Writing Workshop: Week Two

Week One (1 August 2012): Our prompt this week was to write a story based on a photograph.  Old photos and postcards were distributed randomly to all the participants.  Here's what I got:

It's a picture of singer Lovelace Watkins and Ed Sullivan.  Watkins performed on the Ed Sullivan show several times throughout the 60's and 70's.  He was called the "Black Sinatra."  Big, smooth voice.  Amazing.

So here's the story I wrote:
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Mother's kiss was an exaggerated pantomime of a kiss. It was more for the benefit of admiring strangers than it was for me. She liked the way the puckering hollowed out her profile and showed off her cheekbones. The dry peck on my forehead was just a byproduct of her vanity.

“Louise, you spoil that boy,” said Mr. Gladstone from next door, his eyes growing wide. He had a highball in one hand and a Benson and Hedges in the other. The Gladstones and the Pritchards, my mother and father's friends from church, came one Sunday a month to drink cocktails, gossip, play pinochle, and ogle one another's spouses. The two other couples left their children at home with babysitters. My mother did not encourage their attendance.

Although my quiet, serious nature belied my six years of age, usually mother hustled me up to bed by 7. This particular night, though, she'd started drinking early and her benevolent streak had prevailed. “You are a good boy, Philip,” she told me, “You may stay up tonight and watch Ed Sullivan as long as you behave yourself, and then take yourself up to bed.”

“Behave yourself.” The words jumped out of the sentence at me. I knew what she meant. My parents had a low tolerance for “any variety of shenanigans,” as they said.

My mother's house was immaculate. It was by and for fastidious adults. She was fond of mirrors and chrome. Our sofa and carpet were white. I was six-years-old in 1968. Our sofa and carpets were white. She kept her gardening and art books on a shelf my father had built arranged in order of height. There was an orchid placed in the center of our coffee table. It begged me to touch it, but of course I never did.

My architect father spent hours in the basement at his drafting table listening to The Romantic Strings of Mantovani. You could see it the blue prints that resulted from those sessions, low, sweeping structures. The floor plans were gracious, dramatic, like a section of violins.

Whenever I made a mess, had a rare moment of sass, refused to finish my supper, my mother would become fed up immediately and send me down the basement stairs to have my punishment meted out by my father. He would put me over his knee and spank me half-heartedly to the Romantic Strings of the Montovani Orchestra with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His hand came down again again to the rhythm of Village Swallows or Lara's Theme from Dr. Zhivago. Afterwards I would stand up and he'd stare at me awkwardly like he didn't know whether to sock me in the eye or shake my hand.

“That's it, son,” he'd say, “please, do try to look after yourself better.”

I could hear the muted rise and fall of the adults' voices coming from the dining room now. My mother was laughing her controlled laugh at regular intervals. I sat in the middle of the white sofa and stared at the television set. I heard Ed Sullivan say, “Lovelace Watkins.”

A tall black man stood in the middle of the screen. The band started and then his voice came out, low, full, and luxurious. The sound flowed out of the television and wrapped itself around me like the beckoning smoke hand that comes from the caulron of carrot stew and tickles Bugs Bunny's nose. I covered the lower part of his face with my chubby hand and focused on his eyes. They seemed to be full of water, in earnest, but sad, almost apologetic. I opened my mouth to let his voice in deeper. I became aware that I was rocking. I realized when they dropped that my shoulders had been up around my ears for a long time. The man's voice was in my fingers now, the man's voice was in the center of my chest. The man's voice was in my pants now, bathing me with its warmth.

I was hearing my mother scream then from far away and the sound of a glass hitting the floor. My father jerked me up off the couch, ending my reverie.

“Philip! What's gotten into you? How could you?” she bellowed.

The couch was drenched in urine.

The audience was clapping for Lovelace Watkins, my mother was crying. The neighbors were seeing themselves out in low tones of hushed outrage. Father put me in my room and closed the door.

As I lay in bed my memory of the man's voice cradled me. It nearly drowned out the sound of my mother's furious scrubbing. That night I pretended my pillow was Lovelace Watkins.