What Happens Next

In The Avocado Grove, the character’s write letters, either short ones to one another or longer ones they never end up sending.  The longer letters are the kinds of things they might write in journals or diaries, and they have the sort of dialogue they would never say to one another.  With Ally and Marianne, it is this way.  This is the letter Ally writes to Marianne – at Father Beni’s suggestion. 

(I’m currently working on what happens next for these characters – and it is confounding at times.)

June 30, 2014

Dear Marianne,

When you chatted it up at the block party with Roberto Dennis and his pack of macho friends, it seemed as if you didn't know me. A few months ago you acted like we were sorority sisters. "Tell me about the neighborhood," you said. And you winked at me and looked at me encouragingly. We sipped our tea. You smiled but said little about anything.

I gossiped about everything. How Roberto's wife, Delucca Dennis has the worst temper and hollers every morning at her dogs that will not stay in her yard and how those dogs run wild all over the neighborhood as if they are possessed. I told you the Johnson's daughter is a high- school dropout and also has a druggie boyfriend. I sipped my tea. I gossiped more.

Your face is wise like Grizzly’s when she isn’t drunk, and I started to tell you about my sister and her child. But it was like I forgot you were even there. It was like I was speaking to a ghost in the room. You sat so quiet and still.

"My niece drives me crazy," I said. "And I hate her hair. It looks angry as if she couldn't decide between pink and red and the gorgeous blonde she was born with."

"That's just teenagers and that's just hair.” And I jumped when I heard your voice. You sipped your tea. I spilled mine all over my new shorts.

I wanted to ask how much bleach makes you look like you were born with the pale, white blonde hair that some babies have. But the most I managed after staining my outfit was, "How often do you have to go to the salon, every four weeks, right?"

You rolled up your pant leg and showed off an ankle tattoo. The brown spots fanned up. It looked as if you stepped into a giant mud puddle, except it felt like I was the clumsy one. I slipped up. I didn’t say anything about your tattoo.
I thought I might catch it and see it in the pattern of the spilled tea all over my cream colored clothes.

When you wiggled out of your skinny jacket, I saw the butterfly canvassing your arm. That butterfly looked alive, as if it might take off at any moment or stay and show me its teeth, and whisper your secrets.

You smiled at me but you never answered my question about your hair. But I felt as if I had helped you. My house guests are all anyone gossips about now.
Here's some of the stuff I've been asked:

"Is Emily your daughter or your sister's kid?"


"Is Don Emily’s father?"


"Did you see the video of Emily and Delucca's boy and what she did?"

But I imagine you already know this. I outrank the antics of Delucca's dogs or the wheelies Juniper's boyfriend does on his motorbike at midnight, or any of those guys Roberto introduced you to and you hang out with now (neighbors I never bothered to know well).

Welcome to the hood, this Avocado Grove.

P.S. Father Beni says I don't have to give this to you, but I wish I were brave enough to do it. There's a cool factor to you Marianne I'll always admire. And I'd bet all the nurses I've met at the hospital would be your friends. I don't have any good answers for them. I've tried a dozen different ones. Everything I say sounds hollow or wrong. Good enough isn't enough. Maybe why perfect blonde hair matters? I don't know. Father Beni doesn't know and G-d remains silent.