious personality disorder”. This is a good thing.

A year ago when my husband was mean to me or sarcastic or unkind, I took it. I accepted it, I took it like an unwanted hurtful present and I held it close. But this time when Biff was (in my opinion) selfish and hurtful, I didn’t accept it. In fact, I was strong enough to say in an almost superhero voice “This is not good enough for me” and I was willing to end it right there.

What changed then? Biff did not come crawling back and say “Oh, baby, I love you and I’ll never ever do that again.” I would’ve been skeptical if he had. What he did do was better and right. We sat on my deck outside and he said, “I fucked up. I’m really sorry. And when we fight again, I want to be able to talk to you about it.” We will fight again. But if we’re to succeed as a couple or even become better individuals, we’ll need to talk about it.

We’re trying again. Slowly. Differently. Things do feel different. We’re talking more, especially about all those tiny moments in our lives that have shaped us. Why, for example, when he sat down to eat two steaks I remembered the cupboard my stepmother kept locked. It was filled with good food, name brand food, when we kids had nothing to eat. It’s primal stuff like that.

I have no idea what will happen next, but I do know this: I stood up for myself, maybe for the first time ever, and Biff stood up for us. He’s trying. I’m trying. It’s all very adult. And it makes me strut just a little bit. Maybe at 37, divorced, mom to two kids and pseudo mom to two kittens, maybe I’ve finally grown up a little bit. I don’t wear a cape for real, but I feel it on my shoulders. And sometimes I even carry a whip.

That’s probably TMI.

I apologize for that image.

Hope to see some of you at the reading this Friday. I’ll be reading a tiny section of “Blunder Woman”. Come up and say hi. I don’t have a superhero death grip so if you want to shake hands, I promise to be gentle.

Mailing List

Hey there. I'm thinking of doing a little newsletter once a month where I can go into a little more detail about fun things that are happening with me, or other writers I know. I might include things like recipes or quotes or (I don't know) random dares and/or pointless information.

A newsletter lets me tell you secrets. Not that I have any secrets, but I might make one up.

If you want to be on this list, please send me a comment here. I'll see your email address but no one else will, and I'll add you to the list. And I won't share your email with anyone because that would be rude.

Cheers,

Tanya

TUNNEL VISION: Chapter 5 "Working"

Chapter Five

Working

At last, Doctor Kinney was working, doing the things he was hired to do. After a month at the institution, he could finally navigate the hallways without getting lost, though he still had Mallie Lynn Peters escort him to the ladies’ ward or followed just behind Biggart to other parts of the facility. Kinney felt as if her were living two lives at the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum. During the day, he donned his white coat and observed patients and dictated to nurses and orderlies what they should do to control and quiet the inmates. At night, he slipped into a suit and joined high-ranking members of the staff for elegant dinners in the dining room with silver service, crystal glasses, and four course meals, all served by female inmates. Inmates who were usually there for reasons of promiscuity. In general, the promiscuous women could function in everyday life as long as you did not look too deeply into their eyes and risk the siren’s call. In this way, Kinney’s days and evenings marched on.

October passed quietly and slipped into November. Kinney’s days began to replicate, so that he was beginning to have trouble discerning one from the next. His days fell into a pattern and it was only because of his schedule that he was able to tell them apart.

Sundays were rest days for him and the staff. On Sundays, inmates were essentially left on their own, locked in their wards. They did not mill the campus, but sat in their beds or in rocking chairs or paced inside their wards. Mondays were difficult days, days in which the inmates had regressed into their illnesses because of the rest of Sundays. Kinney believed, as did the staff, that the diseased mind flourished in solitude. Only through work could demons be quieted. On Mondays then, he spent conducting therapy sessions, namely use of hydrotherapy and colonics. There was a new treatment called insulin shock therapy that state asylums were beginning to use. Large doses of insulin were injected into the inmate to induce a coma. This relaxed the brain and allowed the patient time to rest and heal. Of course, too much insulin could cause death, so while Kinney liked the idea of the therapy, he felt more confident with older, practiced remedies. Hydrotherapy sessions seemed to offer the most benefit as the hours emerged in cold water or shooting water into a patient’s face seemed to shock the mind into lucidity, however brief. As Kinney watched one of the patients thrash in the water, he thought that nearly dying must be a transformative event. To be just on the brink, teetering between existence and blackness…surely that experience would transform you.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday he spent visiting each ward and marking off charts. Thursdays he attended meetings with the board and other staff members. Fridays were for research, and this day was the day he looked forward to beyond all others, the day that seemed to lie just beyond his reach. He had freedom on Fridays. He could walk the grounds then, find solace in the comfort of his own mind. On Fridays, he would read the latest scientific journals and work on his own ideas. He was fascinated with neuro surgery and removing diseased portions of the brain to heal a person. He had, in his previous position, attempted such an operation but the results of the experiment had been, sadly, fatal. Still, Kinney felt as if he’d brought her peace. His mind while no longer existing, was at least free of all conflict and disorder. It was, in essence, free of everything.

Kinney tried not to think of this. Instead, he grabbed his notebook and decided he would visit the men’s ward for his research today. And he would take a shortcut through the Tunnels. The Tunnels seemed to call to him—quite literally. At night he would awaken in his bed, shivering with a cold sweat, and he would swear that he heard Rose calling his name. He resisted walking in the Tunnels because he was afraid what might happen to him. Yes, he thought, he was afraid. On this Friday, though, the Tunnels would be required. It was November now and the grounds were barren and cold, twisted tree limbs seeming to reach out in agony. Outside, an ice storm was brewing and the trees moaned with the weight of their burden. With that, Kinney looked behind him to make sure he was not being followed, and slipped silently belowground.

*

He was deep in the belly of the Tunnels when he heard a great boom aboveground. He heard the tearing of wood that could only be a tree falling, perhaps giving in to the weight of the ice. The lights in the tunnels flickered and went out.

Kinney did not move. He knew if he waited and controlled his breathing his irises would adjust to the new darkness. In moments, the darkness would lighten, turn purple and he would be able to see.

He heard footsteps. Something shuffling. A laugh. Behind him? He turned. No. In front of him. To the side of him. “Who are you?” he called, his voice echoing around him. Whoareyouwhouareyouwhoareyou bounced back to him, but the words were whispered and layered and Kinney was certain it was not just his own voice coming back at him. “I have a gun!” he called and then instantly felt foolish. Yelling at shadows. And of course, he did not have a gun.

After a moment, he realized that the phrase “I have a gun” did not return to him. Indeed there was silence.

He began to see. Just shadows at first. He could make out a dim light in the distance. And then, to his growing horror, he realized those shadows in front of him were moving. One scurried on the ground, a lump, a moving lump the size of a person on their knees. Two to the side, the shadows as tall as Biggart. Kinney spun. Two more shadows moved toward him…one slender and jumping, the next moving fluidly as if gliding on air.

The gliding shadow asked him softly, “Who are you?” and grabbed his face with cold fingers that felt as comforting as talons. “Who are you?” The woman whispered again, for it was a woman, and her voice in the darkness was a lyrical as a lullaby. She leaned in close to him, pressed her nose against his neck and….smelled. When she drew her face back to look at him, Kinney lost his tender hold on panic.

He was looking into the face of his Rose, his wife, dead these three years.

“Kinney,” he managed, barely able to form the words. She looked at him. Cocked her head.

“Kin-ney,” She said, but it was Rose, wasn’t it? It was Rose, his beloved dead wife, risen from the grave, or halfway from the grave and existing in the in-between of the Tunnels. “Meet my family,” with that she gestured to the other shadows and Kinney turned his eyes toward them. He could see them now, see them as four distinct people, two men and two women and he felt his heart stop in his chest. They were inmates, surely, inmates loose in the Tunnels, inmates with bloodied feet and dirty pajamas, with eyes fueled by disease and torment. He recognized one, a man who was lean with muscles sharpened by hard work. His name was Kostic, and he was the man Kinney had performed hours of hydrotherapy on, leaving the man exhausted and certainly just shy of death.

“Kinney!” Kostic hissed. “Kinney!” the others echoed.

And then they were upon him.

What happened because of the steaks...

If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I had a bit of a heartbreak this weekend. Biff and I had a huge fight over something ridiculous and he grabbed all his stuff and stormed out of the house. He didn’t even say goodbye.

And it started with steak. Stupid steak.

We went to the grocery store with the kids and I asked what we should do for dinner. Biff said “Steaks!” I said that sounded good and turned to the kids and asked if they’d like Crabby Patties (what we call hamburgers, a nod to Spongebob Squarepants). So we picked up stuff.

It was a nice day. Biff helped me with yardwork, cleaned out my garage and while he prepped the grill and pushed Simone on the swing, I prepped the food. He grilled mushrooms and green peppers and then I gave him four hamburgers and the two steaks to grill.

When the food was done, I prepped the burgers for the kids. He asked me for a plate. He put the two steaks on the plate and asked for a knife. I gave it to him. Then he took the plate with the two steaks to the table and sat down with it, prepared to eat. And here’s the part where it gets ridiculous. “Are you going to eat those two steaks?” I asked, shocked, my face red with heat.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, what am I supposed to eat? I mean those are two steaks, I assumed you’d cooked one for me. You didn’t? You cooked them both for yourself?”

“I thought you were going to have a hamburger,” He said. He offered one of the steaks to me. “Here. Take one. You want one?” But by that time, I was so mad at the selfishness of the act that the idea of eating steak turned my stomach.

Why did I get so mad? Because the steak seemed to be a symbol of something greater. I assumed at the grocery store that he was cooking us steaks. I thought it was sweet. Then he sat down to eat both of them and it struck me as so insensitive and self-focused. And in a rush I thought of all the little things I did to try to please him. Cooking food he’d like and avoiding the food I love, knowing it would turn his stomach. How I tried to ask him questions about his day, told him he’s cute, told him I liked the way he kissed me. He told me once that I didn’t need to tell him those things. He didn’t need to hear it. I said, “Well, I do.” Meaning, it would be nice to hear that he appreciated me, cared about me. I needed to feel tended to.

Which was why on my birthday when there was no card or tweet or message on Face Book, no flowers, no cake, that I also felt deflated. I’d told him how my husband for 5 years never remembered my birthday or scheduled a trip out of the country during that time. How my ex had told me once that I shouldn’t have cake on my birthday because it was too fattening. Biff said that was horrible, but on my birthday, he did nothing to show me that I somehow mattered to him.

Maybe I’m high maintenance. I don’t know. But I honestly believe that a relationship and another person, a person you are close with physically and emotionally, needs to be tended to. You treat them kindly, like a rare orchid.

You make sure they have the food they need, the affection, you tell them they’re special. (Not that I do this with my orchid. Mostly I just water it once a week…but still. You get what I’m saying.)

I tried to talk to Biff, to clarify if he’d ever considered if I wanted steak. He said of course he had, but when he saw the four burgers he assumed I was eating those. (I made extras. The kids like leftovers) And yes, it was ridiculous. But then he got so mad that anger just poured off him. “I can’t talk about this,” he said. And he stormed outside.

I waited. I waited for a half hour. I went outside where he was sitting smoking. “If you can’t talk about the little things,” I asked, “How will you talk about the big?”

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

I thought about his anger and his inability to talk to me. I thought about how our relationship wasn’t the partnership I’d hoped, that I was suddenly paying for almost everything and driving him everywhere and letting him stay with me while he looked for a job and an apartment. I thought of my two kids sleeping upstairs and what would happen if he got angry at them? If he couldn’t talk about steak, how could he talk about disappointments or frustration or miscommunication. “I’ll give you cab money,” I said. “You can leave tonight.”

In the end, he didn’t take the money. He packed his rollaway suitcase and his bag of clothes. He left his yogurt and tequila. I heard the wheels of the suitcase going up my sidewalk. I didn’t know where he would go, but I also knew there wasn’t anything I could do about that. He didn’t say goodbye.

Biff has apologized and I appreciate that. He said he’d like to try again and that he wants to work on talking this through. He sent me a note saying I shouldn’t change how I write because of him, essentially giving me freedom to write this. But I can’t go back to him right now. I want a partner. An equal. I want someone who treats me tenderly. Someone who would offer me a steak in the grocery store and then say, “If you don’t want steak, what can I make for you that you will love?”

I want someone who’ll make me a birthday cake.

It would be easy to give up on this, to lower my wants, to settle for someone who seems to like me well enough. But I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t, especially after how my ex treated me during our marriage. So I won’t settle. And if being strong means loneliness, I can deal with that. I’ve dealt with much worse.

That's It! I'm Joining Weight Watchers, A Support Group & A Cult!

It’s humid out. This is the kind of weather where I imagine what it would feel like to live in the currents of a giant’s hot, steamy breath—after   consuming a gargantuan sandwich. In other words: it’s gross outside.

I think, truly, I must have some spiritual connection to the weather. On sunny, cool days I’m generally intelligent and well-adjusted. On sunny, hot days I’m a little hyper and I tend to expose my cleavage on a whim. On cold days, I’m cuddly and contemplative. Today, it being gross outside and all, I’m just plain moody.

If I played a role in Snow White and the Eight Dwarves I’d be…oh…Moody Dame. (Not quite a bitch, you see, just moody.) And when I’m moody, I obsess. Endlessly. Over everything in my life. Harrumph.

(I’m starting to annoy myself so I’m going to take a break and come back to this. Maybe I’ll have a story to tell and stop being so whiny.)

TAKE #2

This morning, I put on my yoga pants and looked at my legs and was faced with the horror that they looked, indeed, like sausage stuffed in a casing. Why? Why have I let myself get this way? And why am I eating peanut butter chocolate pie while I write this?

TAKE #3

Starting over again.

Recent stresses. My ex got married on July 3^rd: three days after my 37^th birthday, one day before the 4^th of July. He picked up the kids after his 20 mile run and then Biff and I sat quietly in the house. I started to go insane. I called my sister and she invited us over. Sweet relief. So Biff and I travelled to Belding and then went down to the beach where my sis immediately hitched us a ride on a party pontoon boat. We spent the next five hours drinking, swimming, and laughing. I had to be home at 8PM to pick up the kids. P and his new wife were dropping them off so they could catch a flight to Hawaii for their honeymoon. (Need I say that my ex and I never went on a honeymoon? He said it was too expensive.)

It turned out to be a great day. Biff and I laughed. He rubbed my back in front of people. Kissed me. My sis and I were cracking each other up. And there was a little bell inside me ringing that my ex was now remarried. Why did it sadden me so when I don’t feel any emotion for him? Biff said maybe I’m jealous that he’s moved on. It isn’t that though. Really. I’m jealous because I want to be married and I want a honeymoon and I want a man who loves me and my kids, loves me so much he can’t fathom NOT being married to me. Then I look at Biff and categorize every comment he’s made about looking for work outside of Michigan, that there’s nothing keeping him here, how he’s not really looking for an apartment because he could end up anywhere, and I think hmmmm. How much does he feel for me? Am I just a convenience? And I think maybe it’s just a matter of time before he’s out the door.

My sis says there’s no way to know if someone is going to break your heart. You just have to enjoy your time with them. But how can you do that when you don’t trust them? My ex met a woman, fell in love with her, asked her to marry him. It was easy. And now they have that comfort of being a couple, of living a shared life. Me? I’m still hobbling along, legs of sausage.

TAKE #4

I remind myself that some people like sausage. Especially Germans. And, well, foodies.

TUNNEL VISION--Chapter Four--Discoveries

Chapter Four

Discoveries

Traverse City, Michigan, 1952

Ray wants to know what I am carrying around. What’s in that box you’re always digging through, he asks, and I can hear the irritation heavy in his words.

They’re just notes, I say. I know that if I actively hide it from him, he will tear the room apart searching to find and read every slip of paper inside this box, so instead, I put the secret of my birth right on the kitchen counter, grab a handful of papers, and hand them out to him as if offering a bouquet of flowers. Would you like to read it? I ask.

He looks at me and there is a moment when we are staring at each other. I force myself not to lower my gaze and then, soon enough, he lowers his first and eats his eggs. It is a minor miracle.

I don’t know why I am hiding it, even in the open like this. Beyond the paperwork that says my mother died three years before having me, there is very little in here that Ray would understand. There is very little in here I understand. Some things I look at again and again, like the old postcards of the asylum, making the grounds look so peaceful and inviting that I’d like to go there myself. There are some medical records taken from when I was an infant about my weight and size and length and that I had jaundice. There is a lock of hair tied with a white string. It is a single curl and even though it sits in this box, I can tell that the woman who had curls like this must have been beautiful once. It occurs to me that it is the same dark color as my own, though mine is short now and has no beauty left to it.

There is also a red ball (smaller than my palm, cupped), a candle burned to just a stump, and a list of names. It’s the names I look at now, run my finger over: Liliana Stephenson, Robert Kostic, Timothy Beeler, Lynnie Sherry, and then a single name or phrase written in capital letters AMA.

There are papers attached to this list of names. Each name has its own page and there are terms and boxes checked. Feeble minded, senility, involutional melancholia, dementia praecox followed by other words that are, I know, different kinds of treatment, words involving shock and water and other things I do not understand. And there are phrases that scare me, phrases like “the patient displays episode of extreme violence and rage”. And there are dates circled and stamped, and I do not know if these people were discharged or they left the asylum through a more permanent departure. My father has signed each page. These names then, these people, were patients of his…but why are their names and diagnoses wrapped in my box of secret things and why, no matter how many times I go through the pages, is there no such page for AMA?

I touch the curl of hair with my fingertip. Ray calls for more eggs. I put the lid on the box though even I know that you can lock something away, and it still goes on existing, even in the dark.

*

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1932

He was upside down. Surely he was upside down!

But no. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t floating above the floor, staring at it beneath him. He was staring up at the ceiling…and there was Mallie Lynn Peters dabbing his forehead with a damp cloth. “There, there, now, Doctor Kinney. It’s all right. It’s all right now.”

He felt, rather than saw, the hulking presence of Biggart leave the room. Mallie continued. “You tripped and fell in the tunnels you did. Bumped your head good and deep now, didn’t you. Afraid there are stitches. But don’t you worry. We’ve done them before. They ain’t pretty, but they’ll heal. Now, sit up, Doctor Kinney. It’s time to start your day.” Mallie helped him to a sitting position and then offered her arm to steady him as he rose to his feet.

“But there was someone in the Tunnels…” he began. He remembered it clearly. He’d reached out, felt the tangle of hair, heard his name echoing around him, through him. And hadn’t he…hadn’t he seen Rose? Hadn’t he seen someone who looked like Rose standing next to him, her eyes a flash of wild blue in the darkness, like a flint lighting?

“Course there was someone in the Tunnels. There’s always staff in the Tunnels. It’s how we get around so quietly.” Mallie studied him, wiped the dirt from his knees and then took a step back. “Now, don’t you look a sight. The patients will be pleased as anything, they will, to see them look at you. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” he asked, still confused as to how he had ended up in his office and how he had received stitches without any awareness at all as to how that was managed.

“It’s time to work,” Mallie said with more than a hint of authority in her voice. “Follow me.” She turned and exited the room. It took Kinney only a moment to follow her, but before doing so he pulled a single strand of dark hair from his lapel. It was a small thing, indeed, but proof enough that he’d seen someone in the Tunnels, and that someone had worn her hair down, not clasped tightly under a hat the way support staff did. No. That someone was either a patient or perhaps… perhaps…

Kinney shook his head and took after Mallie. He’d had the slightest moment where he’d actually believed the woman he’d seen really had been Rose. She had the same dark hair, the same length, and the same blue eyes that seemed to stare straight into his soul—if, indeed, he still possessed one.

*

They walked a short distance to the women’s ward. At last, Kinney was getting a sense of the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum as it really was: a vast machine for the mentally broken, a place inhabited and thriving with a swarm of lost souls. They passed inmates walking the grounds, inmates obvious in their striped pajamas and slippers. Some exhibited psychoses clearly, while others just stared at him a bit too long, the head cocked a bit too far. Mallie, for once, did not chat too him about bread or Mr. Young. She walked briskly across the courtyard and into the cold, hard building of the women’s ward. “You are to check on patients in Ward B. You’re lucky though, Doctor Kinney, Ward B is a pay ward, not the best one though, but at least you’re not in the other.”

Kinney nodded. There were several areas in the hospital, patients separated first by sex and then by finances. Those with families who could afford to, paid for their keeping. These inmates were treated to a spacious, open ward and meals that ranged from ham with breakfast to a full dinner at night. Their room was open and peaceful. Inmates were allowed to bring elements from home. That was the highest tier. The second tier belonged to inmates whose families could not afford to keep them in comfort, but still paid a minimal fee to at least ensure that they had decent meals and were tended to with respect. Their room, also wide and open, had more beds in it and no elements of the home. They had porridge for breakfast, boiled meat, soup. This would be the ward he would attend to.

And finally there was the Ward of the State. These were patients whose families could not pay, did not want to pay, or for inmates who did not have families at all. These were the inmates picked off from the streets and shipped to the asylum so that society would not have to see the effects of long-term syphilis on the brain, or psychoses where someone existed physically in this world, but spiritually they were somewhere or someone else. Kinney and Mallie passed this ward. He could hear the women inside, crying, laughing, shouting. One glance inside the room told him what he had feared. With the economy free falling, more and more individuals were slipping into madness, and no one could afford to pay. The hundred beds were filled in Ward C, and there were a hundred more women sitting, standing, pacing in the room. They were fed porridge and a watery soup and when they became very sick indeed, they were shipped to another secret room in the hopes that their illness would claim them quickly. The State did not like to pay for their upkeep.

“We’re here,” Mallie said and opened the door to Ward B.

*

He had expected to walk in, sit quietly at a desk, observe and then leave. Kinney should learn, he thought, that life never operates the way you expect. It’s as if as soon as you form an expectation, life hears you and then makes a different choice just to spite you. Kinney walked in, Mallie passed him a file, and the women surged.

He tried to walk forward. Tried to breathe. Tried to keep his gaze firmly in front of him. He was a tall man and because of this, the women reached up to him. He registered the reaching of their hands to touch his shoulders, his neck, his hair not as women individually touching him, but as if he were being accosted by some mythical creature with a hundred arms, a thousand probing tendrils searching to read him.

“Line up!” Mallie Lynn cried, her voice showing more than that hint of steel. “It’s Doctor Kinney to examine you!”

Mallie stomped her foot against the tile and the room fell to a hush. The wave of hands reaching to feel him ebbed, receded, and the women parted. A tiny, old woman stood before him. Her grey hair was not secured and it fell to the middle of her torso, wrapped her small frame as if it were a shawl. “You’ve been in The Tunnels, you have,” she whispered. Her voice was an injection of ice to his veins. “You’ll be back there too. Once The Tunnels bites you, you’re never the same.” She pointed to him, to his face, and he tentatively touched the stitches that now stretched there.

Mallie looked at Kinney and said softly, “Her name is Mrs. Hoogewind, sir. We don’t ever use her first name sir, not ever. She bites.” Mallie placed a file in Kinney’s hands, and with that, he began his work.

*

That night, he did not think of the waves of patients he’d seen and analyzed. He did not replay assigning therapies, addressing issues, discussing treatment plans. He did not look to tomorrow when he would oversee the hydrotherapy sessions. He did not revisit his ideas and plans for new therapies or read any of the journals that were being published discussing experiments with brain tissue and how elimination of key areas of the brain could cure a patient of all psychoses…and perhaps all emotion as well.

No.

He did not think of these things.

As he lay in bed listening to the moans of patients trapped in diseased minds, he thought instead of Rose, singing to him. It seemed if he really focused his mind he could hear her singing even now. Her voice was as far away as memory, and as soft as a promise. As he drifted to sleep he thought, for a moment, that her song seemed to be coming from somewhere beneath him, directly under him. Perhaps straight from the Tunnels.

With this thought, and Rose’s song calling to him, he slept.

*

The woman watched the man sleep. His dark hair fell across his eyes and his chest rose and fell with each breath. He looked sad, even sleeping. She reached her hand out to touch him and gently as a whisper touched his brow. Even sleeping he looked different than the others. She drew her head back and studied him.

“Ama, no!”

The woman heard her name and withdrew, sinking into the night. She was not to touch this man. He was of the upper world. He was not a tunnel person. He would not understand her. She knew this. She felt it as a truth. And even as she followed the woman in the white dress down into the Tunnels, Ama knew without question that she would be back, and next time she would touch his lips.

TUNNEL VISION Chapter 3 "The Tunnels"

Chapter Three

The Tunnels

The Northern Michigan Insane Asylum features a great expanse of tunnels connecting the separate wards, Building 50 and many of the doctors’ residences. This allows for the seamless transportation of goods necessary to the running of the facility, ensuring that your family member will not be aggravated by anything unsightly. Additionally, the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum has separate wards for men, women, and those from higher paying members of our society. There are separate wards for those patients of lower classes who are supported by the estate. The segregation of wards and the underlying tunnel systems ensures that your family member will never be exposed to someone of a different class level or mix with those of more dangerous afflictions.

--Promotional Material for The Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1915

We have been notified that there has been a breakdown of the tunneling system. Several patients have gone missing from locked wards and have been located in the caverns of the facility. We assure the board that this matter has been dealt with efficiently and promptly. All escaped inmates have been found and reassigned. The rumors currently circulating in the Traverse City community are without validity. As you know, with the recent influx of patients, we are experiencing a shortage of beds and materials. We graciously request additional support in both remedial staff and in two to four more physicians so that we can ensure all patients are accounted for at all times. The issue of the tunnels has been addressed and is currently being mended.

--A letter to the Board of Trustees dated 1931

The next morning Kinney was up before Mallie Lyn Peters could knock on the door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” she began and then “Why! You’re an early riser, aren’t you? I stopped by the kitchen for some bread for you sir, if you want, and this time I remembered. I told that rascal Charlie—I mean—Mister Young to not disturb me and I had a purpose. Mr. Young said I, I’ve got…” Mallie’s hand went to her mouth again, a look of horror spreading its wings over her face. “Oh, sir. I clean forgot the bread. I went on so much about Mr. Young disturbing me from my purpose that I clean forgot that I meant to get you some bread! Would you like me to go back?”

“What I would like, Miss Peters,” he said, using her formal name to slow her down and draw her attention,

“What I would like is to be taken into the tunnels.”

Mallie did not breathe and the natural rose of her cheeks withered. “I’m not sure I understand, sir. Today you’re to be meeting with the board again.”

“I’ve had enough meetings. It is time for me to get to work. It is time for me to do the job that they brought me here to do and that is to tend to the distorted minds that are brought into this facility. Now if you would kindly take me to the tunnels, please.” He issued the ‘please’ as a command and Mallie Lyn understood it as such.

“The Tunnels,” she said softly. She said the phrase as if it were a name and Kinney understood that here it was. “They’re meant only to take us between buildings sir, when the weather is rough, or someone is very…ill…and needs to be taken swiftly to the infirmary, or of course when... There isn’t anyone down there for you. Your patients are housed in a separate facility and I can walk you across the courtyard if you would like to get there sooner.” Kinney studied Mallie’s face. So there were depths to her too, he thought. She appeared innocent and girlish and yet there was an element of steel to her. He wondered if, like a knife, she also had blade.

“You may take me to my office, but I should like to go via The Tunnels.” This time he called it by its name instead of saying the words as a descriptor.

“Very well,” Mallie said and curtsied, but the way she said the words made it very clear to Kinney that it was not at all very well. “But if you don’t mind, sir, it won’t be me taking you down there. It’s not…it’s not a place for someone like me.”

Kinney did not hear Harvey Biggart approach, but rather felt his shadow in the doorway. “If you’ll come with me, Doctor Kinney. I will show you the way.” Harvey stretched out his hand, as large (it seemed to Kinney) as a paddle, and Kinney took the first step out of his room and into the sunlight.

*

Elliott, I love you. I love you. I love you. Don’t look at me! Don’t! Take a step back, Elliott or I swear I’ll…

He did not hear Rose’s words as much as feel them radiating throughout his body as he stepped into The Tunnels. The system was accessed through a rather secret door in the lower levels of Building 50. Harvey explained that there were several such entrances (or exits) throughout the property, mostly camouflaged so that they blended in with the environment. He took a rusted key from his shirt pocket and opened the gate.

Kinney stepped into the darkness. It smelled, as he expected, of damp earth. But there was something else too. Something foul. Something beyond the remnants of refuse that they transported through the tunnels. And with that, Kinney thought, again of Rose. How near the end of her illness she had a similar scent. It was the scent of caged animals. A zoo. “I’ll lead the way,” Harvey said and Kinney nodded, following him.

The tunnel was wide and tall, as if a gigantic earthworm burrowed beneath and left a cavern in its wake. The walls were lined with brick and dripped with condensation. With each step Kinney took into the underbelly of the facility, he felt as if he were taking a step back in time, somehow impossibly taking a step closer to Rose. Love me again, she’d cried that final day, pleading, on her knees. And he had said no. Just one word. Just one word and it was as if he had unlocked the final door of her madness.

What was it about being here that brought her so very close to him? Her illness had begun simply enough. She’d always had a dreamy quality to her, but it was that very distance to her, as if she was seeing into another world just beyond his reach, that he had found so desperately attractive. She’d seemed to belong both of his world and a place where everything was brighter and more beautiful. She used to joke that she could hear music playing wherever she went and he had laughed at her, thinking she was talking with poetry. And then she’d begun to hear voices talking to her. Telling her to do things. He’d thought that by studying dementia praecox he’d easily be able to cure her. He had been wrong. There was the day he’d returned from the infirmary to find her standing at the kitchen sink, her hands bloodied and still holding the clumps of brown hair she’d ripped from her own scalp. “It’s the music, Elliott,” she’d said. “I’ve been trying to get it out.” At that moment he knew that she had slipped away from him and he had shut his heart to her. He thought he’d chosen a beauty to love for all eternity; she had transformed into a beast and had to be hidden away.

In this way, the tunnels reminded Kinney of his late wife. Not that they were twisted and dark and scary, though they were that, but he imagined if his wife now existed in another plane, it was not someplace magical, but rather someplace evil like these tunnels.

Harvey Biggart walked briskly in front of him, at first just a pace or two ahead, but soon stretching the space between them that if it were a rope, it could snap in two. Harvey walked deftly around puddles and cracked bricks, while Kinney’s ankle twisted and his feet seemed ill-prepared for this kind of footing. “Watch your step now, Doctor Kinney,” Harvey called to him, his words echoing. “We’re almost to your place.”

“Biggart, slow down!” Kinney called and Harvey paused, allowing him to catch up. He found that he was gulping for air, a waterless fish. “Could you. Explain about. The Tunnels. A bit please. Of the truth.” Kinney looked to him, expecting the man to give another version of the tour he’d already received, but this time he’d tell the truth. Truth that already Kinney suspected. He’d been given the sanitized tour of the facility. They were keeping things from him. Hiding patients from him. They’d cleaned thoroughly anticipating his arrival. Later, after he’d signed away his life to be employed by them, only then would he see the reality of the place. But Harvey did not give him a tour. He moved his head ever so slightly which Kinney deciphered as a ‘no’. And they resumed their walk through the belly of the asylum, Harvey steadily increasing speed until he was a bent shadow just out of reach.

At what point did Kinney begin to hear his name breathed to him from the walls? Surely there was a moment when there was silence, and then his name, but he did not realize when that moment happened. He was nearly running to keep up with the stooped figure ahead of him, listening to water drip, and the echo of their footsteps through the corridor. He was trying to place where exactly they were under the facility. Surely they’d passed Building 50 and the men’s ward. Perhaps they were inching under the women’s ward now. But at what point did the sound of his own desperate breathing change to the awareness that the walls were calling to him. Daahhhhkkkterrrrrrr Kinnnnnnnneeeeeey it breathed, soft, barely audible, as if the earth herself were sighing. And not just once, but his name became a loop upon itself, one syllable followed by its twin by its twin and its twin until his name became a horrible twisted sound of an echo turned against itself. He stopped in the tunnel, his heart beating so hard it seemed to want to careen from his chest. He tried to call out to Harvey, to make him stop, but he found he had no voice. He reached out to steady himself against the wall and touched not the wet, cold surface of stone, but the thick damp mass of a tangle of hair.

Random Blogness

Okay. Yes. I know I’m posting a blovel on Wednesdays….and shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t writing about an asylum in the 1930’s assuage my need to blog to the universe because I’m already churning out material? You’d think that would be true, but it’s not. (Say in Captain Kirk’s voice) I. Must. Blog!

*Currently looking around my living room because now that I’m blogging I realize I don’t actually have anything to blog about*

Random things then.

1.         Things with Biff Turlington are going quite well. So well, I’ve almost stopped wanting to break up with him every day. This has nothing to do with him, mind you, but with my own mind and that crazy control freak who lives inside my brain pulling random levers. There’s one lever she likes to pull called PANIC. Any time something is going well, she wraps her perfectly manicured hand (if I’m inventing someone to control my emotions, she’s going to be more put-together than I am) around the lever and braces for pulling. It’s like my whole body tenses every time things are going well, preparing for when they’re going to take a sharp turn into chaos. So far, I’m still braced for it.

2. Hanging out with my family for my nephew’s graduation party, my sister looked at me. “I like your cleavage,” she said. I nodded. “You should show it more often.”

“I know, I’m trying, but I have certain body issues.”

She looked at me and blinked. “That’s stupid. You’re beautiful…but I have to tell you…” she reached for my arm and knocked her finger on my sports watch. “THAT fucking thing is hideous. Take it off.”

“I can’t take it off.”

“Why?”

I didn’t know how to answer her. Because by NOT wearing the watch, I couldn’t randomly time things like how long I walk, how long in-between thinking about sandwiches and panic, or set several alarms to remind me of random things throughout the day. “I’ll have a white line from the sun,” I said, knowing surely this would end it.

She looked at me and blinked again. Damn her infernal blinking!! “Take the fucking thing off. You are not allowed to wear that hideous watch unless you are running or at band camp.”

I took the watch off.

3.         Random things I’ve said or almost said and then realized taken out of context, they sound ridiculous.

“I want to eat your pickle. I must eat your pickle! Can I have it? Your pickle? Just a little bit? Pleeeeaaase?”

“I like having a little man inside me every now and again.”

“That’s dawkward.” (I was trying to say either dorky or awkward, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate.)

4.         Tomorrow’s my birthday. I turn 29.

Only part of that is true.

Okay…I turn 37. 37!! I remember when I worked at the Beverley Hills Café in Miami, there were these brothers Cristian (pronounced “cris-tee-in”) and Felipe. They were well-muscled and seductive and had Spanish accents to die for. One was 35 and the other was 37. I thought they were absolutely ancient. (I was 24 at the time.) But one night Cristian kissed me. It was a kiss that changed my life. And ancient or not, it was an incredible kiss, in a car, under palm trees, in the heat so thick you could run your fingers through it. So. I guess if he was ancient at 37 and could kiss like that, and now I’m ancient…uh…Forgot where I was going with that. Now I just want to kiss. Where’s Biff?

5.         Biff tells me not to freak out and relax. I think this is good advice. I’m trying.

Gothic Blovel: Chapter Two -- Exploring

Chapter Two--Exploring

1952

Traverse City, Michigan

I am seven months along now and there is little I can do. My neighbor Katy Peck says I am expecting twin boys, but I just shake my head at her. It’s a girl. I know it is. I know it without even having to ask how.

Until now, my days have been filled with cleaning the house and cooking meals for us. In the summer months I can fresh preserves and pickles. I do not can cherries, of course, not when Ray works at the Traverse City Canning Factory. The palms of his hands are stained red, though we never mention it. He says he’ll never eat another cherry; that you’d have to kill him to get him to eat one. Sometimes in June when the cherries are ripening, I will cut them into little pieces and bake them into a chocolate cake. Ray eats two or more slices in a sitting.

Lately though I find that doing even the simple things is hard. My daughter is heavy. She pulls on the muscles of my stomach. Sometimes she flips around and jabs me. It’s the strangest thing to feel her flutter around, and something that only she and I share. During these times, I go for a walk to the beach. It’s just two blocks away and it seems to calm her. Or maybe it just calms me. At any rate, she quiets and we listen to the waves lap against the shore. I gently pull my dress up to my knees (if no one is looking) and wade in to the cool water.

It’s on the day that I find a Petoskey stone as big as my hand that I think of my mother. If you ask me, I will tell you my mother is Mallie Lyn Young and my father is Charlie Young and that I am the oldest of three, Irish girls. My sisters are as red headed as my parents. My hair is dark as a secret.

A Petoskey stone has a story to tell. It’s made of hundreds of tiny hexagons side by side, of coral long dead. Somehow, over the years, it transformed. It started as coral and became something else, something millions of years later I can hold in the palm of my hand. I am like a Petoskey stone: I started as someone else’s child and became Mallie and Charlie Young’s.

My mother did not want me to know, but she gave me the box anyway. You should know this, she said, and I could tell her how much it pained her to tell me the truth. She was afraid I would not love her. It only made me love her more.

Inside I found the papers that haunt me to this day, and it’s this I think of while trying to calm my own growing child.

I was born to parents Rose and Elliott Kinney in September, 1933. This would be enough for me to wonder, but it’s the second piece of paper that troubles me, and I have not been able to say a word of it to Ray. How do I tell him what I know? It is hard enough to say that I was adopted. Somehow it’s a shame on me. So how I could I tell him about the yellowed slip of paper? It’s a death certificate for Rose Margaret Kinney dated December 1930; and yet I hold my birth certificate dated September 1933 and Rose Margaret Kinney is listed as my mother. My real mother died three years before I was born. How is this possible? What does it mean?

Of course it isn’t possible…it isn’t. Who then was my mother?

I smooth my thumb over the surface of the stone and toss it as far as I can. I hope the bay swallows it whole and won’t release it again for another thousand years.

*

1932

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum

My Dearest Elliott,

You loved me once. Love me again. That’s all I ask of you.

Just try and do that and I promise, I promise, a hundred

times I promise that I will do better. I will be a better wife to you.

--A letter to Elliott Kinney, signed Rose

He dreamed of walking through a cherry orchard when in bloom. White blossoms laced with pink clung to the trees. Miles and miles all around him of green hills and cloudlike blossoms. The lake stretching out in front of him just a blue strip across the horizon. He could feel her reaching to him and he went to her, slowly, as if she would disappear like smoke if he approached too quickly. She did not. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled him close to his chest. He could feel her. He could honestly feel her. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of her dress, at the nape of her neck, tilted her head forward and lifted her dark hair so that her spine rose before him. Then, slowly, he lowered his lips and then he kissed the skin that lay exposed and vulnerable before him. “Love me again, Elliott,” she said and before he could stop himself, he said “No” nd let go of her hair.

“Good morning, sir, I do apologize for waking you and coming into your chambers and all, sir.” It was a young girl with curly red hair tucked haphazardly into a white bonnet, nineteen or so, and her hand rested against his shoulder, her bare hand touching the fabric of his shirt, burning with heat to his very skin. “I’m Mallie Lyn Peters, sir," she continued in her pronounced Irish accent. "I help with cleaning and such sir.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “For the doctors, sir, not for the others. There’s nurses and specialists who tend to them and I ain’t…”

Kinney lifted himself in bed, temporarily interrupting the girl. Her face blushed crimson. “Continue,” he said.

“I shouldn’t of woke you up sir, but Doctor Grooms is here and he’s ready to get you started and he said I mustn’t hesitate but to wake you up directly and I did too, only first I stopped in the kitchen to grab you a bit of bread and then I got to talking to one of the attendants and then well, I ate that piece of bread sir what with Charlie…I mean Mr. Young talking on and on and so and then I remembered that I needed to…”

Kinney yawned, none too discreetly. “Thank you, Mallie. If you could…”

“You want something to eat? I could go back to the kitchen.”

“I’d like to get dressed,” he said pointedly. The pink flush to her skin soon deepened to a positive burn.

“Course sir, excuse me sir. I’ll wait outside and then show you the way. It’s awful easy to get lost in here. Why I’ve heard about a woman once who…”

“Thank you, Mallie. That will be all.”

Mallie swallowed hard, curtsied, and then retreated out of his room.

Kinney stepped out of his bed gingerly, as if expecting there to be pain when he walked, the way, he was sure, a mermaid new to legs would expect and anticipate pain. There was none. He walked to the window, drew open the curtains and for the first time he could see the ground of the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum before him. It was beautiful. Simply beautiful. Like a dream itself. He wondered, briefly, what price they paid to keep up such beauty. In Doctor Kinney’s experience beauty was never without its opposite for long.

*

Mallie led Dr. Kinney through a vast network of winding corridors until he arrived, breathless, into a great open room with twenty or so wooden tables.  “We’re in one of the dining rooms, sir,” Mallie said.

Kinney looked around. Each table was set for four or more. There were tall, thin windows that reached from floor to ceiling. Sun didn’t so much as pour through the windows but somehow managed to illuminate the space from within. The floor was tiled and scrubbed clean. The effect was of an efficient hospital-like cafeteria, but it still managed to be somewhat homey. “Is there anything else I can get for you, Dr. Kinney?” Mallie asked, her Irish accent lilting. “If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to be on my way and back to my other duties before Doctor Grooms gets here. He doesn’t like to deal so much with the lesser support staff and I’d just as well like to get about my day, if you don’t mind.”

He studied her face for a moment. He’d begun his career as a medical doctor but had switched to psychiatry when his wife fell ill. He had trained himself to be sensitive to what the body said as well as how a person spoke. So much meaning clung not to what was said but to how it was voiced and sometimes, more importantly, the words held back. Mallie’s cheeks were flushed, which might have been a natural state for her. There was, however, something in the tautness of her smile and her eyes did not shine with humor but were, perhaps, dulled from a lack of it. This was a girl who, for whatever reason, was afraid.

“Certainly, Mallie. You are excused.”

She curtsied and said with relief, “Thank you, sir, kindly. If you need anything else, sir, do not hesitate to call for me. You may not always see me about, but I am sir, or someone is who knows where to find me. You have only to call my name.”

And then with a swishing of he skirts, she was gone.

Kinney walked to the window. The curtains were already tied back to allow for the sunlight and so all he had to do was to simply look outside. Funny, he thought, one would never guess that this was the home of the mentally deranged. One would guess, looking at the couples strolling arm in arm that this was some place of respite or a grand park, if it weren’t for the fact that many of the people walking were clothed in striped pajamas, their partners clothed in the white of the medical profession. And the couples, of course, were all of the same gender. There was no mixing of the sexes at the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum. Kinney knew from his research that men and women were housed in entirely separate complexes. There were also several cottages on the premises where doctors could reside if they chose. And except for the communal walking areas, the place was effectively segregated.

He wondered if the criminally insane were as effectively segregated. Surely there must be some place that they resided. It was, after all, for their care the he had been summoned, not for the care of simple depressives and drug addicts. No. Dr. Kinney’s specialty was for psychoses of a higher sort, and which he had dedicated his life and his scientific method into curing by any means possible.

“Good morning to you, Doctor Kinney,” said a deep, melodic voice. “Welcome to your new life.” The man, surely Dr. Grooms, spread his arms open wide and smiled. Kinney noted the smile, here too, did not reach his eyes.

*

In life, as things happen, they happen in a linear fashion. One thing follows the next. One foot goes in front of the other and then is followed again. And so the tour of the facilities and grounds did occur in a linear way. Kinney followed Dr. Grooms and listened to him and nodded, and noticed the way their shoes echoed on the spotless floors, and how sunlight was fierce in its intensity. He nodded to inmates and did his best not to immediately notice they were damaged. He saw the men’s wing and the women’s. The dining hall. The medical ward. He was brought to an office and given a coat to wear and shown how to fill out forms. Everything was precise and orderly.

Why then, when at dinner, did he remember the day not as in one moment after the next, or one thing happening after another, but as an impression? As a whole? It was as if the day and all the moments in between had melded together and formed some kind of painting in his mind. There were the cows the patients milked. And there were the rows of beds they slept in. And there was the sunlight. The unforgiving sunlight and then…there were the shadows and the eyes, and the pale skin and taut faces looking at him, hiding from him. And there was the laughter and the screams in the distance, although he only saw patients who walked and smiled happily. And at dinner time as he sat with the board and tried to cut his steak, it was not the rooms or the grounds or even the patients of the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum that he thought of at all. No. He thought of the tunnels that connected everything and inched beneath the surface.

“No need to tour that area, Dr. Kinney,” Dr. Grooms had said with a hint of ice in his voice. “That is for the unseemly things, as we like to say. The transportation of refuse and occasionally of those patients who finally surrender their lives to an illness we cannot cure.”

“But where are the others?” Kinney asked. “Where are the ones I was brought her to treat? Surely they are not strolling the grounds, whistling or milking cows of all things.”

“It is as I said,” Dr. Grooms said evenly. “The tunnels are for refuse. You will see it in good time, but today, today let us focus on all the pleasantries our facility offers.”

Kinney chewed his beef and thought how he too was guilty of hiding something that had once been beautiful and had become so unseemly.

COMING NEXT WEEK: Dr. Kinney in The Tunnels and a strange vision.

BLOVEL--CH 1 Cont'd

Chapter One Contiued

Dr. Kinney Arrives--Building 50

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected upon his arrival. Perhaps to enter the great facility alone and in solitude. He imagined he would call out for assistance, hear his words echo along the corridors. At after 9PM in the evening on a Tuesday he certainly did not expect to be greeted by two rows of nurses and orderlies, dressed in bright white, men in pants and collared shirts, the women in white dresses with white aprons and white hats. He did not expect to walk through the aisle they made for him and certainly had not anticipated the applause. Two men stood at the end of the line, one dressed in a dark suit, the other in dark working clothes. He expected the gentleman would be one of the board members who had hired him to assist Doctor Christopher Grooms, and Kinney was not disappointed. This, at least, fit with his expectations.

The thin gentleman with spectacles reached out to grab his hand and the applause abruptly quieted. “Doctor Kinney, a pleasure! A pleasure! Do come in.” His handshake was warm, firm, and sustained. “I am Mr. Harrison, Edward Harrison, and this is Mr. Biggart.” Mr. Harrison dropped his hand and it was promptly captured in the meaty embrace of Mr. Biggart.

“Name’s Harvey,” Mr. Biggart said. His palm was cool and moist and once the handshake was over, Kinney discreetly wiped his palm against the fabric of his coat. “I’m in charge of the facility management.”

“And I’m the president of the board,” added Mr. Harrison. “I do apologize that the rest of the board is not here to meet you but that will change in due time. In due time. Come along now. I’ll have someone carry your bags to your room.” He motioned and the precise white lines of nurses and orderlies dispersed, as silently as snow falling.  “We have you stationed in Building Fifty for the time being and then will move you to one of the cottages on our site. Of course, should you choose, you may want to purchase a home near the waters. Traverse City is beautiful. That is, of course, if you stay.” Mr. Harrison looked at Kinney as if expecting a response.

“Ah,” he said.

“Very good then, very good. To your room and then we shall reconvene for dinner and a tour if that is all right with you.”

Kinney hesitated to pull his pocket watch out. The weight of his travelling from Detroit played heavily on him. Mr. Harrison adjusted his spectacles and then winked. “Of course, perhaps you prefer a little solitude tonight. I will show you to your room and we can reconvene for breakfast and a tour. At that point, I can turn you over to Doctor Grooms and the support team. Will that be too your liking?”

Kinney offered a smile thinned by fatigue but heavy with gratitude.

“To your room then!”

Kinney followed Edward Harrison up the ornate staircase and down three or more corridors. “You’ll learn all this in time,” Mr. Harrison said over his shoulder as he quickly navigated the labyrinth. “Ah. And here we are.” He stopped in front of a door labeled DR. E. KINNEY, withdrew a skeleton key and opened the door. The room was expansive, with an ornate bed and his bags already waiting with him, dripping slightly with rain.

“How on earth…” Kinney started.

“Magic,” Mr. Harrison said soberly. “In other words, Harvey Biggart. He’s a master at coming and going as is most of the support staff. They move around like whispers. It’s really quite astounding. All so that we do not disturb the graceful minds of our patients. And on that note, I will leave you to your solitude.” He adjusted his spectacles one more time, turned and was gone.

And with that, Doctor Elliott Kinney entered his room and was alone. Of course, he had been entirely alone for two years now, and though he appreciated the quiet he found no comfort that night in his solitude—not when the presence of Rose was almost so palpable that he could smell the hint of her perfume lingering in the air.

Kinney sat on the bed. He tried not to breathe too deeply. When sleep finally took him, it did not soothe him. Even though this was a new place, a new start, it seemed his wife had followed him again, even into the deepest of shadows; and she was with him still.

Gothic Blovel -- Ch 1--The Doctor Arrives

Northern Michigan Insane Asylum features sprawling green hills and landscaping as relaxing as it is beautiful. Your loved one will be as well tended as our gardens. The asylum follows the Kirkbride Plan in which patients are treated with kindness, comfort and pleasure. Indeed, restraints are considered barbaric. A chaotic mind must have peace and beauty in which to flourish, and a place of safety to do work. Patients at the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum will be comforted by music, gardening, and the great gentle beauty of Nature herself.

--Promotional Material for The Northern Michigan Insane Asylum, 1915

The Board of Directors at the Northern Michigan Insane Asylum request additional funding to support not only its current residents, but also to expand the program. While we follow the Kirkbride Plan of treating all patients with kindness, comfort and pleasure, there are certain minds that are so badly fractured they need additional care. The Northern Michigan Insane Asylum features a system of tunnels connecting the more than 4 acres of facilities. This allows for the transfer of unsightly goods such as refuse, as well as maintenance issues to the facility. Additionally, there is ample space located in the basement of the facility for those members of our society who are too disturbed to participate in the outside world. They receive kindness, understanding and the best scientific practices possible. Please consider our request for additional support…

--Grant request for funding to the State of Michigan, 1920

CHAPTER ONE

THE DOCTOR ARRIVES

1932

Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane

“Course it’s raining, now,” Bill Pepperidge said, nodding to the windshield as the wiper dragged across it. Little good the wiper did in the rain, and Dr. Elliott Kinney hoped the old grounds man knew the way without benefit of being able to actually see through the downpour. The rain came in heavy sheets, bowing maple trees forward. He tried to get a sense of the grounds and the much-heralded flower and vegetable gardens, but everything was rain and dark and shadows. He felt the truck twist and turn on the road and silently assured himself that he would not let his stomach react.

“Sorry about that, Doctor,” Bill said after the truck splashed through a large pothole. Kinney tried to calm his mind. If he didn’t fall through one of the rust holes in the floor, surely the bumping of the Model A pickup would rattle his brain, perhaps so much they he would have to be admitted as a patient instead of its newest doctor. Bill continued, “Now I know you can’t see it now so you’ll have to take my word for it, but when the sun is shining and it’s coming through those maples, you’d swear the trees were on fire or something. In a good way, of course. Like a beautiful kind of…” He paused here and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Magic,” he said with a firm nod, as if he’d decided that were just the word.

He made a sharp turn, the muscles in his thin arms flexing.

The truck shifted and bounced and Dr. Elliott Kinney leaned against the window certain he was going to fall out.  If he had been a praying man, he would have whispered one then. He did not whisper.

“Beauty is important here, you know,” the grounds man continued.

Dr. Kinney nodded though he doubted the old man could see him, and he was not surprised when the old man continued talking. “Course you probably know of Kirkbride’s ideas that insane people need beauty and music and all that sort. You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend pruning bushes and planting blubs. Not complaining of course. Glad to have a job, especially with things they way they are. Beauty though, I don’t know. You one of them kind of doctors? You believe that they can be healed?”

“It’s not a matter of belief,” Kinney said.

“Exactly! I say toss ‘em in the place and lock the doors. Course they let them walk the grounds and pick flowers and such and I guess they do all right. That’s mostly for show though. The real crazy ones are kept elsewheres.” With that, Bill Pepperidge slammed the truck into park. “We’re here,” he said with a grin. “Building Fifty.” He nodded at the expansive building they were parked in front of which had, it seemed, been born from the rain and shadows and would surely fade when morning came. “Hope you’re ready for this.”

Dr. Elliott Kinney nodded once, opened the truck door and then braced himself for the onslaught. There was a hint of ice in the drops and the rain was fierce and cold and cut at his skin and made him feel, briefly, as if somehow he were still alive.

He ran to the doors and though he could hear the grounds man calling after him, the meaning of the words was lost in the rain.

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.

Cast your vote!

Tell others to cast theirs.

You can tweet me, FB me, or leave me a comment here. Hope you like the ideas, and thanks for playing along.

I'm Going to Write a Blovel and Need Your Help

You know, I’ve been searching for blog topics. I could keep blogging about my life, but I’m a little tired of me and I need a break. So I posted on FaceBook that I was thinking of what to write and Dana H. gave me a great idea.

Two years ago, I posted “Blunder Woman” as a blovel. A blog novel, if you will. I wrote tiny snippets and posted them online…and now that blovel is a honest to god book—or will be on July 11^th. And since it’s summer and I don’t want to blog about myself entirely, I thought, why don’t I blovel again?

Only this time, I’d like a little help from you.

Here’s my idea. I want to create a story written with readers in mind. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’d like to try. I’ll ask questions, you give me input, and I’ll write. Whatever it ends up being, it will probably be funny, or at least have funny elements to it. There will be quirky characters, and maybe a saucy scene every now and then.

So here’s my first question:

What kind of serial book would keep you coming back?

Do you want another romantic comedy, suspense, sci-fi? Do you want a murder mystery? Vampires? Zombies? Quirky every day women? Divorced? Singles? Do you want to read the further misadventures of Blunder Woman, or would you like to meet some new characters? Just, you know, no Westerns. By god, no westerns.

Tell me what you want. The first step is the genre, or type of blovel. Then I’ll come up with some basic ideas and let you choose.

So. Let’s get started. Tell me what you want to read, and I’ll write it.

And tell your friends. The more input, the more possibilities.

Yeah?

Perfection is Creepy AKA Why I'm Loving my Curves

Yes. It’s official. I’m addicted to blogging. I’m trying to make it take the place of chocolate because if my hips get much bigger, I’m going to feel like I should start birthin’ again.

I honestly don’t know how to transition from that sentence. The only way to do it is awkwardly…

Sooooo….I’ve been thinking about bodies. Yep. Bodies. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about my own body. I’m turning 37 this month (turning, the way that milk curdles) and I’m trying to be okay with that. For the most part I am. I’ve been struggling with my weight though. I can blame my broken foot and that running hurts now, but I also have to blame ice cream, and chips, and delicious sandwiches. But then I wonder, okay, at almost 37, I’m still in pretty good shape. I’m a size 10 and that’s respectable. I have curves. Lots of curves. But they’re in the right places. So what am I complaining about?

Then the next question is “When am I going to let myself be happy with who I am?” How many books do I write? How many accolades do I need before I allow myself to say, look, you’re who you are, curves and all, and it’s okay.

So I’ve been staring at bodies. Young bodies. Old. Chubby ones. Lean ones. Hard ones. Soft ones. And it occurs to me that not one person has a perfect body. And if you see a picture of a perfect body, it’s been airbrushed. We are not perfect, people. Perfection is creepy.

I’ll tell you a secret about my body. Very possibly this will fall under the TMI heading. If you’re a chick, you’ll probably get it. You might even get it if you’re a dude. But my body has changed. A lot. I used to have these tiny little perky breasts. Breasts so firm you could bounce quarters from them. And I did. Breasts so pert, you couldn’t tuck a pencil under them. I can now hold a stapler. My nipples have expanded. That’s right. NIPPLES. I have a soft tummy. I have tiny stretch marks on my thighs. I have a recurring hair on my chin that if I don’t pluck, threatens to look like the root of an orchid. I dye my hair. If I don’t suck in, I could pass for being sorta pregnant.

This is the truth. While I’m not entirely okay with this, I’m trying. I’ve been looking at myself a lot lately. Sometimes, I even like what I see. If I stare long enough, I’ll also see that I look womanly. I look sexy. I have eyes so blue I can sometimes feel them flash. And even though my body is changing, my spirit isn’t. Actually, it is. But it’s getting better. I’m more passionate with age. I’m more understanding. I have good legs. By god, I’m a bottle of wine!

Bad metaphor, because it might sound like an invitation for someone to drink me.

On second thought, that’s a good metaphor.

What I’m saying here, people, is that I’m flawed. Deeply flawed. And you know…no one else is flawed in exactly the way I am. And there’s something beautiful about that.

And you, whoever you are reading this, I bet you’re all kind of beautiful too in your own delicious weirdness.

This is what age does to a woman. It makes her love herself. Let me rephrase that. It makes me love who I am, curves, hair, healing foot and all.