No is Yesser than Yes

When accompanied by an eloquent explanation

Okay so I promise I am not high but it snowed last night and something about the angle of the sun this morning I guess and impeccable timing on the part of Daisy and me (or I) which is maybe why I couldn’t find the leash (me) and then that other distraction (also me) but there we were walking way up on the bluffs above the gorgeous blues of Lake Ontario and the sky was nice and complicated and we were bobbing along and that’s when I noticed it.

The snowy pathway in front of us melted like an ongoing fairy tale as we walked

Never mind that on the way back the fairy tale got dark and muddy and isn’t it strange how you get this dreadful hot flash when you slip sort of like pre-embarrassment although it’s likely from the old days, Grog, more like pre-death because our rocky ancestors and their ledgy world.

I sent a story to a literary publication and last night I got an email back and that’s where the blog title came from because if it was a yes that’s all it would have been but because it was a not quite, she gave me – and to enhance the fairytaleishness her name is Lolita – a long flattering letter that floated nicely in my head all night like a non-stop paper airplane and is still coasting.

Also, she gave me a few super-valid suggestions, I mean they came from the bottom of her heart full of kindness and knowledge and experience and I know exactly what she was saying and she said it brilliantly she really did.

How could she know that my stories are the way they are on purpose – but I’ll watch what I call them because maybe they’re not flash fiction after all – they are only short

If you feel like it, here’s the one I wrote this morning before me and Daisy went out and melted the pathway with our minds:

Flash Fiction without the Flash

Maybe I should try something different, you know, get a real story going where there’s tension and precision and character-building and maybe make them a little shorter because a lot to wade through, you know, when the options are so concise and sparkly and this is more of a series of dullish observations maybe a bit too fluid, too watered down, and just jump in and make your move already which, along with if you’ll forgive me, was what Uncle Billy used to say during games of checkers.

Everybody thinks the good stuff is in the attic but I’ve always been one for basements, so when we finally got the front door open I went straight downstairs while Em went up the three flights like a balloon.

Where you going? she hollered down through the lozenge of air just as I pushed the door to the basement open and slid inside.

I stood there a minute let my eyes figure it out. Two square streams of light fell in golden shapes into the space we used to play checkers, me and Uncle Billy whose sly glances across the board I used to practice in the mirror and by the time I was 17 I had it down and was irresistible if you’ll forgive me for saying. Just ask Em. Also got the if you’ll forgive me line and more from him the way he’d push the words into the air like beautiful golden checkers before he’d take the win.

Uncle Billy had been married to Auntie Bea but she died and except for the kitchen, he left the upstairs of their 60s home like she was still there – all doilies and needlepoints and drapery and framed photographs, jars and dishes and piles of half-sorted buttons which she collected – and he stayed downstairs, he even slept there, in the hum and din of his fishtanks.

Uncle Billy lived close to our school and we went there for lunch, straight into the basement where two plates with grilled cheese sandwiches, one with ketchup one without, waited for us, Jeopardy at noon with the guy everybody forgets about who was more like a newscaster as far as personality goes, and then I Love Lucy which Em said shhhh to us all the way through, Uncle Billy’s face going like Marcel Marceau’s.

Hang in there. I am building character, focusing, trying for tension.

Uncle Billy was very uncomfortable in the third floor cardiac unit at Mount Grace Hospital before he finally went to the basement if you catch my drift – we played checkers until his final if you’ll forgive me – and now the house is ours.

The fishtanks are all empty and the sides powdery green, whatever was left inside rusted and brown but I remember when these tanks were his oceans, the fish his friends, the way he’d look at them like he was saying if you’ll forgive me for loving them.

I remembered spotting some of Auntie Bea’s things in there after she died, a few thimbles, a pile of buttons here and there, five or six spaced vertical in the sand for the fish to weave through, a zipper foot, strands like a button banner all the way across, sometimes attached both ends which made the buttons spin and twirl like mad and sometimes attached only one end so they made underwater kites.

I wish I could say that’s when Em came down all of a sudden said look what I found! and it’s maybe armfuls of money if that’s your thing, tiny taxidermied fish, love letters beginning with you shark, you, or old pirate’s clothing, the copper pin on the jacket boasting the name Billy Blithe or some other satisfying surprise, something to make you glad you read this, but do you want to know what she actually handed me?

A business card from One Man’s Trash.

I reached into the tank grabbed a fistful of buttons, caught a thimble on my baby finger, uncovered a bright red checker which I also took and then a black one and said, yeah, tell them everything down here. All of it.