I like it. I have no idea what's going on, but it's a good start to something decidedly genre.
Here's the last page or so of the first part of an unpublished novel I put together a while ago. It's meant to be evocative; let's see what it evokes.
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I’ll give him credit. Max kept any ... observations that may have been building up within him unverbalized over the course of the meal. He’d shifted a number of disapproving glances in Mags and Winnie’s direction, but was largely set on “behave,” a mode kept intact by a number of disapproving glances shifted by Aunt Jo in
his direction.
I needn’t have worried. Max was one thing, but for
really inappropriate social gaffes ...
“So you two are lesbians,” Peter rolled the word around in his mouth, as a small child might a sweet pickle -- no set reaction yet, just definitely unfamiliar.
Mom slapped her forehead.
“Yes, that’s right,” Aunt Maggie smiled gently. “Among other things. We’re also altos.”
“What’s that like?” Peter said.
“Altos?” Maggie was ready to treat Peter’s oddly timed thirst for enlightenment as the joke it was. “A lot of hymns are out of our range.”
“And ‘hims’ as well,” Winnie said.
“Hm? -- oh, right! ‘Hims,’” Maggie giggled as she got it. “
Completely off the radar.”
“Entirely,” Max grumbled, and I think Jo kicked him. He poured a second glass of pinot noir. Really dark stuff.
“It doesn’t seem -- well, that’s kinda weird, isn’t it?” Peter had only had one glass of wine at the table, but God knows how much he’d knocked back downtown. Obviously plenty enough to say anything.
“I’ve never felt ‘weird,’ exactly,” said Maggie, as if actually considering it.
“In fact, look at her,” Winnie said, beaming at Maggie. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Well, yes,” Peter said.
“Don’t you want to just eat her up?” she vamped.
“Well ...” Peter’s rather indiscreet blush was answer enough.
“Well, see?” Winnie planted a kiss on Maggie’s cheek. “Not weird at all.”
“Peter.” My mom isn’t psychic, but she is wise, and knew where this was going if he stayed. “Aunt Olive’s train is coming in in just a few minutes or so. Why don’t you go down and meet her?”
“Oh, will do,” he said, and got up, mom’s keys still jingling in his pocket. Ass.
“You two
{Paul & Jan} are just so cute together,” Winnie said. I grinned and took some roast as the bun came from the other direction. “How long have you been going out?”
I thought Winnie must have been on her second glass, though it was I who blushed. “Oh, a couple of months,” I said. “I met her my first week of school.”
“Seminary, you said?” Maggie looked to my mom. After her
faux pas about Karen, she’d done her best to stay on familiar ground.
Wrong time to take a bite of the little sandwich I’d made. It gave Max an opening. “Yes, for all the good it’s doing,” He set his glass down.
“Hush, dear.” Jo did her best.
“So Kristin’s art is good, you were saying?” Winnie asked.
“Well, what I saw last night was quite promising,” Jan answered. “She’s young, yet, but ...”
“If she were here, she could show you herself,” Jo came back with little raspberry squares — a layer of Oreos, a layer of cream cheese filling, a layer of tart, thickened red raspberry compote and a dollop of whipped topping, with a raspberry and mint leaf on top.
“Don’t worry, Jo, we’ll see her soon enough.” Winnie said, taking a coffee herself and a dessert as Mags headed back to the kitchen.
“My 16-year-old daughter is out on the town on a Friday night with a car and God knows how many people in it when she is supposed to be here helping her mother get things ready for tomorrow, and you say ‘Don’t worry.’ What do you know about it?” Max growled at Winnie. “When you have a daughter ...”
Jo saw where that was going. “Max darling, eat your dessert.”
He very deliberately set it to one side and cleared his throat. “Are they teaching you the Bible at all in that school of yours, son?”
He was staring at Winnie, but the question was clearly directed at me. My fork hovered in mid-air.
“We are covering the Bible, yes.” I took my bit of dessert, which was delicious.
“What’s Paul say in Romans?”
“Quite a lot, actually,” I said. “He sums up his theology, God’s new relationship with humanity through Christ, his general sense of right and wrong ...”
“‘General sense of right and wrong,’” Max had been lying in wait for that very theme, and pounced. “Romans 1:26, for example.”
“Max, hold off ...”
He wasn’t listening to Jo. Maggie had frozen. Max was staring at the light fixture.
“‘They became vain in their imaginations, and God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their bodies between themselves.’”
Maggie moved to hand him a coffee, which he did not even acknowledge. Winnie rolled her eyes. I may have, too. I mean, I definitely heard him pronounce the “u” in “dishonour.” “That’s not exactly as I remember it ...” I started.
Max continued, shifting his gaze to me. “‘So God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.’”
“God ‘gave them up ... ?’” Winnie said.
Max dismissed the question with a wave. “God teaches by example. He hardened Pharoah’s heart His glory to display. He showered His wrath upon Sodom and Gomorrah. John’s gospel says Satan entered Judas to bring about Christ’s betrayal.”
“Paul was recounting a litany of what the status quo Jewish religion considered unrighteous acts,” I said, suddenly very thankful for strict teachers. “Honestly, if you read this, he’s just going for shock value. ‘Burn in lust one for another,’ and all that. Early Christianity worked hard to prove it was just as down on unrighteousness as the Jews.”
“The Jews were down on it, definitely,” Max said. “They were ‘down’ on unrighteousness. They were down,” he looked from Maggie to Winnie. “on homosexual lust.”
“The ancient purity laws were meant to keep order ...” I tried.
“Oh, don’t even bother, Paul.” Winnie sat back in her chair, sipping her coffee, eyes flashing a cold fire. “Never mind the steady job, service to the community, never mind I’m a concert violinist or that we’re singers in our church choir, ignore our professional ethics, and just screw the mutual love and support. If it’s not between a man and a woman, it’s ugly and disgusting and sinful.”
“‘It is abomination,’” Max’s eyes were back on the light fixture. “Leviticus 18:22. ‘They shall surely be put to death, and their blood is upon them.’ Leviticus 20:13.”
Winnie moved to get up, but Maggie stopped her.
“Maxwell, my love,” she said. “I have always wished you and my sister every happiness. You have raised three beautiful, talented children. You should be right proud. And I know that Josephine is happy with you, as I know she is oftentimes frustrated.”
I wasn’t sure Maxwell, her love, munching his dessert, was listening anymore. Josephine’s face was in her hands. Winnie looked supportively at Mags, who decided to stand after all. This had been coming for a while as well.
“But I grew up here,” she said, shaking somewhat. “I had all the self-doubt and the theology and the brain-dead nonsense the men around me would cling to desperately and call common sense.
“I realized they were just afraid,” she said. “Maxwell, you’re living in fear.” She moved to within inches of him. “You fear what you can’t figure out, what doesn’t fit into your neat little picture of the world.”
“Well, I’ve just got one thing to say to you,” Maggie planted a kiss on the top of Max’s big bald head. “I’ve decided I’m going to be happy. And my happiness -- the only thing that makes sense to me in this whole redneck, inbred world -- is Winnie. And I make her happy. And we ... clearly make you unhappy. So tell you what. We’ll just go upstairs and pack, we will find a hotel, and we’ll just stop back tomorrow for the ... well-wishing.”
“Maggie!” Our shock was singular, but Jo’s face had it worst of any, simultaneously registering anger, hurt, fear and entreaty, depending upon where she glanced. It nearly broke. “Maggie, please don’t ...”
“Jo, darling, I wouldn’t for the world leave you with all of these dishes.” She moved back to her place and finished her coffee in a gulp. “But it’s for the best. Winnie can get us packed up while I help clear away. I’m sure there’s a taxi to be had.”
Jo, turning to Max, fairly fumed. “Max, I swear to you if these girls have to stay in a hotel tonight ...”
“It is abomination.”
“We’ll just abominate elsewhere, Jo.” Mags and Winnie moved to the kitchen. “Thanks for a ... lovely meal.” They were gone.
My mom and Jan had started pulling dessert plates together, and moved a load to the kitchen. The others were moving off as inconspicuously as it is possible for people to flee a grenade.
Jo was seething. “Max, sometimes you burn me up.”
“Sin is sin,” Max said, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Somebody’s got to say it.”
She began puttering around the table furiously, picking up the last of the dishes. “Well, thank God we’ve got you here to point out how my SISTER is unwelcome in MY HOUSE. That she GREW UP IN! It’s SO NICE to have a MORAL COMPASS in the torrent of SIN this world has become. To be appointed God’s voice on moral rectitude. Meanwhile you sell merchants less ad space for the same price, pad commissions, accept bribes.” She picked up the bottle of pinot noir and shook it. “And you’re the final authority on holiness.”
“Josephine,” he said, sharply.
“Judge not,” she hissed. “that ye be not judged. And unlike that other you were spouting, Jesus actually SAID that.”
I left Max alone at the table with a few drops of blood-red wine at the bottom of the bottle. He spilled them into his glass as Peter pulled up outside. He raised a singular toast to holiness as great Aunt Olive flung wide the front door.