Unfinished Novel
Many years ago as part of a month long novel writing challenge, I threw together a rough draft of a novel based loosely on my life. I recently ran across the file and decided to see if I could edit it into something readable.
It is a work in progress, and since it is serialized, please feel free to offer suggestions and corrections. Maybe we can finish this as a community.
Chapter One-The Curse
By the fall of 1996 Sean’s marriage seemed stable after years of tumult. He lived in hope that his wife Samantha had settled down and he would no longer have to live a life filled with stress and suspicion. To those people that knew them, the couple appeared to have an idyllic situation with two healthy children and a newly purchased home in a tight-knit community. They were both active in their church and in their small town.
It was the church that kept the fragile union together. Samantha had a religious awakening during the couple’s lengthy separation late in 1993. That was shortly after the birth of their second son Shane. Samantha’s personal religious revival seemingly caused her to reach out to Sean and beg him for forgiveness for her cheating ways and lies. That led to another attempt at reconciliation.
As with any reconciliation, Sean returned to a very different marriage, one that was fractured and fragile. It would take years before he trusted her again, if ever. In spite of the dysfunctional nature of his marriage, Sean found comfort in the fact that he did not have to go to school functions, church or the kids sporting events alone. This was especially important in a small town where gossip ran freer than water out of a fire hydrant. The couple had their share of typical problems but they learned to shield them from their two boys and, for the most part, from their churchgoing friends and the townspeople.
In spite of outward appearances, Sean lived a miserable life filled with regret and disappointment. He and his wife had little in common, aside from their children. She was simple-minded, serious and devoid of humor. Sean, in spite of his lack of education, enjoyed reading, music and he was always quick with a joke. Sean’s humor hid the fact he was self-conscious about the fact that he had dropped out of high school when he was 16 years-old.
Sam’s life was devoid of personal tragedy. At 28 years-old, she still had two full sets of living grandparents, and her siblings were healthy. Her mother and father, just like their parents before had, both worked at Eastman Kodak in Rochester N.Y, which was the largest employer in the region, even though Kodak’s glory days were behind it, her parents lived a typical suburban life filled with the trappings and the inevitable attempts at keeping up with of the joneses. Her parents were devoid of emotion, which may explain why Sam was always seeking attention in positive or negative ways.
Sean’s family life and makeup was very different. He was the youngest child of three. Both of his grandfathers were long deceased by the time he was born and his grandmothers were both dead by the time he was ten.
Sean lost his father in 1996 shortly before they moved into their new house. December 8, 1996 was moving day. The O’Connor family fortunes had improved and they moved from a pitifully small apartment in Hamlin NY to a ranch house less than twenty miles in Albion. If the home buying process was any indication of things to come then the O’Connor family should have been worried. The length of time from origination to funding was almost six months and in turn Sean’s apartment complex had forced his hand and made him sign a yearlong lease instead of letting him go month to month until they closed on the house. Since Sean had no idea when and even if he was going to be approved he signed the new lease.
In the couples four years in Hamlin they had accumulated enough junk to warrant the renting of a mid-sized U-haul truck. Out of concern over the fact that they were breaking their lease, Sean and Samantha moved late one evening and without notice. Sean loaded the last of the junk they had accumulated and did a last scan of the apartment.
Photo by Trinity Nguyen
“I’ve always hated this part.”
What part?” asked soon to be former neighbor Eric Simpson.
“Standing in the middle of my home and seeing it barren. I had some really good memories in this place and I guess I am just worried.”
“Worried about what?”
“I don’t know…I am just worried. Everything having to do with this house seems to be cursed. We had issues with the financing. The renters threatened to squat. My mom is furious I am moving farther away from her. Nothing seems right about this whole process”
“I don’t know why you’re bitching,” Eric said. “I wish I was moving into my own house, I’ll be listening to my wife bitch about us renting a place for the next week.”
“I have been listening to mine complain for years,” Sean said. “But there was something about this apartment that brought us the type of contentment that I had been looking for, I felt at peace here with God and with myself.”
“What the hell are you talking about, are you getting religious on me preacher boy?”
Eric’s words hit home for Sean. He was in the middle of a hyper-religious phase and was a self-taught student of the Bible who occasionally led service at the Lutheran church he attended with Sam. He still never felt comfortable, or accepted as a Christian leader in his congregation. Sean let the comment go with just a chuckle.
Sean and Eric did one last sweep through the apartment and Samantha came in afterward with a vacuum cleaner. In spite of the fact that the security deposit was hopelessly lost due to the breaking of the lease. Samantha was still worried about appearances, so she made sure that no one could claim she left the place a mess.
It was time to leave when Sean asked Samantha for the keys to the rental truck.
“They are in my coat,” she said
Sean and Eric suddenly realized that in their haste to get out of the apartment they had thrown all of the jackets in the back of the truck in a large pile. There was not an inch of wasted space, and the coats had been packed hours ago. Sean’s head dropped as he thought about the “curse.”
“It looks like a good time to say your prayers Sean, that coat is buried in there,” joked Eric in a Semi-sarcastic tone.
There was no time to unload the whole truck, so the only option was to have one of them crawled around in the back of the U-Haul with a flashlight in the hopes that they would find the lost keys. Since Eric was well over six feet tall and weighed around 300 pounds, the task was left to the smaller framed although slightly overweight Sean. He crawled around in the back to look for the missing keys, and he was soon buried in the back of the truck.
The situation made Samantha furious although she hid her anger. Only those closest to Sam experienced her dark side for she constantly worried about appearances, both physically and emotionally.
Sean crawled around in the back of the U-Haul and moved around in the seemingly endless pile of paraphernalia that had been accumulated throughout the couple’s marriage. The quest was akin to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. but the urgency of the task overshadowed the daunting nature of it.
One of Sean’s strengths was paradoxically his weakness; he was extremely stubborn, a trait most likely passed down to him genetically by his father of the same name. The trait worsened as his hairline receded and his waistline expanded. At barely 5’6” Sean was shorter than most of his peers, and he was the stereotypical kid with “little man syndrome.”
When Sean and Eric stood next to each other the contrast was laughable. In addition to the physical contrast their personality traits were also diametrically opposed. Eric was a mechanically inclined, manly type who could fix just about anything. His wife, at his insistence, stayed home and tended the house and raised the children. In an age where the wife was expected to work, Eric’s wife Kathy was part of a dying breed, the “housewife.”
Other contrasts were apparent. Sean and Samantha had two boys, Eric and Kathy two girls. Sean and Samantha feigned happiness in public, but privately the marriage always seemed fragile and on the brink of breaking, Eric and Kathy came to blows in public with no regard to what others thought of the situation, but their bond and loyalty towards each other was rock solid.
Because of Eric’s limited income, the couple was constantly battling eviction and shut off notices in creative and oft confrontational ways. They were survivors, and resourceful, always managing to keep the power on and avoiding getting kicked out of their apartment.
Sean and Samantha faced similar financial problems but it was usually Sean who had to step in and handle situations diplomatically when Samantha’s spending and impulsiveness got out of control, which was usually about every six months.
Sean’s faith was strong during this period, God always seemed to intervene and guide him through troubled times and in turn Sean gave generously to the church both financially and with his time. He had learned to look at everyday problems as a test of faith, and that brought him a measured degree of peace. It always seemed to him that God was there to catch him when he was about to fall.
In that respect the quest for a needle in a haystack was a simple task with the help of God and so Sean left the truck and brought together the two couples and led them in prayer.
“Dear Lord, all knowing and seeing father we come together to ask your help in finding the keys that are lost in the back of that truck. We know you are a loving father and we turn this problem over to you dear Lord.”
A newly confident Sean walked arrogantly towards the truck and seemed to dive into the pile like an Olympic swimmer and in a few minutes he emerged from the mess smiling cocksure holding a set of keys. For a guy that believed in curses, he smiled like he was a favored disciple under a hedge of protection.
And so the couple drove away from the tiny apartment complex in Hamlin to their new digs 17 long miles away in Albion NY.