Auld Acquaintance (Part Two)

Previously: Part One  

Charlestown, Mass.  Early Summer, 1996.

I'd bought the phone at Office Max, likely the cheapest model on offer.  It was only fate or kismet that it had the exact ring as the office phones featured on NBC's Homicide, a show that made it okay to spend Friday nights alone.  A show that kept me at my cathode-tube iMac until 10 Eastern, writing away, because what else could I do with the time?  If hunger is the best gravy, loneliness is the best punch-clock.  This is how my phone rang.  Mine and Detectives Pembleton, Munch, and Lewis.

So one Saturday morning that summer following Pam Painter's Short Short course, my phone burbled.  It was Janet Burroway, a name that was familiar but one I couldn't place.  (Had my back not been turned to my bookcase, where Burroway's Writing Fiction was the bulk of my personal Self-Help, Advice, and How-To section, I might have gotten it.)  I hazily realized she was calling to tell me that my story had won Florida State's Short Short contest for that year.  She told me how much she liked the story, explicating the part that calls back "Auld Lang Syne" in the mother's cupped hands, told me last year's winner had not only won the promised $100 and a crate of oranges but also had this story reprinted in Harper's Magazine and read aloud on Morning Edition.  She told me I sounded young -- I wasn't even aware I'd spoken -- and asked what I did.

I told her I was a grad student in Emerson's writing program and working in Human Resources for a mutual funds company.  She said she was thrilled that a young person had won, that others had spent years trying to win their contest.  (To someone with my esteem issues, this meant she was already regretting the decision.)

She asked if I knew of Jerome Stern.  Again, familiar but not clicking (and again, Stern's Making Shapely Fiction was right there in the room with me.)  "He was," said Burroway, "but there you've already heard me say 'was.'"  The Florida State contest had been Stern's labor of love, and he had just that Spring died of cancer.  "So I can't promise you that this year will be like last year, in terms of the exposure," Burroway said.  "We're all fumbling in the dark here, after such a loss."

The call came to end, and I hung up, and holy shit, I think I was just talking with Janet Burroway.  And I won, and I'm going to be in print and I'm going to eat oranges and be in Harpers and Bob Edwards is going to interview me on the radio.

I called my parents.  "Oh," they said, "that's great."  My effusing embarrassed them.  I felt like I was telling them I'd discovered all the eldritch secrets of the Kingdom of Atlantis.  "Mmm-hmm," they said, "how wonderful.  One hundred dollars, you say?"  I'd borrowed $40,000 from the federal government to go to art school and write stories, and here I'd just made enough off of professional writing to pay for about two weeks' worth of interest on that loan.  They didn't see the victory.

So I called Pam, who was genuine and thrilled.  She asked if I'd called my parents.  I told her I had, but that I felt like they didn't totally get it.  Pam said we'd need to get the class back together when the oranges arrived.  "We'll inject them with vodka and have a party!" she said.

I was over the moon.  Could not sit still.  Everything was about to change.

And then, for an awfully long time, nothing happened.

Next:   The Story in Question