DARK ROADS ALWAYS LEAD HOME DARLENE M. GLASS Bachelor of Arts in Business: Management/Marketing Mount Union College May 1991 submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN CREATIVE WRITING at the NORTHEAST OHIO MFA and CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY May 2018 ©COPYRIGHT BY DARLENE M. GLASS 2018 We hereby approve this thesis For Darlene M. Glass Candidate for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree For the department of English, the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing And CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY’S College of Graduate Studies by ________________________________________ Imad Rahman, Committee Chairperson ________________________________________ Department & Date ________________________________________ Caryl Pagel, Committee Member ________________________________________ Department & Date ________________________________________ Michael Geither, Committee Member ________________________________________ Department & Date ________________________________________ David Giffels, Committee Member ________________________________________ Department & Date ________________________________________ Date of Defense DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to Marie, my wife, my best friend, my biggest supporter. Thank you for the endless hours you spent reading, editing, rereading, listening to me read, missing me while I hole up in the office, the spare bedroom, campus, random houses and coffee shops to write, and especially for letting me spend buttloads of our cash to get this degree. I couldn’t have accomplished any of this without your constant support, time, love, and encouragement. DARK ROADS ALWAYS LEAD HOME DARLENE M. GLASS ABSTRACT This thesis is a work of fiction. It includes the first half of a novel-in-progress and three short stories. The plot driven novel, Red Plane, is about a woman, Alexis, who discovers her hidden passion for murder, while dealing with and preparing for the homecoming of her mother, who has been in prison for fourteen years for murdering her husband, Alexis’ father. The rest is a series of short stories: Breakfast at Mel’s is a surreal tale of a man who wakes up in a bizarre dream and has to make a choice between good and evil; Smalltown Adjustments follows Prajan, an Indian man, on his trip to a grocery store in--the very caucasion--Smalltown, Ohio; The Escape Claws introduces us to Clem, a stray cat who wakes up in the hood and must fight to survive the mean streets of Cleveland until he finds a place to call home. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………… v RED PLANE………………………………………………………………………...… 1 BREAKFAST AT MEL’S……………………………………………………………. 141 SMALLTOWN ADJUSTMENTS………………………………………………...….. 151 THE ESCAPE CLAWS………………………………………………………………. 164 vi RED PLANE Tall buildings make me smile. I think of them often when I wake up like today at 3:00 a.m. I am standing atop of them, looking over the city, the wind in my face. Then I jump over the ledge, falling unto the city, the wind in my face, the soft swishing sounds as my body floats left then right then left. Then peace. My mind was racing with everything I had to do today. I tried to chant myself back to sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Fill out paperwork for mom’s release. Sleep. Go see court ordered therapist. Tell her what she wants to hear so mom can come home from prison instead of going to a nuthouse. Sleep. Go to work. Sleep. 1 Work on living room. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. And then there’s mother. Waiting for me to bring her home from her own prison. To my own prison. Keeping me here. To keep her here. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. I feel like the universe is playing a sick joke by letting me wake up every morning. 2 CHAPTER 1 “Before we start I have to inform you of my guidelines. If you tell me something that I feel is a situation of imminent danger to yourself or someone else, I am ethically obligated to report it. What that means is that if I feel you are going to hurt yourself or someone else—“ “I know what that means,” I interrupted her before she continued to make me feel stupider than she was already trying to do. “Good.” “I’m only here because the court ordered this, Dr. Finch,” I said to the therapist’s round face. I tried to read something in the dark brown that surrounded her large pupils but it was futile. I wondered why the lights were so low in here. Was it to keep the crazies calm? Was it to make us feel cozy and safe so we would tell them everything? “Why are you here?” Like she didn’t know why I was here. Let the games begin. “You know why I am here,” I told her calmly. “I need to know that you understand why we are here,” she said. “To see if I am fit to take care of my mother so the prison psychiatrists can feel comfortable letting her come to live with me when they parole her,” I spewed at her. “And why is your mother in jail?” “Isn’t that all in your notes?” “I need to hear it from you?” “She’s in jail for stabbing my father twenty-seven times with a kitchen knife.” I was fighting hard to keep the lump in my throat down and I felt like I wanted to vomit. I 3 don’t think I had ever said that out loud before. I was getting warm. I could feel wetness between my breasts and under my armpits. “You okay?” I tried to sit back and look relaxed. “Fine. Are you okay?” “Why did your mother kill your father?” “I’ll have to get back to you on that since she hasn’t spoken since that night. But I’m sure you already know that,” I said trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. The room was so small. The paneling may have been painted white, but the straight, vertical grooves, made it still feel dark brown. And it was getting so hot in there. I could smell the leftover scent of flowery perfume lingering from the person who sat here before me. I tried to ignore it. I folded my hands on my lap and smiled. “Do you think it had anything to do with your brother’s suicide?” “Maybe you can tell me. You’re the expert in human behavior. I’m just a carpenter.” “Do you like being a carpenter?” “I love it. Do you like being a therapist?” “We’re not here to talk about me.” Me neither. “I thought we were here to talk about my mother.” “We have to make sure you can take care of her.” “She’s mute, not crippled.” She opened her mouth as if to say something and then thought better of it. If she thought she was going to get to me, she was kidding herself. There was an awkward moment of silence before she continued. “Let’s switch gears for a moment. Where will she live?” 4 “I have a house I am renovating. It’s half done. By the time she’s released everything else will be finished.” “Where is the house located?” “In Cleveland. The Old Brooklyn Neighborhood.” “That’s a nice neighborhood. And who else will be living there?” “Just us.” “Not dating anyone?” “Not at the moment.” Where was this going? This was such a fucking waste of time. “So, about bringing my mother home.” “Are you angry with your mother for killing your father?” “Not angry so much as confused. I mean, she must have had a good reason to one day out of the blue go apeshit and stab the fuck out of her husband. Something had to trigger it.” “Let’s talk about Bobby.” “Bobby’s dead. And yes, logically, due to the fact my mother killed my father after Bobby hung himself in his bedroom, they must be linked. But why he killed himself, I don’t know.” “What do you think?” “I don’t. My father is gone, my brother is gone, and for all practical purposes my mother is gone. What’s to think about? It can’t be changed. It is what it is. So I get up every day and put on my big girl pants and go to work and live my life. That’s all I can do.” “That’s what you do, but how do you feel?” 5 I feel like my skin is crawling and I need to get out of it. I want to rip my flesh apart and let my organs fall to the ground, covered in blood. I want to tear off my head with bare hands just to get it to stop for one fucking minute. Every little thing is getting under my skin. All day I hear people talking, cackling, chewing, sneezing, coughing, breathing and I want to strangle each and every one of them. I am so edgy and despite what my shaking hands and jittery limbs may look like, I am tired. So fucking tired. I am tired of feeling like this. I am tired of waiting for a death that is nowhere in sight and yet I can’t solve my own problem. The hands that could bring me peace are tied behind my back with fear. The fear of failing. What if I fuck it up and it doesn’t work? Then everyone will know how fucked up I am and how I couldn’t even kill myself right and thinking about it just drives me more insane and it does not help stop the freight train running through my body. I want to hit something or someone but more than that, I want to cut my wrists open because I know that will bring me relief.