The Blue Collar Chronicles: And Other Stories

By Julianne Papetsas

Meet the Blue Collar Queen and her many manifestations. Whatever form or name she takes, this woman is not to be underestimated. She is sexy without wearing heels, loud without opening her mouth, intelligent and loving and loyal. She has a power that cannot be denied and that is simply . . . miraculous. In this collection of short stories, she brings with her an entourage of equally endearing characters, people whose frailty propels them to greatness and who show that through pain and disappointment can come an unadulterated love of life and of the self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496936059

Julianne Papetsas

Julianne Papetsas has followed up her praised novel Seraphine: A Provincetown Story with this collection of fifteen short stories that capture, not the nostalgia of an idyllic past, but the struggles of contemporary generations trying to find their footing in a great big world. The Blue Collar Chronicles are raw, honest, lyrical, and capture the profound beauty of every emotion in Papetsas’ signature way.

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© 2014 JULIANNE PAPETSAS. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/28/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3604-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-3605-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Prologue: The Story

This is what made me

The Blue Collar Chronicles

The Spot

9 Lives

Benny

Modernistic Mo

Painting Spiders

For you, precious lumps of clay, birds with broken wings. You are so much more important than you know

The Big F

On Cookies and Dreams

The Day the Flowers Bloomed

Miraculous Woman

Love and Other Nonsense

A Love Story

A View of the Reservoir

Midnight’s Dragon

The Abyss

Keep Dancing, Beautiful

This Book is Dedicated To:

The People Who Made Me,

My Precious Lumps of Clay,

and Anybody I’ve Ever Loved.

You know who you are.

PROLOGUE

The Story

This is the story I wrote about you. Oh? Are you surprised? Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you know that I write about you? Didn’t you realize that when you speak I listen? Didn’t you know that even when it seems I’m not paying attention, I am, cataloguing everything you say, digesting it in my mind over weeks or months or even years until I find a time to give it its own life? It is fiction, of course. I cannot remember nor do I know all the details, but I fill in the blanks using my imagination, until I become you, and we become something brand new.

Didn’t you know?

Didn’t you know that you inspire me? Yes, your very existence inspires me. Didn’t you know that what you perceive to be a simple life, to me is the stuff of literature? Didn’t you know that every pain you’ve felt, I’ve absorbed as my pain, and every joy you’ve felt, I’ve absorbed as my joy; that every pain you’ve dealt me, I’ve turned into romance, and every happiness you’ve given me, I’ve turned into jubilation? Didn’t you know that your tears have become mine, drip drip dripping on this paper, and the tears you’ve caused me have become a source of fragile strength? Didn’t you know that your laughter rings in my ears, and what you love, I love, and that what you love, I’ve made you love, and will make others love, just like us?

Didn’t you know?

Didn’t you know that everything you’ve ever said and done and been has been osmosed by me and become me and has become this paper? See this paper? See this print? Yes, it is something completely fresh, something completely new. But it’s an awful lot of you.

Didn’t you know?

This is what made me

THE BLUE COLLAR

CHRONICLES

I

Blue Collar Queen

Nobody dared underestimate the power of the Blue Collar Queen. She was sure to prove the naysayers wrong. She was loud without opening her mouth. She was imposing without being tall. She was sexy without wearing heels, though she could walk in them, crisscrossing, her ankles, swinging her hips made for bearing babies, but she kept the womb locked up. Her nails were perfect without a manicure. Her hair was sculpted by the skill of her own hand. A little Maybelline from the grocery store sufficed to play up her eyes, but she always bought designer perfume.

She rolled up to parties in a big rig, pumping the clutch with her All-Stars, wielding the stick, palming the wheel effortlessly. She sat tall, as comfortable in the ride as on her couch. The toolbox clanked with every bump she hit, water dripped off the rack, Mickey Thompsons kicked up dirt. She slid out the door more gracefully than if she’d stepped out of a limo, the sort of transportation that would’ve made her feel exceedingly uncomfortable.

The Blue Collar Queen got out. She kept her nose clean. She never drank till she got drunk. She spit knowledge. She kept a perfectly balanced check book. She read Hemingway and Hughes and could recite them. She spun f-bombs with eloquence. She was a lady, but she brought her fists to a fight. When she spoke, she looked one right in the eye. It didn’t matter whom, she was unintimidated.

She was the Queen.

She went to school with the White Collar Girls, but she wore the gold. She raised her hand in class and handed her papers in early. She bought her books with money she made cleaning apartments. You could eat soup out of her sinks and cut a prime rib on her toilet seats. She went to bed early and walked alone. Those girls were rich, but they didn’t cry when they read good literature. They didn’t dance as though they were bringing down the rains for the harvest. They couldn’t speak in every tongue. The Queen spoke Blue Collar. She also spoke Perfect.

The Blue Collar Queen opened jars by herself, changed her own light bulbs, could cook anything with a recipe, kept a spotless house, could carry a couch on her back or fifty pounds of groceries up three flights of stairs. She could stack her own firewood, hook up her own television, change the oil in her own vehicle. Her clothes were always pressed and spotless though she never paid more than $25 for a shirt or $30 for a pair of pants and had better use for her money than the dry cleaners. She massaged lotion into her dish-pan hands, rubbing out the roughness of her feet and her legs and her elbows until all the rawness was smoothed away. She neatened her own eyebrows and made her own bed. She was routine-driven and regimented, but her spirit soared.

The Blue Collar Queen was available for only one: The Blue Collar King. She gave the kind of love that made a man put weight on because she fed every hunger: his soul, his mind, his stomach. When he came home, there was dinner in the oven. The game was on the TV. The throw pillows were neatened on the couch, and the dog was fed. The Queen donned sweats and a T-shirt with simple black underwear underneath. She licked the salty sweat off his neck, soothed the calluses and blisters on his palms with her lips, rubbed her face against his rough stubble. She scrubbed the soapy sponge along his honey back watching the rivulets of suds and water. She massaged away the soreness in his muscles, and when the Blue Collar King pressed her to him with all his might, he found her unbreakable, unbruiseable, unbendable. Her skin was as thick as his, but softer, her muscles as hard but smaller, her bones as strong but lighter. He built scaffolds to erect sky scrapers, but she built scaffolds to support his dreams.

He talked. She walked. He hungered. She fed. He cried. She wiped his tears away with the back of her hand. He reached. She said, reach farther. She did it herself. She wanted more. She got it. She gave it to him. He hurried to match her every stride, but he stumbled as she floated. Yet she turned, smiled, lifted him up, brushed him off, and brought him along with her. The Blue Collar Queen could carry a world. She could certainly carry him.

But he was a King. She never let him doubt that. Every Queen needs a King, and she wouldn’t have settled for anything less.

The Blue Collar Queen built a high, solid wall around herself. White Collar Knights rode up on their stallions, tried to scale the walls, parried with elaborate thrusts of their swords, chivalrous acts of etiquette and valor, recited lines of poetry. The door remained locked until he came armed with only a chisel and wooden mallet. He slowly chipped at the hard exterior, the finest masonry. The sweat dripped off his nose, the sun burned the back of his neck, but he worked with resolute care until the door opened, the wall came down, and the Blue Collar Queen let him in. She wiped the dust and grit from his eyes, and apologized for leaving him in the cold so long. You see, she said, It’s just that I have so much to lose. But now she built those walls around the two of them, and he wanted to cover her with himself like the threadbare t-shirt she slipped over her little breasts before crawling into bed.

The Blue Collar Queen wove prose like love letter poetry. Lying enfolded in the down comforter, she gently with strong grip clutched his wrist and stretched his arm toward a fine crack in the ceiling. See that star there, she said, It’s been waiting there for you and me. If we reach far enough, we are sure to touch it. And when they held each other, he could feel that very star burning between them. He could feel her heart pulsing through her soft, firm flesh and into his chest, and he stroked her body and gripped her close until he could no longer tell where she began and he ended.

She drowned herself in his lazy eyes, and sometimes her brow was furrowed as though appealing for a sign of some kind. He wanted to put his mouth over those pools of pain and smother all her fears away. One day he asked her how a woman so self-assured could look on his face with such apprehension and weakness. It’s because, before you came, I was under a cloud, the Blue Collar Queen whispered. But then you came knocking at my door, and with it all my pain was lifted away. That day life had new meaning. Now I feel like the words coming out of my mouth are even truer than they were before. She rolled onto her back and sighed, looking up at their whitewashed heavens. Your hands should be enough to calm my nerves, your smile, your taste, your reassuring words, and the simple fact that you keep coming back. But no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I have nothing to be afraid of, I feel so scared because your love has melted me into a puddle for others to splash through. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put myself back together if you leave me.

She used words he could comprehend, but strung them together so cryptically, his head felt dizzy, and his heart pounded, and he knew of nothing better to do than to kiss her, and swear that he’d never go away.

II

Blue Collar King

The Blue Collar King never aspired toward much until he met the Blue Collar Queen. It wasn’t that he was lazy – far from it in fact – he just never cared much for books. He preferred the instant gratification of working with his hands, but his teachers always looked down on him as being an underachiever simply because he’d rather spend his time in the shop than behind a desk. It wasn’t until he realized that the Blue Collar Queen loved him not for what he could give her but for what he dreamed of giving her that he suddenly felt compelled to better himself as a man.

He saw her standing at the crosswalk in the rain, and pulled his black Ford up to the curb, rolled down the window, and said, Nice girl, want a ride?

She laughed, white teeth in a pretty, round face, eyes sparkling, seeming not to notice the raindrops hitting her shoulders. I parked my truck right up there by the school, and work is just down the alley.

So?

She smiled again, It’ll take longer to drive around the block.

But you won’t get wet.

She gave a bashful laugh and shook her head resignedly. Then, without another word, she skipped through the puddles to the passenger side of the truck, a small-town girl with city style. As they drove down the hill, they chatted about mundane things, things that neither of them could recall later on, but they did remember that they felt instantly at ease with each other. The young crow’s feet deepened at the corners of his eyes when he grinned, which seemed a constant thing, and her words flowed in that townie accent with the eloquence of college graduate. He realized she’d seen more of the world than he had, and in his heart he hoped there was still something left for him to give her. The first time he loved her and she cried in his arms, he knew that a piece of both of them had been missing before they found each other.

The Blue Collar Queen made him want more in life without ever saying a thing. She never asked for lavish gifts, never dropped hints, or acted shrewish. This was not the nature of the Queen. The Queen could buy herself whatever she wanted, but what she wanted most was him. She never pressured him to go on vacation, because being with him was the only place she wanted to be, and she never fussed when he came home tired, because she too found herself exhausted by the end of a day of hard work and longed to rest her head on his chest or pull him back in her arms, burying her nose in his hair, kissing and caressing his head.

The Blue Collar Queen understood how hard the King worked for her. When she studied the cuts on his hands, her face became downcast as though she would weep. But the salt of her tears would have burned, so instead, she rubbed salve into them. She clipped away the dirt and grease under his nails, and gently held his hand in her lap as they watched the games, not saying a word. Those were the days when she was tired. The weeks were long and hard, but sometimes she had the greatest stories to tell, stories that would make him laugh until it seemed he grew another line in the corner of his eyes. He wondered if she was trying to age him with laughter as she recounted the events of the day with perfect impressions of the players and sharp wit. The Blue Collar King loved his woman not simply because she laughed at his jokes but because the Queen could tell her own jokes.

For a long while she earned more money than him, but it never threatened his ego. Oh, it hurt him because he wanted to give her all of life’s necessities and more, but she never made him feel like she was wanting for anything. Probably because she wasn’t. He’d given her the one thing she could never get on her own, and she never let him forget that. Together, they took the world by the balls.

III

Blue Collar Genius

The Blue Collar Queen’s father was known as the Blue Collar Genius. Against all odds, he’d attended and graduated cum laude from a prestigious university, laying a foundation for his Blue Collar Princess to do the same. Now she was a Queen. He was on his way to becoming a White Collar Man, but those old Blue Collar Habits got in the way, and a few terrible mistakes later, he found himself cutting pylons on the new wharf. He became so strong he could wield the weighty saw with one hand, a saw that was difficult for two men to lift. He sweat and he suffered, but being the Blue Collar Genius that he was, he soon made his way to becoming a Blue Collar Millionaire. He was as skilled with a hammer as he