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Deborah J. Brasket

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Deborah J. Brasket

Tag Archives: Short Story Month

“Looking for Bobby,” or Losing & Finding Ourselves

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by deborahbrasket in Fiction, My Writing, Short Story, Writing

≈ 19 Comments

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"Looking for Bobby", Deborah J. Brasket, fiction, identity, literary fiction, short fiction, short stories, Short Story Month

Ismael_Nery_-_Nu_no_Cabide,_c__1927 Wiki CommonsMay is short story month, and in celebration I’m posting a short story I wrote years ago and published in an online journal, Bareback Lit. Unfortunately, the story can no longer be read on that site.

It’s a strange little story that plays with how we identify ourselves and each other, and how we lose and find ourselves in those identities. It’s not a story to “enjoy,” but I hope you find it interesting.

LOOKING FOR BOBBY

By Deborah J. Brasket

Bobby is bad. Just turned seventeen, he’s big and mean with hands the size of basketballs. Not that he plays basketball. He likes the clean, straight edge of a razor or knife better.

Bobby is loose. His long sharp bones seem to hang in his tight skin; and when he walks, he dances.

Now he runs. Behind him the drugstore, the cop, growing smaller and smaller. And the sun, the morning sun, soft on his back. Before him races his long, clean shadow, his sharp legs slicing through the sidewalk like knives through butter. He smiles at the image, then turns, darts down an alley. With a quick glance behind him, he spreads long, powerful hands on the top of a wall and scrambles over. Dropping lightly, he pauses, crouched and coiled. His small dark eyes sweep up and swallow the neat back yard, the little house before him. The screen door gapes open like a black hole and he springs for it, entering. He jerks the door close behind him.

“Out boys! I told you kids to stay outside for awhile!”

The house is dark and steeped with strange, myster­ious odors. Bobby hesitates, his breath big as watermelons and hard to swallow. A taste like blood. Soon his hard, dark pupils grow soft and fat with the darkness absorbed. All around him rush shapes, objects, unfamiliar. Bobby jumps.

“Greg! You hear me? I mean it now. Just git on outside!”

Slowly, stealthily, Bobby approaches the open doorway and the voice behind it. He places his hand on his hip pocket, feels the hard shaft within, and then swings forward to fill the doorway.

The room is draped against the light. Only the glow of the TV and the woman’s pale skin can be seen. She sits curled in the corner of the couch, plumped up like a big pillow, one bare leg tucked childishly beneath her. Bobby grins.

The woman glances up, annoyed. Her round eyes grow rounder as she takes him in. “Where’s Greg?”

“I dunno no Greg. You just sit quiet little mama and you won’t get hurt.”

“Me sit quiet? That’s a laugh! You’re the one making all the noise!” Her plump legs unfold and she pads toward the TV, turns the volume up. “Sorry, but I’ve been waiting all morning to watch this. Go ahead and sit down though. It won’t be long.” She smiles, curls up into a ball again on the couch.

Bobby flicks a wet tongue over his lips. Smart ass, he thinks. He strolls over to the TV and yanks the plug from its socket. Now there’s no light but hers.

“Well, that’s a fine howdy-do! Guess I do watch too much TV, though. That’s what my husband says anyway. Thinks I spend all day parked in front of the tube. As if I had the time! But those soaps. You watch them once and you’re hooked. All those lives running out every which way. And you got to ask yourself–how will it all end? You never can tell which way a life will turn, can you?”

She sits now on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, her wide pale face caught between the palms of her hands like a moon among clouds, watching him as he stands there with the plug in his hand.

“It’s all right now. You can sit down. I won’t bite or anything.” She winks. “I can see you need to rest a spell. How ‘bout a Coke?”

Bobby flings the cord away and springs to a crouch, whipping his knife out in an instant where it lays now in his hand like a living thing.

“Who you think you talkin’ to, woman?” he says, eyes narrowed to slits. “You see this here?” He turns the blade so that it catches a stray beam of light, making it dance in his hand. “This here’s my own special baby. My very fine and lovin’ lady. She do anything for me. She like nothing better than to decorate little ladies like yourself. So you sit there real quiet-like and don’t get her riled none, hear?” Bobby’s feet move, restless, beneath him. The knife feels like a fish, cold and slippery, in his hand. And this woman like a deep, round pool.

The woman gives a startled little laugh. “My! You’re quick-like, aren’t you! You remind me of my brother. He was wild like that and all. Always springing out at a body! And look what’s come of him!”

Bobby snorts. “Lady, I may be a number of things, but I promise you this, I ain’t nowhere near like your brother!”

“Why sure you are! Look at you. You have his mouth—— corners all droopy, like his smile fell down, I use to tell him. He never did like to hear me say that. No sense of humor. You don’t want to turn out like him, though.”

“That a fact?” Bobby says. “So? Just what happened to this all-bad bro’ of yours?” he demands, curious.

“0-h-h-h, you wouldn’t want to know,” she assures him, shaking her head slowly, her round eyes grip­ping his and never leaving his face.

Bobby’s knife slips from the light as he feels the room moving back and forth beneath him. He gives his head a shake as if to free it. With an effort he lifts his knife.

“You one crazy woman, you know that? Why don’t you shut that fat face awhile. In a little bit, I’m gone, and you ain’t never gonna know I was here at all. See?”

“Oh no you don’t!” she says firmly, rising. “You can’t stay here one minute more with that knife in your hand. Heaven’s! You’re not that much like my brother! The mouth maybe, and the funny way with your feet like you’re going to fall flat on your face, and your eyes. . . maybe. But no,” she adds decisively and strides past him toward the front door. “This won’t do at all. I have two little boys to think about. Why, if they should come home now and see you here like this . . . why, I don’t know what they’d think! It’s bad enough on TV. But in their own home?”

She opens the door, holding it for him. The light on the lawn is dazzling, rising in waves of green. The sidewalk lays across it like a white-hot poker.

“Go on, now. Go home where you belong. Take a nice long nap. You’ll feel lots better.” Bobby steps out into the light and shakes himself free from the cloying darkness.

“Git, now!” she shoos him away with the back of her hand. “And for heaven’s sake, put that knife away! Remember what I told you about my brother!”

Bobby shoots away from her touch like a bullet.

The noon sun is hot and intense upon Bobby’s head as he slows to a walk. He studies his shadow laying in a fat, round puddle at his feet, fishes it for lost images of himself. That crazy broad! He tries to laugh but can’t quite manage yet, can’t quite figure out how she failed to know him. But he ima­gines how he’ll hoot when he tells the others. Tells them how this crazy fat lady mistook him for her brother, tried to sit him down and feed him hot chicken soup and cookies for lunch. They’ll get a kick out of that one! For they know him well. Even the young ones know all about ol’ Bobby and his dancing, blinking blade!

He feels better now and begins to run, his knife reaching out before him. He feels his blood pumping through his veins, pumping so fine and fast it would like to cut loose without him.

He’s almost to the corner when he hears a sound behind him.

“Freeze! Hold it right there!”

Bobby grins. At least the Man knows him. He stops and turns. The sun dancing on his knife blade seems to leap from his hand like a fish.

Slowly Bobby slips into the pool lying like a shadow at his feet. The splash is the sound of gun fire. Cool, cloy­ing arms reach up to grab him, pull him under. He breaks loose, struggling for the surface, for the light, for some forgotten image.

Lying in his own dark puddle, Bobby looks up to see the fat sun wink. And close its eye on him forever.

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“When Things Go Missing,” Piecing the Puzzle Together

05 Sunday May 2013

Posted by deborahbrasket in Addiction, Fiction, My Writing, Short Story, Writing

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Addiction, Families, fiction, Online Writing, Relationships, short story, Short Story Month, writing

ReadingShort stories are getting a lot of love lately. May has been proclaimed National Short Story Month. Others have dubbed 2013 as the “Year of the Short Story”. Either way, for those who write short stories or love to read them, this is a reason to celebrate.

So I was pleased when my short story “When Things Go Missing” was published in the newest issue of Unchartered Frontier, an online literary journal. The story is actually an excerpt from a novel that I’m writing. Here’s the synopsis.

One day Fran heads toward the grocery store and keeps on going till she reaches the tip of South America. Meanwhile she leaves behind an empty hole in the lives of her family, an insecure daughter trying to cope with the rigors of graduate school and lackluster love life, a son strung out on heroin, filled with self-pity and rage, and a husband who plots her course across the continent with push pins on a map as he pays her credit card bills. How they cope with her mysterious disappearance and the cryptic phone messages and photographs she sends them, as well as rediscover each other and forge new relationships in her absence, creates the heart of this novel.

Auguste_Rodin-The_Prodigal_Son-Ny_Carlsberg_Glyptotek

The Prodigal Son by Rodin

The novel is written from the perspectives of three main characters, the daughter Kay, the son Cal, and the husband. The short story is Cal’s first chapter (adapted to stand-alone). His story is particularly difficult to write (and perhaps read) because many readers will not find him sympathetic at the beginning. For others who have experience with addiction, ADHD, or love-hate parental relationships, his story may be painful and heartbreaking, and might hit a little too close to home.

But for those who love a good “prodigal son” story, or like rooting for the underdog–cheering for Rocky Balboa when he ran up those stairs, or rooting for Bradley Cooper’s character in the recent film Silver Linings Playbook—I’m hoping they will cut Cal a bit of slack.

A lot of things are missing or perceived missing in Cal’s life, as the title “When Things Go Missing” indicates. It’s interesting how so much of who we are is shaped by the things missing or absent in our lives–as much as, or more so perhaps, than what’s actually there. The whole premise of the novel is how the mother’s absence shapes the lives of those left behind, as well as how they come to “re-see” her in light of her absence.

Silver-Linings-Playbook-Image-03

From the film Silver Linings Playbook

But it’s also about how we struggle to make sense of our lives, struggle to piece things together when so much seems missing.  Especially since how often these puzzles are pieced together from scraps of memories, misperceptions, misunderstandings, miscommunications, misinformation, as well as our own prejudices and preferences, which often blind us to what actually is. Those missing pieces come to shape how we see each other as much as what’s actually there. In some ways, none of us are really what we are perceived to be by others. We are all the unreliable narrators of our own stories.

The miracle, perhaps, is how we connect at all. How despite all that would seem to conspire to keep us apart, we come together nonetheless.

If this sort of thing interests you, you can read “When Things Go Missing” online in Chartered Frontier. You can also download the journal for free in a number of forms.

Here’s the opening of the story to get you started:

Cal stands on the front stoop of his parent’s home with a cold breeze swirling around him, liking the damp chill seeping into his skin, goosing it up. The sun is almost gone, a faint, dull glow smeared along the horizon. Dusk settles like ashes over the neighborhood rooftops. He watches his sister backing her Volvo down the driveway, heading off to Northridge or Norwalk or wherever the hell she’s living these days. She’d come home looking for a little comfort since mom had gone missing. Fat chance of that. But he’s sorry now that she’s gone, sorry he hadn’t at least said he loved her, or asked her for a loan, and missing her even before she disappears around the corner. He takes a long last drag on his cigarette, squeezes the tip, and drops what’s left into his shirt pocket to save for later.

It feels weird walking into his parents’ house without knocking, even though he’d grown up here, been living here since his last stint in county jail, and off and on over the past ten years. He’s acutely conscious that this is not his home and never really had been, not even when he was a kid. He sucks on the fact like a sore tooth, teasing it, testing it with his tongue. It’s like he’d been born homeless. Like from the day he was born they were all just waiting for him to move out again. The thought fills him with a strange sense of satisfaction: Cal didn’t need a home. Didn’t need anything, anyone. Ever.

I hope a few of you will take the time to read this and let me know what you think. It would mean a lot.

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  • May Is Short Story Month! (recordedbooksblog.com)

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After sailing around the world in a small boat for six years, I came to appreciate how tiny and insignificant we humans appear in our natural and untamed surroundings, living always on the edge of the wild, into which we are embedded even while being that thing which sets us apart. Now living again on the edge of the wild in a home that borders a nature preserve, I am re-exploring what it means to be human in a more than human world.

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