wildscape. literary journal

Kitchen Table Prose
by Catherine Dean

I stumbled across an ad for the perfect job in the classified section of the local newspaper. I was lucky to see it. The classifieds were never really my thing. It was always the obituaries and then the comics. I hadn’t yet quit the comics. I still couldn’t give up on Al Capp and Hal Foster. The obits still comprised some of the best and worst of newspaper writing.
         Neither my husband Gary nor I thought anything of my 8 p.m. job interview at an apartment building. Back then, kitchen table magazines were seen as a valid introduction to the publishing world. He dropped me by the dim yellow light of the main entranceway. I pulled a clipping out of my pocket. It was a dream ad for any writer, soliciting non-fiction, genre and literary fiction.
          I had learned to adapt to the strictures of newspaper writing. I had been busted several times for my inability to write ledes and for my infamous run-on sentences. Over the years, practice improved my ability to hit one thousand, then, 750 words. Word count never increases no matter who you are, but editing can wrench the heart right out of a story. A correct or more accurately incorrect turn of phrase could literally hinge on one letter. My work was constantly subjected to the whims of a revolving door of junior reporters.  Hence, my review describing a book steeped in bathos was now infused with pathos. A claque of obsequious admirers had become members of a select clique.
	I wrote questions down in one of the spiral shorthand notebooks I always carried with me. My pens were within easy reach of the inside of my purse. I had worn a suit jacket over a dress and tied my hair back. There was just enough time beforehand to blot a coat of lipstick and run a dusting of blush over my cheeks. I arrived at the door drenched in rain and sweat.
        It was an ordinary, small apartment stuffed with old, not antique furniture. I noticed the grooves from the vacuum cleaner in the low-pile carpet. The living room was painted in an extreme beige.
	The editor introduced himself as Edward and asked me to tell him a little about myself. I started with my usual joke about having worked for Conrad Black’s fiefdom.
        “You can write anything you want,” he interrupted.
        “Really? I don’t do genre writing, but I do fiction and non-fiction.” 
        “I really don’t care what you write. You can write anything you want, like anything. What we really need is for you to sell magazine subscriptions.”
        “Magazine subscriptions?”
        “This is how it works. People sign contracts to pay for our magazines. These agreements are legal and binding, also unbreakable. Best case scenario is our premium package.”
         He was just some guy in a sweater and a pair of slacks, of average height and weight, freckle-faced and wholesome in an Alfred E. Neuman sort of way. You’d be hard pressed to pick him out of a line-up. How could such an ordinary looking guy be capable of this kind of casual cruelty? The worst thing is that he figured I was desperate enough for the job. He sized me up as just another writer willing to get the job done.  It was necessary to thank him and get out, but I hesitated. I spent another few minutes imagining this was some small independent, community magazine. I would not be struggling with Gary’s directions for interviews at art studios, churches and farmer’s fields. There would be no opportunity to be an off-the-beaten-track stringer for a story that would blow up nationally. There were no more small-town fall fairs to add to my oeuvre.
          The guy hadn’t even noticed that I had stopped listening. I got up from the hardback chair I’d been sitting in. 
         “Thank you very much,” I said, extending a hand.
         “Thank you,” he said, shaking my hand briefly, not too long, taking care not to squish my fingers together, like the kind of guy you hope to share a pew with when it comes to the sign of peace portion of the liturgy.
           I ran down the long flight of poorly-lit stairs and out on to the street to wait for Gary. It was still raining hard when he pulled up. I was crying when he opened the door.
          “Don’t worry,” he told me, “I have a friend on the force. We can talk to him.”
          For some reason, I thought that the business card I had taken from the guy would be the kicker, the ultimate evidence. I figured the fraud squad would see the classified ad as proof of the guy’s shamelessness and immediately despatch their best people. Because Edward’s scam was so transparently fraudulent, it was considered local and trivial.
           So the story ends, right? A writer walks away from a bad thing and learns a lesson. I would be remiss were I to end the story there. Of course, I still remember how literally exposed I felt standing in the dark waiting for a ride home.
           But this is a lie of omission. It leaves out what my oldest daughter calls the Mary Sue-itude of my own writing. 
           Years ago, I received a call from a guy asking if I would like to join a new writer’s group. Two men named James (my father was also a James) met up with me at one of two local coffee shops. The group worked out very well (also I only had one name to remember). We met regularly, sharing stories, poems and ideas. Original Jim entrusted his newly-written novel with me. The men were respectful and fair, also honest.
           As our family prepared to move to a new city, our group meetings had come to an end. The two Jims revealed that they had been puzzled by an expression I used in a story. It’s technically correct (for someone living at the turn of the century, at any rate). I do admit to having a bunch of words in my word hoard that I like simply for the sound they make. Giving any of them up has not been easy.
          Uxorious is one I still love, despite it being an offensive anachronism (less offensive than womanizer, or even feminine or masculine). I still find ways to shoehorn the word scatological into text. It’s such a nice way of talking shit, literally. And for that, I love it. One of my writing group friends insisted I retire recidivism from the files. It just doesn’t work with everything. Onanism always makes the word list, being such a mellifluous term for masturbation. It sounds more like a philosophical movement than a physical one.
         I can’t deny being a hypocrite. I called out the guy in an undergraduate poetry course who used the word ontology or ontological several times a class (never to his face, so the outrage festered the entire course). Onanism is a far more functional concept than ontology, the most oxymoronic of all oxymorons, the scientific proof of God.
          Original Jim explained that the group was baffled by a description I foisted on them. They could barely contain themselves as I described a character’s farded cheeks. Neither Jim called me on it at the time. I regret that I must have missed some serious side-eye. Sometimes, we only see what we must. What they in fact heard were the words farted cheeks. I admit to having been partial to words like interlarded and larder and bard. At the time, they seemed somehow traditional to me. The next had that same ring. The arcane term farded refers to applying make-up to one’s face. Now, it feels a lot like invoking the fourth dictionary definition of the word labia to describe a character’s facial lips. One might be technically correct in doing so, but risk the red-faced laughter of the most generous of audiences, and not of the farded cheek variety. And I’m as guilty as the next person for mocking a fellow parishioner (clearly a Nancy Drew stan) who favoured the word ejaculated as a synonym for “yelled out”. At 12 years old I had figured out that Carolyn Keene had led a sheltered life.
             I could torment myself over the malapropisms attributed to my byline, or pity myself for nearly being used, or underused. In order to protect myself, I knew Mary Sue to be a grifter. It was time to cut ties with her. I waved gently at the Carolyns huddling in the rain by the wan light of an apartment building waiting for a car to take them to the sanctity of their homes.

about the author // Catherine Dean