Enough! Thirty Stories of Fielding Life’s Little Curve Balls
Literary Wanderlust
It will all be over in a week. That was the affirmation Abigail had gone to bed with every night toward the end of the first month of Rosemary’s so-called “visit.” Now, five weeks later, Rosemary and Zack were still around, leaving trails of Frito crumbs and sticky drops of soda pop leading from the kitchen through the tiny living room and into the library across the hall where the sleeper sofa and the rent-a-cot had transformed a hitherto serene environment that had once been Abigail’s refuge into a noisy, messy pigsty.--Enough
I hear the back door open, and a man emerges from the shadows at the foot of our house. Hitching up his trousers, he buckles his belt and walks up the alley to the street….I compose a little poem in my head. It goes: “Alley cat, alley cat. Where you at. You scarin’ my brother. You like doin’ that? You makin’ me mad, Mr. Alley Cat. So you better watch out. ’Less you wearin’ a hat.”--Alley Cat
Portia learns another lesson: She is here to take the rap.
“You signed off on this, didn’t you” a higher-up accuses.
“Yes.”
“How could you possibly think it was appropriate?”
“Sorry.” She hangs her head when she says this, not so much to indicate regret as to hide anger. She can’t help wondering why it is inappropriate and why some people seem to be able to judge appropriateness so much more easily than she can.--Department of Purgatory
It is only then that I feel it might be possible to rise from my sleepless bed and cross the floor to the window, hoping I might hear an owl hooting in the distance or that I might see a clear sky, knowing there won’t be nearly as many stars as I grew up with, but perhaps the Big Dipper? Orion? That’s when I remember running across the back yard and into the orchard, with you finally catching me and the two of us collapsing onto a bed of sun-kissed grass, bathed in dappled moonlight and surrounded by the scent of apples, our laughter stifled by desire, your hand creeping up beneath my skirt.--Noise
In fact, when she thought about it, airline crashes were rare. She’d clearly overreacted to the one that had eventually sent her rushing into the arms of a candy maker who, like some blind dates she’d had in the past, was certainly sweet but truly boring.
What if there was another crash?
Without her there, they’d send a form letter—or worse, provide a list of victims’ names. The customer rep, a temp with no empathy, would mouth words scripted by the airline’s legal counsel. That wasn’t how you dealt with the recently bereaved.--Break It Gently
“Do you know what happens when I call them for tech support?” she said. “I get the same recorded message: ‘I’m sorry, there seem to be two accounts listed at this number’ Then I have to give them my PIN before they can access my account” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think they’d clean up their own records, considering they’re the ones who recycled the phone number.”--How Josie’s Problem Got Solved
Sometimes on dark and windy nights, the terror spills over the doorsill and slithers across the yard to our bedroom windows, unseen, waiting for the right moment to scratch the windowpanes or bang the screen door. On nights like those, I can’t help freezing as I lie there, holding my breath as long as I can, my heart pounding loud enough for the terror to know I’m here, alive, waiting to be devoured. I’m too old to cry like a baby. Anyway, my mouth is too dry. And I forget all about admitting I’m scared, not that I believe it will help.--Memories of the Shed
The person I can’t help looking for is Julia although I know where she is. It still breaks my heart. Julia’s summer “salon” included a stream of friends….We would start out on the beach in the morning and, by sundown, move back to the house that Julia rented year-round from a man named Peck.
Julia swore he was the world’s greatest landlord. Peck gave her bargain-basement rates during the off season, fixed the misbehaving appliances, removed dead squirrels from the attic, even filled the tank on her gas grill….Word came, not from Peck (whose reputation among us plummeted when we learned he’d lacked the grace to tell her himself), but via a friend of Julia’s who happened to be Peck’s agent. “He wants to sell the place,” she told Julia. “You need to move out by the end of October.”--The Greatest Landlord on Earth
Reviews
“Caroline Taylor has compiled some of the best of her short stories into one captivating, memorable volume.”--Colorado Book Review
“…taut, pointed, and consistently intriguing—not to mention potent reminders of the dramatic arcs that shape even the most ordinary lives.”--Louis Bayard, author of A Pale Blue Eye and Mr. Timothy
Literary Wanderlust
It will all be over in a week. That was the affirmation Abigail had gone to bed with every night toward the end of the first month of Rosemary’s so-called “visit.” Now, five weeks later, Rosemary and Zack were still around, leaving trails of Frito crumbs and sticky drops of soda pop leading from the kitchen through the tiny living room and into the library across the hall where the sleeper sofa and the rent-a-cot had transformed a hitherto serene environment that had once been Abigail’s refuge into a noisy, messy pigsty.--Enough
I hear the back door open, and a man emerges from the shadows at the foot of our house. Hitching up his trousers, he buckles his belt and walks up the alley to the street….I compose a little poem in my head. It goes: “Alley cat, alley cat. Where you at. You scarin’ my brother. You like doin’ that? You makin’ me mad, Mr. Alley Cat. So you better watch out. ’Less you wearin’ a hat.”--Alley Cat
Portia learns another lesson: She is here to take the rap.
“You signed off on this, didn’t you” a higher-up accuses.
“Yes.”
“How could you possibly think it was appropriate?”
“Sorry.” She hangs her head when she says this, not so much to indicate regret as to hide anger. She can’t help wondering why it is inappropriate and why some people seem to be able to judge appropriateness so much more easily than she can.--Department of Purgatory
It is only then that I feel it might be possible to rise from my sleepless bed and cross the floor to the window, hoping I might hear an owl hooting in the distance or that I might see a clear sky, knowing there won’t be nearly as many stars as I grew up with, but perhaps the Big Dipper? Orion? That’s when I remember running across the back yard and into the orchard, with you finally catching me and the two of us collapsing onto a bed of sun-kissed grass, bathed in dappled moonlight and surrounded by the scent of apples, our laughter stifled by desire, your hand creeping up beneath my skirt.--Noise
In fact, when she thought about it, airline crashes were rare. She’d clearly overreacted to the one that had eventually sent her rushing into the arms of a candy maker who, like some blind dates she’d had in the past, was certainly sweet but truly boring.
What if there was another crash?
Without her there, they’d send a form letter—or worse, provide a list of victims’ names. The customer rep, a temp with no empathy, would mouth words scripted by the airline’s legal counsel. That wasn’t how you dealt with the recently bereaved.--Break It Gently
“Do you know what happens when I call them for tech support?” she said. “I get the same recorded message: ‘I’m sorry, there seem to be two accounts listed at this number’ Then I have to give them my PIN before they can access my account” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think they’d clean up their own records, considering they’re the ones who recycled the phone number.”--How Josie’s Problem Got Solved
Sometimes on dark and windy nights, the terror spills over the doorsill and slithers across the yard to our bedroom windows, unseen, waiting for the right moment to scratch the windowpanes or bang the screen door. On nights like those, I can’t help freezing as I lie there, holding my breath as long as I can, my heart pounding loud enough for the terror to know I’m here, alive, waiting to be devoured. I’m too old to cry like a baby. Anyway, my mouth is too dry. And I forget all about admitting I’m scared, not that I believe it will help.--Memories of the Shed
The person I can’t help looking for is Julia although I know where she is. It still breaks my heart. Julia’s summer “salon” included a stream of friends….We would start out on the beach in the morning and, by sundown, move back to the house that Julia rented year-round from a man named Peck.
Julia swore he was the world’s greatest landlord. Peck gave her bargain-basement rates during the off season, fixed the misbehaving appliances, removed dead squirrels from the attic, even filled the tank on her gas grill….Word came, not from Peck (whose reputation among us plummeted when we learned he’d lacked the grace to tell her himself), but via a friend of Julia’s who happened to be Peck’s agent. “He wants to sell the place,” she told Julia. “You need to move out by the end of October.”--The Greatest Landlord on Earth
Reviews
“Caroline Taylor has compiled some of the best of her short stories into one captivating, memorable volume.”--Colorado Book Review
“…taut, pointed, and consistently intriguing—not to mention potent reminders of the dramatic arcs that shape even the most ordinary lives.”--Louis Bayard, author of A Pale Blue Eye and Mr. Timothy