Fall 2009 Writing Regimen Contest Winner

At the end of every month-long writing regimen for adults, participants are invited to submit up to three of their best regimen-inspired pieces for a chance at publication on southeastreview.org. We are proud to announce that Carl Mealie is our most recent winner.

Carl lives in Tracy, California, where he has retired from working as a pastry chef to be an at-home dad to his three children. In an effort to keep his brain from turning into mush, Carl began writing a couple years ago and is currently looking into MFA programs. Carl blogs here and here. In addition to writing, he enjoys playing bass and classical guitar. This is his first contest win and publication.

For our fall regimen, Carl chose to submit a piece of short fiction he’d written in response to the following Reading-Writing Exercise:

Everyman
by Philip Roth

“Then the next day came news of the former colleagues, the same men he worked with and often ate lunch alongside while they were all with the agency. One was a creative supervisor named Brad Karr, who’d been hospitalized for suicidal depression; the second was Ezra Pollock, who had terminal cancer at seventy; and the third, his boss, was a gentle, lucid bigwig … who had been suffering for years with heart trouble and the aftereffects of a stroke…”

Write a scene in which bad news is revealed. Does all of the information come out at once? How do the characters react to the bad news? If you are writing poetry, make this a narrative poem — try to explore the nature of bad news, and its effect on a specific person.

Fall
by Carl Mealie

“But why?” Mark asked. He was unable to meet Lori’s eyes, afraid of finding indifference. So he looked down at the pattern on the rug they had bought shortly after buying the house. Mark had always found the thing attractive but now thought it ridiculous. The mass of tangled branches and leaves had always seemed to give it character. As he saw them now they appeared disorganized, without direction.

“You can’t be surprised by this. It’s been coming for a while,” Lori said. She was standing in the kitchen leaning into the corner where the countertops formed a right angle, a steaming cup of coffee clasped in front of her. “I know I haven’t been happy for a long time, you haven’t been either.”

“I think I can be the judge of my own happiness or lack of, thank you.” Mark had been reading the paper after taking the kids to school when his wife came into the kitchen and said that they needed to talk.

“All you do is mope around the damn house. Helluva way to express joy,” she said and sipped her coffee.

“It’s been a tough couple months. That doesn’t mean I’m not generally happy.”

“I just think it’s best for both of us. We’ve grown apart, Mark, you’ve gotta see that. We don’t like any of the same things anymore, we’re just two people sharing a house. I need more than that.”

Grown apart. Mark wondered what that meant. Was it possible that two people who share children, dinners, bank accounts, vacations, TV shows, and a hundred other things could grow apart? Hell, he’d been shrinking more than growing. First a series of pay cuts then outsourced altogether with nothing on the horizon. Mark looked out the sliding glass window at the oak tree in the back yard. The leaves had turned red about a month ago and were now an orangish brown. When the wind blew some would detach and float to the ground. “It’s fall,” he said.

Lori looked into her coffee mug. “I know,” she said, the confidence in her voice faltering  a bit. “I was looking at the tree the other day. It’ll be time to hang the ghosts in it soon.”

Mark’s eyes shut almost on instinct to keep the tears from running out. Every year the kids made ghosts out of white paper lunch bags and hung them in the tree for Halloween. He couldn’t remember how it started, just one of those things a family does that becomes a tradition. He turned to face Lori for the first time and saw that she was staring into her mug, though the coffee was no longer steaming. “How did this happen to us?” he asked.

“It just happened. It’s not you, or me either. It just happened.”

“Right, right, definitely doesn’t involve us at all.” Mark noticed that his wife was still focused on her cooled coffee. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” she said before placing the now cold coffee on the counter and leaving the room.

He looked back at the tree as a gust of wind blew through the yard. A couple of leaves were falling, fluttering back and forth on their way to the ground as if they were unsure of what direction to take, all the while knowing that it didn’t matter, they were falling just the same.