Manic Monday

15,460 words and counting.

This is the strangest thing I have ever written. I am having a blast. killing myself. 60 pages in seven days. I think it took a year to write the first 60 pages of Two Rivers.

Anyway, here's a snippet:

Rose doesn’t know the details of her mother’s death. She’s a smart girl though; I’m sure she has an idea.

When she was very small, I used to tell her a story about the night she was born. Some of what I told her was true. Some was not. She did come early. A whole month before she was supposed to arrive. She wasn’t due until March, but on Valentine’s day, Tara woke up and knew that she would arrive that day. Tara told me the story once, not long before she died, told me that she’d been shooting up all night, and when her water broke she thought she’d simply pissed herself. I told Rose that Tara spent the day walking in the Village, waiting until the pain was too much to bear before she took a taxi to the hospital. I told her that she bought flowers, candy for herself. That she was wearing a red scarf that day that blew out behind her in the cold February air. The only color in the grey, sunless, bitter day. I told her that finally, when she knew it was time, she hailed a taxi and not but an hour later Rose arrived in the world. That the first thing Tara asked for after she was born was a cup of hot chocolate. That she was her mother’s only Valentine. I spared her the unnecssary details: the fact that she stole the flowers from a Farmer’s Market and was chased down by the vendor who spat in her face and called her a dirty whore. I left out the benevolent taxi driver found her crying on a curb and took her to the hospital, where she was taken to the psych ward before they realized that she was in labor. That she was too doped up to notcie that the baby was crowning between her legs. She did ask for hot chocolate. And she told me that when she saw Rose’s face, her lapis colored eyes peering up at her, it was the first time anyone had ever loved her.

Rose. I didn’t know what I was doing, still don’t. But I’m doing my best.