Fairhaven Literary Review No. 1

By Emily Rose

Fairhaven Literary Review is a monthly review of the latest in creative storytelling. It focuses on longer short stories and creative non-fiction. We feature a range of established and new writers each month.

This is issue number 1, June 2013.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fairhaven Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781939497123

Book preview

Fairhaven Literary Review

No. 1 (June 2013)

Edited by Emily Rose

Published by Fairhaven Press Inc.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Fairhaven Press Inc.

ISBN 978-1-939497-12-3

ISSN 2326-3164

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Chapter 1

From the Editor

Note from the Editor:

We are pleased to introduce this inaugural edition of the Fairhaven Literary Review. We are working to bring our readers a wide range of short stories and creative non-fiction. We are publishing a range of well-established authors and newcomers. We hope that these volumes will serve to highlight the range of creative writing being produced today and will stimulate discussion, analysis and inspiration.

-- Emily Rose, Executive Editor

Chapter 2

Insight (Fiction) by Fred McGavran

Insight is essential for successful psychotherapy. When I was a resident in psychiatry, all new analysts had to undergo psychoanalysis to learn the process and themselves. For my first adventure into the subconscious, I selected Harvey Kaufman, M.D., as my guide and mentor. Dr. Kaufman had heard Freud lecture in Vienna and was regarded by students and colleagues alike as the model psychoanalyst. He sported a wispy gray beard, smoked a pipe, and had a habit of dozing off during sessions that lasted longer than twenty minutes. Best of all, he never took notes.

Your earliest memory, Ted, or do you prefer Theodore? he began pleasantly enough, tapping the tobacco in his bowl.

Grandma always called me Teddy, I replied, lying back to tell how my first epiphany occurred at a Sunday dinner on grandmother’s terrace that glorious fall the Second World War ended.

Little legs dangling from the chair, I was sitting beside my Mother, trying to make the lima beans disappear. Most adults have forgotten how appalling a lima bean is to a child: cold and chalky with the same internal structure as a grasshopper. I was dropping them one at a time onto the pavers, hoping the cat would be interested, when I felt Grandma’s cold hard hand on my shoulder.

Eat your lima beans! she demanded. Do you want to draw rats?

Before I could answer yes, she shoveled still more of the pallid green legumes onto my plate and sat down across the table to watch me die. This time I adopted a more subtle strategy. While she was distracted by Mother’s tale of Daddy’s latest outrage, I slipped first one, then two lima beans up each of my nostrils. To my horror, the pile on my plate did not diminish. I was placing one in my left ear, the side away from Grandma, when the movement caught her eye.

It’s a sin to waste food! she cried, slapping my hand. Then she uttered the most terrible words a child can hear. What’s that in your nose?

Nodding, Gwammy, I replied, discovering how difficult it is to speak persuasively with foreign objects in the nostrils.

Just like his father! she exclaimed, yanking me away from the table to her upstairs bathroom, where she extracted the offenders with rusty tweezers.

No ice cream for you, young man! she snapped. If anything had caught in your throat, you would have suffocated.

I was not sure what suffocated meant, but apparently something awful happened to people with foreign objects in their nose and throat. So while assorted aunts, cousins and the only uncle still on speaking terms with one my aunts gobbled ice cream on the veranda, I lay alone in the guest room, reflecting on my experience. Was it just another example of adult bullying, or did Grandma’s warning contain the secret of my liberation?

Today an email to Children’s Services would procure speedy release, but Dr. Spock had not yet published, and the children of the nation still suffered unspeakable torments. As I twisted in anguish, I suddenly felt that wonderful sensation of excitement and relief that rewards successful problem solvers. Freedom was mine, if I only dared seize it. I waited until naptime, when the children retired to recover from the morning’s excitement and the adults to sleep off several bottles of Sancerre.

Sneaking downstairs, I grabbed a handful of left over lima beans from the grownups’ plates and a plum from Grandma’s untouched fruit bowl. Then I scampered back upstairs and slipped silently to her door. Sure enough, from inside came the rich, rhythmic snores of a woman at peace with her family and herself. I turned the handle and slipped inside.

To this day, lavender reminds me of old ladies. I hadn’t realized how much of it she used until I stood on tiptoes beside her bed, just before sticking a lima bean up each of her nostrils. She sat up so quickly I barely had time to plunge the plum into her open mouth. Then I stepped back to see how well a seventy-year-old’s coordination holds up under stress.

I don’t know what bothered her more: her dilemma or the strangely detached three year old watching her try to cope. She lurched into the bathroom for the tweezers, apparently convinced it was hopeless to remove the plum. That was a critical mistake. After her eyes started to water, there was really no hope. I was nearly back to my room when a thump down the hall signaled the end. This was my first insight to be clinically confirmed.

With an ambulance and two real policemen to enliven the party, the afternoon passed quickly. I was a little exasperated with Mother for blurting out that Grandma didn’t even like plums. Years later, after learning that police rarely listen to hysterical bystanders and pathologists usually neglect the nostrils, I regretted marring the occasion with needless worry. Before departing, my Mother and aunts cleaned out the refrigerator and my uncle slipped the last two bottles of wine into his jacket pockets.

It sounds as if you have some unresolved issues with your grandmother, Teddy, Dr. Kaufman said in a tone that implied criticism of my inner child.

I had forgotten he was there. Years later, I realized that was the mark of the master therapist. He had not even lit his pipe.

To the contrary, I replied reassuringly. I put closure to our relationship years ago.

I don’t know how much farther we should go with this, he said so low he could have been talking to himself.

I rose slowly from the couch, a little disappointed he had not commented on such remarkable prescience in one so young. Then again, only the very young can enter the space without words that is perfect empathy. To my ear there had been an echo of Virginia Woolf in the retelling. It wasn’t until our second session that I realized he thought I had been putting him on.

At grand rounds the next week, he gave a memorable lecture on splitting, a dynamic that occurs when the patient turns the treatment team against one another.

I really enjoy group therapy, Miss Norton, but the doctor has not been helpful, a manipulative patient may complain to the therapist.

Doctor, you had me on the road to recovery, but Miss Norton’s group sessions are undermining all our progress, the patient then says to the doctor.

At some deep level, Dr. Kaufman apparently regarded splitting as a metaphor for the residency experience. I commented that it sounded like fifteen-year-old girls planning a slumber party and was probably about as meaningful. He looked at me a long time without responding.

This is a very serious undertaking, Teddy, he began our next session, watching me settle into the couch. This time he lit his pipe. Maybe we should talk about your relationship with your parents.

I was a bit taken aback by the question. Freedom to be yourself is the ultimate goal of therapy. Parents are a necessary means to enter this world and an unpleasant diversion until escaped or neutralized. Nevertheless, I was there to learn, so I shared some of my insights into my parents’ relationship.

I did not meet Daddy until he appeared the afternoon Grandma’s will was probated. Had I realized earlier how hope of an inheritance might reconcile the combatants in the worst marriage, I might have considered other alternatives for Grandma. Now, instead of the pleasant tones of Gene Autry or The Shadow on the radio after dinner, I heard the clank of beer bottles and happy speculations about how much of Grandpa’s fortune had survived Grandma and the War. When the unpleasant truth turned out to be only enough to pay the lawyers, their marriage soured again.

During her more lucid intervals, Mommy accused Daddy of marrying her and fathering me to obtain a draft deferment. Why else had he disappeared to California as soon as his name was taken off the conscript list, leaving her alone to cope with rationing and with me? In my practice today, I caution parents never to argue in front of their children because of the trauma that may result. Indeed, I learned so much about the military draft from them that when the Korean War broke out, I recognized an opportunity to restore peace to our family. This was the second time my insight was validated by success.

We were talking about your parents, Teddy, your parents, Dr. Kaufman interjected. Tell me about your parents.

Everyone always said I sounded just like Mother, I said to calm him.

He relaxed immediately, thinking we were returning to a more traditional recovery of early fifties moments in the manner of John Updike and others of the Long Island school. It

Reviews for Fairhaven Literary Review No. 1

[Mike · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's an interesting collection of short stories. Not a consistent theme, but that's fine. All were entertaining.