This is seriously infuriating.

I wanted to work on London Calling today. Instead, two hours behind on packing and errands, no shower yet, forget the hair colour and the manicure I wanted to get done for the trip, need to come back and do more on Cruel Sister instead....

GAH.

Taking a break from Cruel Sister to drabble.

Overlay

ab•re•ac•tion: release of emotional tension through recalling a repressed traumatic experience.

Is love traumatic? I don't know. It was certainly an experience, and emotional tension, well, now. I do know that the "release" part of this definition is horseshit. I've released nothing.

Maybe I need a different word, like Lillian Hellman's pentimento: peeling away top layer to reveal what's beneath. Old paint, pictures that scar the heart.

Or maybe there's a word I don't know, definition: past and present converge, until one is as vital and real as the other.

This is where I live. And the present?

Masks nothing.

I was inspired by this week's drabble topic, though it didn't come out at anywhere near 100 words. Since it's been so long since I wrote anything for fun, I thought I'd post it anyway.

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“Want a candy bar?”

“What do I have to do?”

“Come sell Christmas cards with me.”

“Okay.”

The lady who comes to the door is old, with skin as white as her hair. She sees two dusty blond children she doesn’t know. I smile at her and wave.

“Hi.”

“Hello. May I help you?”

“Ma’am, I’m selling Christmas cards, and I wondered if we could take a little bit of your time, maybe you’d like to look at them?”

She looks at him and back at me again. I smile again, a gap-toothed, freckle-faced grin that grows bigger as she smiles back, just like always.

“Well, sure. Of course.” She swings the door wider and invites us into a musty cave of orange and brown-patterned furniture, stiff and uncomfortable. She stops beside the entrance to the kitchen as we sit gingerly on the edge of the couch. "Would you children like a drink?”

“Oh, yes, please!”

He kicks me in the shins where she can’t see and my smile wobbles. He pastes his smile back on just as she turns back to ask us what we’ll have. I ask for water, confused by the kick and not knowing what to ask for. I don’t know what other grown-ups have in their refrigerators to drink. He tells the lady he doesn’t need anything, opens his book to show her the Christmas cards, pointing out the particularly cozy scenes, the religious verses.

“Well, I suppose…” She looks up at me and I smile again, wondering where to put my glass. The water’s warm and tastes of metal.

She looks back at the book and points with one wrinkled finger, “There, that one.” I look down at the scene she’s chosen, it seems dark, an old church in blue snow with an alien red glow coming from the windows. “Joy to the World” is pressed into the paper in gold. “One box, please.”

“Thank you, ma’am. That will be $2.00.”

“Oh, of course, let me just get my pocketbook.” She rises and leaves the room and he turns and looks at me with a sneer.

“You could have gotten her to buy two. I told you to smile.”

I shrug a little. “I did smile. The water’s warm.”

I go through the arch behind the sofa and put my glass on the faded linoleum counter. She comes back so I turn around again. He changes when he hears her foosteps; innocent smiling boy face turns up to the lady as she brings him the money and counts the coins into his outstretched hand.

On the steps I breathe deep of the fresh evening air. "Candy?”

“Later. I need to sell at least 10 more boxes of these first.”

Hoo, boy. Spirit of the season...?

Every time Tep posts the drabble topic, I try to come up with something to write, but inspiration hasn't struck very often. When it did only drivel came out. With this one, though, the memory floated up as soon as I thought of masks.

I didn't mean to kill the thread, though. Edited because I can't seem to type properly tonight.

Don't worry, Deena. I've got more idea for masks. My drive up to Minneapolis gave me some wonderful ideas. If I still remember them tomorrow after I recover from the chocolate martini.

Hey, all, I never write period, pretty much, but this story coming up could be my "I Only Have Eyes For You" So I don't know how to get this kind of info... What might a Southern woman in the mid-fifties wear that would make people around think she's Not Quite A Nice Girl? Not a hooker, just, like...forward? Bright lipstick, too much perfume, pants in public? She's a city woman, if that helps.

A drabble for the mask theme:

I’m a body on a gurney, waiting my turn in the hall outside a busy triage.

The usual fictions don’t apply here. I’m below the masks now- scraped down to essentials- literally without a leg to stand on.

Nobody ever died of patellar arrest, and my cell phone signal won’t connect. Too busy to help me replace my shattered mask.

So me and my blown out tendon commune with the ice pack that’s turned into warmish slush. I whisper prayers and promises and wonder is the day that the fears I’ve hidden behind my stylish facade wardrobe bloom into undeniable flesh.

What might a Southern woman in the mid-fifties wear that would make people around think she's Not Quite A Nice Girl? Not a hooker, just, like...forward? Bright lipstick, too much perfume, pants in public? She's a city woman, if that helps.

I just checked with my mom, who was in high school in the 50s -- she said her recollection, for both teens and grown-ups, was that there was, unsurprisingly, lots and lots and LOTS of conformity, and so there wouldn't be much visually to give you a clue. It was all pretty subtle. A sweater or skirt just a bit too tight. Hair not just dyed blonde, but bleached. For high school girls, chewing gum in class and smoking anywhere on school grounds. And attitude -- not appearing to seek everyone else's approval, or even care about it one way or the other.

But mostly, my mom said, because everyone looked and dressed so much alike, it was gossip. Fast women got smugly gossiped about by the guys who nailed them (or claimed to have), who let their friends and younger brothers in on it, who told their sisters and moms, who whispered behind their hands whenever She walked by, whether or not the guy who started it was telling anything resembling the truth.

So some jerkwad you said "No, thanks," to, could make up this whole fantasy world and wreck *your* life just cause he felt like it? D'oh. Stupid double standard. (Not that that will happen in my story...that character *has* actually done a bit of carrying-on as I envision her, but I guess that is why older women tell me so often that my mouth will get me in trouble.)