Renovations and Other Stories
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University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2012 Renovations And Other Stories Amanda Rene Lager University of Central Florida Part of the Creative Writing Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Lager, Amanda Rene, "Renovations And Other Stories" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 2358. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2358 RENOVATIONS AND OTHER STORIES by AMANDA RENE LAGER B.A. University of South Carolina, 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2012 © 2012 Amanda Lager ii ABSTRACT Renovations and Other Stories is a linked collection of ten fiction stories that examines the ways by which women renew or restore themselves. The collection is set in the imaginary city of St. Clair, South Carolina, a town balancing historical accuracy with the sensational tourist industry; Carolinians who trace their ancestries back to the American Revolution with suburban newcomers; and the notion of cherishing the past with moving forward. Many of the characters struggle with identity, whether it is regional or feminine individuality. The protagonists must challenge self-image when faced with situations that make them reconsider their places in their marriages, schools, jobs, and in their lives. Relationships among women, especially mother-daughter bonds, are an important motif throughout the collection. These stories cover the lifetimes of two generations of Carolinian women. A baker struggles to break free of her Northern transient upbringing. A history student yearns to escape her past as a victim of bullying to form a new, confident identity while saying goodbye to her estranged mother. Another girl explores the confused social politics of the South which alienate her from a childhood friend. I intend to examine, through fiction, how people come to appreciate one another, often a moment too late, and how sometimes we completely misunderstand ourselves. iii To my grandfathers, Pat and Sam, who could not see through the completion of this thesis. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Jamie, thank you so much for taking on this project before you had even arrived in Orlando, for pushing me to see through my characters’ eyes, and for patience until each draft became something coherent. Susan Hubbard and Pat Rushin, thank you for your workshops and for putting up with my incessant emails to see this thing through. Thanks to Darlin’ Neal and Lisa Roney, who saw drafts of a few of these stories in their initial forms. To Jocelyn Bartkevicious, for being a temporary thesis chair and for your advice before I moved to Orlando. To Dr. Kathy Seidel, for inspiring much of the research behind this project. To Don Stap and Russ Kesler, for filling in the gaps in my knowledge of poetry and for suffering my baked goods in your classrooms. And to Terry Thaxton—there are few words that can say how thankful I am to have you in my life. “Thank you” is never enough. Thank you to Carl Bertoch of the National Park Service, Steve Colman, Patrick Dukes, and Bethany DuVall for answering my questions and sharing your stories—and occasionally throwing art supplies in water to see if they would float. To my fellow CRW students, in particular Ryan Haskins, Jaroslav Kalfar, and Rachel Kolman, thank you for your comments and insights and friendship. Especially to Rachel, who read almost every story in this collection and left a mark on more than a few of its pages. To my family, thank you for being the beautiful, crazy beings that you are. And, finally, to my father, Doug. Without your Jack Berthoud stories, I would have never been a writer in the first place. v TABLE OF CONTENTS RENOVATIONS ............................................................................................................................ 1 UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS........................................................................................ 17 CHARLESTON MUD HENS ...................................................................................................... 35 BRAIDS ........................................................................................................................................ 50 HILUM ......................................................................................................................................... 66 PIAZZA ........................................................................................................................................ 84 STARING AT THE MOON ......................................................................................................... 99 TIDAL MOTION........................................................................................................................ 116 THE BAIRSTOW HOUSE......................................................................................................... 130 NORTH COUNTRY .................................................................................................................. 146 APPENDIX A: WRITING LIFE ESSAY .................................................................................. 161 APPENDIX B: READING LIST................................................................................................ 174 vi RENOVATIONS For the fifth morning in a row, Eve awoke in bed alone. She watched as the sunrise brought the furniture into contrast, the dresser a different shade of gray than the carpet or the lamp or the mirror. Glen’s body should have been a dark shadow outlined against the window, but all night there’d been no steady, gentle breathing to match hers. She threw back the comforter and gathered enough courage to walk. Then, she descended the wooden stairs covered by the red carpet runner, passed through the high-ceilinged dining room, and entered the equally large kitchen. The stainless-steel appliances and blue-gray paint made the room feel like a factory in Georgetown, not a historic Single House in downtown St. Clair. Now, the gap between her preference and her husband’s was more evident by the bitter taste that formed on the back of her tongue each time she opened the fridge. Routine guided her through these mornings. Eve filled the tea kettle out of habit, not knowing how many changes she could stomach at once. While she waited for the kettle to whistle, she retrieved the newspaper from the mailbox. The whole week, Eve was up before her neighbors. Later on, they would pass by with dogs or on the way to work or jogging, but, for now, the cobblestone street was empty. Each day started sooner, sunrise a minute earlier each day her husband remained absent. Longer days promised a renewed thickness of the air and green in the garden. Humidity and Spanish moss weighed down the oak tree on her front lawn. Eve’s limbs felt as heavy as its branches. On the piazza, Eve found a blue envelope leaning against a candle, the porch’s sole decoration. Her name was written across the envelope in Glen’s blocky, capital-letter script. Eve eased into one of the rocking chairs as she debated ripping open the letter. Five days of waiting, 1 and she was afraid to hear what excuse Glen could offer for himself. Good news or bad, it wouldn’t wait with her on the porch for time to pass and her emotions to calm down. She paused between each tear, afraid to damage the letter inside. The sheet of hotel stationary, from a chain that catered to the swarms of tourists and which sat only blocks away from their house, revealed little. He gave her no answers, no explanations, only directions that he and his lawyer would stop by the following day to pick up his clothes and to clean out his study. Wind toyed with the tips of the dormant azaleas and jessamine in the garden, plants Eve’s mother-in-law, Queenie, had tended while she was alive. The tea kettle whistled. Eve turned off the burner, tossed a couple bags in the water to steep, and returned to the porch. Cars sputtered past. The occasional lost tourist met her gaze as he admired her neighborhood. The house at her back slept. # Queenie had met them on the porch when Glen firstbrought Eve home. She’d sat in a rocking chair, fanning herself with a folded housekeeping magazine, and watched the condensation drip from her glass of tea. Though Eve wore a dress and some makeup, she looked frazzled compared to how put-together Queenie was—a beautiful dress, sleek curled hair, not a chip in her pink fingernail polish. Eve wanted to sink through the porch steps, sink through the cobblestone and the dirt right into the water rushing from the river out to the Atlantic. Glen bounded up the steps and hugged his mother, leaving Eve on the lawn. She folded her hands behind her back and laced her fingers together. She had little family pedigree compared to her boyfriend’s, nothing that would impress Queenie. True, Eve was as much a Carolinian as any Demerest, her ancestors stretching so far back there was no telling when or from where they had come. Eve had been raised in the St. Clair suburbs, yet even she had heard 2