Genesis of a short story

 

A couple of days ago I blogged about creativity, writing, and inspiration, and I included how difficult it is for me to write a short story unless I have some sudden creative inspiration. So I thought some of you might like to read this short story, which was inspired by a recipe. It features Kelly O’Connell, the realtor/renovator at the center of my Kelly O’Connell Mysteries. Kelly’s office is in Fairmount, the neighborhood adjacent to mine in Fort Worth and one brimming with authentic Craftsman houses, many of which have been preserved. Long the single mother of two, by the time this story takes place, Kelly is married to police officer Mike Shandy. Keisha who appears in the story is her office assistant.

If you don’t know the seven Kelly O’Connell books, plus a novella, you might start with Skeleton in a Dead Space. The books are all available on Amazon.

A word about the short story: My son, Colin, met his bride, Lisa, when he was managing a dive resort on Grand Cayman, and Lisa came there to do underwater photography. When Colin and Lisa first returned from the Caribbean, they lived with Lisa’s parents in Sugar Land, Texas. Lisa’s mother, Torhild, was born and raised in Norway and came to this country as a soldier’s bride at the age of seventeen. She still cooks some of the dishes she knew as a child, and Colin particularly fell in love with these hamburgers (and I might add, with John and Torhild, as did we all). Torhild calls them Norwegian meat cakes, but we’ve all come to use the term hamburger.

I cannot tell you why those hamburgers inspired a short story, but they did. And it is the only time I’ve ever incorporated the paranormal into my writing. I hope you will be charmed by Annalise Nelsen.

Please note that this is a draft version (I seem to be unable to attach the PDF) so there are some typos. Here’s the story of “The Villlage Gaarden.” If you want the recipe for kjottkaker, I think it will be the recipe of the week in Thursday’s “Gourmet on a Hot Plate” blog. Happy reading.

 

 

 

 

 

The Village Gaarden

 

A short story

 

By Judy Alter

 

The Fairmount Neighborhood was once peppered with storefront businesses, many with residential quarters behind them for the owners. Today most of those picturesque buildings have been demolished, but one or two remain, now renovated into charming homes.

One day, on Travis Avenue between Hawthorne and Lilac streets, I found a storefront new to me—and still open. The day showed North Central Texas winter at its worst—a freezing mix of ice and sleet, wind howling. As Mike told me that morning, “Only a fool would go out on a day like this. Stay home.” I didn’t, and now I was hungry for hot comfort food.

Blue-and-white checkered curtains hung on rods three-quarters from the top of the windows, and the words “The Village Gaarden” were stenciled in black on the window. I wondered about the misspelling and the owners. A hand-lettered sign indicated that the small café would be serving from 12:00-1:00 p.m.

Old-fashioned sleigh bells, hung on a thick leather strap and looped over the inside door handle, sang out as I entered. There were only six tables but they gleamed as if just waxed. Small vases held flowers that looked like lilies of the valley. Blue-and-white china in a variety of patterns and serving dishes rested on a plate rack around the room. Steamy warm air, heavy with the wonderful smell of beef cooking, enveloped me.

A small woman welcomed me. Short and a little wide, she had white hair pulled into a bun at the back of her neck and curls escaping around her face, softening the severity of her hairdo. Her face was anything but severe. Brushing her hands on her apron, she held out both hands in welcome, and I took them gratefully.

“I am so glad to see you,” she bubbled. “I’ve been hoping you would come. I’m Annalise Nelsen. I love to have visitors.”

There were no other customers, but how could she be expecting me? I managed to thank her and then asked, “You’re only open for an hour?”

She nodded. “It’s only me, so I only open when I feel like cooking. Today I made Norwegian hamburgers—Kjøttkaker, we call them. You would like? With mashed potatoes and green peas?”

Of course, I would like. She bustled off, while I settled myself at a table. I tested the flowers—yes, fresh, as I thought—but lilies of the valley were certainly not in season now. In fact, you couldn’t grow them in Texas. Within seconds Annalise appeared with a crockery mug full of fresh, strong black coffee.

I asked about the flowers. “Lilies of the valley aren’t in season now.”

 “I grow,” she said. “We call them liljekonwall.”

Annalise ignored the problem of the flowers, and said, “Now, your dinner. Only one minute. It is all ready,” and she was gone again, reappearing seconds later with a plate of food that looked and smelled way beyond good.

The meat cakes, served with caramelized onion and gravy, were soft and tender rather than chewy like a hamburger. The flavor was pure beef. I tasted the potatoes alone first—rich with butter and whole cream. Then I dabbed a bit of gravy on them—just as good. But the peas—they looked more like a thick green pea soup, with dried peas that hadn’t completely lost their shape. There was no ham taste. Instead, these were slightly sweet and somewhere, deep down, had a butter flavor. I savored a mouthful, while Annalise stood watching me, hands on hips.

“You like?”

“I love,” I said.

“Good. I leave you to enjoy in peace.”

And although I had a thousand questions for her, she disappeared behind the curtains again. I did eat in peace, savoring each mouthful of the hearty, soul-warming food. My feet thawed, and my disposition improved. I took out my cell phone to call Mike and tell him about the wonderful place I’d found. I could imagine bringing the girls here and seeing Annalise hover affectionately over them. But my cell phone said, “No service.” I shrugged and dismissed it as due to the weather.

Annalise came back to ask about dessert. She had made rice pudding she told me, again supplying the Norwegian name—risengryn. I was beyond full but then again, no one else had come in, and I was afraid she’d be stuck with a whole lot of risen-whatever-it-was. I tried to indicate by my hands I wanted a small serving; what I got, of course, was a huge bowl that I could not finish. Rice pudding with hints of nutmeg and vanilla and liberal amounts of currants—another thing one almost never found in Texas, unless you bought them dried.

I ate as much as I could and waited tactfully for the bill. It was well past one o’clock, Annalise’s closing hour, and I didn’t want to detain her. Finally, calling her name softly, I headed toward those curtains. After all, she was elderly, and she might have gotten tired and nodded off. I didn’t want to startle her.

When I got no answer I poked my head through the curtains and found a sparkling clean kitchen—cast-iron stove, empty cast-iron skillet sitting on the top and newly oiled, blue-and-white dishes, like those in which my meal was served, draining in the dish rack. But no sign of Annalise and no answer to my calls.

I had no idea what the lunch might have cost. I left a $20 bill on the table and headed back out into the weather, but by now it didn’t seem so bad. The sleet had stopped, the sun was out, and the ice was beginning to melt. No heart for going back to the office and so full I was almost but not quite uncomfortable, I called Keisha in my office and said I wasn’t coming back, headed home, and took a nap before I got the girls from school.

At dinner that night, I picked at the hamburgers Mike had grilled. His burgers were always great, but I was still full, and I was bursting to tell my story. As my account of lunch spilled out, almost without a pause for breath, the girls sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed. When I finished, Maggie said, “Gosh, Mom, what an adventure,” and Em piped up with “I want to go there!”

Mike was not so swayed. “Wait a minute, Kelly. I’ve never heard of this place and neither had you—and we both know every inch of this neighborhood pretty well.” Of course we did—I’m a real estate agent, and Mike, now a detective, was for years the neighborhood patrol officer. “You found a place you’d never seen; it was only open for one hour; there were fresh lilies of the valley on the tables—hey, I’m from Texas. I wouldn’t know them if I saw them. No menu, one dish. Your cell phone wouldn’t work, and the owner disappeared. Are you feeling okay, sweetheart?”

“I know it sounds strange, Mike, but drive over there yourself tomorrow. You’ll see it, and you should go for lunch.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

I didn’t say any more about my adventure. Mike’s skepticism put a damper on it, and the girls were clearly puzzled.

****

Mike called before ten o’clock the next morning. “Kelly, I just drove the length of Travis Avenue, and I didn’t see any storefront buildings, let alone The Village Gaarden” His voice dropped. “I don’t know what to tell you, except, sweetheart, have you thought maybe it was a dream when you had that good nap before the girls got out of school?”

“Did you tell any of your buddies at the police station about this?” My question was hostile”

“Swear,” he said. “You tell Keisha?”

“No,” and he knew it was serious, because I tell Keisha, my office assistant, almost everything. Had I imagined that? No, I most definitely had not! How would I have known about kjøttkaker and liljekonwallL?

I muttered, “I’ll be back” and slammed out of the office. But it wasn’t on Travis Avenue.  I drove nearby streets, weaving in and out of some that were only a block or two long. I saw two abandoned store fronts but no Village Gaarden.

Back at the office, I sat in a slump until Keisha whirled around and demanded, “Okay. What’s the problem?” Keisha is young, African American, colorful, and the most amazing person I’ve ever met—maybe beside Mike. Among other things, there’s her sixth sense.

I told her the whole story and waited for the laughter, but it didn’t come.

“Okay,” she repeated. “We got to get to the bottom of this.  I can’t have you in this funk all the time. Worse than when you and Mike have an argument. Who’s the oldest person you know in Fairmount?”

“Mrs. Workman,” I answered without hesitation. “She’s in her nineties, and she’s lived here since she was a young bride. Still lives in the same house on Jessamine.”

“Let’s go see her.”

“You going too?”

“Yep, I am. I gotta get to the bottom of this too. Your mama’s cooking is pretty good, but I could eat some of that Norwegian stuff you’re talking about.” Keisha lived with my mom off and on when there seemed to be a reason.

I called Mrs. Workman and asked if Keisha and I could come for a visit.

“Of course, Kelly, dear. But you know I’m not going to sell my house.” No quaver marked that elderly voice. It was as strong and forthright as mine.

“Oh, I know, Mrs. Workman. I just want to ask about, uh, some neighborhood history.”

“Oh, my dear, I love to talk about that. You and your friend come right over. I’ll put the tea kettle on.”

Thelma Workman used a cane when she came to answer the front door, but her handshake was firm, and she welcomed Keisha as heartily as she did me. Clearly, she had worked quickly, for the tea tray sat on the coffee table complete with teapot, creamer and sugar, three cups, and a plate of sliced homemade banana bread.

Please, Lord, let me be like this when I’m ninety!

We chatted casually about the bad weather, the changing neighborhood, Mrs. Workman’s Persian cat. All the while, Keisha fidgeted.

“Mrs. Workman,” I began hesitantly, “do you remember a small restaurant called The Village Gaarden?”

Her eyes were bright, and she was instantly on the alert. “Over on Travis Avenue? I remember it well, because I enjoyed many good meals there. Annalise Nelsen could cook like no one else I ever met. She surely put me in the shadows.”

I also shot Keisha a look that said, “See? I didn’t make this up.”

Mrs. Workman continued. “That was years ago, though. In the ’40s, if I remember correctly. I was a young bride, and I even went there for help with cooking. She was so generous and loving—like a second mother to me. But then Annalise’s husband died, and she went back to Norway.”

“She went back to Norway?” I echoed. “What happened to her restaurant?”

“Her children sold the building, and it was demolished. Isn’t there a playground on the site now?”

I had seen a playground when I went back looking for the restaurant. I turned to Keisha, helplessly, but she didn’t laugh nor did she frown. She just reached out for my hand and held it comfortingly.

Mrs. Workman persisted. “How did you even hear about that tiny restaurant, Kelly?”

“Oh, I was examining some old maps, and it was listed on one.” I was surprised that I could lie so easily and quickly.

We chatted a bit more, thanked that lovely lady for tea and delicious banana bread, and left. In the car, Keisha sighed. “I sure wish that hadn’t been a dream, Kelly. Those Norwegian hamburgers, whatever you call them, sound wonderful.”

“They were,” I said. “I have the recipe in my purse. Annalise gave it to me. Want to copy it?”

I wasn’t telling Mike about that. Someday I’d make kjottkaker for him and claim I’d found the recipe on line, after that dream I’d had. But Annalise was real.

 

A photograph, a short story, a novel, and the truth

 

In 1936, documentary photographer Dorothea Lange took a picture that has become the symbol of the Depression. The photograph, taken in Nipomo, California, shows a woman sitting in the back of a beat-up truck, holding an infant, with two other children huddled close to her but turned from the camera, as though blocking it out. The woman stares into the distance, her face lined with fatigue, hunger, and anxiety. She and the children are dirty, their clothes obviously worn for days. It is a picture of abject poverty and hopelessness. Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration and did not own rights to the photos she took; she was paid a salary and never profited directly from the immense popularity of this image. Nor did she get the subject’s name or permission. A few days later, the photograph was published in the San Francisco News. The subject of the photo remained anonymous.

In 1978, a woman named Florence Owens Thompson wrote to the Modesto Bee identifying herself as the woman in the portrait. She and her family felt used by the photographer, disputed some of the facts that had grown up around the picture, and resented being symbols of the Depression. Thompson, who was full Cherokee from Oklahoma, eventually had several husbands and partners and as many as nine children (the record is a bit unclear). In 1983, her health failed, and her children asked for donations to cover her medical care, collecting several thousand dollars. She died a few months later at the age of eighty.

Knowing none of the story, I first saw the picture years ago and was struck by the anguish on Thompson’s face. What I wondered would bring some joy and hope into that life. I wrote a short story, “Sue Ellen Learns to Dance,” in which I plucked her out of the Dustbowl and gave her a new life. The story won a Wrangler (Western Heritage) Award from the National Cowboy Museum and a Spur from Western Writers of America.

This past week I read a novel, Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, also based on the life of Florence Thomson. Silver uses three voices to tell the story---that of Mary herself (Thompson), photographer Virginia Dare (Lange), and a college history professor named Walker Dodge who appears to be the only purely fictional addition to the story. Silver lays out a plausible life for Mary Coin—more marriages, more children—that ends with her living alone in a trailer, despite nicer accommodations arranged by her protective children. The three voices speak interchangeably, and I was uncertain early on where the novel was headed, though I had a suspicion. The characters are portrayed sympathetically, and the entire work is a graphic account of the hardships of the lives of migrant farm workers in the 1930s. There is also a lot of angst and much introspective wandering in the minds of these three characters, but eventually it ends with a climactic plot twist that takes real liberties with truth and possibility.

A friend and fellow novelist asked me what I thought about the differences between my story and Silver’s novel, and at first, I dismissed it as the romanticist (me, with a happy ending) against the realist (with a heart-wrenching though contrived ending). But the more I thought on the question, the more I realized that Silver took a specific woman and created a plausible, probable if grim life story for her. That is or should be historical fiction.

I saw the beleaguered woman as symbolic of the many migrant mothers and imagined a future rather than trying to stick to reality. There were other threads in my story—a hint of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (a dying grandmother is central to the resolution) and woven in is the theme often found in western stories about the good woman who cherishes memories of an outlaw lover or a wild escapade in her past. Though it takes place in the past, I see it as fiction without the historical qualifier.

I wonder if readers would see the same difference I do. Anyway, I find it fascinating that almost ninety years later, that iconic photograph is still inspiring writers.

Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Fool Girl

My short story, “Fool Girl,” is now available for Kindle readers. But there’s a backstory to this. I’m taking an online epublishing course, and our assignment for the second lesson was to post a short story to Kindle (pity the poor author who has no short stories—I don’t have that many, but what I have are collected in Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories). I read the instructions, read them again, and decided I could never master all that.

Then I made myself work with two files open—the instructions and the file I wanted to post. Step by step, I followed the instructions. Sometimes I went backward; sometimes I decided it was impossible. But finally I had the story posted. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Fool-Girl-Judy-Alter-ebook/dp/B013YXZL3U/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439751429&sr=1-4&keywords=Fool+Girl  Maybe by the time this posts the new cover will also be up—I just did that, and am actually feeling pretty proud of myself. I figured if I got it up as a lesson, I might as well put a low price on it and offer it for sale.

“Fool Girl” is based on a story I read in H. H. Halsell’s Cowboys and Cattleland. In truth, a young boy was at the center of the story but with my penchant for writing about girls and women of the West, I changed the protagonist and sent a lone girl out on the Texas prairie, with its danger of Comanches, to look for two lost work horses.  The story won a Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. I was almost as proud then as I am now of having posted it.

My goal, is to be able to post my next novel, Murder at Peacock Mansion, myself. We’ll see. Meantime, if you want a quick read, download “Fool Girl.” And if you find mistakes, let me know. I already know two places where my corrections simply didn’t post—there is a word “t” where it should be “at” and in about the author one paragraph is the wrong font and size. But I tried.

 

That last chapter

This seems kind of a BSP post (blatant self promotion) but I don’t mean it that way. I just finished proofing (again, for the umpteenth time!) a novel I plan to self-publish in October. As I proofed I dreaded getting to the last chapter. There is, I hope, sufficient tension all the way through the novel, but I know in advance that the last scene is scary, the main character nearly meets her maker, and it makes my teeth on edge. Even though I wrote it, and even though I know the ending. I wonder if other writers feel that way.

I have a short story, “The Art of Dipping Candles,” that has been reprinted many times, and I’ve been called on to read it publicly several times. Same thing: when I get to the end, it makes me cry. I can’t help it—it’s just so damn sad.

Beyond that I’ve had lessons in computer difficulty today. I could not download a mobi file from an email and save it, no matter what I did. Then it turned out I’d been downloading it all the time. I even dug out my generation one Kindle, found the cords, charged it and prepared to try to connect Kindle to  computer—though I had no idea what to do next. Fortunately that little dilemma was solved.

Then I thought I’d begin reading about how to download files to Create Space—not actually doing it, mind you, but just reading about the process. I soon found I’d already listed the book and found myself loading text, trying to load ISBN (International Standard Book Number) which Create Space rejected. I had purchased it from R. R. Bowker, so will have to call one or the other about what to do. Then I tried to upload the cover—I only had a jpeg and they wanted a pdf. A friend converted it for me. I knew this was going to be a long, slow process, so I feel good about even having a start. I want to have ARCs by June.

And I wrote 1150 words on the new Kelly novel tonight. So watch my dust—I’m on a roll! And come October, watch for The Perfect Coed from Alter Ego Publishing (no snickers, please—that was once on my rural mailbox). It’s both an adventure and an experiment for me. Come along for the ride.