Open Wounds, Secret Obsessions

By Linda Joyce Ott

Themes of fractured dreams, poignant memories, and loneliness unite the fourteen short stories in “Open Wounds, Secret Obsessions”.

In this debut collection, you’ll meet a variety of eccentric characters including a young traveller who is duped by a charismatic thief in Rome, a woman who obsessively attends strangers’ weddings, a son who gets to really know his father only after he has died, and a woman whose mother’s puzzling disappearance has tainted her life.

In each of the stories, a deceptively smooth surface cracks open to reveal ogres and monsters below. The characters mysteriously pass from normalcy into serious obsession, if not madness, with the reader never quite able to say when this happens.

The stories show young people providing perceptive insight far beyond their years, while older ones often appear naïve. Many of the characters are broken, badly hurt by life and by the passage of time.

The author’s special talent for writing instinctively with enormous gut-feeling gives these poignant stories their amazing power. Her refined sense of understatement, direct style, and a keen eye for the telling detail combine to reveal complete worlds of inner turmoil. Vivid descriptions reveal a writer who is observant, savvy, and possesses a wicked sense of humour.

The author tells a good story with dazzling simplicity and the reader will delight in discovering this unique voice in these emotionally intense stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Joyce Ott
• Release date: Sep 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9780986583650

Linda Joyce Ott

Linda Joyce Ott is the author of a memoir, "I AM - My Journey To A Creative Life", the dystopian novel "The Naked Law" and a collection of short stories "Open Wounds, Secret Obsessions". She is also an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist working in photography, painting, collage, textile art, assemblage and video. Linda lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.Linda honed her creative writing over the course of a successful career as a writer, editor and communications consultant. She has an Hons BA in English from McMaster University. Mentored by the late Paul Quarrington, she earned a Certificate in Creative Writing from The Humber School for Writers. Linda also took part in a workshop with Isabel Huggan at The Humber School for Writers.Linda has published sixteen photo art portfolios: "A Rainbow of Irises"; "All Dolled Up"; "Auto Parts"; "Flowers of Hope"; "Hard Core: Hornby Island Rocks"; "Hood Ornaments"; "Hood Ornaments 2"; "Magnificent Mums"; "Mexico Obscura"; "Orchidaceous!"; "Outside Art"; "Signs of the Times"; "Strands of Time"; "The Earth Laughs in Flowers"; "Transcending Time" and "Tree Totems". They are available print-on-demand from lindajoyceott.magcloud.comLinda’s art and photos have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Hamilton, Toronto and Alberta, including the Female Eye Film Festival, Artist's Inc, Index G, the Toronto Outdoors Art Exhibition, Hugh’s Room and Visual Arts Ontario. Her photographs have been published in Art Focus, Photo Life, and Camera Canada magazines, and in The Hamilton Spectator.In 2019, four photos from Linda’s Orchidaceous! portfolio, juried into the Royal Botanical Gardens’ Annual Orchid Show Art Exhibit won 1st, 2nd (2x) and 3rd prizes in their categories. In 2018, four photos won 1st and 2nd prizes in their categories. In 2017, the photo White Orchid won Best in Class (Photography) and 1st prize. In 2016, two photos placed 1st and 2nd in their categories at the exhibit.In 2015 Linda was selected to be the Featured Artist at McMaster Innovation Park ‘s18th juried Art in the Workplace exhibition (Aug - Nov 2015) in Hamilton.Linda received Ontario Arts Council exhibition assistance grants for five solo exhibitions at the Hamilton Public Library’s Gallery4: Strands of Time (2017) Orchidaceous! (2016); All Dolled Up (2015); Urban Fresh (2013); The Earth Laughs in Flowers (2012).In 2011 "Auto Parts", her photo portfolio of details from classic cars, was nominated for a Hamilton Literary Award. In 2010 she was nominated for a Hamilton Tourism Award for her chrysanthemum photo calendarIn 2010 Linda received an Ontario Arts Council International Residency Grant for a juried, month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2007 she was juried into a two-week creative residency program at the Prairie North Creative Residency, Grand Prairie Regional College, in Alberta.Between 2003 and 2006 Linda participated in eight, week-long intensive painting workshops facilitated by artist Harold Klunder in Ontario and Quebec. Over the years, Linda has completed numerous art and photography workshops at Central Technical School, Ontario College of Art and Design and Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, and at Mohawk College in Hamilton.More information about Linda's Photography and Art is available on her website: www.lindajoyceott.com and on her blog: www.optimismofcolor.com

Book preview

Open Wounds, Secret Obsessions

Stories

Linda Joyce Ott

Copyright 2013 Linda Joyce Ott

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN 978-0-9865836-3-6 (electronic book text)

Cover photo Ribbons ‘n’ Bows

from series All Dolled Up

Copyright 2013 Linda Joyce Ott

Dedication: For Günter

Table of Contents

Keeper of the Gown

Mother Mourning

House-Husband

Solitaire

Love Envies No One

Sultan of the Sidewalk

The Good Wife

Robbery in Rome

A Weekend Affair

My Life with Grandma

Only the Lonely

Fragments

When I Heard the Gypsy Music

Bright Lines

About the Author

Keeper of the Gown

I remember the day she came in. It was Monday after lunch. We had just finished the sort and were outside enjoying tea and smokes.

The beginning of the week was always full of surprises because we needed to sort through the bags of cast-offs that people had dropped in front of the doors on Sunday. We are closed Sundays and our weekday hours are clearly posted, but still every Monday morning a heap of plastic bags and cardboard boxes full of old clothes and household stuff would greet us.

Some people certainly thought of this place as the local dump, so a lot of the stuff in the sort went straight into the rag pile, or the garbage. We had to be careful though, because sometimes treasures were mixed in with the junk.

One time Enid found an alligator purse in a garbage bag filled with worn blankets and sheets. The same day I found a pair of black leather gloves with the price tag still on. I would have missed them if I hadn’t shaken out every one of the musty-smelling sweaters carefully folded in a liquor store box.

It was a typical June day – sunny, hot, and humid according to the weather network – muggy, sweaty and unbearable according to those of us who worked without air conditioning. She was gazing at the window display. It was one of our best. We had dressed the mannequins in sleeveless floral shifts and bathing suits, then added paperbacks for dog-day reading, plastic glasses on trays, lawn chairs and a wading pool.

She was about my height, in her early twenties I would guess, and looked as cool as a popsicle, in a powder blue silk suit with matching purse and shoes. She hesitated in the doorway and then walked purposefully up to the counter. No one was there. Martha had finished her cigarette and dashed off to the drug store across the street to get some tampons. Enid had just gone to the ladies’ room.

I stubbed out my second cigarette, gulped down the rest of my tea, and went in.

Can I help you? I asked.

Yes, I think so, she said in a voice so quiet I could hardly hear her. You see, I have this.

She laid a big white box, embossed in gold with the words Dream Shoppe, on the counter. She undid the shiny pink ribbon around the box and opened it to reveal the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen, a snow white, satin and lace wedding gown.

Oh my, I said.

It was the dress of every girl’s dreams. Silver filigree embroidered roses covered the bodice. Tiny rosebud-shaped glass buttons started at the waist and went up to the exquisitely formed scoop neckline.

She lifted it gently out of the box, removing sheet after sheet of delicately scented tissue paper. For a moment she smiled as she held the gown in front of her. The satin skirt billowed out into a five-foot long lace train. Then brusquely, she thrust the gown back into its box.

Brand new, never worn, she said. The veil’s here too. I was wondering if you’d take it. For the store, I mean, to sell.

Of course, I said, but we can’t pay you for it. We only accept donations.

That’s okay. I didn’t pay for it either, she said. I just hope someone gets more happiness out of it than I did.

Before I could thank her, she was gone.

I gazed at the gown in the box. If only, I thought. Then just as quickly banished the idea from my mind. Even if Mike asked me, he’d never agree to a church wedding. I’d be lucky to get him to City Hall.

Martha and Enid returned and found me in a daze. I showed them the gown and told them about the woman in blue. We decided to change the window display right away. Usually we wait until Thursday, but a garment such as this deserved special treatment.

We ransacked the store looking for accessories that would do justice to the gown. By quitting time, we had all the elements together: white pumps, a sequined evening bag, a peach-coloured gown for the mother of the bride, a floral dress for the flower girl, a couple of wine glasses, a lace tablecloth and a slightly tarnished silver candelabra.

Like little girls playing with a dollhouse, we spent all the next morning arranging our bridal window. By noon it was done. It looked absolutely fabulous.

Before it was finished, each of us had taken turns trying on the dream dress and posing like mannequins in the window display. We took pictures of each other with my cell phone so we wouldn’t forget how beautiful we looked.

Martha couldn’t do up the zipper once she got the gown on, but that didn’t show up in the picture. With her tousled golden hair, flushed cheeks and joyous smile, she looked like Glinda, the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.

The dress was too long for Enid but we just spread it around her and didn’t let her walk in it. In the photo, she looked as fragile as a porcelain figurine.

Me? It fitted perfectly. All that afternoon, I couldn’t take my eyes off the pictures of me in the gown. It was unreal. I looked like Princess Di. If only I could broach the subject with Mike. Maybe just showing him the pictures would change his mind.

The first week that it stood in the window, the gown was never far from our thoughts or conversation. We wondered about the woman who had brought it in. Was she stood up at the altar, or did her fiancé die in an accident? And we had to decide what to charge for it.

Enid said we probably shouldn’t sell it because it would bring bad luck, having been bought and not used.

At least we need to warn people about it, she said, twisting her wedding