Did I Do Right By Them?

Isolation has never been a problem for me.  How fortunate I am in these years of pandemic.  I suppose if I were put in solitary confinement with no view to the outside, I might suffer mightily.  But sitting at my computer, I can look out onto the deck and study my backyard, still not totally frozen over by this year’s lack of winter’s chill.  I know January is coming, then February and we’re in for it.  But for the moment I can enjoy my container plants that are hanging on.

I think, now that I’ve finished the third or fourth revision—who’s counting—of “Grandmother’s Money,” I can consider, did I do right by them?  By “them” I mean the characters I viciously cut out and left to wither by the wayside, when I was informed I had too many people swirling around.

This is what I mean about isolation.  I’m never alone.  I always have my characters, who are alive within me.

Here’s the situation with “Grandmother’s Money:”  Dear old Grandma dies and leaves two million to each of her daughters and five hundred thousand to her two grandchildren.  Originally, there were four grandchildren.  I made two of them disappear.

One of the readers said she liked the granddaughters better than the grandsons.  But since the grandmother in question had two daughters, wouldn’t it be better to have two grandsons to counter-balance them?  Especially as the grandsons had significant others who were women?

Still, the granddaughters linger in my mind, and perhaps I should have given them more of a chance.

Strange.  I can’t even remember their names.  So I’ll give them new ones, and let you in on their plot lines.  One I shall call Greta because I would never name a real character Greta, so why not entertain myself with that name now.  She was single, approaching forty and didn’t see any male of the species on the horizon with whom she wanted a life.  But she did want a child.  So, when she left her boring job as an assistant city manager of a small midwestern town for her annual vacation, she decided on Hawaii, hoping to find someone to impregnate her.

Did she?  Of course.  What would be the point of sending someone to Hawaii if it didn’t advance the plot line?  He was a birder—we’ll call him Matt—who was attending a convention of other bird watchers.  She sized him up and thought—sperm potential.  They had a fling.  She returned home, he returned to wherever.

Unlucky in love, lucky in conception, Greta had a daughter. When the daughter turned five, Greta decided she had enough of her boring job and got another one in another state, more responsibility, less cost of living.  There she was on her lunch hour, eating falafel, when whom should she spot and who spotted her but her birder.

Except he wasn’t really a birder, but a dentist.  Birdwatching was his hobby.  Did they reconnect?  Of course.  What else?  She never told him that her daughter was his.  But then, wonder of wonders, horror of horrors, she got pregnant again.  Unlike most men, he noticed.  And he confessed to her that he knew her daughter was also his, so why not make a family of it.  Happily ever after, and I won’t go into details of how this connects to the other characters in “Grandmother’s Money.”

Onward to the second cut granddaughter.  Was her name Shelia?  Hmm.  I know her husband’s name was Shane, for some reason.  Believe me, naming people can be very hard.

Shelia was a regionally successful cookbook author, who held cooking classes in her home.  Her husband Shane was the problem. Aren’t they always?  His father and brothers were selling their local grocery chain out from under him.  Managing one of the stores was his life.

Depression set in, which annoyed the hell out of Shelia.  Salvation came in the form of Shane’s mother, long divorced from his father, after his father found someone younger and dumber.  But at the time of the divorce, the mother sued for her share of the grocery chain they started together, so she had money to invest in a project she thought would help her younger son.  She was going to open a deli on main street, part grocery, part lunch spot.  Shane could bring in some of his old workers from the grocery store, and Shelia could prepare batches of food to go, along with holding cooking classes in the new establishment.  Lucky Shelia?  After all, she also had a child to contend with and a moody husband; and we all know the prospects for a new business.  But I left it hopeful.  Perhaps they prospered.  After all, downtown, everyone needs somewhere to lunch.

But they’re gone, both Greta and Shelia, and I doubt whether they’ll make a reappearance in any other form.  But who knows?  I think I was stretching it with Shelia because quite frankly I hardly ever use my oven, I find nothing enlightening or relaxing about cooking.  When I was younger and four o’clock rolled around, I always sank into a depression.  What was I going to feed the kids?  Poor kids.  I bet they never had a tuna noodle casserole after they left my house.  And may I say all three became gourmet cooks, so I think my poor kitchen skills did them a favor.  However, Greta?  I could see loving a birder, as long as he wasn’t too obsessive.  A gentle walk in the woods down an unknown, unknowable path, why not?

Right now I’m cleansing my mind from “Grandmother’s Money” and wondering where to go next.  Characters flit in and out of my mind, but what are they trying to tell me?  Mystery?  History?  Romance?  I await their direction.  As I bring life to them, they bring life to me.