WATER

Short Story by Laura Valeri

I

Darrell tells me he sailed his boat down to Miami from Cape Cod, and docked at the Coconut Grove Marina last night. He says he got my telephone number from the law firm in New York, where we both used to work three years ago.

It’s raining. Has been raining all week. It’s the first thing Darrell tells me when he calls me at the office. All this rain, he says. He asks to meet me in the coffee shop at the marina.

I think, Coffee. Nothing wrong with coffee.

I meet him there, in that coffee shop. He’s tucked in a booth, all the way in the back. His face is turned. There are white hairs in his beard. His hair is uncombed. This seems strange, but I make a noise as I approach his table. I scrape my shoes against the floor and say, Hello.

And he get sup and kisses me on the cheek. He offers me coffee. He orders pie for me, then turns again towards the window. When is it going to stop, he asks me, as though he is sure I know.

It’s not usually like this, I tell Darrell. It might go on maybe an hour or two, then it’ll get sunny again. You had a little bad luck.

Darrell stuffs his hands in the pocket of his jacket and shrugs. Figures, he says.

First summer in Florida? I ask.

His silence only serves to punctuate my inadequacy. I stare at my hands twined together on the table.

I always thought Darrell was out of my league. New partner. Harvard Law. I never made it beyond the secretary pool. Maybe he’s sensing low expectations. He knows about my trouble with Harry. We got to know each other a little, in New York, Darrell and I. There was overtime — Saturdays, late nights.

Darrell tells me he’s been separated from his wife and kid two years. I tell him I am losing Harry. Before we moved to Miami, Harry used to work in the commodities market. He had drinks with the boys after work until late. He was out the door again by five a.m. We thought moving here might change things, but it didn’t. Somewhere along the road, the split began, and after that, it was in the texture of our marriage; it couldn’t be stopped.

Darrell says he knows what I’m feeling, but he’s yawning. He shakes his head, distracted by the sound of rain falling against the windows. Shadows play against his profile, so that as I look at him, his contours blend gradually into the background — the booth, the window lintel, the faded prints and photographs. Dark, grainy shades of distance.

Has it really been three years? I ask him.

He looks down at me. For the first time, I notice the color of his eyes: brown, with bright gold streaks near his pupils. The colors seem to shoot out like rays in all directions, the stark, cool yellows gradually swallowed into the deeper tones. The detail shocks me; the possibility of all that I might have overlooked in the familiar strikes me as both frightening and exciting.

Darrell asks, Have I ever showed you my boat?

My hand is cupping my cheek, I’m leaning on my elbow, lazily, knowing he will find it inviting. I smile at him.

I never thought of us that way, I tell Darrell. No, I don’t think of us that way at all.

I can see from the way that his eyes quickly flick to the water, that he had been expecting a different answer.

I have to call Harry. I should let him know where I am; it’s getting late.

I’m fixed on Darrell’s mouth. It’s full and wide and seems to be expressing something that is beyond the words he speaks, beyond even what his body tells me.

I’m relaxed by the way the water moves beneath us, the movements of the boat lulling me into comfort.

I watch Darrell’s mouth move. I hear him speaking, but what is he saying? The words don’t make sense. He’s describing a past I don’t remember. He’s had too much to drink. I can smell the whiskey in his breath, so pungent. He’s talking loud, and he laughs too much.

I shake my head, almost by instinct.

No, I think I should call Harry, I tell him.

I’m answering a question he hasn’t asked. I take another sip from my glass, and slip further into the numbing comfort of Maraschino. It’s cool on the water, the boat rocking, creaking. There is nothing around us except water, and the coastline is an uneven white line, very far away. The breeze travels up my legs, between my thighs, up my dress and teases the back of my neck. The sensation thrills me.

I wince. I look down at his fingers sliding up my arm. I realize I’m called upon to make a decision. Something moves in the water below. It makes a hurried sound. The boat lifts from under us and then comes down against the water with a splat. I feel Darrell’s weight pressing above mine, and I think about screaming. I realize how far the coastline is.



The surface of the water glitters. I see in it reflected the low, livid clouds, the red of the sky as the night is coming. I see my face, and a long shadow: Darrell’s body, hovering over the undulating surface. His reflection in the water is quick, mercurial, stretched out, and shapeless.

Darrell says, Get up. He says, Get dressed. There’s a quaver in his voice. It’s deep, maybe hoarse. I’m too tired now to think about that. I don’t have a body anymore. There’s something attached to my head but I won’t call it mine. It’s something lying there on the viscous starboard. My head is a spider spitting out thoughts like cobwebs. They weave over the surface of the water with the low-lying cloud. This boat, the water below, the silence and the truth of things — it’s something inconceivable, something too immense to be grasped.

I’m repulsed by my body. I look at it and I see it quivering. I see blood between my legs. I wish to leave my body behind. I want my head to detach from it and fly away. I roll over. I feel myself falling, and then the impact with the water, like a great slap. It’s cold. I’m burning inside; my insides are burning. The water seeps in. Tastes like sweat and tears. I open up my mouth and the water fills my throat. It’s only water — not screams, not words, just water. It goes up my nostrils and through my brain. It stings my eyes. My forehead hurts. The water’s taking away Darrell’s scent. The water’s making soothing sounds. It seeps into my ears and makes a hollow, steady tone, neither friendly nor menacing. I want to give in to it. I want to give up, but my arms move at their own pace. My head comes up through the surface and the lungs expand. My throat suctions hungrily, and I breathe, I breathe, I breathe.

II

I think a lot about dying. I think about it when I’m commuting home from work, driving along the Intracoastal, over the bridges, in the August rain. I imagine driving over the median. I think about the shock, the jolt, my neck snapping back and forth upon impact. I think about what the water would feel like in my throat. I think about wanting to gasp, about lungs filling with water, about not being able to cry out for help.

The water is everywhere. Homeless men fish alongside the bridges, right beside the black and white signs that command no loitering, no littering, no fishing. I see their thin silhouettes contrasted over the wide waterways, the marshes, the famous Florida sunsets, the uneven coastline and the imposing facades of lush, waterfront properties. I see their tattered white shirts adhering wetly to their bony chests. I see their oily beards growing out in tufts from their sunken faces, and it reminds me that hope is the prick of Satan’s fork, that not having is the derisive awareness of one’s own, insurmountable shortcomings.

Dr. Green says I think too much. She says, Wake up each day with no expectations.

That is my mantra. I should be easier on myself.

Now she asks, Do you think about hurting yourself? I shake my head, tell her, No, I have strong religious convictions.

How does that play into it? she asks. She tests me, sometimes.

Punishment, I say. God’s vengeance on the weak.

Do you believe that you have been punished?

I look at my hands twined in my lap. I tuck my chin low and let my bangs cover my eyes. I feel the water pressing against my throat, against my chest, against my very eyelids, but I hold back. I need to breathe, now. I need to let the words out. I breathe in and out, expecting the sounds to come out of me. Nothing.

Dr. Green says, Let’s work towards it, Claudia; try to put it together, a little at a time. It will help you sort out your role in what happened.

Roles are for people who act, I say.

Dr. Green shifts. She walks towards the window. She stands in my light. She plays with the blinds. I hear the aluminum snapping as it bends under her touch. I see her looking up at the Waterford clock on the top shelf of her cherry wood bookcase.

What did you mean by that? she asks me.

I close my eyes and hear the murmur of rain. I think about the water again, how it moves, so strong under the bridges and through the channels, spreading out along earth and cement.

I readjust myself on the leather recliner.

The weather is bringing me down, I tell her.



I go to Doctor Green because I had to see somebody after the social worker at the hospital recommended regular counseling. Severe Depression was the diagnoses. I chose Dr. Green. I liked the books on the coffee table and on the shelves. They’re about dreams; they are about out of body experiences and encounters with Saints — gentle fantasies, happy fairy tales, no threats.

Dr. Green says, Forgiveness is the path to healing.

I don’t ask her what she means by that.

I won’t press charges. There wasn’t much evidence of a struggle in the medical report. The water washed away the semen and blood. I told the police I had agreed to go on the boat. I hadn’t had time to think it through.

Forgiveness, says Dr. Green. The way to healing.

The Police said, A big-shot lawyer from New York like that...

I heard someone say, Old boyfriend comes to town; scorned woman screams revenge.

The social worker at the hospital said, It’s called Date Rape.

She gave me statistics. Newspaper articles. She wanted to be informative.

I asked the social worker if there was such a term as Adultery Rape. I think that’s when she wrote Severe Depression in my chart.



I want to talk about Harry, I tell Doctor Green.

After I say that, my chest hurts. I feel like I’ve just belched out a curse.

I try to conjure up Harry’s face. I think of his beard, his gold-rimmed, designer glasses, the permanent stain on his Suede jacket. The one that wouldn’t come off even after one hundred twenty dollars of dry cleaning.

What is it about Harry you want to talk about? the Doctor asks.

I try to picture Harry’s face, but all I see is Darrell and his bright white teeth against the dark tan, Darrell and his leathery face, Darrell and the five o’clock shadow on his chin and above his upper lip. I see him everywhere: he stands on the dock, coming toward me with his hand extended; he blinks against the daylight, looking rested and tanned; he shakes his rough hand with mine; he smells of salt water and beer; he kisses my cheek; he says, I’m so glad you could make it, kid, so glad you could make time for me.

Dr. Green says, Are you focused on Harry, Claudia?

I think maybe I should have learned to stay focused on Harry while there was still time. Before I drowned in this life and came back like Lazarus to recall the broken pieces on this La- Ze-Boy altar. I’m still drowning.

I focus on my breath, even it out, take air down below, from the solar plexus.

We don’t talk, I say. I told him everything the night he came to pick me up from the hospital, and he stopped talking to me after that. I think the cops had already told him something, anyway.

What else? she asks me.

Nothing else, I say.

Dr. Green says nothing for a moment. I’m distracted by the sound of cars out in the lot. Someone is honking. An alarm goes off briefly, and is immediately silenced. Dr. Green shifts the position of her legs; the silk composite of her skirt is rustling.

What do you think they told Harry when he came to pick you up? Dr. Green asks.

I feel an answer forming in my belly, rising up my chest like air, a bubble ready to float up through my throat. The words I want to speak all come rising up at once, all want to push out to the surface. I feel pressure gathering around my chest, I feel it pressing down on my lungs. I feel the water around my throat, the water in my mouth, in my lungs. I want to speak.

Yes, I manage to say.

What do you think they told him?

I want to say, They told Harry I’m a whore.

I breathe. I bite into my lips. I hold tight to the leather armrests on the recliner. My thoughts are racing ahead, but the words are stuck in my throat. I have that, the crying, pressing down on them, washing the words back in; they drown inside my belly.

I picture as it might have happened. Harry, right as he waits out there for me, outside the examination room. The cops coast up to him, offer him a Styrofoam cup of burnt coffee, make some offhanded comment about the weather. One officer rubs his salt and pepper mustache, the other wipes his forehead with a dirty tissue, and then casually, almost gently, one of them finally says, Pal, your wife said she knew the man.

Claudia?

The water is cold. It holds me up. I’m so tired. So tired. I can’t breathe anymore.

I turn my hands into fists. My chest is jolting, making strange, chocked, hick-up noises. I shake my head. Oh, God, I say, Oh, God, oh, God, oh God.

III

I try to take a nap before dinner. It’s for Harry: for time to realize I’m waiting for him. I’m lying in Harry’s bed, but I can’t sleep. It used to be our bed. Now it is the bed I lie on. Harry and I are dividing our spaces, staking out our territories over our routines. Slowly, my spaces are receding like the low tide, our former privacy turned viscous and silted. Spaces are uncomfortable, but distances are made more obvious with each shared presence.

I’m looking out French doors, which open to a patio. I watch the water level in the swimming pool rise as the rain keeps falling. It was clear and peaceful outside for just a moment, then the rain began again, and so the thundering. It has rained all day.

I’m feeling a shiver. From the dampness or the air conditioning. Or from the gold streaks in Darrell’s eyes and the way he smiled before he asked me up on the boat. The memories come in bursts. They violate my thoughts, rip through moments of tranquility. I let my guards down and they come. I wish I could stop thinking about Darrell.

Harry?

I call out to him, but I know he won’t answer. Maybe I do it just to remember the feel of his name on my tongue.

We have not had an easy marriage, Harry and I. In New York, we were separated for six months, once. I thought I could make it on my own. Harry said he couldn’t take the loneliness. He said I was all that mattered to him and he’d do anything to have me back. Moving to Miami was my idea, but he came through. He said, It’s a test, but alright. I’m willing.

Harry? I call out.

Sometimes I’ll hear a cabinet door open and shut, a chair scrape against the floor, a cigarette lighter struck. Signs of civilization, nearby. Today it’s the sound of his fingers on the computer keyboard clicking.

He does stock quotes over the computer now, and private consulting. He never said so, but I know he blames me for the monotony.

I look at the alarm clock, on the night stand, near the bed. Nearly seven. I’ve left a stuffed Cornish Game Hen cooling on the kitchen counter for a last minute basting. Maybe I should add a laurel leaf for aesthetics.

It smells musty in the bedroom. I feel the rain in my bones, the cold that creeps through my flesh even in the warmest tropical climates. I feel a shiver. I’d like to turn down the air conditioner but the thermostat is in the den. Harry’s territory.

Water needs to be let out from the pool, I tell Harry. It’s going to overflow if we don’t let the water out.

I’m brave enough to head to the den as I speak, and observe the barely discernible silhouette of Harry’s stocky figure, contrasted by the glare emanating from his computer monitor.

Go ahead, he says.

I can’t do it myself, I say. Will you help me, Harry?

There is no answer to that question. Not as I linger on the threshold, not as I move on to the kitchen, not as I set the table for the two of us, and light a candle more out of obligation to Dr. Green, than out of hope. Harry heads out towards the pool. His slippers against the tiled floor speak to me. I watch him open the door. I watch him struggle with the swollen wood, the door so full of rain it no longer fits into its space. Harry steps out in his slippers.

Take an unbrella, I offer.

A curtain of rain swallows and erases him.

Dinner is ready, Harry, I call after him. The rain answers, wrash, wrash, wrash.

I wait at the table, memorizing the details of the upholstered back rest of the chair directly across from me. Harry’s chair.

From the artificial sounds that continue to come out of Harry’s computer, I understand he plans to return there. The Cornish Hen fills up the table nicely, the pattern of the serving plates and the slender line of the crystal and silverware softened by the candle light. I see something moving; a fly. It comes to land on the rim of the bread basket. It rests there for a moment, rubbing its legs together, then takes off again. It lands on my hand. It’s light and it tickles. I lift my hand, cup my cheek with it. The fly takes off.

Dinner is getting cold.



I push the hen bones into the garbage, and rinse my dish in the sink. I see my own reflection in the glass of the kitchen window, between the rain spatter. I have hardly eaten. I let my hands rest under the running water. It’s warm and feels good over my skin, accentuates the cold dampness I feel around my neck and in my feet. I turn off the faucet and realize that I have been crying. I feel tired. I feel the pressure again in my chest, around my heart. I go into Harry’s room and lie down on Harry’s bed.

Harry, I’m going to lie down, I say out loud.

I hear the echos of my voice in this huge room, and I think of myself as an audience to my own act, my own one-man play.

I close my eyes and try to think of nothing.



Black and blue lights. Then, a flesh light. My mouth is full of sand. Near the shore, the smell of gasoline is giving me a headache. Ambulance sirens, a radio dispatch. The beach is full of men, full of tracks on the sand. They surround me. We need to ask you a few questions, then we’ll take you down to the emergency ward. Was the person who called us related to you? How were you on that boat? You can’t touch the dress. Don’t take off the dress, yet. Do you have someone you want us to call?



I wake up, panting, my breathing’s heavy. I put a hand against my chest and feel it, my heart, pumping out beats in a frenzy. Echoes of disparate sounds bounce around the darkness, touch the walls, the ceiling. Where am I? I hear a tapping. Something hitting against glass. I hear it outside, rumbling. The rain. It’s the rain. It’s water rushing heavily in gullies. Water that betrays the earth, seeps underneath concrete, corrodes the walls, the stones. Water that digs. Water that overflows and overturns the dirt. Water coming from above and below.

The swimming pool is overflowing.

Harry, the swimming pool! Harry!

So, that’s where I am. Harry’s room. I suddenly recollect, and calm settles over me. I recognize my own contours in the darkness. The shadows and lights become the line of the bed, the night stand, the commode, the lamp. I’m coming back to myself.

It smells like chlorine. I hear the water trickling and seeping. I hear it falling heavy from the lattice, from the roof. The patio is flooded. The plants are probably drowning in the pots. I worry about them.

I move the covers aside. Harry? I call out. My voice rushes around the room, hitting against the walls, ceiling and corners like a pin ball.

Harry?

‘Rry, ‘rry, ‘rry, the room answers. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, the water says. It has so much to say. Lightning expands, strips the sky raw. Everything’s exposed. Jagged, yellow veins branch out in all directions. Light flickers wildly, palmettos and hibiscus caught in an eerie maze of shadows.

The tiles are cold. They are almost wet. The water’s getting to them slowly. Not through the roofs, nor from the rain. Just in the molecules that condense, through the air conditioner, as the cool air fights the heat. The water wins. It always wins.

I open up the door. My feet step onto a spar of light. The light flickers uncertainly under my steps. It’s a candle burning. I had snuffed it out. Harry must have lit it again.

Harry?

I recognize his shape, square, hefty, filling the space with roundness and strength. He doesn’t move. He sits at the dinner table, the left-over hen in his plate.

Harry, are you hungry? Would you like me to warm that up for you?

I think I see him shake his head but he makes no sound. The lightning transmogrifies his shape, clips and falsifies his movements like a strobe.

I could warm that up for you if you’d like, Harry. It would only take a minute.

Pat, pat, pat, pat, the rain says.

Would you like that warmed up?

He says, I just can’t think of it.

We fill the spaces with our breathing, me with what I know he’s saying, he with what he just said. He says it again.

I just can’t think of it. How you went to see him again.

I feel it rising inside. It wants to come out, Dr. Green. It wants to come out. Water is pressing upon my lungs, water is seeping in through the pores.

I didn’t struggle, I tell Harry. I didn’t even try.

So much waiting, and this is what I say.

My voice is loud in this silence, is loud over the falling rain. Harry tenses up. I see it in the cuts of his biceps and neck.

But I keep talking: I felt him above me, but I thought I was gone. I saw the clouds gathering up above me, thought they might come down and smother me. It was his hand, you see? It was his hand on my mouth, but I thought maybe the clouds would kill me, and anyway, I didn’t scream. I didn’t even try to scream.

Harry says, The police said there was no struggle.

I wait for him to say more but he doesn’t. I wait until my nails cut into the palm of my hand and then I want to scream, but instead I gasp, I breathe, I breathe hard.

Harry, the rain won’t shut up. It just won’t stop. We must do something about the pool. The plants are all drowning, outside, I know it.

Harry doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. His head bends, and then his neck, and so I know he’s looking at his plate.

And I say, He seemed lonely. I only wanted to be pleasant. Harry, I swear it, I didn’t want this to happen.

His eyes were a strange color, brown but with all that gold, like moon streaks. I’d never noticed before. Is this punishment? Help me, Doctor. Help me talk to Harry.

Harry, please, talk to me. Please, Harry.

Harry lifts his head. I think he’s staring straight ahead. I think maybe he’s watching me reflected in the glass of the frame of our wedding photograph. His arms move. His elbows rest on the table, wide apart. His back straightens with his breathing, then relaxes again.

I don’t think my needs are so difficult to understand, I tell him.

I’m talking to his back. I’m talking to that silent shape in the darkness, to that roundness, that space, that mirage.

I need you, Harry.

I wait. I hold my breath. I want to hear him. An answer may come in different ways than words. It may come as a deep sigh, as a coughing, as an uncomfortable shifting. Or it may come in stone stillness. Or it may be the rain to answer, with its dull, monotonous patter, with its insistent, pointless, destructive rushing.

Harry lowers his head. His arms gather around his chest, and then stretch out again. Slowly, deliberately, he picks up a knife. He carves the hen. His fork stabs the soft, dark meat, and the knife saws through the cold bones.

It’s the water again. The water in my head, in my mouth. Harry eats. His arms make a little dance as he cuts the meat from the thigh he’s placed in his plate. Oh, God, Harry is eating.

So I start screaming. He fucked me so good there was no need to struggle.

Don’t, he says. Don’t do that.

And I yell, He went inside me and I tightened up. And all that blood and bruises, but really, really I loved it.

Stop now, Harry says.

I hear my voice. It’s broken, and the water and the rain all around me is rushing, pelting at the windows and the roofs, hitting the house, hitting the ground, the trees outside, the plants in the pot. It’s killing the plants in the pot.

Harry says, You went with him. You went on that fucking boat. The police think...

Thunder cracks.

I wish it would kill you, Harry, I shout. I wish the water would get into your throat, make your lungs burst. I wish the lightning would strike you dead. Harry, I can’t talk, through all this water. Fuck you, Harry! Fuck you!

His chair screeches against the tiled floors; it’s a high pitched sound like a scream. The fork and knife fall to the floor, clanging loudly. The plate falls first, smashes to pieces, the shards flying towards me, dispersing in all directions. Then the bones come down, the nibbled hen. I see Harry’s shape rushing toward me.

Fuck you. I said fuck you!

Shut up, he yells. Shut up!

I loved it! I shout. Is that what you think, you asshole?

Shut up!

I loved it. I loved every minute of it.

You whore, I said shut up, shut up, shut up...

Harry puts his hand around my neck, but it’s bursting through my lungs, all that I’m holding back; it makes me convulse. I hear my own voice, a horrible sound, a high pitched howl.

Shut up! Harry shouts. His hand presses against my mouth, and I bite. I bite down.

You goddamned bastard, I scream. You goddamned bastard. I hate your fucking guts.

His picks me up and shakes me like a rag doll. I realize this is what I’ve been waiting for. I want this. Yes, I think. This is what I deserve.

I feel something bust open inside me. I want to shout, Yes. Darrell. Harry. Darrell. Then, No. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

I scream, but the sound is outside myself now. The scream surrounds me, envelopes me, protects me from Harry and his shouts, from the yelling, from the shaking, the slamming. It’s an incoherent string of words and sounds, comes out of me without thoughts, without the weight of meaning, and so it floats up and through me. Then it dies, suddenly. I feel the weight of my body lifted, I feel myself hurtling back. I hear the dull almost anti-climatic thud, and the breath is suddenly cut off. It’s jolted out of me, hurled in a different direction, lost somewhere in my insides where it can find no expression. I find that I’m unable to stand. Knees buckle under me. I sink to the floor. It meets me at the buttocks, cold, damp, hard, real.

I can’t breathe.

Harry. I see his feet. They are bare. There’s a cut and it’s bleeding. I hear myself heaving.

His voice breaks off. Is he weeping? I can’t move. I can’t lift my head.

Then I hear his breath coming out, stifled, choked. I try to breathe. There’s something on my chest, like a stone of fifty pounds, but I know it’s not. It’s something broken.

I hear Harry dial. He speaks to someone on the phone in a monotone. He’s on the phone a long time. I listen for something I can’t hear. There’s a strange silence. It’s a long time, gone by. A long time alone. Only the pain is talking to me. The pain is moving up my limbs, settling around my neck. The pain is a rock in the middle of a lake. It’s a wave spreading out in all directions, washing over everything in its path.

There’s a pale glare of morning light, when I hear it outside, the blaring of the sirens. The police is here. The paramedics. Men in uniforms. They crouch around me. Some talk gently. One man asks if I can move my head. Then he says, Don’t darling. Don’t try to move. We’ll take you out of here in a moment. You’re doing well. You’re doing real well.

Yes, I say. Yes. It’s all I can say.

When they lift the stretcher and turn to the door, I see Harry talking to a police man. He seems agitated, his face is flush, and the policeman has a hand on his steel cuffs.

I’m strapped onto the stretcher. I’m lifted into the ambulance.

I don’t need to see the clouds hanging low, gathering up above the impossibly still water. There’s light out this morning, but no sun. Only a paleness like a faint promise, a weak promise, one that will probably be broken. The sky is easily betrayed.

The paramedics shut the ambulance door, just as it starts to rain. Splatters hit the tinted windows, gently. So much water all around. Puddles on the ground. High tide this morning, on the Intracoastal. But it settles down. It waits quietly like mourning, waits for more rain, waits to rise over the banks, spill on to the streets, flow through the manholes. Water everywhere I look.

§ § §

Laura Valeri's short story collection, "The Kind Of Things Saints Do, " was the 2002 winner of the John Simmons Award. In 2003 the collection also won the John Gardner Fiction Award.

Laura Valeri's poetry, fiction, and prose have appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers and ezines, including most recently Gulfstream, Big Bridge, Coastlines, and others. She has an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

She can be reached by email at chrmdkarma@aol.com

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