[for explanation, disclaimers and (possibly) the beginning of the "novel", see the last couple days.]
Marlena watched little Kevin playing with his big sister in the backyard and thought back to the day he was born. It was a heightened day, a day with each moment recorded like a Technicolor slide show in her mind. Not many days in one’s life have so much detail. From the day she married Jeff she really only remembered the morning when she had ducked away from everyone to walk in the woods. Dottie’s birth had been so easy and uneventful. When the labor had started, she had calmly finished her work and called Jeff. They had dropped it off at the post office on the way to the hospital. She supposed that she remembered the look of that envelope going into the mail slot better than one remembered most envelopes. But Kevin’s birth. That was another story.
Finding out that Jeff had known where Dottie was had been a shock, no doubt about that. She had thought she might never trust him again. His utter and continuing devastation had brought her around a little, though for several years they might be doing something as ordinary as fetching groceries at Walmart and she would just have to ask out of the blue. “Where is she? Why doesn’t she want to see us? What is wrong? What did we do wrong? How do we know she’s ok?” She continued to ask long after she understood that Jeff knew almost less than she did and was possibly more upset about Dottie’s decisions than she. Emily had, of course, suggested that she hire a private detective, but Marlena just couldn’t.
One morning the phone rang about 4 AM. A strange man’s voice said, “Dorothea needs you. You must come right now.” Who was he? Who was Dorothea? It took a few beats for Marlena to make the connection. “Dottie! Where is she? Is she ok?” The man just said, “Pennsylvania Hospital in Trenton. I have to get back to her.” He hung up. Jeff had leaped out of bed and the two of them drove the half hour to Trenton, the longest half hour of Marlena’s entire life. She could still see in her mind every business and every tree along Route 1. Over them she could still see the layer from her imagination that was busy picturing all the ways she might find Dottie, everything from burnt beyond recognition to dead. Thirty miles away? Even Jeff hadn’t known she was that close, just that she was somewhere in New Jersey.
People said bad things about Mark, that he was cold, that he was mean, that he wasn’t a good man for all that he spouted gospel every other word. Dottie was the one who said the worst things about her former husband, who certainly had not been nice about the divorce. And Dottie should know, having barely survived that marriage with any sense of self intact. For a long time she started almost every sentence with “Mark thinks …” or “Mark will think …” Good riddance as he was clearly bad for Dottie, who was more or less her adventurous self again, but six years away from him and she still cowered like a beaten dog if you spoke roughly to her. But Mark wasn’t all bad. Marlena remembered him best from that early morning conversation, the first time she had ever spoken to him. And then, there at the hospital, she saw him before she saw Dottie. He turned a naked face to her, a face full of gratitude at her arrival, hope perhaps that she would, in the way of all mothers, make everything ok. In fact, Dottie was not dying. She was just at the terrible end of a long, scary labor, one that might have been easier had they not been gospel purists. Epidurals serve a purpose. But it was way too late for that. At that point, all you could do was hope the baby came quick.
Dottie was saying over and over “I want my mother. Get me my mother.” So Mark had called her. Whatever his fears or his motives or his malice, Marlena knew that phone call was a gift. She got Dottie. And Kevin. And Ruth, who had been born less traumatically several years earlier. Mark, on the other hand, lost Dottie. He must have known he would lose her if she reconnected with her parents, but in that dire moment he had called anyway.
@lizhammond Well, that might be the whole thing... In fact, as much as I love to write, not sure writing a novel is in my cards! But man was this an exciting challenge. fn
Really do consider giving the National Novel Writing Month a try in November http://nanowrimo.org/ a bit like 365