'Is it Me?' – #FreeWriteMadness / #NaNoWriMo – Day TwosteemCreated with Sketch.

in #freewritemadness5 years ago (edited)

It's day two of #FreewriteMadness / #NaNoWriMo, and I'm having a great time so far! 😍 I am harnessing this early enthusiasm and positive momentum as much as I can right now, because I know there will be days during November when I won't be able to write much. In this post, I'm writing about two characters in my upcoming novel named Derek and Emma, who have made several previous appearances in my ever-growing collection of Steemit writings!

Today, I'm continuing the pattern I established yesterday in my two previous #FreewriteMadness posts: all text that was written prior to November is italicised and discounted from my NaNoWriMo word count – I'm just including it so that the post as a whole makes sense. I decided to kick off NaNoWriMo by attempting to fill in all of the gaps in my previous chapters.

This post is a direct continuation of a post I wrote back in July, when Derek had just attended a training session for his rugby team. If anyone reading this would like more context behind Emma's story, you can read this post. 😊 Enjoy!

___________________________

Later that evening, Derek emerges from the changing rooms, basking in the glow of his post-exercise high and the much-missed camaraderie with his teammates. The field is now empty. Darkness is falling. He closes his eyes for a moment and thinks again of Lansdowne Road – and once more, Anne-Marie finds her way into his thoughts. He sees her sitting in the front row, cheering him on. He recalls the time she once climbed over the railings to get to him after Ireland had won the European championship, the year after they were married. He had been an up-and-coming star on the team then…

A cold breeze sweeps over him and he shivers slightly. Right. That’s enough of that. He abruptly turns around and makes his way to the car park. The kids are with Moira at the moment, but he doesn’t like to leave them for too long. He has to pick up toilet paper on the way back, too … he could nip into Price Watchers for that, he supposes, as it is very close to Moira’s. He cringes momentarily – remembering his meltdown there last week – then shakes his head and gets into his car. He doubts that the exact same shoppers or staff who saw him last week will be there now. Even if they are, they wouldn’t make a big scene out of him being there again, would they?

He is relieved when the supermarket turns out to be quiet – when he can wander around unobtrusively, not drawing any attention to himself. The toilet roll isn’t where it used to be, though. They must have moved things around. It always irks him slightly when supermarkets do that, as it always seems to happen just when he has grown accustomed to their previous layout.

He turns around – hoping to find someone who can point him in the right direction – and sees the supermarket manager, frowning as she inspects one of the tills: the same till that was malfunctioning during his previous visit. What did she say her name was again? Emma something … Emma Harrison. That was it. Derek remembers her well from his previous trip: the pressed blue suit, the suspicious stance, the thick red hair.

He approaches her and clears his throat. ‘Ms Harrison?’

She looks up, a little startled. A few strands of hair have fallen over her face – she pushes them back impatiently and gets to her feet. ‘Oh … Mr Fitzmaurice, hello.’

‘I can’t find the toilet rolls. Would you mind telling me where –’

‘Oh … yes … we’ve moved some things around lately. It’ll be in aisle six.’

‘Thank you.’ He turns to go, but her voice stops him.

‘Mr Fitzmaurice?’

‘Yes?’

She stands there for a moment, looking uncomfortable, before heaving a sigh and saying, ‘I – I am sorry, if I came across as rude the other day. It was a stressful day, you know how it is –’

He shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I just … I thought I should say that to you. You’re always welcome here – I don’t want you to feel that that isn’t the case.’

‘Thank you, Ms Harrison. I appreciate that.’

‘Call me Emma.’

‘Emma. And, listen … I really am sorry for causing a disturbance that day. I hope I didn’t alarm your staff. It was just … well … everyone in the country knows what’s been going on for me. And what with my worries for the kids and everything … I had a moment where it all got on top of me, that’s all.’

Her eyes soften. ‘I have a son too. I know how it is. You never stop worrying about them, do you?’

‘Right, right.’ He smiles.

‘Well,’ she says awkwardly, clearing her throat and turning back to the broken till. ‘Anyway, I’ve taken up enough of your time, Mr Fitzmaurice, I do apologise –’

‘That’s alright. I’ll go and get that toilet paper now. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

~ Emma ~

Is It Me?

Emma doesn’t understand why she felt like that: why her eyes were drawn to look at Derek Fitzmaurice after he had turned away, why she felt compelled to speak to him again. And as for that brief conversation they’d had about their kids … well, it was strange. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

After trying, yet again, to get the broken till to work, she had given up and told Sarah to ring the maintenance crew. With any luck, they’ll be here tomorrow and she can stop worrying about it.

Alone at last. Emma heaves a profound sigh of relief as she sinks into her favourite armchair – a faded burgundy one her grandfather gave her when she was fifteen years old – and takes a sip of Bordeaux.

This armchair has followed her to every home she has had since leaving her parents’ house. The first shoebox apartment she had rented with college friends – squalid and tiny as it was – had been brightened by its presence, and towards the end of her marriage to Frank, when the fights had brought her to tears over and over again, sitting in this armchair had never failed to bring her solace.

She knows this chair inside out: the short threads of loose fabric at the ends of the arms, the whorls in the pattern, the patches she put on certain spots when the original material began to fall apart. She should get it fully re-upholstered soon – she knows that – but she is too attached to the fabrics that are on it now, tattered and worn as they are.


VeryWell Mind

Emma’s paternal grandfather – who gave this chair to her when she was a child, after she complained that everyone in her house was too loud, and she never had a private place of her own to sit down and read – was closer to her than either of her parents ever were. Not that this was entirely her parents’ fault: with seven children in the house, and Emma slap bang in the middle of them – she has three older siblings and three younger ones – getting her parents’ attention was never going to be an easy task. She recalls that her mother, in particular, was forever cooking and cleaning and snapping at her children for not keeping their rooms tidy. In those days, it seemed to Emma that her mother was constantly out to ruin her fun and obstruct her plans. She only began to empathise with her a little more when she became a parent herself, and learned how she – with just one child – struggles, day in and day out, to know what is best for him. But there are other differences between herself and her parents that she has never been able to reconcile. From an early age, she began to resent their staunch Catholic values, and the fact that she was constantly hauled to Mass: not just on Sundays, but often during the middle of the week too. They strongly disapproved when she told them she was getting divorced, and she doesn’t visit them that often nowadays.

She takes a look out the window – widens her eyes in disbelief at the howling wind and powerful sheets of rain battering against the glass – and shivers slightly. The weather is truly awful tonight. She is thankful that she dropped Brian to Diane’s house before it became too bad. She gets up and pulls the curtains closed, shutting out the unpleasantness, then heaves a sigh and wraps her cardigan more securely around her shoulders. The heat will be on very soon: she set it just a few minutes ago.

Her conversation with Derek Fitzmaurice comes to mind again – ‘I know how it is. You never stop worrying about them’ – and she shakes her head impatiently. She doesn’t understand why she spoke to him like that. She’s never been the type of person to fawn all over some minor celebrity – even as she thinks this, she can hear Frank, blowing up at her for considering Derek Fitzmaurice, rugby star extraordinaire, to be a ‘minor’ celebrity –and she has never been all that interested in sports. Rugby stars have never been on her radar in any way.

Settling back into her seat, her thoughts turn to their habitual subject these days: Brian. Lately, she has been dwelling on his unshakeable integrity: how he will not tolerate the slightest hint of dishonesty in anyone around him, how he cannot comprehend why the world is in such a dire state and politicians won’t put their petty squabbles to one side and deal with society’s pressing problems. His idealism seemingly knows no bounds, and Emma’s greatest fear for him is that he will find it very difficult to deal with life as he grows older. She fears that the world will be cruel to her son in the years ahead: that it will beat his spirit out of him. The incident with the pills has already frightened her enough. She has no idea when she will come to terms with it, if ever.

Her phone suddenly vibrates on the table next to her – a message from Diane, telling her that Brian has got his bed all set up for the night, and they are now enjoying some lovely hot chocolate together and playing Beg of Thy Neighbour to pass the time until Frank arrives. What – is it really eight o’clock already?! She sighs again. Her emails aren’t going to sort themselves out … but she doesn’t want to go through them right now. She wants to sit here, wine by her side, and unwind…

___________________________

‘I didn’t do it, Mam, alright? The bottles are full, can’t you see that? I didn’t really want to do it, I just wanted –'

‘What?’ Emma half-shouted, struggling to remain calm. ‘What is it, darling?’

‘I want things not to be shit.’

‘Well, that isn’t enough information for me to go on, Brian. What exactly do you mean by not wanting things to be “shit”?’ The anger she had been struggling to keep at bay – borne out of a deep, primal fear – finally erupted out of her. Panic roared – thundered – through her mind, obliterating her desire to approach the subject gently.

‘I want ... I want the world to be different. I want people to care about each other more. I want –’

‘The real world does not work like that, Brian,’ she snarled. ‘Out there – in the real world – nobody will pay you for “caring about humanity.” Believe me. You need to get your head out of the clouds and do some fucking work! It’s your Junior Cert year, and if you are honestly telling me that you want to piss your future up against the wall –’

Even as she embarked on this rant, Emma could feel herself inwardly cringing. She knew she would soon look back and be deeply ashamed of saying all this: ashamed that she had let her fear override all else, ashamed that she wasn’t gentler with him.

‘I don’t know if I even want to finish school.’

‘WHAT?’

‘What’s the point?’

Emma put her head in her hands. ‘Is it me, Brian?’ she asked him bleakly. ‘Is it my fault? I know, when your father and I were separating, that I should have been there for you more. I should have helped you to cope…’

___________________________

Emma jolts awake. Her heart is pounding. What time is it now? 11.27 p.m … well, it’s far too late for her to be wading through her emails now. She’ll never get to sleep if she turns on the computer at this time. She curls up into her chair and allows the tears to roll down her face at the memories of that awful night, when she had found all those pills in Brian’s room.

She can recall every single detail all too well: the screams, the tears, her growing conviction that Brian had, in fact, taken pills, her insistence that she would drag him to A & E that very night and get his stomach pumped … she had ended up calling Frank while on the way there and sobbing down the phone at him – the weight of her grief too much to bear. Frank had turned up at the hospital, but had ultimately taken the view that because Brian didn’t actually go through with the suicide attempt, there was no need to make such a huge fuss about it: they should just ‘keep a bit of an eye on him’.

Whatever Orla might say, Emma still knows she has failed her son. Still, when she thinks of that night, there is one question that haunts her constantly: is it me?

She remembers Orla’s exhortations that she go to that damn group…

Alright. Fine. She will attend the support group just once – it can’t possibly make the situation any worse, with the way things have been going – and if it turns out to be the most cringe-inducing experience of her life, she can always vow to herself that she will never go back there again.

___________________________

The non-italicised chunks of text add up to 741 words altogether. I'll write more this evening. I want to end this post by giving a shout out to everyone else who has signed up to the fit of absolute lunacy invigorating personal challenge that is #FreewriteMadness. 😇 I have limited voting power (damn my not-quite-plankton but not-quite-redfish status 😉), but will upvote as many posts as I can per day.

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For a chance to WIN SteemBasicIncome, just read and comment on my #freewritemadness posts. 😊 The lovely people over at @freewritehouse are doing a great job of supporting us complete and utter lunatics NaNoWriMo-ers. 😁

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Your story is simply amazing. It seems to draw readers in with ease. The @freewritehouse is an amazing group to be around. Stories that start off strong, are worth sticking around for the long run.

Love how you are using this month to get something previously started to a finish line!!
So glad that you are writing with us!!

Thank you. I'm so grateful to be writing for you. ❤️

a new window opens to this world, and we see that there are always otehr interesting stories around, because the world is alive beyond whatever min narrative may be followed

#NovMadFan Bruni hitting a couple of nano's before I hit the hay. It's an easy read, and I like that. Fabulous work. 👍

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