Jamey Hatley's Always Open, the Eureka Hotel

Jamey Hatley, Always Open, The EurekaHotel. 

Strange Horizons is a monthly journal devoted to speculative fiction. Hatley is developing this story into a screenplay called The Eureka Hotel.

Jamey Hatley is a native of Memphis, TN. Her writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Torch, The Account, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From The Margins of History, Memphis Noir, and elsewhere. She has attended the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Voices of Our Nation Writing Workshop and received scholarships to the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She made her home in Louisiana for a decade. She wrote her way home to Memphis. She is a 2016 Prose Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award Winner.

Story divided into nine sections:

1.    Seek, flee, wander

2.   Travel  by train, bus, car, feet

3.   Arrive early or nearly so

4.   Follow secret hopes, abandoned dreams, unquenched desires

5.    Surrender to old hungers

6.   Try to escape the past. Fail.

7.   Don’t stop. You are almost there.

8.   Are you there yet?

9.   Decide for yourself

What is this story about? A young girl’s journey to find herself. Story is told in the first person, at first.

The protagonist, a woman, is dating a woman, and her family sends her away. First two paragraphs are direct and to the point---protagonist is deviant, and being sent away.

Page 2 (first page):

1. Seek, flee, wander.

You, perhaps, are doing all three. Your folk decided to send you away to Chicago when they found out about the guitar player who was teaching you to slide your fingers along the strings, who had hazel eyes that changed from green to gold and back depending on the weather of their mood. Who smelled of Hoyt’s Cologne[2] and Royal Crown pomade to smooth the almost red hair under the fedora. The guitar player who stood behind you under that big oak tree in Flora, Mississippi and wrapped strong, muscular arms around your waist. Who settled the guitar right at your center so you could feel it thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum like a heart against your belly.

Your family yelled at you about your virtue and bringing a pickanny into this world who nobody had money to feed. They were Holy Ghost shouting Pentecostals. This wasn’t the worst insult, though. When your brother was sent to fight the guitar player for your virtue, he found that you were in no danger at all of getting pregnant because beneath that fedora was a fall of sandy waves that would put your high yellow aunt to shame. And lower, beneath the belt buckle, even though your guitar player wore briefs under fine gray trousers, y’all were the same.

Page 2: Lovely elevated object, mother’s “best suitcase” and great food detail.

2. Travel by train, bus, car, feet.

On this, your first trip North, your family does not trust putting you on the train or a bus. They know that your beau will find a way to meet you along the path and secret you away. Your mother has filled her best suitcase, a fold-down travel affair that the white lady she does domestic work for gave her. It was the most beautiful thing you have seen. Cardboard wrapped in pale grey linen with red handles. All of your prettiest, most girly dresses are packed. Slips and nylons that you are wearing even in this heat. You will later learn that the suitcase is a throwaway thing that they give to white train travelers for free. It is still beautiful to you.

Before you left, your mama anointed the car with blessed oil from the preacher, and you can’t figure out how it is different from the Hoyt’s Cologne that your beau douses his rabbit foot with for luck in gambling.

Your father and your brother smash you between them in the borrowed '55 Chevrolet and plan to drive ten hours straight up to Chicago. They tell you there will be no stops. You are traveling the first bit through the dark of early morning. You ate your shoebox lunch[3] almost as soon as you got in the car. The fried chicken, lemon pound cake, boiled egg, and the bottle of your mama’s best sweet tea long gone by then. Your stomach rumbles, and it reminds you of the thrum, thrum, thrum of the guitar on your belly. When you look into the inky dark night, you remind yourself that you and your beau are still under the same sky.

Pages 2-3 Great, stress inducing scene, with details of racism in Mississippi/details of sundown town. Gun is introduced, does not go off. Tension is raised: Protagonist’s father is grilled by policeman, lies about a sick wife and getting work.

3. Arrive alive or nearly so.

When you beg, beg, beg that you have to pee, your father stops beside a field in the dark for you to relieve yourself, quick. He and your brother remind you that pretty much all of Mississippi is a sundown town.[4] You hate your father and brother a little for trying to scare you even more, but regret it when you see the blue police lights behind you about an hour out of Memphis and your daddy pulls the car to the shoulder of the road.

You are thankful to be your family’s prisoner. Smashed between your daddy and brother and the gearshift when the white man comes and shines a flashlight through the window. He isn’t dressed as a police officer, but the pulsing blue light behind you makes it true. You know that there is a .45 pistol under your daddy’s seat and another pistol in the glove box, but that means nothing with a white man with his hand on his holster.

Your father takes this trip every few months to see his older brother who lives in the city. He has little wieners, and souse, and liver cheese, and jars of chow chow for him in a cooler filled with ice. Things that he can’t get up in Chicago. You keep thinking about the ice melting and the food going bad while this white man decides what to do with you and your family.

The white man’s voice becomes a frequency that you cannot decipher. All you hear is a stream of YESSIR, NOSIR, YESSIR, NOSIR, NOSIR, NOSIR, YESSIR in your daddy’s voice that seems as if he is yelling up from the bottom of a well. MY WIFE IS SICK, SIR. I AM TAKING MY CHILDREN TO RELATIVES IN MEMPHIS AND A MAN NAMED JIM BRITTON[5] HAS WORK FOR ME. PUBLIC HAULING, SIR. TO GET SOME MONEY FOR MY SICK WIFE. You hear this clearly because it is a lie. The first known lie you have ever heard your daddy tell. YESSIR. YESSIR. I’LL GET IT SIR. Your father holds up his hands, reaches across you and your brother to the glove box, and passes the officer a card. The officer shines his flashlight on the card, but there is no need now. The sky is lit up with a brilliant tangerine sunrise.

He spits a stream of tobacco juice on the ground, and it is as if all your senses are coming back. You can smell his whiskey sweat and powdery women’s perfume. You can see the broken brim of the straw hat he wears and the faintest remains of a black eye still healing.

Y’all be safe out here. Get on to Memphis now, boy. You feel your brother almost jump at the “boy,” but you both know that it is meant for your father.

YESSIRYESSIRYESSIRYESSIRYESSIR.

The car finally pulls away from the shoulder as if it is driving itself, but your daddy’s hands are there on the steering wheel. You now know why your daddy does not believe in trips for leisure. You go where family is and that is that. Weddings, funerals, family reunions, babies being born, trouble. These are the reasons for travel.

You are trouble.

This is your fault.

Pages 3-4 Father’s secret life in Memphis is slowly revealed

4. Follow secret hopes, abandoned dreams, unquenched desires. 

Ought to be able to pick up WDIA[6] strong now, your daddy says. He turns the dial on the radio to AM 1070. You usually have to fiddle with the station to get WDIA, but it is strong and clear. In the house you only listen to gospel or nothing at all. Your beau played WDIA for you in the little trailer he lived in with the folks on the chitlin circuit. You are surprised that your daddy even knows the call numbers for the radio station. The music seems to be unfurling the terror with the police officer from around your daddy. His jaw starts to unclench, and he taps his knee. You pretend not to know the song, but your beau played it for you on the guitar. “Prove it on Me Blues,” by Ma Rainey.

You raise your eyebrow at your brother who pretends that he doesn’t see your daddy enjoying the devil’s music, and keeps his eyes glued to the Texaco Road Atlas and a several-years-out-of-date Green Book[7] he got from a man who was buying new ones at the dry goods store in Flora.

Your brother likes to practice being in charge, so he points out places that you could stop along the route (but that you won’t). You usually sleep through these trips, but you fight to stay awake, even when your head drifts onto your brother’s shoulder for a moment. You try to memorize the highway numbers, watch your brother’s fingers as they trace the way along the lines for the highway. Your father goes the way that he knows—Highway 51 straight up through Memphis. When you cross the state line into Tennessee, he looks at his watch. I used to live in Memphis once, your daddy says. His big square jaw melts into that soft half-smile that you love. He isn’t looking at you, though. He is looking straight ahead at the road that is becoming the city around you. You watch the flash of shock on your brother’s face. He did not know about Memphis but doesn’t want you to know that he didn’t know. Your father had a whole life that you didn’t know about. You look at his face to see if you can see the secrets that could be hidden underneath his furrowed brow and restless hands.

Let’s see if you as good at reading that map as you are at holding it, your father says without even looking over at your brother. See if you can find Beale Street.[8] You watch your brother’s anxious hands hover over the map to find where you are along the highway. You know where south is? your father asks. We came from the South, your brother says, and your father nods. You watch him lean over the map in his lap tracing up from your county of departure. His hand seems to tremble a bit at where you got stopped, but you convince yourself that you are imagining this. He then flips the map over to look at something in the corner. You are proud of your brother and forget for a bit that he is your jailer. Keep north on 51 until we get to Kerr. That’s good, son. But we’ll go on up to South Parkway. Then I can show you where me and your uncle used to live. Can you believe that Black folk live in these houses? Make a right up here, your daddy says. You are still watching every sign for a way to get back to your love. When you see the street, your mouth flies open like a screen door in a gust of wind. Mississippi! You moved from Mississippi to stay on a street called Mississippi! It is the first time you have spoken all trip. How quickly the sound of your own voice became unfamiliar to you. You don’t put your hand up to your mouth to press the words back but clasp them tightly together in your lap until they ache. Your dad pulls up to a stop in front of the building he pointed to and folds over in laughter. Your brother does too. You must love Mississippi, Daddy. You don’t laugh, but you do smile, and your body feels something other than the sad ache you have felt since they ripped you away from your lover.

Your daddy doesn’t get out of the car at the apartment house where he used to live. You can feel his want there in the car with you. It’s never occurred to you that your father was just a person who had his own private wants. What did you do when you lived in Memphis, Daddy? your brother asks. Your uncle and I did do public hauling for a man named Britton. A Black man. Looked almost white. Coulda passed. But was a Black man. Listed in the directory and everything. A Black man? Yep. So that was real? He had his own business and we worked for him. But who cooked? Who cleaned? Your daddy chuckled. We did. You try to imagine your father with a broom or skillet and can’t work it out.

Your father points out the hotels and businesses that cater to Black clientele. He even drives you down Beale Street that sounds like church music at dusk and smoked meat. Keep her in the car, your father says to your brother, and you are a prisoner again. He pulls up at the curb again and goes into a pawn shop. See the three gold balls, your brother says when your father is out of the car. That’s how you know it’s a pawnshop. See the pole that looks like a Christmas stick of peppermint? Barbershop. Your father isn’t in the shop for long, but when he comes out, something about him is different. Heavier or lighter? It is difficult to tell.

Pages 4-5:

5. Surrender to old hungers.

Let’s get something to eat. We are gonna go to my favorite place from way back when. You know how to get back to Mississippi? your father asks. Mississippi where we live or the street? Well, I lived at both, your daddy says. The street. Your brother doesn’t hide his shock this time but gets busy directing your father with the map.

You arrive at a place called The Four Way Grill[9], and your mouth is watering. You are hungry because you long since ate your shoebox lunch and are always hungry. Your brother has been saving his, the fried chicken going soft and the boiled egg overheated. He always delays his pleasures until the last possible moment, but you have always wanted as much as you can get, now, now, now. You can count on one hand the times that you have been to an actual restaurant.

Page 5 Father sees old girlfriend; protagonist takes a nickel and calls girlfriend at restaurant and realizes girlfriend Red had lots of girlfriends and has disappeared. Tension raised in two ways---disappointment via love, realization that father had another life.

6. Try to escape the past. Fail.

You are already calculating what you want to eat. The restaurant is full, and you are self-conscious because what you thought were your fancy traveling clothes now look a little shabby. You get ready to stand in line with your father at the counter but realize that there is a person to take you to a table and there is a very long wait. Before you can get a menu to look at while you wait, you hear your father’s name from the very back of the restaurant. It makes you wonder if the policeman from this morning has tracked you down. The voice is from a woman who is sitting in the far back corner. She has said your father’s entire name, including the middle name he hates, so you know that she knows him.

When his eyes track to the woman, he looks like he has seen a ghost. The ghost waves him over. It has been a month of Sundays, she says. Longer than that, your father replies. You can’t tell how old this woman is. She looks a little older than you at one glance and then older than your grandmother at the next.

Your daddy is nervous again, but not like with the white cop on the road. This is different than you’ve ever seen your father look. You realize that you’ve never seen a man look at a woman in this way. Respect married with fear. Who are these beautiful people with you? My children, your father says, and puts a hand on each of your shoulders. Join me? she says. It is not a question. The waiter appears with menus and waters without so much as a motion of her head. Why don’t you children go wash up and let your father and I get reacquainted? Your father nods, and when you say yes ma’am, the lady lightly touches your hand. You are almost at the bathroom door when you realize that she has put a nickel into your hand.

You use the toilet and wash your hands and then take the nickel and the phone number your beau left you out of your brassiere. There is a payphone in the ladies’ room. When you call the number to the rooming house and ask for your lover, the woman on the other end laughs and laughs. Oh, there’s another one calling for Red, she says. You’re the third since lunch. When did she leave you this number, sweetheart? She been gone from here for months. Don’t feel bad. You not the first.

When you get back to the table, it is full of food. It looks like the whole menu. You thought when you heard the woman’s rooming-house laughter that you wouldn’t be able to eat, but instead the laughter has made you ravenous. You thought you were hungry for what your lover could teach you, but you were hungry for yourself. When you think this, you look up and the lady is staring at you, smiling. You smile back.

Pages 5-6: Protagonist realizes that father pawned his watch (to pay for trip?) Is this old girlfriend a prostitute? Tension continues to rise.

7. Don’t stop. You are almost there.

Well, we are headed up to Chicago and are already running behind, so we better get going, your father says. Already late? A few more minutes won’t matter. Why don’t you run me back to the Eureka? My cab driver got a fare, and you know I believe in people making their money. You know I do, she says directly to your father, and you know it means more than one thing at a time. Your father looks at his wrist where his watch should be, and you now know what is missing. Let’s go then. Y’all put all this on my tab, right? Yes ma’am Miss Landlady, they say. Bye now, the workers call out to your father’s ghost. They hand all of you except The Landlady huge paper sacks of food. Those girls are probably starving by now, she says.

Pages 6-7: The Eureka becomes a character, beautiful old hotel/whorehouse/place where potions are sold. The protagonist is put on the spot by the Landlady; note the elevated object of the leather ledger. Protagonist sees that a woman can have a beautiful office, run a business, run her life.

8. Are you there yet?

You want to go and pick up that lil order at Lucky Heart[10] before they close? The Landlady asks your father. Yeah, I better, he says. I got a package for you too. When you get back she tells him. You remember the Lucky Heart[11] painted on the side of the building from the four-leaf clover insignia from the cosmetics that your mother sells to her neighbors and church members. Your father parks the car in front of the most beautiful house you have ever seen. An older man comes out and gets the food. Your father and brother walk back to pick up your mother’s order.[12]

Now this, The Landlady says with a wave of her arms outstretched, is the Eureka. She waits for you to take it all in. So, this is a hotel? you ask. Oh, it is more than that. It is a home, a safe haven, a place to rest, a place to get strong, a place where we practice being free. It’s beautiful, you say. We work at making it so, The Landlady says.

Come back to my office, she says. Office? You have never imagined that a Black woman could have her own office. There is a fine wood desk. Shelves with more books than you have ever seen before. The Landlady unlocks a desk drawer with a key that was nestled into her bosom. She takes out a beautiful leather-bound ledger. The pages are a rainbow: green, blue, salmon, goldenrod.

This trip to Chicago, do you want to go? she asks. This is the first time anyone has asked your opinion about the situation. Not even your beau.

No ma’am.

Why do they want you to go?

I had a beau who was sometimes a boy and sometimes a girl.

Was he good to you?

For a little while, yes. But now I don’t think so.

Keep the sweet get rid of the rest, I say. And that’s your crime?

Yes ma’am? I guess so.

What do you want to do?

Ma’am?

What do you want to do?

Do with what?

The Landlady leans in and takes your hand from across the table. She leads you to a mirror hung on the wall. Straightens your shoulders. Pushes your chin up. What do you want to do with her? She nods at your reflection in the mirror.

No one has ever asked you that either.

I was learning the guitar. And I can sing a little.

There is a restaurant called Moonlight[13] over on Lauderdale. All kinds of folks come through there singing and playing music. Nice man name of Jenkins runs it. If you can hold a tray and serve some drinks it is a good place to learn something before you go over to those wolves on Beale.

I only had a few lessons from my beau.

And you thought your lil boyfriend was gonna give it to you? A whole entire life? Like he had the keys?

I think I did ma’am, you say.

The Landlady bends down and opens a desk drawer with a key from around her neck. When she rises back up, she throws handful after handful of key ring sets on her desk. Dozens of keys. Baby, don’t ever let anybody think they got all your keys. First off, they got to earn them. Second, you always keep you a key to a secret place all for yourself. A place you can go to, even if it is just in your mind.

Pages 7-8: Point of view changes to landlady (COGIC=Church of God in Christ. Based in Memphis.)

9. Decide for yourself.

When the girl’s father returns, I have the ledgers out on my desk, so he knows what is what. People like me deal in information. We deal in relationships. I knew him and his brother from before. I know enough to know that that brother of his has no business near a fragile young lady. I know where that gold watch he pawned came from. I know where he got the money for that house and farm he’s so proud of. I know the kind of public and private hauling he did around this town. And I know that even though he married a nice COGIC girl, most of the goods that she sells from that Lucky Heart Catalog come from the magical curio section at the back. Just information. Information that he knows that I will use if necessary.

I also have a variety of weapons, poisons, and my own prodigious skills at conjure at the ready.[14]

If necessary. He knows that too.

So, lovie. I am going to ask you, do you want to go to Chicago, go back home, or stay in Memphis for a bit? You are a full human no matter what they say. You get to decide. That’s why we meeting all together. I drum my fingertips a bit on my ledgers for effect.

The girl is worn out with deciding. People get to the Eureka and the world has made so many decisions for them that most of them don’t hardly know what to do. We get enough free people in here—singers, dancers, conjurers, and charlatans that they get to try it out for themselves, this choosing. I’m not sure what she will say until she says it.

I want to stay at the Eureka for a while.

Let’s get you a new name.

Without me prompting, she goes to the mirror again as her daddy watches. She considers herself real good in that mirror, perhaps for the very first time. She turns around, new.

Flora. I’se Flora now.

Good. Then you are welcome here, Flora. You are welcome at The Eureka.

They say The Eureka[15] is gone now, like it never existed. Yes, the building is gone, but I see that big wild bush that stands where the building did. I see the offerings that get left when I pass by to the Mississippi. That the Lorraine is still there, called The Civil Rights Museum now, but it is still full of ghosts. They say Lucky Heart Cosmetics has moved, but its mark is still on the building where it was when I was The Landlady. Folk still eating fried chicken and chitterlings at the Four Way. Once a Landlady, always a Landlady, though. See how I’ve been telling you the story of this girl and yourself back and forth through time? The Eureka was then, but the Eureka is now. The Eureka will never be gone. Not as long as there is a single somebody who remembers, a single somebody who cares about Black folk and their comfort in Memphis, Tennessee. I know Black folk in Memphis still need comfort and care. Too much hurt and too much wrong been done not to. Too much joy been made for us not to keep trying. There will always be a Eureka Hotel. There will always be a Landlady. We will not be erased.

The Eureka Hotel. Always Open. You are welcome here.

Alice Munro's Save the Reaper

Alice Munro, Save the Reaper. 

From Munro’s short story collection, For the Love of a Good Woman

Story is a riff on Flannery O’Connor’s short story A Good Man is Hard to Find.  The title of Save the Reaper is a reworking of Tennsyon’s poem "The Lady of Shalott." (See poem below,)

What is this story about?

-       Grandmother takes her grandchildren on a dangerous journey

-       Lifetime of bad decisions and their consequences. Also note grandmother's preoccupation with corn 

o   Fraught mother daughter relationships

§  Can you trust your mother?

§  Mistakes of one mother’s past come back to haunt the present and perhaps/probably the future

§  Family leaves town and gets mixed up with strangers (opposite of a stranger comes to town)

§  Plans gone astray.

 Story starts in the middle of a car ride/family going on a journey, meet up with strangers. Similar to O’Connor’s story A Good Man is Hard to find in that family is going on a summer time journey, trying to find home from grandmother’s childhood.

Story asks the question and ultimately answers it: Is this grandmother, Eve, a reliable babysitter to young children?

Page 1: Story starts mise in scene, grandmother taking her grandchildren and going on a journey. It turns out to be a dangerous journey.

·      Story starts in the middle of a car ride and a game. We are told the rules of the game.

·      Story proceeds like a nightmare, stakes raised in car ride and then again when family goes to drug den

Questions raised about the protagonist, the grandmother Eve. Is she a bad grandmother and a bad mother? (She is tempted like original Eve.)

·      Is grandmother addled by dementia or just fault decision making ability (impetuousness and impulsivity)?

·      Grandmother hadn’t been invited to daughter’s wedding,

·      Daughter Sophie leaves suddenly---son tells Grandma that she has actually asked her husband to come pick her up. Story is about betrayal, secrets carried by children

            

-       Page 1: Stakes are raised at beginning of story when we realize that Grandma Eve has turned the power of the game over to the 7-year old Philip. She lets him make key decisions---always a bad idea.

o   “What Eve had originally planned was to have the headquarters turn out to be in the village store that sold ice cream. But Philip had taken charge so thoroughly that now it was hard to manage the outcome. The pickup truck was turning off the paved country road onto a graveled side road. It was a decrepit truck with no topper, its body eaten by rust---it would not be going far. Home to some farm, most likely. They might not meet another vehicle to switch to before the destination was reached.”

-       Page 1: Eve has tried to do right by her daughter, rented a house, house is full of foreboding:

“Twelve days, Eve thought. Twelve days had passed of the three weeks. She had to take the house for a mouth. It was a cramped little house, fixed up on the cheap for summer rental. Eve’s idea had been to get a lakeside cottage for the holiday---Sophie and Phillip’s first visit with her in nearly five years and Daisy’s first ever. She had settle don this stretch of Lake Huron shore because her parents used to bring her here with her brother, when they were children. Things had changed---the cottages were all like suburban houses, and the rents were out of sight. This house, half a mile inland from the rocky, unfavored north end of the usable beach, had been the best she could manage. It stood in the middle of a cornfield. She had told the children what her father had once told her---that at night you could her the corn growing. When she too the sheets off the line she had to shake out the corn bugs.

Page 2:  Grandmother troubled by daughter's behavior/recent turn of events: “And the burning question was: Who did the phoning?”

Page 2: Secret revealed and tension raised, Eve questions Philip in car:

“Wasn’t it a big surprise when your dad phoned from California?

He didn’t phone. My mom phoned him.

Did she? Oh, I didn’t know. What did she say.

She said, “I can’t stand it here, I’m sick of it, let’s figure out some plan to get me away.” “

Pages 2-3: Mother-child/Eve-Sophie relationship detailed subtly with hidden potholes:

“And from then until now it had not been feasible for Eve to get to California. Invitations to visit had not been all that urgent, or even specific. Sophie had walked out of Eve’s household a girl student with a toddling son---a winter-pale gale, harassed but high spirited---and come back a self contained full boddied married woman with two children, a creamed-coffee skin and lilac cescents of a permanent mild fatigue beneath her eyes.Also with a certain aversion to memories of the life she’d shared with Eve, of her blithe childhood (as Eve called it), or her adventurous days as a young mother. During this visit they ahd maintained a pleasant puttering routine of morning chores, beach afternoons, wine and movies

Page 3: Flashback on to Eve’s childhood/very specific memories and gorgeous, unnerving writing about childhood memories and fraught mother-daughter relationships :

“When Eve was quite small and wore a great hair bow on her head, she was fond of these country expeditions. She ate tiny jam tarts and cakes whose frosting was stiff on top and soft underneath, topped with a bleeding maraschino cherry. She was not allowed to touch the dishes or the lace-and-satin pinch-cushions or the sallow looking old dolls and the women’s conversations passed over hear head with a temporary and mildly depressing effect, like the inevitable clouds. But she enjoyed riding in the back seat, imagining  herself on horseback or in a royal coach. Later on she refused to go. She began to hate trailing along with her mother and being identified as her mother’s daughter. My daughter Eva. How richly condescending, and mistakenly possessive, that voice sounded in her ears. (She herself would use it, or some version of it, for years as a staple in in some of her broadest, least accomplished acting.) She also detested her mother’s habit of wearing large hats and gloves in the country, and sheer dresses on which were raised flowers, like scabs. The oxford shoes, on the other hand---worn to favor her mother’s corns---appeared embarassingly stout and shabby. “What did you hate most about your mother?” was a game that Even would play with her friends in her first years free of home. “Corsets,” one girl would say, and another said, “Wet aprons.” Hairnets. Fat arms. Bible quotations. The way she sang “Danny Boy,” Eve always said. Her corns.

Page 4 Gateposts become elevated objects, lodged in Eve’s memory:

“Eve drove on all the same but as she passed the lane she noticed the gateposts. They were unusal, being shaped something like crude minarets and decorated with whitewashed pebbles and bits of colored glass. Neither of them was straight, and they were half hidden by goldenrod and wild carrot, so that they had lost all reality as gateposts and looked, instead like abandoned stage props from some gaudy operetta. The minute Eve saw them she remembered something else---a whitewashed outdoor wall in which pictures were set. The pictures were stiff, fantastic childish scenes. Churches with spires, castles with towers, square houses with square lopsided yellow windows. Triangular Christmas trees and tropical colored birds half as big as the trees, a fat horse with dinky legs and burning red eyes, curly blue rivers of unvarying width, like lengths of ribbon, a moon and drunken stars and fat sunflowers nodding over the roofs of houses. All this made of pieces of colored glass set into cement, or plaster. She had seen it, and it wasn’t in any public place. It was out I the country, and she was with her mother. The shape of her mother loomed in front of the wall---she was talking to an old farmer. HE might only have been her mother’s age, of course, and just looked old to Eve.

Page 4 great description of trees/nature

“They went to look at odd things on those trips; they didn’t just look at antiques. They had gone to see a shrug cut to resemble a bear, and an orchard of dwarf apple trees.

            She didn’t remember the gateposts at all, but it seemed to her that they could not have belonged to any other place. She backed the car up and around into the narrow track beneath the trees. The trees were heavy old Scotch pines, probably dangerous---you could see dangling daed and half dead branches, and branches that had already blown or fallen down were lying in the grass and weeds on either side of the track. The car rocked back and forth in the ruts, and it seemed that Daisy approved of the motion.

Page 5: End of Act 1, scary house beckons. Great, slowly revealed, haunting image concluding with, “She was in the wrong place”:

“There wasn’t any sign of a house ahead, but through a gap in the trees the skeleton of a barn rose up, walls gone, beams intact, roof whole but flopping to one side like a funny hat. There seemed to be pieces of machinery, old cars ,or trucks scattered around it, in the sea of flowering weeds. Eve didn’t have much leisure to look---she was busy controlling the car on this rough track. The green truck had disappeared ahead of her---how far could it have gone? Then she saw the lane curved. It curved and they lef the shade of the pines and were out in the sunlight. The same sea foam of wild carrot, the same impression of rusting junk strewn about, a high wild hedge to one side, and there was the house, finally, behind it. A big house, two stories of yellowish-gray brick, another story of wood, its dormer windows stuffed with dirty foam rubber. One of the lower windows shown with the tinfoiled that covered it on the inside.

  She had come to the wrong place.

Page 6 Philip yells at her not to get out of the car. (Where is other grandchild Daisy in all this?) Child sounds the alarm and the adult doesn’t heed it.

Eve unbuckled her seat belt.

Don’t get out, Philip said in a shrill voice. Stay int eh car. Turn around. Drive way.

I can’t, said Eve. It’s all right. That dog’s just a yapper---he won’t hurt me.

Don’t get out.

She should never have let the game get so far out of control. Philip was too excitable. This isn’t part of the game, she said. He’s just a man.

I know, said Philip. But don’t get out.

Stop that, Eve said, and got ouf and shut the door.

Page 7 they enter into a hellish place, den of inequity/crack house? two small grandchildren in tow

Daisy squealed with fright and pleasure---she was the one who more of an animal lover---and somehow they were all en route to the house, Even carrying Daisy and Philip and Trixie scrambling around her up some earthen bumps that had once been porch steps. The man came close behind them, smell of the beer that he must have been drinking in the truck…

“Massive disorder was what they had to make their way through---the kind that takes years to accumulate. The bottom layer of it made up of chairs and tables and couches and perhaps a stove or two, with old bedclothes and newspapers and window shades and dead potted plants and ends of lumber and empty bottles and broken lighting fixtures and curtain rods piled on top of that, up to the ceiling in some places, blocking nearly all the light from outside. To make up for that, a light was burning by the inside door.

Page 8 Great, unnerving description of haunted house, full of chaos and smells and disturbing sights. This is no place for children but grandmother goes in anyway:

“The man shifted the beer and got the door open and shouted for Harold. It was hard to tell what sort of room they were in now---there were kitchen cupboards with the doors open, some cans on the shelves, but there were also a couple of cots with bare mattresses and rumpled blankets. The windows were so successfully covered up with furniture or hanging quilts that you couldn’t tell where they were, and the smell was that of a jun store, a plugged sink, or maybe a plugged toilet, of cooking and grease and cigarettes and human sweat and dog mess and unremoved garbage.

Page 8 Tension rises, someone curses and kicks the dog:

“Fuck. Get that dog out of here.

“Lady here wants to see some pictures,” the little man said. Trixie whined in pain---somebody had kicked her. Eve had no choice but to go in the room.

…

The little man hauled Trixie out from under the table and threw her into the outer room, then closed the door behind Eve and the children.

Page 9 Tension continues to rise---one man naked, dining room hot, the men drinking whiskey, one man asks Philip if he can play the piano:

“Sitting with his back to the door was a young man with sharp shoulders and a delicate neck. At least Eve assumed he was young, because he wore his hair in dyed golden spikes and had gold rings in his ears. He didn’t turn around. The man across from him was as old as Eve herself, and had a shaved head, a tidy gray beard, and bloodshot blue eyes, He looked at Eve without any friendliness, but with some intelligence or comprehension, and in this he was unlike the tatttooed man, who had looked at her with as if she were some kind of hallucination that he had decided to ignore.

At the end of the table, in the host’s or the father’s chair, sat the man who had given the order to close the door, but who hadn’t looked up or otherwise paid any attention to the interruption. He was large boned, fat, pale man with sweaty brown curls, and as far as Eve cold tell, he was entirely naked. The tattooed man and the blond man were wearing jeans, and the gray bearded man was wearing jeans and a checked shirt buttoned up to the neck and a string tie. There were glasses and bottles on the table. The man in the host’s chair---he must be Harold---and the gray bearded man were drinking whiskey. The other two were drinking beer.

…

 “The tattooed man whistled. “Hey you,” he said to Philip. “Hey you. Can you play the piano?

…

Page 9: Gross, horrifying thought and smell, especially in view of fact that children are in the room:

“She thought, There is a smell of semen in this room.”

Page 11 (page 13) Person jumps into her car/stranger comes to tow:n

She was driving so slowly that it was possible---easy for a figure to rise up out of the tall weeds on the passenger side of the car and open the door, which Eve had not though to lock, and jump in.

Page 15 Prostitute/girl makes a move on Eve

“Eve had never believed herself to be attracted to women in a sexual way…

“Of course, Eve said brightly, and the hand trailed away, its whore’s courtesy finished. But it had not failed altogether. Blatant and halfhearted as it was, it had been enough to set some old wires twitching. And the fact that it could be effective in any way filled Eve with misgiving, flung a shadow from this moment over, all the rowdy and impulsive, as well as all the hopeful and serious, the more or less repented of, couplings of her life. Not a real flareup of shame, a sense of sin---just a shadow. What a joke on her, if she started to hanker now, after a purer past and  cleaner slate.

No. It was possible that she just hankered after love.

Page 15 Flashback/story of Sophie’s father/Eve’s affair on the train with a married man from India, sort of lovely oasis in the middle of tension filled story, but also shows Eve’s extravagance and impulsiveness:

Page 16 Tension rises, girl in the car asks for money

“How stupid to think about sex when the reality, the danger, was elsewhere.”

Page 16: Then Eve does the stupidest thing possible: She gives the girl a $20 bill and tells her where she lives. Tension continues to rise:

“It’s all by itself in the middle of a field. It’s got one ordinary window on one side of the front door and a funny looking little window on the other. That’s where they put in the bathroom.”

Philip notes she smells like vomit."

Page 17 Last page, stress inducing paragraph:

There are people who carry decency and optimism around them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can’t tell such people things, it is too disruptive. Ian struck Eve as being one of those people, in spite of his present graciousness, and Sophie as being someone who thanked her lucky stars that she had found him. Eve could say that the house had smelled vile, and that the owner and his friends looked boozy and disreputable, but not that Harold was naked and never that she had been afraid. And never what she had been afraid of."

Page 17 Last paragraph is full of stress and foreboding

Not tonight but tomorrow night Eve would like down in this hollowed out house, its broad walls like a paper shell around her. She would will herself to grow light, free of consequence, and hope to go to sleep with nothing in her head but the deep, live rustle of the corn.

The Lady of Shalott (1842)

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Part I 

On either side the river lie 

Long fields of barley and of rye, 

That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 

And thro' the field the road runs by 

       To many-tower'd Camelot; 

And up and down the people go, 

Gazing where the lilies blow 

Round an island there below, 

       The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 

Little breezes dusk and shiver 

Thro' the wave that runs for ever 

By the island in the river 

       Flowing down to Camelot. 

Four gray walls, and four gray towers, 

Overlook a space of flowers, 

And the silent isle imbowers 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

By the margin, willow veil'd, 

Slide the heavy barges trail'd 

By slow horses; and unhail'd 

The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd 

       Skimming down to Camelot: 

But who hath seen her wave her hand? 

Or at the casement seen her stand? 

Or is she known in all the land, 

       The Lady of Shalott? 

Only reapers, reaping early 

In among the bearded barley, 

Hear a song that echoes cheerly 

From the river winding clearly, 

       Down to tower'd Camelot: 

And by the moon the reaper weary, 

Piling sheaves in uplands airy, 

Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy 

       Lady of Shalott." 

Part II 

There she weaves by night and day 

A magic web with colours gay. 

She has heard a whisper say, 

A curse is on her if she stay 

       To look down to Camelot. 

She knows not what the curse may be, 

And so she weaveth steadily, 

And little other care hath she, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

And moving thro' a mirror clear 

That hangs before her all the year, 

Shadows of the world appear. 

There she sees the highway near 

       Winding down to Camelot: 

There the river eddy whirls, 

And there the surly village-churls, 

And the red cloaks of market girls, 

       Pass onward from Shalott. 

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 

An abbot on an ambling pad, 

Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, 

Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, 

       Goes by to tower'd Camelot; 

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue 

The knights come riding two and two: 

She hath no loyal knight and true, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

But in her web she still delights 

To weave the mirror's magic sights, 

For often thro' the silent nights 

A funeral, with plumes and lights 

       And music, went to Camelot: 

Or when the moon was overhead, 

Came two young lovers lately wed: 

"I am half sick of shadows," said 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Part III 

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, 

He rode between the barley-sheaves, 

The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, 

And flamed upon the brazen greaves 

       Of bold Sir Lancelot. 

A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd 

To a lady in his shield, 

That sparkled on the yellow field, 

       Beside remote Shalott. 

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, 

Like to some branch of stars we see 

Hung in the golden Galaxy. 

The bridle bells rang merrily 

       As he rode down to Camelot: 

And from his blazon'd baldric slung 

A mighty silver bugle hung, 

And as he rode his armour rung, 

       Beside remote Shalott. 

All in the blue unclouded weather 

Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, 

The helmet and the helmet-feather 

Burn'd like one burning flame together, 

       As he rode down to Camelot. 

As often thro' the purple night, 

Below the starry clusters bright, 

Some bearded meteor, trailing light, 

       Moves over still Shalott. 

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; 

On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; 

From underneath his helmet flow'd 

His coal-black curls as on he rode, 

       As he rode down to Camelot. 

From the bank and from the river 

He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 

"Tirra lirra," by the river 

       Sang Sir Lancelot. 

She left the web, she left the loom, 

She made three paces thro' the room, 

She saw the water-lily bloom, 

She saw the helmet and the plume, 

       She look'd down to Camelot. 

Out flew the web and floated wide; 

The mirror crack'd from side to side; 

"The curse is come upon me," cried 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Part IV 

In the stormy east-wind straining, 

The pale yellow woods were waning, 

The broad stream in his banks complaining, 

Heavily the low sky raining 

       Over tower'd Camelot; 

Down she came and found a boat 

Beneath a willow left afloat, 

And round about the prow she wrote 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

And down the river's dim expanse 

Like some bold seër in a trance, 

Seeing all his own mischance— 

With a glassy countenance 

       Did she look to Camelot. 

And at the closing of the day 

She loosed the chain, and down she lay; 

The broad stream bore her far away, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Lying, robed in snowy white 

That loosely flew to left and right— 

The leaves upon her falling light— 

Thro' the noises of the night 

       She floated down to Camelot: 

And as the boat-head wound along 

The willowy hills and fields among, 

They heard her singing her last song, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Heard a carol, mournful, holy, 

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, 

Till her blood was frozen slowly, 

And her eyes were darken'd wholly, 

       Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. 

For ere she reach'd upon the tide 

The first house by the water-side, 

Singing in her song she died, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Under tower and balcony, 

By garden-wall and gallery, 

A gleaming shape she floated by, 

Dead-pale between the houses high, 

       Silent into Camelot. 

Out upon the wharfs they came, 

Knight and burgher, lord and dame, 

And round the prow they read her name, 

       The Lady of Shalott. 

Who is this? and what is here? 

And in the lighted palace near 

Died the sound of royal cheer; 

And they cross'd themselves for fear, 

       All the knights at Camelot: 

But Lancelot mused a little space; 

He said, "She has a lovely face; 

God in his mercy lend her grace, 

       The Lady of Shalott."