Kate Spade has done it again!

In a previous post, Kate Spade's purse designs were highlighted -- The Great Gatsy by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Now, there are more literary clutches. Pride and Prejudice and Emma by Jane Austen, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson, and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Cool and hip. I Married Adventure is very on-trend -- a zebra print background!

Just in time for holiday gift-giving!

Author On the Bookcase
Mara Purl 

I'm excited to welcome Mara Purl, author of The Milford-Haven Novels, to On the Bookcase. Milford-Haven is a fictitious town on California's Central Coast. Pre-9/11, housing is on the rise, the stock market is booming, and Milford-Haven is full of the upwardly mobile pouring out of Los Angeles in search of a fresh start or a weekend getaway. The novels are based on Purl's BBC Radio drama Milford-Haven U.S.A. 

The first in the Milford-Haven series, What the Heart Knows, features Miranda Jones. Artist Miranda begins to trust her heart enough to escape from her life of privilege and start over in Milford-Haven. Now that she's moved, deeper questions surface: What is her life purpose? What's missing? And what does her heart know that her head keeps ignoring? Miranda connects with environmentalist Samantha Hugo -- a brilliant PhD twenty years her senior who gave up a son years earlier and with restaurant owner Sally O'Mally who left Arkansas to create her own dream. Each woman wrestles with her own core issues while balancing demanding careers. What happens in Milford-Haven when journalist Christine Christian is found murdered while investigating a half-built house?

Look for the sign to Milford-Haven, pull off Highway 1 and discover for yourself . . . What the Heart Knows.

Mara chats about her Author Chat with a book club and how her "characters became springboards for philosophical considerations and self-examination" during the book club discussion.

Mara, what does your heart know?

When I think of book clubs, I think of a special evening when I was the guest of a group in Thousand Oaks, California. The meeting was held at a beautiful home nestled in the hills. Spacious and comfortable, the home was also fragrant with cooking aromas when I arrived.

After being welcomed, I was invited to sit at a large dining table where the group of twelve women assembled. Our plates were heaped with a sumptuous array of perfectly cooked foods, and as we began to share the meal, one of the book club members introduced me formally.

It soon became clear that not only had everyone there read my book; each had read it carefully and apparently made notes, as notebooks and index cards, and print-outs of the Reading Guide from the Reading Group Choices website began appearing next to their plates. The first volley of questions were about story details: Why did Samantha, an environmentalist, drive a Jeep Cherokee? Why was Miranda, obviously attracted to Zack, suspicious of his behavior? The second set of questions were aimed more at larger writing issues. Did I really believe I could keep developing so many characters? How did I plan to inform readers who started with book three what had already happened in the series?

Some of their questions put me on the hot seat, but I experienced it as more of a “warm” seat—a comfortable place to be, gratified by their obviously genuine interest. But as dinner finished and desert was being served, things got even more interesting. Now the characters and their experiences became springboards for philosophical considerations and self-examination. Now we were a group of women interested in working on our lives, talking through issues, and revealing deep feelings.

We were women who’d moved from our heads to our hearts. And this was the most thrilling part of the evening for me. For this is the theme of my entire series, and the reason book one is titled What the Heart Knows. In our culture, we’re not only encouraged to “use our heads,” but admonished that the only way to get ahead is to use smart tactics and learn how to strategize. This is all to the good!

Yet, when it comes to “following our hearts,” we’re often advised we’re being “overly emotional,” “immature,” or just “foolish.” I believe the heart—our intuition, our instincts, our gut-feelings—can offer information that is every bit as valuable as what our heads have to tell us. So I challenged myself: what would life look like for a character who began to listen to what her heart says? This is my protagonist’s journey. And, to some extent, it’s the journey of each character in Milford-Haven.

The thrill of that evening with the book club was that the very questions I had posed for my characters, were the questions my readers were now posing for themselves. On the surface, my books are good reads because they entertain and provide escape—something we all need from time to time. But beneath the surface, these deeper issues swim patiently, waiting for a chance to surface.

At the end of the evening, I felt not only physically full, but emotionally and intellectually well-fed. The book we’d discussed that night happened to be one of mine, but the experience went far beyond the content available between the covers of the book. Indeed what had happened was the book had become a window into the heart.

Thanks so much, Mara! Reading groups love to extend their book discussions outward to their lives and the world.

Bonus for Reading Group Choices Fans!

A Milford-Haven Single
Read When Hummers Dream, Mara's prequel to the first novel in her series. This is your chance to read the story before the story. . . .
also includes the Prologue and Chapter One of What the Heart Knows.

Praise for The Milford-Haven Novels

"In Mara Purl's books the writing is crisp and clean, the dialogue realis­tic, the scenes well described. I salute her ingenuity."
—Bob Johnson, Former Managing Editor, The Associated Press

Mara Purl pioneered small-town fiction for women with her popular and critically acclaimed Milford-Haven Novels. Her beloved fictitious town has been delighting audiences since 1992, when it first appeared as Milford-Haven, U.S.A.©—the first American radio drama ever licensed and broadcast by the BBC. The show reached an audience of 4.5 million listeners throughout the U.K.

Early editions of Mara's novels have won fifteen gold and finalist literary awards including the Benjamin Franklin, the Indie Excellence, the USA Book News Best Book, and the ForeWord Book of the Year. Mara's other writing credits include plays, screenplays, scripts for Guiding Light, cover stories for Rolling Stone, staff writing with the Financial Times (of London), and the Associated Press. She is the co-author (with Erin Gray) of Act Right.

As an actress, Mara was "Darla Cook" on Days Of Our Lives. She was named one of twelve Women of the Year by the Los Angeles County Commission for Women.

Learn more about Mara and Milford-Haven.

AUTHOR SQUARED
Michele Young-Stone
Cara Hoffman

Two Authors chat about writing, books, and everything in between

I'm excited to welcome Michele Young-Stone (The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors) and Cara Hoffman (So Much Pretty) to Author Squared.

Take it away, Michele and Cara!

Michele: I have some questions I’m dying to ask you.
Cara: Sure 

Michele: So, So Much Pretty, is seriously one of the best books that I've read in years. I thought the small town was perfectly eerie and amazingly portrayed. The descriptions were active to the point that I didn’t feel like I was reading description!

 Cara: Thank you. I'm really flattered, especially since that's coming from someone who can write the small town with such evocativeness.
Michele: Were you inspired by events/crimes you covered while a journalist?
Cara: Yes. It was a crime that actually happened in a more suburban area.
Michele: Wow! I loved the surprise ending. Did you know how the book would end when you were writing it?
Cara: I knew the ending before I knew anything else.
Michele: Was the ending what "really happened" or no? I ask b/c I NEVER know endings.

Cara: The book was partly based on an abduction/murder. The ending is kind of a logical conclusion to those events given the nature of the characters. Michele, do people ask you constantly about surviving a lightning strike? 

Michele: You bet, but in this case, the fiction is better than the facts. I was "really" struck by lightning, but the "facts" of what happened to me were too boring for my novel.
Cara: God!! I assume you weren't struck twice
So what really happened???
Michele: I was knocked unconscious, age 11, but then regained consciousness at some point. We were in my parents' driveway and I was struck and my mom was there. We were both in such shock, like total real shock, that we actually drove to the mall--which is what we'd intended to do when we went outside that day.
Cara: Wow. Did you get any medical attention?
Michele: NO.  Which sounds crazy, but that was the best thing about researching lightning and lightning strike survivors. More than 50% of people struck do not seek medical attention, and that statistic is probably even higher. No one believes the victim, and without physical burns, there's no evidence via xray because the lightning travels through your cardiovascular system.
The National Weather Service has only started taking lightning strikes seriously in the past ten years. Nowadays, golf courses and swimming pools have much stricter rules/guidelines concerning thunder. Because if you hear thunder, you are within range of being struck. You can be up to fifteen miles from a storm and be struck.  Thunder is the sound lightning makes when it comes in contact with the ground. 
Cara: Apart from life experience, what made you want to use lightning strike as the central metaphor for a novel about family and intersecting fates?
Michele: I had a writing professor who said, "There are a million books about dysfunctional families and especially about dysfunctional father/daughter relationships. What is going to separate yours from theirs?” I love magical realism so I thought that the lightning would enable me to do both. Cara, is your second novel also based on a story you covered while a journalist?
Cara: No. It's about the Iraq war and adjusting to coming home and living in a family again.
Michele: Ooh, that sounds fascinating. I guess you are doing a lot of research?
Cara: I'm doing some research--a lot of it not about the war. The book focuses on sibling relationships and trauma. Michele, are you working on a new book?
Michele: I'm working on a third book. Sarah, our editor, and I are going to decide this fall if the second or the third novel is the next to meet the reading world. I think we'll go with the third novel, but since I haven't finished it, we shall see. The third novel has more of an international appeal.
Cara: hmmm. Very curious. Can you talk about it?
Michele: Both the second and third novels explore violence against women. The third novel, The Saints of Los Vientos, tells parallel stories of two girls born with wings: one in Lithuania during WWII, and one in Florida in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Cara: Really interesting.
Michele: The girls are related and connected by more than wings. And the second novel is another "parallel" story about a woman in the 1960s as a teenager and as an adult in the 1970s. It's a love story where the man-woman relationship is the least healthy.
Cara:  Do you work on your manuscripts simultaneously?
Michele: No. I can't look at the second book again until I am done with a complete first draft of the third. Otherwise, I would go seriously bonkers.
Cara: Ha. You must have a rigorous schedule
MIchele: I write every day. How long did it take you to write So Much Pretty?
Cara: A little over a year.
Michele: Did it take you a long time to find an agent and editor?
Cara: I was very lucky. My agent Rebecca Friedman picked up the manuscript immediately. It took about five or six months to sell. Which seemed, at the time, like a long time.
Michele: Did you do a lot of edits with Rebecca?
Cara: Very few. She's an incredible reader and has real insight. I have been so happy working with her.
Michele: That's awesome. And I'm sure, like me, you love working with Sarah at S & S. She was my editor at Shaye Areheart/RH, and I trusted her so implicitly, all I wanted to do was to work with her again. Cara, another thing I was wondering: well, two things: I really related to Claire and Gene, in So Much Pretty. Was there a character from So Much Pretty that you really related to (more than the others), and while writing the darker parts of the story, did you internalize any of the emotions, like was it difficult? Did you feel depressed, etc.?
Cara: I do love working with Sarah. It's a great process. As far as the characters in So Much Pretty are concerned, I guess it's no revelation that I related to Stacy Flynn. The reporter. But you know, you really feel all your characters’ emotions whether you want to or not. There were certainly hard scenes to write, and those scenes and the research I was doing on violence made some days pretty difficult. Michele, the parts of your novel that were so moving to me had to do with Buckley and his mom. They were so sad and also edifying. Was it hard to be with Buckley when you were making his life hard?
Michele: Yes. It was really hard being with Buckley. I love the characters Abigail and Clementine, and when I wrote the lightning scene with Bo, the dog, I sobbed. I didn't want to write it. While working on this third novel, I had the worst nightmare I've ever had. I couldn't wake up and every time I thought I was awake, I was still in the nightmare. It was terrifying, and I couldn't figure out where the dream came from, and then when I sat down at the computer the next day, I reread what I'd written the day before, and OMG, but it was a terrible violent scene where I'd had to imagine myself in this horrid predicament, and I'd been so immersed, it'd sunk into my subconscious.
Cara: Yes. It really gets you! I've had those kinds of nightmares before. A long time ago when I was travelling I had several nightmares in which I “woke” into another dream. The tip off that I was still asleep was that a dog started talking to me.
Michele: That's a riot. Thank goodness for that dog! So, I have to ask: Are you having trouble with the social media stuff like Facebooking and Tweeting and having a website? Or is it hard for you to read and talk in public?
Cara: I guess I'd prefer to be writing novels than using twitter. I think of those things as a distraction mostly, but a pretty innocuous one. How about you?  Are you finding the time?
Michele: I have a six-year old. I don't know. I think that publicity stuff is super hard. I'd always prefer to write. I used to get really nervous reading in public, but I'm much more relaxed now. I really enjoy what I do. I can't believe I actually get paid to tell stories!  It still freaks me out. I was a school teacher for ten years (English teacher). I've had to do a lot of publicity b/c two weeks after my book came out, my publishing house, Shaye Areheart, was dissolved.  It was pretty chaotic for everybody so I knew that I had to do whatever I could to spread the word about my book. I didn't want it to die.
Michele: I CAN'T WAIT to read your next book.  You have such talent! When do you think you'll be ready to show it to your agent? Or is that a "jinx" kind of question?
Cara: Likewise. I'm excited to see your new work. My agent sold the new novel to Sarah at S&S a few months ago. So it's just a matter of getting the time to finish it.
Michele: Kudos! Congrats! I understand how hard it is to find the time. I'm in that same boat.
Cara: I'm very interested to see what these girls with wings do, and how you make your characters lives intersect--which was such a great strength in The Handbook.
Michele: Yeah. I can't seem to write linearly. I like to have a hundred threads and pull them together. And, this is fun: for every novel I finish, I get a tattoo, so my third novel will be a pair of wings. It's incentive to finish the book.
Cara: If you have a prolific career you will be like the illustrated man.
Michele: LAUGHING!!! The tattoo artist said to me, "You need to write faster. You need more tattoos!"
Michele: Bye, Cara. Keep in touch and best of luck to you. I am so glad Sarah gave me your book to read. I really couldn't put it down. Thank you.
Cara: Thank YOU.

And, THANK YOU, Michele and Cara! Family dynamics, faith, and nature in The Hanhbook for Lightning Strike Survivors and murder, small town secrets, and a great sense of place in So Much Pretty make both books excellent book club picks.

Michele Young-Stone earned her MFA in fiction writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Once, many years ago, she was struck by lightning in her driveway. She survived. Michele resides in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and son and a community of great friends.

Cara Hoffman has won a New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for her work on violence and adolescents and has worked as an investigative reporter covering New York State's rural and Rust Belt communities, where she reported on environmental politics and crime.

Fourth Installment!
Sisters of the Traveling Computers
Novel-in-Progress

Eight great writers are going to produce a progressive novel -- like a progressive dinner! Each one will write a couple paragraphs, a chapter, two chapters (whatever strikes her fancy) round robin style without discussing it with each other. This novel-in-progress will continue through the rest of the year. The scribes are Eleanor Brown (The Weird Sisters), Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell From The Sky),  Siobhan Fallon (You Know When The Men Are Gone), Therese Fowler (Exposure), Tanya Egan Gibson (How To Buy A Love Of Reading), Caroline Leavitt (Pictures of You), Sarah Pekkanen (Skipping a Beat), and Rebecca Rasmussen (The Bird Sisters.) All great books for reading groups!

First installment (May 15)

By midnight, he still wasn’t home. Or he wasn’t picking up the phone, which he knew would make her frantic with worry. She couldn’t leave the Martin’s now. Already, Mrs. Martin had told her that just cleaning up after the party wasn’t enough, that she wanted her to also redust (redust!) the figurines on the mantle because “You didn’t take enough care last time.” Should she tell Mrs. Martin how Mr. Martin groped her as she trying to arrange the baby chocolate éclairs on a plate? Should she tell her how Bobby, Mrs. Martin's son, called her a stupid bitch and kicked her out of his room so she wouldn’t catch him doing Jesus knows what?

She wasn’t supposed to use her phone when she was working, but she dialed again. Maybe he was with Bette, his terrifying girlfriend. Maybe he was walking again, clearing his head about what had happened.

Second Installment (June 22)

Maria wasn’t ready to become a grandmother at 42. And that was what she said first when--with his lips trembling—Mark told her that Bette was pregnant. She should have held him. He looked so scared. How could her teenage son become a father before he had a chance to become a man?

That was just five weeks ago, and now she wouldn’t have to be a young grandmother. She wouldn’t have to watch Mark struggle to take care of a family too young. Why couldn’t Mark see the miracle in this moment?

The phone went to voicemail again.

It was a thirty-minute drive home from the Martin’s. Let him be home by then, she thought. Just please let him be safe.

Third Installment (July 1)

“Dammit!” The most ghoulish figurine, the one with the trio of black-eyed children gaping up as if caught forever in the middle of wailing some god-awful song, skittered across the Pledge-shiny mantle and shattered on the floor below.

Maria dropped to the marble and quickly swept the delicate porcelain into the dust rag.  Her right knee grinded roughly and she winced, maybe she would have been old enough to have been a grandmother after all.

“What have you done?”

Maria looked up at the doorway and saw Mrs. Martin standing there in that blue dress of hers, the one that had the extra padding in the front and made the woman look top heavy enough to fall on her face. What Maria would give to see Mrs. Martin fall on her face. Though it looked like tonight just might be the night as Mrs. Martin tottered over the smooth floor toward her. Maria tried to judge the distance between the door and the mantle—would Mrs. Martin, who clearly looked like she had finished off every wine bottle in her cellar, notice the missing figurine? Should Maria pretend she was just wiping up a speck of dirt on the marble and get herself to the department store tomorrow to find one of these ridiculous chatkas, get it back on the mantle before Mrs. Martin had finished nursing her hangover and got out of bed at noon? Whenever she had broken something in the past, Mrs. Martin docked her pay a good fifty percent more that the true price of the broken item. Maria knew that vase the cat knocked over, the one she got blamed for, had been a Wal-Mart special rather than any Shannon Irish Chrystal from Macy’s, but she had let it slide.

Now she curled those shattered little goth kids into her palm. “How was the party, Mrs. Martin? Did your guests just love those éclairs?”

“I thought I heard something break in here.” Mrs. Martin seemed unsure. Then she slipped, looked like she was about to do a split and quickly righted herself. That’s what she deserved for wearing those three inch hooker heels, Maria thought. Clear heels! No one could get away with clear heels except… well, hookers. Didn’t Mrs. Martin know that a fifty year old woman had a better chance of keeping her man if she let herself age gracefully instead of buying out Victoria Secret push-up bras and over-botoxing her face?

“Did you say something broke in the kitchen? I’ll get right on it.” Maria rose, again feeling that weakness in her knee. For a moment she felt a rush of sympathy for Mrs. Martin and the skin stretched too tightly across her face, the highlighted hair that only seemed to emphasize her grey, the manic way she held her wine glass as if it’s contents was the only thing allowing her to think that she was still young and lovely in the eyes of her husband.

“The kitchen is a disaster,” the woman sneered, and Maria felt her spine straighten, her sympathy evaporate. The kitchen had been pristine ten minutes ago, all the party’s washing up done and put away. The only thing left should be a few coffee cups from the hanger-ons who pretended to sober up before drunk-driving their Hummers and Mercedes home.

“I’ll take a look before I go,” Maria whispered, eyes down. Then she glanced up, rearranging her face as sweetly as possible. “Oh, Mrs. Martin, I think Bobby wanted you to go on in and say goodnight when your guests left, he seemed like he was waiting up for you.”

Maria left the room, shoving the rag deep into her pocket. She hoped Mrs. Martin walked right in on that little pervert and caught him watching whatever sicko pornos only rich tech-savvy kids had the time and money to become addicted too.

She peeked into the kitchen; the gleaming granite was just as clean as she left it. Two dirty coffee cups in the sink. Two dirty coffee cups now constituted a “disaster.” Maria shook her head and quickly put the mugs into the dishwasher. This family didn’t know the disasters that knocked them upside the head every day: Mr. Martin chasing anything that peed sitting down, Bobby talking to topless girls in Thailand through a web-cam, Mrs. Martin with a liver that wouldn’t see the next decade. Oh no, the only disasters the Martins recognized were the fluctuation of stock prices, a new wrinkle on Mrs. Martin’s rigid face, Bobby not getting into Princeton.

Maria set the alarm system in the foyer and shut the front door without further ado. She was reaching for her cell phone before she was at the end of the driveway and felt a sudden stab of pain. She tugged her hand out of her pocket, heard the chime of glass hitting the asphalt. A shard of figurine had sliced into the pad of her thumb and now jutted out of her flesh. Part of a face hung perpendicular from her finger, and one of the black eyes, souless and cold, stared up at her. It made Maria hesitate and stare back, jolted and afraid. That eye looking at her felt like a bad omen. She tugged it out, threw the piece on the drive, stuck her bloody thumb in her mouth. Then she started jogging to her car, her heart tight in her chest.

Mark, she thought, dear God, Mark, please be all right.

Bette answered the door, looking peeved at Maria for trying to get into her own home. Maria would have naturally apologized for waking anyone up, but the glint of Bette’s eyebrow ring, the twist on the girl’s perpetually red-lipsticked mouth, made Maria itch with irritation instead. First of all, Bette was not allowed to be in the house when Maria was not. Call her old-fashioned or absolutely ridiculous, Maria didn’t care. It was her number one rule. Second of all, there were plenty of bolts on that door that the kids could have locked that Maria had a key to open, but they had decided on using the chain, knowing Maria couldn’t get in, which made her think that they had deliberately locked her out so they could do the sorts of things Maria told herself sickos like Bobby Martin got up to. As if getting Bette pregnant once just wasn’t enough for these two. As if a miscarriage, yes, horrible, but in this case it felt like it was the will of God Almighty Himself, as if a miscarriage hadn’t spared them already.

“Mark’s here?” Maria asked immediately. Bette shrugged in that sullen way that made Maria want to wring her neck.

“Bette, is he here or not? And why weren’t either of you answering your cell phones, I was worried sick—“

“He hasn’t called me since ten,” the girl said. “I don’t know where he is.”
Maria blinked at Bette, noticing for the first time that she was wearing a pair of Mark’s boxers. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?”

The girl followed Maria’s eyes. “He told me I could stay here, to make myself comfortable.” She put her hand on her hip. “It’s not like I could go home now that everyone knows Mark knocked me up.”

Maria felt exhausted, the room tipping to the left for a moment. It was too much. “Bette, where is my son?”

Bette sighed forcefully in reply, her thick fringe of bangs lifting off her forehead with the effort, and it reminded Maria that the girl was only a teenager after all. Granted, a seventeen-year old, and she lorded that extra year of experience over sixteen-year old Mark, it was part of her strange power over her son, Maria knew. But she was still a girl, at least in calendar years, and she had been through a lot, had been pregnant and lost a baby and now it seemed as if her parents had kicked her out of her home, all before her senior year of high school. If Maria had been a better person, she would have embraced Bette immediately, asked her how she was feeling, offered to make her an ice cream sundae. But Maria didn’t feel like being a better person tonight, she felt the taint of the Martin’s still on her skin, making her impatient and cruel. “Goddammit, Bette, don’t you sigh at me. If you don’t tell me where Mark is I will call the police and tell them to take you with them.”

Bette’s arms dropped limply to her sides. “He went somewhere with Figgy. He didn’t tell me what they were doing but he said not to worry about them unless they didn’t come home by morning. He told me to make up a lie to tell you but… but I couldn’t.” She glanced at Maria and Maria thought maybe there was something scheming in the girl’s eyes, something that didn’t match the poor-little-worried-me story.

Maria sat down at the small kitchen table.

Figgy. That name rang some vague bell. Was he one of Bette’s cousin’s? Yes, that’s right, he was the eldest Figuera boy, eighteen, the one who had repeated his freshman year of high school twice. Mark had never been friends with any of the Figueroa boys before. Before Bette. Maria should call the police right this minute, tell them her son was missing. Mark, her beautiful boy. She thought she had done things right with him, he never missed a day of school, teachers always telling her how good a kid he was with his ‘yes ma’am’, ‘please’ and ‘no thank you’s, his noble attempts at chess club, his weekend work at the Books and Boogie store downtown. And then this girl, this Bette-- who would give a child a French whore name like that anyway? -- always looking like she was laughing at the adults, like she knew something no one else knew, with her lip gloss and frightening piercings and tight black t-shirts that showed the small star tattoo just above her hip, this girl ruined everything. Maria thought of the first time she met Bette, how she was certain she had smelled alcohol on the girl’s breath, how the girl seemed impaired by something more than youth, and when she asked Mark about it the next day, he claimed Bette had had the stomach flu and the anti-nausea pills weren’t sitting well with her. It was the most preposterous thing Maria had ever heard but her son said it with such certainty, so hurt when Maria laughed at him, that Maria thought Mark himself believed the ridiculous story. Now Maria assessed Bette and wondered if she had even been pregnant. She certainly didn’t seem weak or fragile for someone who had miscarried just two days ago.

Maria put her hands over her face. They were only kids. Surely Bette couldn’t have lied about something like that just to tighten her grip. But Mark, where was he? One o’clock in the morning, off with a dumb-as-mud eighteen year old named Figgy, up to God knows what.

Suddenly Maria thought again of the Martins, of Mrs. Martin thickly snoring in her king sized bed, of Bobby on his computer all night, of Mr. Martin sending suggestive text messages to his secretary, and, for the first time in the eight years that Maria had worked for them, she envied them their minor disasters after all.

 Fourth Installment
(July 22)

The light woke her, curling its fingers gently around the curtains, feeling its way into the room slowly. Squinting against the light, Maria reached out and turned the alarm clock towards her so she could see.

Six-thirty. When had she become unable to sleep in? The night before a day off, she invariably promised herself that she would sleep until some hedonistic hour – eight, maybe – and the next morning, she invariably woke at the same time she did every other morning, feeling, somehow, cheated, but unable to fall back to sleep anyway. Mark, on the other hand, could still keep the nearly-vampirical hours of a teenager, staying up until dawn threatened, and then sleeping happily until the afternoon.

The thought of Mark gave her a vaguely uneasy feeling, and she pushed the clock away. Had he ever come home? She slipped on a bathrobe and padded lightly down the hall, the carpet rough and stiff under her feet, the periodic stains a map of time. In the living room, Bette was sleeping on the sofa, face-down, one hand resting on the floor, the opposite foot hooked over the back, as though she had collapsed in the midst of some athletic event. Her makeup was smudged, her hair messy, and Maria felt a twinge of something maternal as she looked at the girl. Maybe she had been wrong about Bette. Maybe she should trust her more, see the elaborate makeup and aggressive piercings and the tight clothes as what they were: armor against the world, against anyone getting too close.

Mark’s door was closed – still, or again? Maria turned the handle gently, placing her other palm flat against the wood as she pushed. The room was dark, the bed, empty.

She closed the door, the worry in her stomach twisting and growing. Wherever he and the unfortunately-named Figgy had gone last night, they hadn’t come back.  She padded softly into the kitchen and looked at her cell phone and the answering machine. No messages.

With a sigh, Maria ran her hands through her hair and rubbed her eyes. She caught a glimpse of herself in the window above the sink, a tired woman with tired eyes and a worried set to her mouth. She hadn’t always been like this, hadn’t always looked this way. Once upon a time she would have been gentler with the Martins, been gentler with Bette, been gentler with herself. But then things happened…life happened, and here she was, with money problems and parenting problems and job problems and a thousand responsibilities as long as her arm, and the gentleness had faded to an occasional guilt that slipped around the back of her mind like a ghost.

And now she had three new problems: Mark was missing, Bette was not, and she was going to have to call Danny and tell him both of those things.

The first eight installments will be anynomous as the writers would like to guess who is writing that passage solely on sytle of writing. How fun!

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