Middle, Lost, and Found E-Book

Jamie Ford

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A short story from Jamie Ford, the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Das E-Book Middle, Lost, and Found wird angeboten von Allison & Busby und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
Short story

Leseprobe

Middle, Lost, and Found

JAMIE FORD

Contents

Title PageMiddle, Lost, and FoundCopyright

An ode to the alpha female.

Readers often ask, “Do you model your characters after real people,” and my stock answer has always been, No, I don’t. Because I tend to create very simple characters and then rub them up against circumstance to see what happens. Sometimes they’re strong and sparks fly and other times they’re about as unyielding as Jell-O.

But the more I thought about the character of Mrs. Beatty (my favorite character in Hotel on the Corner of You Know What) the more I realized that in many ways she is an echo of my grandmother—my mom’s mom. My Grandma Blackwell was an alpha female, a strong southern woman who chewed snuff, could cuss like a sailor, and yet she was a nurse (she must have had the gnarliest bedside manner imaginable!).

And when I ruminated further on the whole thing, suddenly I realized that I married an alpha female. And we’re raising our daughters to be alpha females—they surround me, I’m totally outnumbered.

Which reminds me, I need to finish this intro and hurry up and make dinner so I can take Madi bra shopping and then drop Kassie off at jujitsu. Gotta go.

Hope you enjoy getting to know Mrs. Beatty a little better.

JAMIE

Middle, Lost, and Found

Jamie Ford

Dora Jean Beatty slammed the front door, not violently, just enough to cause a ruckus—anything to pierce the stagnant silence of her modest walk-up on Queen Anne Hill. She tramped in, kicked off her heavy leather Oxfords, laces still tied in greasy knots, tossed a damp copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on her speckled yellow kitchen table, and banged the cupboards open and closed. She noisily sorted through a drawer of kitchen utensils, then fished out a can opener and ratcheted the lid off a tin of Falcon Brand Pink Salmon. The lumpy meat looked as gray as an old unmatched sock. She hated the stuff, but Mr. Marble, a grizzled Manx with six-toed paws, loved the salty, oily fish. Dora Jean plucked translucent bones from the can, then scooped out the contents with her fingers and into a fat coffee cup that sat on the far side of the kitchen table. The name Harold had been written on the cup, brushed in gold ink that had long since lost its luster.

Mr. Marble leapt up on the table, nary making a sound, and sniffed his dinner twice, before gulping down the fish in large bites. Dora Jean smiled. There was always a certain satisfaction in watching Mr. Marble eat from Harold’s favorite, prized coffee cup, matched equally in proportion to his considerable disdain of the old tomcat.

Dora Jean tried not to wonder about him, her husband, her ex—whatever he was—and tried not to worry about where he was. His absence is a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless, she thought, nodding absently, though her tired eyes didn’t match her smile whenever she caught her reflection in the kitchen window.

Nothing was official, just that he was gone. Again.

AS SHE LAY in bed, Dora Jean gave Mr. Marble plenty of room to stretch out on the queen-sized mattress. He favored the left side, which was just as well with her. It prevented her from sleeping in the middle—a terrible place she’d found herself in many times, unable to sleep. She’d wake each morning, invariably hugging a pillow in the space her husband had once occupied.

Harold’s old pillow still smelled like him. She’d scrubbed the linens time and again, but she couldn’t quash the scent of the musky Fougère Royale she’d bought him as a gift on Father’s Day. One might see it as an odd gift, since her doctor had all but declared her barren—he used the term infecund, as if that word could dress up the truth into something prettier. Afterward, she suggested that they adopt a baby and her Father’s Day gift was meant to be a hopeful reminder of their promising future. Now the scent of it was just a bitter ghost that haunted her whenever she was alone.

In the gloaming, Dora Jean tried not to remember the white wicker stroller she’d seen on display at Frederick & Nelson’s on the long walk home from the doctor’s office. A baby doll had sat inside, looking absurdly fake, with its cue-ball head and drawn-on hair, swaddled in a periwinkle blanket. For some reason, the mannequins pushing the buggy, a plaster man and woman dressed in vibrant, fall colors, seemed so happy, so real it almost made her jealous. She couldn’t forget—try as she might—the conversation with Harold that followed that night.

“Adopt? Why would we want someone else’s leftovers?” Harold had asked without bothering to look up from the sports page to hear an answer. “Face it, Jeannie. Some people are meant to have a