Stonecoast Review
The Literary Journal of the Stonecoast MFA
Staff Spotlight
Jeanne Lawson
Jeanne Lawson makes her home on the coast in Down East Maine and considers it a daily blessing to see, smell, and experience the ocean. Her career choices included professional positions in healthcare and publishing and owned a few small businesses. She is currently a student at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA program, she likes to write about Maine, crime mysteries, history, and nature. Besides writing she loves telling stories orally and hopes they make others laugh.
What do you write?
Short and long stories of Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Non-fiction.
Is there an author or artist who has most profoundly influenced your work?
Ernest Hemingway and Helen Macdonald
Why did you choose Stonecoast for your MFA?
It was recommended by an alumnus and great writer. The program fits my needs as far as offering dynamic faculty, independence, and a community of dedicated writers.
What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?
Spending time with classmates, sharing stories, and laughing.
What do you hope to accomplish in the future?
Get my short stories published so I can entertain, inform, and help others with my writing.
If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?
To Kill a Mockingbird
The following is a previously unpublished story by Dinah.
Families eat their own stories. They are circulated, ad nauseum, told and retold until no one knows to whom they truly belong.
This story is my mother’s. Or it was. She is dead now.
I was a child when I heard it. I would curl next to her, burying myself into her sides when frightened.
Or rather, it was a sanitized version I heard. Later, when I was older, I heard the truth. So, I suppose, now the story is mine.
#
It takes place when my mother herself was a child, in the 70s. My mother and her friend Sue had a choice: they could play Barbies, roller skates, jump rope, or the woods. On this particular day, they chose the woods. They rode their bikes down from their suburban homes to the edge of the creek that bordered two neighborhoods. In my mind, they are like the children from Stranger Things, with their oddly wide-set bike handles and their tendency to roam.
Although that is not quite right, since the girls must have been barefoot. That is how my mother lost a toe, several years later—it caught in a bicycle chain. She liked to frighten my friends with the sight of the severed appendage. She would kick off her shoes and wiggle them, and all the little children would shriek and run away, and then creep back for a second look.
Sue and my mother threw down their bikes and made their expedition through the undergrowth, avoiding the minefield of sweetgum balls. It was summer, so everything was leafy and green, and dripping with humidity.
“Wait for me!” my mother shouted.
Sue had already reached the creek bank. Other children liked the creek too. Sometimes boys would occupy its shores, throwing mud at each other and then at the girls, if seen. My
mother and Sue hated them with a passion, invaders to the sacred place as they were. But this time the girls were alone.
My mother scrambled over a fallen log. As she dropped down, her foot brushed against something unfamiliar. She jerked away and stumbled backwards. Her first thought—copperhead!—was mercifully incorrect. She inched closer, but the hollow place underneath the log was dark and she couldn’t make anything out. She took a stick and poked at it. Nothing moved, but she knocked against something solid.
My mother, on hands and knees, crept closer and peered into the darkness. This time, she saw something.
The something she saw was bones. Large bones. Human bones.
My mother’s breath came quick. She had long expected to find bones, or treasure, or some mysterious fairy tome in these woods. Her day had come.
But, she must be only cautiously hopeful. One time before she had come across the skull of a dragon, only to find that it was, in fact, that of a dog.
“Where are you?” Sue shouted. My mother jumped.
“I’m over here! I think I found something, you better come see!”
She carefully fished out some of the bones with her stick. The skull rolled onto the leafy ground. Although covered in rotting plants and dirt, it was unmistakably human. “Oh my goodness ‚” Sue said. She was breathing hard. I picture her as a blonde, with watery eyes and a kind smile. Although, of course, she was would not have been smiling at the time.
My mother poked the skull with her stick. It rolled. Both girls shrieked. For the first time, my mother felt fear.
#
The girls waited in Sue’s basement. It was dark and humid. The carpet was covered in Barbie-scenes, the dolls posed with blow-up furniture.
I would later inherit these dolls. My friends and I shunned these dolls; they were for girly-girls, which we clearly were not. So they went mostly ignored in their cardboard-box home, occasionally brought out to serve as extras in other dolls’s adventures, or to be subjected to more deliberate torture. We once decapitated one with an Exact‑o knife after trying her for witchcraft. I had wanted to burn her at the stake, but my mother forbad it. The cardboard box is still tucked away in a distant corner of my closet. I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of it.
Sue absently picked up one Barbie, then set it down. My mother had her arms wrapped around Sue’s family dog. She buried her face in the dog’s warm fur.
At first, Sue’s mother had not believed their story of the bones. She had insisted on seeing them. When she did, she went very white, and went to call the police. The girls hid in the basement, and waited.
“What do you think happened?” Sue said.
My mother tugged at the dog’s fur. The kindly creature—a golden retriever, perhaps—submitted to it without protest.
“I don’t know,” she said. A thought occurred to her, a very clever one too. “Probably someone just left the bones there ‘cause they didn’t want to pay for a funeral. I saw on the news that coffins cost thousands and thousands of dollars.”
Sue was unconvinced. “I bet it was a little girl. Like us, but younger. And she was killed.” “Why?”
Sue shrugged. “I just know.”
#
Sue was right. My mother overheard her parents talking about it weeks later. They didn’t want to tell her anything, so she listened in at their door. The bones were a little girl’s, a little bit younger than my mother. She had gone missing a year before, from a different part of town. The police had never found any evidence before this in connection with her case.
“That’s awful,” my grandmother said.
“We should be careful with her, at least until the police … No going out after dark,” my grandfather said.
My mother was indignant. She liked to roller skate in the evenings, when the asphalt was cooler.
#
In my mother’s version, they never did find out what happened to the dead girl. My mother told me that she would periodically look to see if there was new information on the case. There never was.
#
In my version, it was Sue’s father. He killed the girl, and other little girls, too. When the police came to take him away, Sue and my mother were jump-roping in the front of their house. They watched as the police took Sue’s father, hands cuffed and shoulders hunched. Sue screamed, and tried to run at him, but was held back by her white-faced mother. On the way home, my mother was in such a rush that she caught her bare toes in the chain of the bicycle, and severed her big toe. Her own parents had to rush her to the hospital. #
But all this does not matter. My mother is dead.
#
Here is a story about a dream that turns into a nightmare. Decisions have consequences and sometimes we think a bad decision will kill our dreams but often they are blessings in disguise and lead us to better dreams. Learning what is important in life comes in all shapes, sizes, and disappointments.
The Suit
The interview was at 10:00 A.M. I had spent the last six months preparing for this moment. I’d passed their preliminary exam and was physically and mentally ready. Today was the next step to becoming a Special Agent with the FBI. Quantico, here I come.
When I entered their Boston headquarters, I noticed only tall men wearing blue suits. Would that be a stumbling block to my application? I was a 5’2” female. It was too late to think about that.
The first thing they asked me to do was to take the trigger-squeezing test. They put me in a small room with only a table. A proctor entered the room with an unloaded Smith & Wesson 459 semi-automatic pistol. He asked me to squeeze the trigger in rapid succession. He counted how many times I was able to squeeze the trigger in a minute. I passed. All that hard work at the gym paid off. My rigorous routine included weight training, aerobics, and running. The hand-strengthening exercises were the most painful. I squeezed a gripper till my hand was numb and worked with rubber bands and weights to improve my grip. Chin-ups helped, too.
Next came the face-to-face interview. I was escorted into a large meeting room by a secretary. The room had a grand oval-shaped conference table with a glass top. The chairs had green leather seats, wooden arms, and swiveled. Two people were already seated at the table. The lead interviewer, Miss Randall, had mousy brown hair and wore a rumpled suit. The second interviewer, Mr. Perkins, was about thirty years old wearing a nicely pressed blue suit and was very pale. There were no smiles or warm and fuzzy banter to get the conversation going.
Miss Randall first verified my name, telephone number, and address. I passed. Next, she explained the format of the interview.
“I will ask you three questions. If you answer them satisfactorily, then we will move forward to the second phase of the interview,” Miss Randall said.
The first question was lobbed my way.
“Have you ever taken any illegal drugs?” asked Miss Randall.
Huh? What kind of opening question was that? What about “tell me about your job, your education, your cat?” A few softball questions, please. I thought.
Time moved slowly. The second hand of the wall clock screamed in my head. How could something that was going well sour fast? Do I tell the truth or lie? What did they want to hear? I knew what they wanted to hear. Did I have the acting ability to deliver a lie? How badly did I want this job? Would my lip quiver? It usually did when I lied. Would they see it move? I could taste the second phase of the interview. Darn conscious. I could only think of the Sir Walter Scott line, “Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” If I lie, my references will have to lie, or at least one of them. If I tell the truth, am I dead in the water? No question two?
“I smoked marijuana in college,” I said.
“How many times?” Mr. Perkins asked.
“A few times,” I said.
“Where?” Miss Randall asked. She looked angry and ready to slap me upside the head.
“Gee, I can’t recall, but I know it was only at parties,” I confessed.
“When?” Miss Randall asked. She wrote something down.
“I don’t remember, exactly. It was over five years ago,” I said. Kick me out. I know you don’t want me. Why prolong my suffering? I thought.
“Who were you with?” Mr. Perkins asked. He didn’t look up when he asked the question but tapped his pen on the table.
“I don’t know. I was standing with a group, and someone offered it to me,” I said.
“Have you ever purchased any illegal drugs?” Mr. Perkins asked. The pen tapping continued.
“No,” I said.
I never got asked question two.
“I am stopping this interview. I will consult my superiors to see if they want to continue pursuing your application. Please remain in this room,” Miss Randall said.
Was it all over? How could that be? What would I say when someone asked me how my interview went? Everyone knew it was today. I felt sad about telling my mother. She was excited and proud that I got the interview. Do I lie to her about why they discarded my application?
In preparation for the interview, my mother had taken me shopping for a new outfit—her treat. She took me to Filene’s, where she worked, and got a 15% discount. She encouraged me to get something special and make a good first impression.
“You need to wear the right thing,” my mother said.
I saw the blue wool suit on the rack labeled New Arrivals. It was full price, but it was beautiful. After we looked at every other suit, we decided the blue suit would do the trick. We got a new blouse and trotted to the shoe department for blue pumps. I felt like somebody. She spent over $300. That was a lot in 1983.
A tidal wave swept over me as I sat alone in the interview room. There wasn’t a thing I could do but sit and think. I had been a private investigator for a licensed agent in Boston for the past three years. I was good at my job. My research skills were the best of any investigator in the office. I was the first female investigator hired by the boss. My colleagues were skeptical, but I proved myself after working there for six months. Even though I loved my job, I wanted a more definite career path. I applied to both the U.S. Marshall Service and the FBI. Was my dream of being a Special Agent going up in smoke? I wondered.
I figured they were spying on me; I didn’t squirm but tried to remain calm. I knew I did the right thing by telling the truth—I have no regrets. But that didn’t make me feel better. College was a time to experiment, right? It was the 1970s. Well, there was no justifying it. Pot was illegal. I did wrong. The FBI cared about those things. Would they arrest me?
I stared out the window. It was a cloudy day. While I waited for the verdict, something started to shift inside me. I realized I didn’t want the job anymore. Who wants to work with people who enjoy crucifying other people? It dawned on me that if I became an FBI agent, I would do the crucifying. Was I trying to reject them before they could reject me?
After an hour, Miss Randall returned to the conference room with a different man.
“We will continue this interview, but there is no guarantee we will pursue your application,” Miss Randall said.
It was time to lighten up this conversation. Take control. I knew they wouldn’t be pursuing me. They might as well see the real me, not the obedient mouse I needed to be to get the job.
When the interview resumed, they asked some traditional interview questions. Nothing about my cat, though.
“What was the most difficult decision you had to make in your lifetime?” Miss Randall asked.
I thought long and hard. I wanted them to know I wasn’t offering a frivolous response but seriously considered the question.
“What to wear for this interview,” I said.
The room went silent. The interviewers didn’t look pleased, but it was true. The day I spent shopping with my mother was important. She believed in me, and that full-priced suit gave me confidence. That was more valuable than this job.
I trotted out of that room, feeling pleased and liberated. That feeling didn’t last for long. Instead of crying an ocean of tears, I walked along my favorite beach in my blue suit and new shoes. Stunned as I was, I started to contemplate my next career move. I drew a blank.
I went back to being a private investigator with average-height people wearing jeans and t‑shirts. In a few months, I had a case that ended that career. A couple sued a doctor for malpractice because their baby was born deformed. My job was to get into the home under false pretenses, look at the baby, and see how it functioned. I intended to fulfill the requirements of this case, but once I started to talk to the mother, I was heartbroken for her. I left without making any effort to see the baby. I told my boss I couldn’t lie for a living anymore. It was then and there that I decided no more lying. It was a decision I have never regretted. Not getting that job was a blessing in disguise. Forty years later, I still owned the suit, but I only wore it that one day.
