The Nancy Nolan Show

By Hazel Hart

Love them or hate them, talk shows seep into our lives, playing in the background of our thoughts and affecting our opinions and actions. In her ten years as a talk show host, Nancy Nolan has influenced the lives of thousands of guests, would-be guests, and viewers. Here are some of their stories.

A teenager tries desperately to be chosen as a guest in "Dear Nancy Nolan.

An unwilling guest faces dredged-up emotions abut her runaway mother in "The Green Room."

A promiscuous mother is confronted with her lies in "My Baby's Daddy."

A woman viewer tries to help a teenager who is being sexually harrassed by her boss in "Confessions."

A young mother learns what God can do--and what He can't in "Answered Prayers."

A woman faithfully watches Nancy Nolan's show, hoping to be reunited with the parents who abandoned her in "Amanda Marie."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hazel Hart
• Release date: Aug 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465919816

Hazel Hart

Hazel Hart has won awards for her short fiction, including "Amanda Marie," published in Kansas Voices, and "Confessions," published in Words out of the Flatlands. She has two published suspense novels, The Night before Christmas and Like Mother, Like Daughter, and has co-authored two books of short stories, Dark Side of the Rainbow and Edge of Nowhere, with Bonnie Eaton aka B.J. Myrick.

Book preview

THE NANCY NOLAN SHOW

Short Stories

By

Hazel Hart

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Amanda Marie previously appeared in 2000-2004 Kansas Voices.

Copyright © 2007 by Hazel Hart

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book 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 person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Acknowledgements

Brief quotations from two T.S. Eliot's poems, The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock, are used in Confessions.

Cover microphone clip art source: DailyClipArt.net

Cover design by Hazel Hart

To Bonnie, whose relentless encouragement made this book possible.

______________________

CONTENTS

___________________

Confessions

Dear Nancy Nolan

The Green Room

My Baby's Daddy

Answered Prayers

Amanda Marie

CONFESSIONS

April is the cruelest month. Detective Tuttle's wandering mind settled on the line from Eliot's The Waste Land. He was seeking protection in poetry against the high-pitched monotone of the agitated woman on the other side of his desk, a defense he had learned from his high school English teacher, Miss Martin, who was the subject of Bitsy Barnes's ramblings. Today was April Fool's Day, and the kooks were out.

Apparently, Bitsy had gone to work for Miss Martin after the retired teacher's stroke a few years ago. Although Detective Tuttle thought of himself as a skilled interrogator, he had been unable to move Bitsy along to whatever had brought her to the Elm Grove Police Station. He had given his full attention when she began a circuitous tale of her morning at Miss Martin's house, but there was only so much a mind could take. The effort to understand her rapid speech with its occasional stutter exhausted him in the first five minutes of chatter about fighting her way through the bushes to retrieve the morning paper, the number of times she called the newspaper office to complain, and how every morning, it was the same thing all over again. Young people had no respect.

Tuttle raised an eyebrow at the young people crack. Bitsy must be somewhere in her mid-thirties. Not young, but certainly too young for the good old days lament. That was his complaint. He glanced down at his cup of coffee growing cold.

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. He mused over Eliot's line and mentally thanked Miss Martin again. She had told him that losing herself in a poem often helped her survive the tedium of lengthy faculty meetings where nothing but nonsense transpired.

Like this nonsense with Bitsy. He opened his mind for a moment to see where she was in her story.

"Miss Martin said I cooked the egg too long. She liked it poached, solid white, slight runny yolk, and I said 'That's what you got. I made that. I made that just like you like it,' and she said, 'Twenty-five seconds too long. Take it back and fix another one.' I did that. I made another one. I brought it. She poked it. Poked it. The yellow ran. Yes, it ran. And she said, 'It's a little underdone, but I'll eat it.' A good thing, too. Yes, a good thing. Because the cat started yowling for his food. He yowls just like her. Has to have