Staff Spotlight: Pamela Stutch

Interview

What do you write?

I write fiction, mostly short or short-ish stories. I think Raymond Carver said it best—with short stories, you can get in, get out, and move on. I’m always afraid of getting lost if I hang out in the world I’ve created for too long. I’ve written a novel, but shorter stories are where I’m most happy. I also marvel at people who can write non-fiction. My life just isn’t that interesting.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

My biggest influ­ences prob­a­bly are Raymond Carver and Lorrie Moore. I love Moore’s out­ra­geous sense of humor and I often try to incor­po­rate humor in my own work. I love Carver’s plain lan­guage and how he creates so much tension and power with the words he chooses. I love Alice Munro too.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

I live in Maine.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

There are so many. Stonecoast has been an amazing expe­ri­ence for me. I think writers are a unique breed. We tend to look at the world dif­fer­ent­ly than other people. It’s great to be around people who share the same passion and way of think­ing. I actu­al­ly go through with­draw­al between residencies.

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

Write, write, write. And publish, of course. Maybe teach?

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

One of my all-time favorite stories is “Vissi D’Arte” by Lorrie Moore from her col­lec­tion Like Life. It’s about a writer who lives in a run-down apart­ment in the Times Square area of New York City in the 1980s. It has some of the fun­ni­est, most poignant, true pas­sages about living in New York at that time that I’ve ever read.

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Featured Work

Apartment 7G

The fol­low­ing excerpt is a work of fiction exclu­sive­ly for Stonecoast Review.

Pene­lope had been gone from the city for twenty-one days, nine hours, and seven minutes. She hadn’t kept track of the seconds.

The high-rises gleamed at her as the taxi drove over the Tri­bor­ough Bridge into East Harlem, down the FDR Drive South and past apart­ment com­plex­es. The sky­scrap­ers of midtown loomed in the distance—towers of steel, brick, glass. For years she hated the skyline. It rep­re­sent­ed her impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult mother. Pene­lope took a breath of stale taxi air, inhal­ing the sac­cha­rine straw­ber­ry from the air fresh­en­er dan­gling off the rear view mirror.

“Do you want me to cross the park at 98^th Street?” the driver asked.

She didn’t respond.

“You want 98^th or 116^th?” The driver was ges­tur­ing now.

Why did such a thing matter? She didn’t mind a few extra minutes. Enjoy the view. The lights. The city was a whole new place to her.  The driver squint­ed from beneath his navy Yankees cap, his large dark eye­brows press­ing together.

“Lady, do you speak English?”

His taxi license placard said Evan Sawyer. License issued Feb­ru­ary 10, 2017. A picture of him frown­ing into the camera. She crossed her legs at the ankles.

“98^th Street,” she said.

Evan Sawyer turned his eyes towards the road. Pene­lope glanced again at the placard with his name and sullen picture. Evan Sawyer had the same ini­tials as Emmanuel Shep­pard, her best friend from fourth grade whom she had not seen in thirty-five years.

Traffic was flowing down the FDR Drive South, the cars jock­ey­ing for posi­tion like racers in a video game. They took the off-ramp at 98^th Street, went west towards Fifth Avenue, then through the park with twists and turns, tunnels, and the rem­nants of fall, the only bit of rural land­scape in Manhattan.

Colum­bus Avenue, Ams­ter­dam Avenue, then Broad­way. The taxi turned left, then right, stop­ping in front of a large brown build­ing with a green canopy: the build­ing where she had grown up. Evan Sawyer turned on the inte­ri­or light of the cab and she paid him with a credit card.

He popped the trunk and got out of the car. Hugo, the doorman, approached the taxi and waved when he saw her. He placed his hand on the car door and opened it, his pocked face smiling.

“Welcome home!” said Hugo. She hoisted the back­pack con­tain­ing her clothes for the week on her shoul­der. Evan Sawyer placed her two suit­cas­es on the side­walk. She took hold of each, but Hugo put out his hand for the luggage.

“No, I’ve got them,” Pene­lope said. She turned to walk up the three steps to the build­ing, rolling the suit­cas­es behind her. But Hugo insisted.

“Let me,” he said. He wres­tled the suit­cas­es from her as she began to ascend the steps and before she could protest, he was lifting them up and feeling how light they were. His eyes glinted. “How’s your mother?” he asked, car­ry­ing the suit­cas­es into the lobby.

“Better.”

She fol­lowed Hugo, her boots squeak­ing on the freshly-pol­ished marble floor. The mail­box­es were up a brief set of stairs to the left, beyond the lobby’s Christ­mas tree. She gripped the gleam­ing brass rail as she ascend­ed to the mailroom.

She found the right key and insert­ed it into a shiny lock labeled “Apart­ment 7G.” Her parents had rented the same unit since 1963. Pene­lope remem­bered when the mail­box­es were a dull, for­got­ten brass, and when there were no doormen to hold the front door open, or to lift unsus­pect­ing­ly light suit­cas­es from their owners.

The mailbox opened without resis­tance. Her fingers went inside and pulled out invi­ta­tions for her mother to join AARP, solic­i­ta­tions from local hearing-aid spe­cial­ists, and funeral expense life insur­ance offers —no medical ques­tions if you returned the card within thirty days. Oh yes, and solic­i­ta­tions from Medicare Advan­tage plans. It was that special time of year again: open enroll­ment. She remem­bered two years ago when her mother can­celled herself out of Medicare without real­iz­ing it. How she fought on behalf of her mother to get it back, and she did get it back but what a hassle. It was the begin­ning of Myra’s dementia.

She pushed the mailbox closed and locked it. Hugo was holding the ele­va­tor button for her. The empty suit­cas­es were already inside the cabin.

“She’s coming back, right?” said Hugo, his brown eyes sparkling. She knew he was think­ing about the Christ­mas tip he might receive if he passed on good infor­ma­tion to the land­lord. Infor­ma­tion like crazy Myra Petril­lo, the only rent con­trolled tenant left in the build­ing, might be in a nursing home and wouldn’t be return­ing. Ever.

“Oh yes,” she lied.

“Good,” he said, with a smile all big white teeth and fleshy gums, and he waved as the door closed.

She breathed but did not loosen her body. Video cameras sur­veyed the ele­va­tor. A safety feature, or so it pur­port­ed to be. Hugo would be watch­ing on the mon­i­tors down­stairs, she was certain.

The ele­va­tor rose to the fifth floor then stopped. The door opened. The smell of cig­a­rettes still emanat­ed from the apart­ment down the hall on the left, even though her mother had been gone for four months. She wheeled her suit­cas­es across the marble floor towards the apart­ment door, the sound echoing off the walls.

She opened the door, pulled the two suit­cas­es inside and quickly shut it behind her, flick­ing the nearby light switch. The crystal chan­de­lier, its bulbs thick with beige smoker’s film, illu­mi­nat­ed the room.

Every­thing was in the same place she had left it three weeks before. Books and mag­a­zines piled up on every surface, includ­ing in corners on the floor. Grocery store receipts, junk mail, real mail, dollar-store knick­knacks. The black­ened, antique book­case that had once been a rich cherry, the dark velvet rose-uphol­stered chairs, and the once cream-colored ori­en­tal carpet, now stained nico­tine-brown. She had grown up here. She was con­ceived here. Her father had died here in 1995—the aura of his pres­ence still lin­gered. The apart­ment and its con­tents were a part of her as much as her bones and skin and hair.

But with Myra gone, the apart­ment was hers. Hers to clean up, fix up, hang on to as long as she pos­si­bly could, for next-to-nothing rent. A place to write, enjoy the city once again, and rekin­dle old friend­ships, like the one with Emmanuel Shep­pard, whom she would be seeing the next night.

New York Times news­pa­pers from five months ago were stacked in a corner. The heat hissed through the radi­a­tor in the kitchen. She breathed out, and dumped her back­pack onto the dining room table.

She bent over and picked up a folded New York Times from the stack. It seemed such a shame to have all that impor­tant, well-written news gone unread. Her mother had stopped reading the Times years ago. Just like the hundreds—no, thou­sands—of dusty, untouched books in the apartment—on lit­er­a­ture, art, pol­i­tics, travel, great reli­gions and philosophers—piled in floor-to-ceiling book­cas­es in the living room and bed­rooms and in the hallway. Books left for Pene­lope to go through and decide—to keep or not to keep? To donate to the library? To give to a friend? To sell? They were her penance for being an only child.

Besides the books, there were the bank state­ments, deposit and with­draw­al receipts, the stock trade con­fir­ma­tions, the bro­ker­age state­ments, the doc­u­men­ta­tion sup­port­ing tax returns going back forty years, in groups with frayed rubber bands holding them, stuffed into drawers, piled up on tables. Each doc­u­ment would have to be exam­ined and shred­ded. Pene­lope hoped this time the shred­der wouldn’t overheat.

She took the Times into the kitchen, put it on the table, and opened the refrig­er­a­tor. No food from three weeks ago. She had emptied out the refrig­er­a­tor shortly after Myra’s depar­ture and kept it clean since. A box of crack­ers on the counter. An apple from her back­pack. Rice cakes from her last visit. Enough to get her through tonight.

She sat down on the stool at the kitchen counter adja­cent to a large window, opened the box of crack­ers, and watched as the city wound down. Cars passed uptown, tail lights blend­ing into the night. The taxis with “for hire” signs shining yellow. The street lamps illu­mi­nat­ed leaves gath­ered in clus­ters below aban­doned branch­es. There were no stars, only street­lights and steel and brick and brown wooden water towers atop the buildings.

Saltines mixed on her tongue with the rem­nants of air­plane peanuts. She bit into her apple and glanced at the Times. “House Votes to Avoid Shut­down, Senate Dooms Bill,” the front page said in big, bold letters. She folded the paper back up.

An open pack of cig­a­rettes and a dirty ashtray rested on top of the microwave beside a faded, frayed book titled Cooking Like a Pro in No Time! She threw the pack away and dumped the ashtray into the trash, the smell of stale tobacco—Myra’s smell—clinging to her fingers. It was prob­a­bly the last pack of cig­a­rettes Myra opened, right before Frieda called that fateful evening.

Frieda came in to check on Myra five times a week for a few hours, to take her to appoint­ments, do her laundry, cook for her, walk her around the neigh­bor­hood. On a Tuesday at the end of July, Frieda sum­moned the police after Myra didn’t answer the door, and a land­line tele­phone rang four times before the machine picked up. Pene­lope sat on her couch in Port­land, Maine, her legs invol­un­tar­i­ly shaking, her hands and feet sensing every nerve, her throat tight with nausea, and Frieda on a cell phone while the police drilled a hole through the lock on Myra’s apart­ment door.

“They’re almost in,” said Frieda, as the sound of the drill echoed in the background.

Penelope’s heart numbed. “I’m pre­pared,” she said.

Frieda mumbled some­thing and then returned her voice to the phone. “They’re in.” The muf­fled­ness came over the phone again, and then Frieda sang out, “I hear her.”

Pene­lope bolted from the couch. “What’s she saying?”

“She’s yelling,” said Frieda.

Pene­lope was pacing, her legs feeling like they had been wrenched from their sockets. “But what’s she saying?”

And then her mother yelled again, loud enough for Pene­lope to hear: “What the hell took you so long?”

“She’s alive!” Frieda said.

Myra had been tightly wedged between her bed and her dresser, con­tort­ed into a posi­tion no one could imagine how she achieved. She was taken by ambu­lance to St. Luke’s.  Pene­lope was on the Jet Blue 6 a.m. to JFK the fol­low­ing day. Myra was hos­pi­tal­ized for a week with a frac­tured shoul­der. Then it was rehab for another three, and then up to Maine to assist­ed living, to Whis­per­ing Pines, the only facil­i­ty that, after review­ing the nursing notes—with nota­tions about the con­stant Ativan and the nec­es­sary Haldol—agreed to take her.

Pene­lope washed the tobacco scent from her hands and turned off the kitchen faucet. The ele­va­tor sounded, then a noise in the hall. Voices, foot­steps, the opening and closing of a door. The neigh­bors had come home, Saul and his wife, Karen. They owned a small one-bedroom next door. Saul was a port­fo­lio manager by day and an amateur hard rock gui­tarist by night who wanted to build himself a prac­tice studio. Myra’s ample two-bedroom would be perfect. Bring the floor plans, hire the engi­neers, break through a few walls, and, presto, you have a huge new apart­ment with a prac­tice studio. After Myra’s mishap, Pene­lope received several calls from Karen, pref­aced with “How’s she doing?” and “We were so upset! Please, give her our love,” which, after about three and a half minutes, trans­formed into, “By the way, is she coming back?”

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Pene­lope was dream­ing she was late for a class every­one had kept secret from her.

She ran through the school halls trying to locate the classroom.

“Ha ha, not there, little girl,” said her fourth grade English teacher, Mr. Steiner, every time she stopped in front of a door. “Can’t find it, can you? I’ll bet Emmanuel Shep­pard knows where you should be.” But she couldn’t find Emmanuel either, and every time she thought she saw a little blond boy ahead, he would dis­ap­pear around a corner and be gone by the time she reached it. The bell rang, first period was up. Every­one filed out of the build­ing, ready for college. Except Penelope—she had to go back and take a test on the class she missed.

“But I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.

“That’s your own damned fault,” Mr. Steiner said.

Penelope’s cell phone rang at 7:10 a.m., waking her.  She knew who it was without seeing the number.  Her mother still had enough cog­ni­tive ability to call. Of course her mother left a message. Pene­lope dialed in the secu­ri­ty code and listened.

“This place is a prison,” said Myra.

The cold Decem­ber draft from the window mixed with the stale steam apart­ment heat. Outside, a garbage truck growled deeply after a series of thumps from workers hurling trash bags into its belly.

“No one will give me a cig­a­rette,” said Myra. “I want a god­damned cigarette.”

Pene­lope envi­sioned her mother, sitting on her new flow­ered couch in her new assist­ed living apart­ment, the smell of fresh blue­ber­ry scones baking in the facil­i­ty kitchen down­stairs, the sound of birds and squir­rels outside her window, and Myra’s small, brown eyes perus­ing her sur­round­ings with contempt.

“I want to go home. I deserve a cigarette.”

Click.

Myra’s doctor had put her on a nico­tine patch to ease the crav­ings, which worked until she felt ornery, which was most of the time. Pene­lope pressed the button to shut down her phone. In her haste to get back down to New York, to get down to the apart­ment, she had for­got­ten that smoking ces­sa­tion for Myra was not going well.

_____________

Morning light fil­tered in through the soot in the windows in the master bedroom. The high-pitched voices of chil­dren gath­er­ing at a school bus echoed from the street. At 8 a.m., Pene­lope reached for her jeans. There was instant coffee in the kitchen. Instant coffee with several store-bought Dan­ish­es had been a suf­fi­cient break­fast for Myra.

The kettle was on the stove. She spooned two heaps of instant coffee grounds into a clean mug. The chipped dishes could be thrown away. The large col­lec­tion of empty jelly jars could reside nicely in the recycle bin. The ancient tele­vi­sion in the living room could go to Good­will. These things would give her a sense of accom­plish­ment, a sense that she was plowing through the muck with courage and deter­mi­na­tion, making progress, making sense of the chaos. It was the books, the knick­knacks, deci­pher­ing what should be kept, what should be sold, what could be packed off to Maine either in a suit­case or via movers that gave her angst. And the shred­ding. The endless shredding.

The coffee tasted like bitter, black chalk. The spoon went into the sink. She dug out four large plastic shop­ping bags from the closet and began to discard magazines.

Her mother sub­scribed to at least a dozen pub­li­ca­tions, only some of which she read. In recent years, Myra couldn’t refuse tele­mar­keters calling and inform­ing her that she could get two whole years’ worth of a sub­scrip­tion for only $19.95. The fact that she didn’t read Muscle Fitness or have any inter­est in it was irrel­e­vant. Myra said she gave the copies to Hugo down­stairs because he always seemed so strong, lifting pack­ages and grocery bags.

Three and a half shop­ping bags filled easily. Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, The Econ­o­mist, The Week, Conde Nast Trav­el­er, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Women’s Health, Money, Muscle Fitness, Shape, and Playboy. Playboy? Perhaps Myra had con­fused it with Play­bill when agree­ing to place the order. Pene­lope then started into a pile which proved more com­pli­cat­ed. Old concert pro­grams. Could they be worth money? She decided not. Receipts with no iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion on them: trash. Airline sta­tion­ary from the days before per­son­al­ized movie screens and tiny, crammed seats: trash? Letters between her parents during their courtship in the 1950s: keep. Def­i­nite­ly keep.

Four bags were enough for a journey to the trash room at the end of the hall. She gath­ered the bags at the entrance, placed her hand on the knob and was just about to turn when there was noise. A yap. The patter of paws. The slam­ming of a door across the hall. The ding of the ele­va­tor. Her hand sprung back from the knob. The peep­hole. She looked.

It was the man from across the hall and his dog. After Myra fell, he rang the door­bell every day to ask Pene­lope how Myra was doing, and of course, if she was coming back.

The ele­va­tor door closed with a mechan­i­cal thump. She turned the apart­ment door with one hand and with the other grasped the four bags of paper trash. But they were heavy. They had to be dragged. She took them with both hands. The sound of the bags scrap­ing painful­ly through the hallway rever­ber­at­ed off the walls. Other people would be looking through their peep­holes to see the cause of the ruckus. Her slip­pered feet ran over the marble, pulling the bags along, the sound searing her brain. Finally, she pushed the door to the trash room open and it moaned back in protest. Her foot propped open the door as she dragged the bags as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble to the blue recycle bin.  The white let­ter­ing on the blue admon­ished all of New York to be respon­si­ble and recycle. A large sign on the wall from the build­ing man­age­ment announced, Be a Good Neigh­bor! Recycle! But the bags were weighty and the recycle bin was empty, and she winced each time a load made contact with the bottom. The trash room door moaned again on the way out. She scam­pered back to the apart­ment, and with quiet fingers, she closed the apart­ment door behind her.

Safety. She had visions of being trapped in the apart­ment by the fear of inquis­i­tive neigh­bors, pes­ter­ing her to know when and if and why her mother was coming back. Was it worth it? Sure, she could call the movers and have it be over. Confess, be for­giv­en, then be on her way. Let the land­lord air-kiss her on both cheeks and then rub his hands over the thought of his forth­com­ing, easy $1.5 million that the apart­ment was worth.

No. She would weed and sort, discard and arrange at her own pace. And she would channel her inner Myra, and tell people to piss off if they had too many ques­tions. And the more she thought about it, the more she felt right­eous. There was so much work to do. So much stuff to go through. Endless stuff.

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