Quoting brief excerpts from the novel, this week we meet Colt, Garnet's nephew and boarder, and his daughter, Meg.
Colt "Though he’s twenty-nine, in his heart of hearts Colt feels as adrift, as unsettled as he remembers being at eighteen. He would like to be feeling that his real life has begun. Instead, he believes he lost his way somewhere between Rain telling him she was pregnant eleven years ago and today. Yes, he stuck it out, got an education, which truth to tell has not proved very useful. Yes, by working part-time during the school year, full-time summers and breaks at the construction job he still holds, he’s debt-free. He’s even managed to become and remain a part of his daughter’s life and cobbled together a mostly positive relationship with her mother. But he’d hoped by now to have a partner, a term he despises for its business-as-usual implication, but the person it represents in his mind, this unknown someone, he thinks he’d like her. A lot. He’d hoped to have a house, no, a home, by now. He loves his aunt, does not know what he’d have done without her kindness, but maybe it’s time to free them both up, break up the current stasis? Colt does not have a girlfriend. He has not had a date in, has not had sex in, what the hell, he is not going to say how long. For either one. He’ll be pinned down only to it’s been a while. If nothing else, maybe he needs to actually do something about that." Meg "Sunday evening Colt pulls into Rain’s driveway, delivering Meg to her mom after a weekend in which nothing special happened. He and Meg ate pizza with Garnet; they took Vera to the dog park, went to breakfast with their elders, and Meg to the library with Garnet. They saw a movie, its forgetful fish reminding Colt of something, of someone, finally realizing on the way home that it was Garnet’s ex, Bowie. Meg then went out for sundaes with that same uncle Bowie, the crummy weather bothering neither one. Colt and his daughter played Monopoly with Garnet, one game each evening, Colt, winning big and sorely lacking in good-sport humility, christened a “bad winner” and “glory hog” by the disdainful ladies. In other words, it was perfect. He turns off the engine and glances at his daughter. He would very much like to have her remain ten forever, his life remaining in perfect equilibrium, no looming future to scare the bejesus out of him. Nothing says happy and afraid don’t go together. That they don’t march lockstep holding each other up like the two wounded soldiers they are. Considering the fragility of happiness, aren’t we always looking back, worrying, making sure something, anything, isn’t gaining on us, on a mission to take it all away. I know, I know. Stupid. Serving only to make a person less happy, more afraid. Even so, Meg’s sweet round face, that smile her grandmother’s, all of it more than enough reason to startle awake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night thinking of all the things the world contains. Its arsenal of illness, violence, accidents. To recognize your significant powerlessness in the face of it. How do you live with that? How does anyone?" Coming next week: Garnet's ex, Bowie, and her sister, Ruby "An Invitation to the Party" can be pre-ordered at: regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/an-invitation-to-the-party/
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We tend to write about what we know. I am a writer, thus this blog: Why write? What, when, where to write? Stay tuned. Archives
April 2024
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