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    The Reading Place
    The Reading Place
    The Reading Place
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    The Reading Place

    By The Reading Place Authors

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    About this ebook

    We should all have one—a special place where we get away from the world. A place where distractions are kept to a minimum, worries and cares are forgotten, and an endless cornucopia of imagination is ours for the taking. A place where we can open a book, open our minds, and be transported elsewhere.

    A reading place.

    And that place could be anywhere: a soft bed in the bedroom, a cozy chair in the den, a cushy window seat, a lawn chair on the back porch, a single seat in a private bathroom, or even a booth in a crowded and noisy restaurant. It really doesn’t matter where we read, as long as our minds can close off the world and focus on the words. Within these pages are stories that can do just that. So take this book to your reading place, take a couple of deep breaths, open the cover, and begin reading.

    Now...isn’t that a great feeling?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribes Valley Publishing
    Release dateMay 23, 2014
    ISBN9781310488979
    The Reading Place
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    Author

    The Reading Place Authors

    These are the short stories of the winning authors of Scribes Valley Publishing's 2013 Writing Contest.Chelle WotowiecDrew HardmanMike TuohyRonna L. EdelsteinVincent GuilianoCatharine LeggettTJ PerkinsAmelia PerryKristen SwensonIO KirkwoodSusan Zimmerman

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      Book preview

      The Reading Place - The Reading Place Authors

      THE READING PLACE

      Copyright 2014 Scribes Valley Publishing Company

      Published by Scribes Valley Publishing at Smashwords

      This book is available in print from the Publisher

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      The Reading Place – A Foreword by the Editor

      When We Become the Photographs – Chelle Wotowiec

      To Endure – Drew Hardman

      War of the World’s Fair – Mike Tuohy

      Consumed by Vincent Guiliano

      Watcher – Amelia Perry

      Redemption – TJ Perkins

      The Flood – Kristin Swenson

      Capisce? – Mike Tuohy and Susan Zimmerman

      All of Me – Catharine Leggett

      Dismissed – Ronna L. Edelstein

      The White Carpet – IO Kirkwood

      This anthology is dedicated

      to those who

      know where the reading place is

      THE READING PLACE

      A Foreword by the Editor

      ©2014 by David L. Repsher

      We should all have one—a special place where we get away from the world. A place where distractions are kept to a minimum, worries and cares are forgotten, and an endless cornucopia of imagination is ours for the taking. A place where we can open a book, open our minds, and be transported elsewhere.

      A reading place.

      And that place could be anywhere: a soft bed in the bedroom, a cozy chair in the den, a cushy window seat, a lawn chair on the back porch, a single seat in a private bathroom, or even a booth in a crowded and noisy restaurant. It really doesn’t matter where we read, as long as our minds can close off the world and focus on the words.

      Within these pages are stories that can do just that. So take this book to your reading place, take a couple of deep breaths, open the cover, and begin reading.

      Now…isn’t that a great feeling?

      ~~FIRST PLACE~~

      WHEN WE BECOME THE PHOTOGRAPHS

      ©2014 by Chelle Wotowiec

      The woman with the blonde hair wiped tears from her cheeks before she came over to my bed. She didn't think I saw her crying and I wondered if this behavior was a part of her normal routine. She inched closer to the chair next to the bed, as if weights were strapped around her ankles, before she finally sat down and told me that Susan had passed. I watched the words escape her lips and I saw my reflection in her eyes.

      The tone of this woman’s voice, her wet cheeks, and puffy eyelids told me that I should know Susan. I’d dreamt a few nights before that my memories were stuck in my stomach. The children that I had, the house that I lived in, the career that I had once only dreamed of fulfilling; all of this was stuck in my stomach. Looking at this woman’s questioning eyes, I hoped that if I sat up, pulled my body to a right angle, it would allow memories of Susan to surface.

      Janet, the daytime nurse came into the room with clean sheets and my Aricept. She set the sheets on my end-table when she saw that my daughter was still here. She disappeared into the shared bathroom and came back out with a small plastic cup of water. I took the pills and right when I thought she was going to leave the room, she stopped short and said, Wow, Maggie, this is the first time in days that you have sat up! And then, as if her words had no consequence whatsoever, walked out of the room with her fake toothy smile.

      Are you okay, Mom? She asked me after she placed her hand on mine.

      I looked at her unfamiliar fingers and nodded my head. I'd pretend, I decided. Maybe it was a survival instinct—play the game. I think so, I managed to say through my dry, cracked lips. How did it happen?

      She was silent. I’d noticed the past few months that this woman had been putting on weight. Her upper arms had grown larger and her fingers fatter. She must have been in her forties, maybe fifties at the absolute latest. Her hair was disheveled, her blue blouse was wrinkled, and the skin on her face drooped. She cleared her throat and said, You don’t know how it happened?

      Her upper eyelids were beginning to swell even larger. This was going to be difficult, I was sure. I closed my eyes and thought very carefully of what to say next.

      Mom, answer me, she managed to spit out.

      I kept my eyes closed. Susan. Susan. Susan. Then I was in my childhood bedroom with the powder-blue comforter and oak end-table. On the foot of the bed was my collie, Ginger, snoring. Ginger’s leg was broken and wrapped in a cast as a result of a failed jump over the backyard fence. She was sick, I said into the heavy room.

      Yes, Mom, the woman placed her hand on the back of my head and rubbed her fingers in a circular motion, your youngest daughter was sick.

      She dropped hints that I knew I had heard before. Susan was a single woman. She moved away at twenty-two and lived alone in downtown New York where she worked as a copy editor. She didn’t call her sister often, but she called her mother all the time. She called me all the time, the woman told me. Susan decided at a young age never to have kids. This blonde-haired woman told me now that she never agreed with Susan’s decision.

      The woman continued to rub my head and when I remembered that I hadn’t had my hair washed in over four days, I pulled my head away from her hand. Then she began to sob on my lap. I placed my hand on her back and let my fingers rest on her wrinkled blouse, just as I had seen the other women do with their children.

      Sssshh, now, I whispered as a mother would. I tried to imagine Susan, a woman that I created and a woman that grew inside of me, sick. It was something terminal, I was sure. She probably began to weaken. Maybe the first thing she noticed was a trembling hand or spotty vision. Before she knew it, it grew hard to breathe. Something as simple as breathing became a losing battle for her. As this sickness grew stronger, she probably shrank into her own skin and became nothing but bones. I pictured this but it didn't do anything for me. I didn’t care about Susan.

      The blonde woman sat up and pulled herself back together. Minutes went by and I looked at the curtain to my left that was supposed to be a wall. I had every wrinkle and every tear on the curtain memorized. I turned my head down to the right and focused on a small birthmark on this woman’s neck. I placed my right pointer finger on it and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine bathing her as a child, placing the same finger on the same birthmark. I must have washed that pigmented skin a hundred times. I tried to picture wrapping up a young yellow-haired girl in a soft white bath towel.

      I could hear Margie, the woman in the bed on the other side of that curtain, snoring. I was jealous of her. I wished I were sleeping too.

      Let's get out of here, the blonde woman said and picked up her purse. Let's just do it, right now.

      What? I reached for my blanket. Instead of finding my blanket, I found an old photo album. It was opened to a page displaying a faded photograph of a younger me with a child on my knee.

      Do you remember that, Mom? She sat down on the bed next to me and pulled the album onto her lap. She turned the page, What about this one?

      The photograph showed two young girls sitting in adjoining mud puddles, smiling and waving at the camera.

      You took that one, Mom. You used a copy of this one in your portfolio. You said it caught something real about us that photographs rarely did.

      She turned the page and we looked at more pictures of the two girls, the father, and myself. After she had turned through all of the pages, a photograph slipped out of the small sleeve of the back cover.

      I know him, I said. I brought the photograph closer to my eyes. It was much older than the rest, its corners torn. My father smiled at me in his brown suit and white necktie. A cigar smoked from his left hand. I closed my eyes and for a moment could smell his cologne.

      The woman stood up off the bed and turned her face toward the door. She brought

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