Well, it's November, so this is the month I should be writing a lot. I haven't written much so far, feeling swallowed by a heap of paperwork to get our visas and home sale documents, but I plan to jump in there.
I started a novel last November and wrote about 35,000 words. This November, I aim to finish it. Of course, I haven't been dormant in the months since November. I worked on finishing a different
novel, a sequel to The Summer of France which I call Autumn in Aix. That one is out for revisions right now.
When I returned to my novel in progress, I was surprised to find that I like it a lot. I don't always feel that way about my writing. The current title is The Wedding-Dress Theory. It's a mother daughter story.
Ironically, as I'm preparing to move to France, I'm writing a book about a couple who decide to travel to all 50 states in the U.S. But things go awry, as you might imagine.
I'm going to share the first chapter here and hope that you like it so I'm encouraged to continue.
Tess
Tucking
a clutch of maps under her arm and transferring a loaded purse to her shoulder,
Tess Wright Thompson reached for the doorknob, hoping she could open the door
and step inside before all of her belongings fell onto the front porch.
“I
got your maps, but these better be the last of them,” Tess called out to her
husband, Rick. Even from the living room as she dumped her bag onto the black
leather couch, she could see through to the dining room and the white board he
had set up there. His handwriting in blue marker scrawled across it with dates,
places and reservations for their upcoming cross-country trip. It’s what he had
always wanted to do – travel to every state in the U.S. in one big journey. So
they were doing it, with an Alaskan cruise at the end and then a flight to
Hawaii where they would lie on the beach for a week to recover from so much
adventure.
Rick,
10 years older than Tess, had retired just the month before. Today was Tess’
last day at the Things Remembered shop where she worked helping people pick
personal gifts then having them engraved or embroidered with names. The store
had found a college student to take her place for the summer, so she was free
to travel and then return to work in the fall.
“If
you even want to come back,” laughed Charles, her 28-year-old manager, who was
meticulous about the merchandise, but couldn’t figure out why Tess would want
to work if she could have a husband support her.
“What
else am I going to do?” she had asked Charles. “Stay home and watch Rick be
retired? I suppose he’ll take up hobbies, like wood working or tinkering on old
cars, or whatever cliché retired husbands do.” She had sighed.
Tess
liked routine, and this trip, Rick’s retirement, would definitely shake up the
routine. Ever since her mother died 24 years before and she’d had her “episode”
as she liked to call it – clinical depression her doctors called it – she’d
lived by routine. She returned from the psychiatric hospital a zombie marching
through a fog with strict timelines for feeding the children, getting them to
school, picking them up, feeding them dinner – her hectic life as an assistant
district attorney thrown aside as she muddled to get through every day. She
wouldn’t have survived without Rick’s support, his nightly backrubs, the times
he’d come in from work and say, “Let me make dinner; you go read a book and
relax.” And he had agreed that getting a small job at a shop might be good for
her as the kids finished high school. He never pushed her to go back to being a
lawyer, just held a hand at the small of her back, figuratively, whenever she
threatened to stumble.
Oh,
she groused about Rick’s retiring but she felt closest to her real self with
just the two of them, walking for coffee, their hands entwined. Ambling through
the farmer’s market and picking out a few zucchinis, a bunch of strawberries,
some local honey, and guiltily adding a cinnamon roll loaded with cream cheese
icing to their healthy purchases. They would split the pastry at home as she
sipped tea and he tipped back strong coffee.
Maybe
the entire cross-country trip would feel like their weekly trips to the
farmer’s market.
She
leaned over to save her overloaded purse from spilling out onto the couch, settling
it upright. She’d brought home all of her belongings from Things Remembered
today. She was going to be gone for three months – no sense leaving an extra
cardigan hanging on the hook in the backroom next to the time clock. She’d also
grabbed her deep-purple travel mug, engraved with her name and a blossoming
iris. Tess loved all things flowered and all things purple. She pulled the mug
from her purse and set it on the side table.
Open
maps dotted with post-it notes and stacks of maps yet to be unfolded and notated
covered the dining room table, and she would add this latest set of maps. She
had stopped by AAA on her drive home. She knew that Rick had already planned
every step of the trip, so she wondered why he continued to pour over the maps
and order new ones.
They
had two weeks yet before the journey, and the next step was to buy supplies.
“We
can get supplies anywhere along the route,” Tess had reminded him. “We’re not going
to the Australian Outback. There are CVS drug stores around the whole country,”
or at least she figured there were.
Tess
had put her foot down at the idea of renting an RV. “If we’re going to do this,
we’re staying in hotels, and decent hotels.”
So
they didn’t need to stock up on road food or plan meals. They’d be eating in
diners and restaurants, maybe grabbing Subway sandwiches for picnics. They only
needed to pack clothes and toiletries, plus their credit cards.
Tess
had a vision of the old days when they would get travelers’ checks before a
long trip and chuckled to herself.
“Hey,
Rick,” she called as she walked toward the dining room with the maps. “Remember
when we used to buy travelers’ checks and then we’d have to search everywhere
for someplace that would accept them? That time in the Blue Ridge Mountains
when –”
She
halted as she rounded the corner of the narrow wall to the dining room and saw
Rick slumped over the table, the back of his head toward her. A plate with a
few crumbs of cake and an empty coffee cup sat beside him.
“Rick?”
Tess called tentatively. Had he fallen asleep?
She
moved beside him and touched his shoulder, beginning to shake him but her hand
recoiled. His shoulder felt cold and stiff. Not warm and yielding with the
bones and muscles resisting beneath.
“Oh,
my God! Rick! Rick!”
Avoiding
contact with him, Tess scooted his chair in enough so that she could get around
the table to see his face. Partially open, his eyes stared straight ahead at
the table and the skin above his eyelids looked blue as if he’d applied eye
shadow. His mouth hung open, and a little puddle of drool rested on the table
beneath him.
“Rick!
Noooooo.” Tess didn’t know how long she howled the word as she fell to her
knees and covered her face.
Well? What do you think so far? Would you keep reading?
Keith Van Sickle
is a technology industry veteran
and lifelong traveler
who got his first taste of overseas life
while studying in England during college.
But it was the expat assignment to Switzerland
that made him really fall in love with Europe.
After returning to California, he and his wife Val dreamed of living abroad again
but were unable to find another expat gig.
So they decided to invent their own.
Now they split their time between Silicon Valley and St-Rémy-de-Provence,
delving ever deeper into what makes France so endlessly fascinating.
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