Martha Moody

The write-to-pitch program was terrific. I came away with lots of ideas not just about pitching but about how to improve my manuscript and become a better citizen in the writing community. Paula and Michael are rich in knowledge, savvy, and contacts. They are generous teachers. And all we participants were interesting people (of course) so any downtime between sessions was a pleasure.

MT. ZION, OHIO 2015 I’ve never met Nomi and there she is, plopped at the family table, grey-haired, frowning, solid as a bulldog, in a speckly green dress she could have worn to a wedding. But this is a church luncheon after a funeral. Her daughter’s funeral. I grip Dylan’s hand harder. The church lady escorting us taps Nomi’s shoulder. “Nomi, here’s Bob, Esther’s husband, and”—the church lady bends over—“what’s your name again, sweetie?” “Dylan,” my daughter says. She drops my hand and seats herself in the folding chair across from Nomi at the same time she plucks from her craft bag a handful of plastic strings. Dylan may be nine, but she’s nine with aplomb. “Isn’t she precious?” the church lady says to Nomi. “Your grand-daughter!” I didn’t see Nomi at the service, she must have sat in back. But I know all about her. Nomi Baloney, No-no Nomi, Nomi of a thousand hateful stories. Nomi who kicked my dead wife out of the house two days after Esther turned sixteen. Nomi eyes rest briefly on Dylan before she raises them to me. “Hello, Bob.” Years ago Nomi sailed around a corner at the IGA and almost crashed her cart into me and Esther. Esther grabbed my shirt and turned us away. “It’s okay. She didn’t see us.” The two of us were nose-to-nose with plastic bags of rice. Esther was breathing fast. “This is perfect,” Esther said. “Mom hates rice.” I glanced down the aisle at Nomi’s broad back. “How can someone hate rice? It has no flavor.” “Bob. Slant-eye food.” “Jesus.” I see Nomi reaching for a long box of spaghetti. “Pasta’s okay?” “Of course. Dad’s Italian!” Now, in the church basement, Esther’s dad Tone Bello struggles to his feet. Getting over a knee replacement, I heard someone whisper during the service. Tone’s third wife, Little Mary, rises beside him. Tone and I shake hands. We know each other a bit. Hellos in passing, the yearly wassail gala at his house. “Nice service,” Tone says. “Helluva thing.” His right eye twitches. “It was asthma, Tone.” Trying to keep my voice steady. Hoping to cancel some of the words the preacher used. Brokenness. Battles. Eternal freedom. You can patch a girl together But you can’t stop the weather Wish I was made of pleather Why did Esther call herself girl? She was eight years older than me and she didn’t call me boy. But there were things I couldn’t ask her. “Why pleather?” I said. “It’s plastic! Indestructible.” “I know everything, Bob,” Tone says now. “You should sue those bastards.” As if suing could bring Esther back. I want to close my eyes and wake up anywhere but here. A cave, the dock of a ship, a rocket headed to the moon. Get mixed up with a lawsuit and for weeks, months, years I’ll be reliving Esther’s death. I have a daughter. We have a life to lead, a better life. Bob, don’t think that. A different life. Tone’s third wife Little Mary reaches across the table and grabs my good hand, her fingers soft and warm as a declawed cat paw. “Thanks, Little Mary,” I say. Little Mary’s no longer little, but she still has that sweet face. I’ve known her as long as I remember. Before she quit to marry Tone, years before Dylan was born, Little Mary was the helper in the daycare where Mom worked. Only five of us at the family table. My mother is dead, gone of a bowel infection. Bad bowels after a good heart surgery, how does that happen? Dylan had just started kindergarten. My father then was three years gone. A storm, a drive to check on his great-uncle, a falling tree. “Out of the blue, bam,” Mom always said. “He didn’t suffer.” I sit across from Tone, technically my father-in-law, although I don’t even know if he’s right or left-handed. The church ladies serve our food family-style. “These gals can sure fry chicken,” Tone says, spearing three pieces for his plate. Little Mary meets my eye and smiles. She and I pick at our plates as Nomi keeps her gaze on Dylan looping and weaving her plastic cords. “Way I see it, Bob,” Nomi says, eyes not turning my direction, “you’ll be married in a year. Every single gal around’ll bring you meals.” “I don’t want another wife.” Little Mary stops eating. Nomi turns her gaze to me. “That’s the good thing about her being older. You even thirty yet?” “Yeah, thirty. Exactly.” “You still living in your folks’ old place?” I nod, wondering how Nomi knows this. Nomi says, “I got plenty of room in my house, if it comes to that.” What is she talking about? I have a job. I have money. Nomi shakes her head. “Never thought I’d lose my only child.” You lost her years ago, I think. “For crying out loud, Nomi,” Tone says, “let Bob eat in peace.” Nomi makes a growling sound. On the other side of Tone, Little Mary closes her eyes. In a moment, everyone but Dylan is eating. She’s still busy with her strings. “Business going okay?” I ask Tone. Stupid question. Tone nods and waves a drumstick. He’s built half the new houses in Mt. Zion. “Dylan?” Nomi says. No response. Nomi raps her knuckles on the table. “Dylan, you probably don’t remember me, but I bet you know my house. Big brick place across from the Fairy Castle. Your mom used to bring you there when you were just a toddler.” Nomi saw Dylan? My wife took our daughter to Nomi’s house? Esther talked as if her mother lived continents away. I had no idea Esther visited her. So many things I learned too late about Esther. Dear God, if you are up there, please please please don’t tell me more. “Cute as a button,” Nomi says. “Last time I saw you, you had on a blue t-shirt with raccoons.” I got that shirt for Dylan. The color matched her and Esther’s eyes. A beautiful grayish blue, the color of Mom and Dad’s old bathroom sink. “I do miss that pretty sink,” Mom said to Esther when they met, “but now I have it in your eyes.” Dylan lifts her head. “I like animals.” “I like animals, too,” Nomi says. “I grew up on a farm. Whatcha making?” “A lanyard.” Dylan holds up the length of knotted cord. Dylan has Esther’s looks, sable hair, full lips, those eyes. Every year her beauty scares me more. Nomi reaches across the table and wiggles her thick fingers. Dylan passes the lanyard to her. It’s probably ten inches long, almost finished. “Pretty simple knot.” Nomi hands the lanyard back. “You make a lot of these?” Dylan nods. “What do you do with them?” Dylan shrugs. They’re all over our house. On tables, in drawers, under sofa cushions. “Plastic,” Nomi scoffs. “Ever string them into a vest? Be kind of scratchy.” Dylan giggles. Pleather, I think. “You sit there doing things,” Nomi says, “might as well do something useful.” She points at a furry pink triangle draped around Little Mary’s neck. “See that? I’m a knitter.” Little Mary nods and smiles. “Birthday present.” Dylan bites her lips together, eyes wide. “I make scarves, socks, sweaters. Some people knit little animals. Itty-bitty toad, maybe? Baby owl?” “What about a possum?” Dylan keeps a life-list of mammals. “I never thought of knitting a possum, but sure. I can make up a pattern if you need it.” Dylan breaks into a grin. So does Nomi. My God. Happy as a dog with two tails. My father’s line when I married Esther, the day she and I lay on the roof of my parents’ garage bellowing out Living on a Prayer. A month later I find out my money’s gone. Two months later I sell my parents’ house and Dylan and I, carload by carload, move ourselves in with Nomi. I’m an only child with one dead wife and two dead parents. My childhood friends pretend that they don’t know me. How can I deny my daughter knitting?

Oops, left this off (for Bob's Big Break) Settings (These toggle between Mt. Zion and Philadelphia.) Mt. Zion: Nomi’s huge brick house and block-sized yard she got from Tone in the divorce; Tone and Little Mary’s McMansion (Tone’s a builder) with a screening room in the basement and five empty bedrooms upstairs; the old glass factory with its busted windows; the downtown’s second-hand shops and Christian bookstore and the pharmacy on the square that Bob pretends he doesn’t see; the Confederate flag in the trailer park just past Walmart Philadelphia: Monique’s inherited brick row house now split in two, with a dink couple on the other side of the dividing wall; Bob and Dylan and Monique’s antique-shop-like living room and shared kitchen; Bob and Dylan’s upstairs bedrooms and front room; Monique’s private lair off the kitchen, which Bob and Dylan never see Bob’s walks to work and workplaces: over Schullkyl River bridges and sidewalks dotted with vagrants and beggars but no trash cans; a modest Mexican restaurant in center city; a small catering kitchen with a walk-in fridge and long metal counter

Hi, fellow writers--It's fun to find all theinteresting things to read here! I'm eager to read more and meet everyone in person next month. Here's my assignment. Marti Moody, Dayton, Ohio Story Statement: It’s 2017. Widower Bob Tweed, age 33, and his 12-year-old daughter Dylan escape their stifling Ohio hometown and stumble into new and interesting lives in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. But as Bob runs out of money and Dylan’s Mt. Zion grandparents exert increasingly desperate measures to get Bob and Dylan “home,” Bob finds creating a better future for his daughter means admitting painful truths about his wife Esther and the futile years he spent trying to save her. Antagonist: Tone Bello, Mt. Zion’s premier builder, is a creature of pure self-interest. He takes pizzas to the local police station so the officers ignore his speeding, and shuts up his ex-wives by giving them houses. He takes whatever he can—most recently, his third wife’s younger sister. Now Tone wants to rescue Dylan, the only grand-child he sees as worthwhile, from the “mire” of Philadelphia. “I don’t care a fig about you, Bob,” he says, “but I don’t want that life for Dylan.” Tone uses shame, fear, money and even a physical attack on his ex-wife, Noni—the one person he respects, even fears—to try to force Bob back to Mt. Zion. Title Possibilities Bob’s Big Break Bob White Bob Breaks Out Free Bob Genre and Comparables upmarket fiction Comparables: A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore Erasure, by Percival Everett Fleishman is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner —Each of these novels uses believable characters and a combination of drama and humor to address contemporary life and problems. But “Comparable” is a hard thing for me to find. So much that I’ve read on/about drug addiction and family dysfunction stresses improvement and healing, but the ultimate message of Bob’s Big Break is that some people and families are unhealable, and Bob and Dylan and Nomi ultimately are able to move forward only by accepting that the death of Esther, their very troubled mutually loved one, was a thing that none of them could have prevented. I would love any suggestions on comparables! What should I read? Core Wound/Primary Conflict Three years after the death of his asthmatic, drug-addicted wife, Bob Tweed finally has enough money and oomph to escape his small Ohio hometown of Mt. Zion and dead wife’s difficult family. He drives himself and his daughter Dylan to Philadelphia, hoping they’ll meet the sorts of people they’ve heard about but never met. This they do, but while Bob’s and Dylan’s view of the world expands and deepens, Bob’s money is dwindling and and his in-laws show that they are willing to do anything—even to each other—to get Bob and Dylan “home.” When Bob’s friend and landlady Monique attempts suicide, Bob’s housing situation in Philadelphia becomes impossible. Bob must use the things he’s learned from his new friends—as well as the help of his mother-in-law, Nomi, a woman he perceived as his enemy—to find the strength and means to propel himself and Dylan into a better future. Two more levels of conflict Inner conflict Set-up: Mt. Zion. After a difficult meeting with his father-in-law Tone and another with two former classmates, Bob is eating the dinner fixed for him by Milly, his old high school teacher. “Milly, did I tell you that yesterday I saw a big Confederate flag? Right here. In the trailer park.” Milly shakes her head. “I don’t know any trailer park people.” “No kids in your classes?” “I taught advanced English, Bob. Outskirts, that trailer park is on the outskirts.” “The Welcome to Mt. Zion sign is before it.” Steph could live in a trailer. “I don’t understand zoning, maybe that park got grandfathered in. The poor are always with us, Jesus said.” It’s at that moment, exactly, that I’m overwhelmed with sadness. Swamped with it, as if I’m weighted down in Milly’s dining room chair by a sea of pain above me, and I don’t have the strength to move. Dear God, lift this burden from me. But my burden isn’t bigger than Steph’s or Milly’s or Nomi’s or even Tone’s, it’s the burden of being a person and alive. We humans with our bony flat hands and soft bellies and hard heads, aren’t we near-helpless creatures, jellyfish pushed and shredded by the currents of the huge unfeeling world? How did my parents manage it? Always, they lived kind and stable lives, even though my father’s best Army buddy was killed by friendly fire in Iraq and my mother had five miscarriages before the miracle of me. Why did they die and leave me in this scalded world alone? Couldn’t they at least show up in dreams? For dessert, there’s apple pie. A home-made pie for my sake, it’s too much. Milly may be lonelier than I am. The thought makes her almost repulsive. I hope Lily doesn’t think about me the way I think about Milly. Bob, of course Lily does. She’s a dream, a fantasy, you want too much from her. I look at Milly proudly slicing her pie and I feel like crying. Social conflict: Set-up: Philadelphia. Bob and Dylan’s older, newly transgender landlady, Monique, has never had a romantic relationship. But when Monique comes home late from a bar trivia night —she’s on a team called“The Transcendents”—Bob and Dylan upstairs hear her enter the house with another person, followed by the sound of the door to Monique’s bedroom closing. Bob and Dylan flee the house early the next morning—Dylan to school and a friend’s house, Bob to work—then walk home together that afternoon wondering what they’ll find. It’s a boy. He’s there when we walk in the front door, sitting in Monique’s usual indentation on the sofa with his legs spread, leaning over with his elbows on his knees watching TV. Monique is in Dylan’s chair, looking happy and dishevelled. Her trivia-mate (what else can I call him?) has on a plaid flannel shirt and khaki pants. His black hair looks like a poodle’s, shaved on the sides and fluffy on top. The haircut looks younger than his face, but he can’t be much older than I am, which makes him twenty-five years younger than Monique. Monique makes introductions. This is Joey, this is Dylan, this is Bob. Joey nods at us and turns his attention back to the TV. Chuck Todd, the 5pm MSNBC hour. “Hell of a thing, yeah?” Joey says. “Helluva,” Dylan whispers. Monique waves for us to sit down but there’s only one chair free and it takes a moment for me to work up the courage to share the sofa with Joey. Dylan, looking relieved, takes a seat in my usual chair. Joey smells like aftershave. “I went home a couple hours, picked up some things, came back. Didn’t want to leave Mo here alone.” Dylan bites her upper lip. “You two met at trivia?” Joey nods, eyes still on the TV. “Same team.” The beam of sun through the back window isn’t picking up any hair on Joey’s cheeks. Testosterone pills must not grow beards. I scold myself for thinking this. It’s the feeling that’s important, I remind myself, not the anatomy. Hard to believe that, but how could I know? Impossible to imagine feeling stuck inside the wrong body. “Know what I did with Mo’s Mueller Time t-shirt this morning?” Joey said. “Took it to your back driveway and burned it.” Monique sinks lower in the chair. “I had too much faith. I never imagined Mueller would…” “The fix was in!” Joey says. “You couldn’t expect Mueller to be honest!” I’m confused. “You’re not a Trump fan, are you?” Joey growls and spits on the floor. Dylan and I flee upstairs. “Only baseball players spit like that,” I tell her. “On TV.” At Dylan’s request I move Dylan’s mattress and sheets and blankets into my room on the floor. We skedaddle down the stairs and leave the house and buy sandwiches at Ahmad’s, then sit at the public library leafing through magazines until the place closes. Mo and Jo aren’t in when we get home. At least, they’re not in the living room or kitchen. I can’t sleep. Halfway through the night Dylan asks to go back to her room, which takes some effort. What a mess I’ve gotten us into. Maybe we should move back to Mt. Zion. It’s the mingling thing. I may be as scared of mingling as Nomi is.