Facing Fiction

By Alyssa M. Whittington

To Elizabeth Hackett, every person is a character, every place is a setting, and every moment is a scene waiting to be written. But when a simple accident leads to debilitating writers block and lands her in psychiatric counseling, she is forced to surrender her isolation and reenter the unpredictable, uncontrollable world that resides outside the novels she pens. With the often-unwitting help of her enigmatic counselor, Elizabeth tiptoes into a new relationship and, for the first time in years, finds herself revisiting the events that led to her own broken engagement. She begins to examine previously unchallenged plotlines in her past and uncovers holes and truths that make returning to her life of omnipotent authorship impossible. To move forward, Elizabeth must learn how to exist in a world of tangled relationships, abused friendships, and imperfect faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984510785

Alyssa M. Whittington

Alyssa Whittington is a Pittsburgh native with a minor in creative writing from Bucknell University. She is an engineer by day, and Facing Fiction is her first novel. She currently resides in Maryland with her three plants: Charles, Philomena, and Lola.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

E lizabeth Hackett filed her fingernails by grating them over her pants. She chiseled away the ragged edges her front teeth had left behind after ninety minutes of mindless biting during her drive. It had been one hand after the other and then back to the first, while the free hand took the wheel and cruise control shuttled her away from her apartment. Now with the car in park, she raised her hand to pull down the sunshade and its lighted mirror, but her mind slapped down her hand with a hiss of Vain before it even touched the visor. Her reflection would be the same as always. The same crows’ feet tied to the edges of her eyes like slanted tick marks of an inmate counting days, the same shallow circles sagging below, the same overeager streaks of gray in her dry dishwater hair. The only surprise would be that there was still a thirty-six-year-old staring back at her. Years were inching by, and she felt she should look at least eighty. But the mirror always disagreed and showed her no more hunched, graying, or shrunken than upon last inspection. It was as though her appearance had raced forward in aging in her midtwenties and waited for the years to catch up, idling until they were united and could proceed together a gain.

Elizabeth stepped out of her car and dropped her spent cigarette on the slick pavement. She stifled its smolder with the heel of her clog and leaned against the side of her ancient but well-kept Subaru Outback to survey the dark street. The lane was lined with squat Craftsmans built en masse in the ’70s. Their exteriors were distinguishable only by the lawn ornaments. Most had icicle lights dripping from their frozen gutters; some had tubby inflatable Santas with thin skins shivering in the breeze. There were numerous herds of wire-framed reindeer stationed on the lawns in configurations that made them seem social or possibly conspiring. The only two ungarnished houses sat on the south end of the street, and their neighbors’ long-reaching LED haze coated their lawns with light anyway. Elizabeth wondered whether the nondecorators had accepted this silently and had invested in blackout curtains, or they were of a sort more inclined to swap working bulbs for failed ones in the dead of night. Because she could not examine them for herself, Elizabeth pictured the homes’ interiors as identical—all had a windowless, wood-paneled basement that smelled of muddy boots, two or three bedrooms with quilts and afghans piled in the closets for winter nights, and formal dining rooms with china cabinets of dusty wedding crystal too fine to use. She took one last look before turning northward and eyeing the glassy ice patches on the frozen slope ahead.

Nearly a dozen parked cars lined the street leading to Elizabeth’s great-aunt Bernie and great-uncle Sam’s house. Elizabeth leaned forward drastically as she shuffled and skated around the cars parked on the steep incline. Her clogs’ nonexistent tread made the ascent difficult, and she hissed through her teeth every time she found her body contorting in response to unseen ice underfoot. It was a cruel hill, but her calves began to ache after an embarrassingly short distance, unfamiliar with strain. It was an excuse to stop, though, and she paused and held on to the side mirror of a black Sequoia for balance. She gathered her all-weather coat closer to her (it was missing three of its buttons) and breathed onto the chilled fingers extending from her grubby black fingerless gloves. The wind slapped at her bare ears, but she took the opportunity to stall her arrival. Elizabeth turned and looked back down the street at the harshly sloped pavement and was reminded of the decades-old story the neighbor kids always whispered when she’d joined them there for sledding.

Elizabeth could see her—a five-year-old in an overstuffed purple snowsuit with blond ringlets sticking out from under her knit hat. There was an enormous pink pom-pom on top. It was a cloudless, carless Saturday, and the sun was beginning to sink low on the horizon; eight inches of snow had fallen the day before, and the sunset was giving way to a bitter cold that was turning the snow’s top to a crusty ice and forcing the children inside, one by one. Her mother stood on the front porch with her arms crossed in front of herself. She nodded to her daughter, her pointer finger raised. Yes, just one more. The sniffling, red-cheeked girl nodded back and threw herself headfirst onto the orange plastic saucer sled. With the sledding path well carved by others before her, the girl picked up speed, squealing and gripping the rim of her sled. The children heading in the other direction—either straggling back up the hill toward their homes or another run—cheered on their youngest initiate. She dared to wave with one hand and stick her tongue out in their direction, so she didn’t notice when her saucer slipped from the carved track. When she looked forward again, the telephone pole was inches away, and she had a split second to squeeze her eyes shut. Then there was a snap, shouts from the hill, and the frantic swish of a horde of snowsuits in motion. Adolescent shrieks for help laced themselves into the air in tinny layers, each voice contributing a new stress of discord. Move her. Don’t move her. Check for breathing. Get out of the way—her mom’s coming. Don’t look. She’s not breathing. Her head isn’t sitting right. Don’t look. Elizabeth opened her own mouth as if it would contribute, but nothing came out. Her mind slowly retreated from the cloudless Saturday evening and resumed residence on the same street on the dark December night. Elizabeth exhaled a slow trickle of gray breath into the frigid air and blinked the image of the little girl into the storage of her mind. She might be able to use it later. Fiction was, after all, her medium.

Elizabeth burrowed her hands into the thin pockets of her coat, and the wind kicked up even further. She slogged up the rest of the hill and then the salted cement stairs to the house with a modest strand of lights outlining the garage and a wreath on the front door. A wad of stray tinsel from the neighbor’s yard caught in the wind and landed on her coat sleeve. She plucked it off and raised an eyebrow at it; it failed to offer an apology, and she deposited it into one of the decorative flowerpots on the front stoop. She rang the bell before allowing herself time to reconsider.

The door flew open so dynamically that the wreath flew off. Elizabeth looked down at it, sitting at her feet. Playing dead, she thought, and approved.

Elizabeth! a plump, snowy-haired Mrs. Claus look-alike in a flour-dusted holiday apron cried, throwing open her arms. Elizabeth’s great-aunt Bernie lunged forward and embraced her, and Elizabeth was acutely aware of the wreath caught between them on the ground as it grated against her ankles. Aunt Bernie took a step back and held Elizabeth at arms’ length, apparently unbothered or unaware of the fallen wreath. Elizabeth was surprised by the old woman’s grip on her arms and could feel finger-shaped bruises blooming.

We’re so happy you could make it. We missed you the last couple of years. Aunt Bernie smiled, and her silver-rimmed glasses slipped down her nose.

Yes, wish I could have made it, Elizabeth murmured, searching her memory. She thought she’d used the excuse of car trouble last year and icy roads the year before that, but she wasn’t positive. Automotive nightmares, she responded vaguely. She’d developed a rotating list of excuses. Car trouble, twisted ankle, root canal, repeat. She’d removed root canal from the rotation when she’d begun wondering how many a person could realistically have. She could have developed more-elaborate lies, but it seemed a waste of creative energy—they all knew she was the absentee relative, the one that passed through and waved and was barely more substantive than a ghost.

The excuse didn’t matter; Bernie wasn’t listening. She was already shepherding Elizabeth into the tiny living room and yanking the coat from her back. Elizabeth didn’t bother to tug at the obvious wrinkles in her white button-up shirt that was cut so straightly it resembled a man’s. Everything except the top button had been secured, and it was enough to hide the flat, pigeon-chested expanse beneath. In college, Elizabeth’s freshman roommate Marietta had harangued her into trying on a tank top, and as soon as she’d put it on, Marietta had looked at her and said, Oh, with such pity that it was back to crew necks and scarves over training bras that would never know a real day’s work.

Elizabeth stood in the living room, coatless, and, immediately, her great-uncle Sam lumbered in from the adjacent dining room. His Santa hat sat askew, and his smile was equally lopsided. Oh, hell, she thought. Too late to run.

Little Lizzie made it! he rumbled, belting bravado over his shoulder for the guests in the dining room.

Elizabeth was swiftly deprived of the air with which to utter, Elizabeth, not Lizzie, as Sam hugged her against his enormous belly. It was solid, beer-packed, and after large holiday dinners he often took to rubbing it and telling his grown-up children that they would have a new brother or sister soon. As Elizabeth found herself pressed against the imaginary perpetual fetus, the wreath hug with Bernie seemed almost appealing.

When she’d been released, Elizabeth took a large step back. Hi, Sam. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you! Sam was in fine form, and Elizabeth could taste beer and aftershave vapors in the air between them. Take off your shoes and stay awhile! He clapped her on the back, nearly knocking her off balance.

Oh, um . . . Shoes. Elizabeth had forgotten that Bernie and Sam insisted everyone take off their shoes for the holiday party. She guessed the policy was geared toward making guests feel at home; it certainly wasn’t because the laminate flooring and industrial rugs were in danger of further damage.

Here, put them right here, Sam rumbled, gesturing at the living room corner where a heap of shoes sat on layer of plastic grocery bags. It looked like a Black Friday sale at Goodwill had just taken place and left the unpaired, discarded shoes there. Elizabeth reluctantly placed her sunken-soled brown clogs by the edge of the pile in the hopes that she would not have to dig through Athlete’s Foot Mountain to find them in an hour and fifty-six minutes when it would be appropriate to leave. She stifled a scowl. Being shoeless felt barbaric.

Why, look at those piggies! Sam said, pointing at Elizabeth’s feet. You on welfare, girl? he chortled. Elizabeth’s big toes poked out through holes in her socks. The heels of the socks were almost worn through too.

No, I am not. Elizabeth didn’t offer an explanation, but she wished she could control the flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the jab at her wardrobe and everything to do with her salary. It could not go unnoticed that the family strategically never mentioned how many books on the Barnes and Noble’s Recommended shelves bore her name. Stories about paying for college and stressfully expensive basement remodels were stifled by prideful swallows when she entered a room. She wouldn’t understand, she heard them hiss in their minds.

Well, I’ll get you somma my socks. Your feet are gonna freeze off like that. Before Elizabeth could protest, Sam was waving a pair of gray hunting socks in her face. She put them on dutifully, if only to move past the conversation about proper hosiery. Elizabeth offered a perfunctory wave of hello to the relatives sitting in the dining room before escaping into the kitchen.

Every inch of the forty-square-foot kitchen was covered in garland, and Elizabeth’s eyes lingered on the strand fastened to the ventilation fan above the stove. It looked a little charred. Oh, boy, she sighed, and grabbed an empty glass from the Formica counter. Bernie was at the three-foot-long breakfast nook counter helping a young niece standing on a stool to make cutout sugar cookies. Two of Elizabeth’s second cousins were helping themselves to plates of lasagna and Italian sausage from the stove, and an unidentifiable man was peering at the labels of the wine bottles next to the refrigerator. Elizabeth assumed he was the husband of someone she was supposed to know, since he bore no resemblance to anyone else in the family. Then again, neither did she. All the recessive genes had cropped up in her, leaving her looking diminutive and conspicuous next to her tall, sturdy, blue-eyed cousins.

Elizabeth examined the crowded kitchen before squaring her perpetually hunched shoulders and heading toward the vodka she knew would be stashed above the refrigerator. To her misfortune, Bernie turned from her cookie-making just as Elizabeth passed.

No, no, dear, Bernie scolded, reaching for the empty glass in Elizabeth’s hand and steering her back toward the doorway. I’ll get you a drink. You just go settle in and relax.

Really, Bernie, it’s no problem. You’ve got your hands full with—Elizabeth looked at the little girl covered in cookie dough who had one finger jammed solidly up her left nostril. Elizabeth wanted to say, Kristen, but knew it could just as easily be Katelyn or Karen or Kelly—cookies, she finished. She hadn’t relinquished her grip on the glass.

You are a guest, and guests in my house are served their drinks. She said it with a smile no less sweet than Mrs. Claus would don, but her voice’s undercurrent was infinitely less sugary. Elizabeth surrendered the glass. Now go join the party, Bernie chided as she shooed Elizabeth into the dining room.

Elizabeth’s eyes darted over her surroundings as she crossed the room and slipped into the remaining seat at the dining room table. The table wasn’t very large, but in the small room, it was big enough such that her chair’s back sat nearly against the china cabinet. Every surface in the room had been covered with tabletop Christmas trees and crocheted angels and snowmen figurines. From her seat, Elizabeth could see there were a half-dozen men occupying the adjacent TV room in addition to the dozen people sitting in the dining room on mismatched chairs; Elizabeth could hear the playful yelps of the children sent into the game room downstairs and the surlier yelps of the two schnauzers cordoned off in the basement bathroom for the protection of the guests. With no drink in her hand, the only thing left for Elizabeth to do was see what inspiration could be gleaned from the crowd. The hunt for new characters was a welcome distraction, and she sized up each person in turn.

Sam, the hefty, jolly, vocally steadfast Republican accountant at the head of the table. Next to him were Mel and Anthony, the quiet couple from Vermont, and their daughter, Lisa. Elizabeth thought she belonged in a pamphlet advertising a Catholic boarding school for anorexic teenagers. Elizabeth could easily envision the parents as a couple resigned to separate affairs (neither of them sultry or even interesting enough to fully recount in a story), waiting for their daughter to go to college so they could divorce. Divorce quietly, just as they did everything else. As a character, Lisa would read about witchcraft wistfully and slip laxatives into her friends’ food, in addition to her own. Elizabeth remembered that Lisa also had a little brother who was probably still young enough to be with the kids in the basement. Elizabeth could not recall his face or name but decided he would grow up to be a successful lawyer with a sex addiction.

As Elizabeth silently cast her relatives into the realm of fiction, someone nudged her elbow.

So, Elizabeth, I hear you’re writing another book, a man with a dark, bushy mustache in a gray Chesterfield sweater commented, taking a swig of his equally dark drink. Her annoyance that he’d managed to acquire real liquor registered far below the baseline hatred that made her molars quarrel like unmeshed gears. Elizabeth had decided years ago that Frank, her mother’s brother, would be written into a character destined for several decades of jail time, hemorrhoids, and delivering a long apology to an empty room on his deathbed. Thirty-one years could not dull Elizabeth’s disgust at a man who offered no excuse for skipping his sister’s funeral. In the thirty-three years since then, she’d never heard him speak her mother’s name, and his penchant to leave the room when she was discussed was evident. Over the years, Elizabeth had asked every relative at least twice why this was, but she’d never heard anything concrete. There were some Oh, I haven’t noticed answers and some I think he’s just still upset that she’s gone responses, but these were said with the hush and hurry of lies. She could understand that people did not want to dwell on the sudden pneumonia and untimely death of her mother, but to her, it was Frank’s presence and unburied hatchet that kept her out of conversation altogether. My godless godfather, Elizabeth referred to him in her mind, and the sight of the leather bracelet with a silver cross on his left wrist drove her molars into deeper battle with each other.

Always, Elizabeth said, icicles clinging to the answer.

What about? Frank’s wife, Ellie, asked. She was a soft-spoken woman that Elizabeth easily put into the role of verbally abused housewife frightened by her husband’s imperiousness. Ellie had perfectly straight dark hair that always looked like it had just been trimmed to single-length perfection. That evening, she was wearing a cream turtleneck, and Elizabeth watched her finger the gold cross pendant at her throat. Her nails were unpolished but trimmed as precisely as her hair.

"This and that. You know. People." Elizabeth watched a few spines at the table stiffen and cloaked her satisfaction that she had made them self-conscious. Ellie, though, was undeterred.

I read your last book, Elizabeth. I loved Mr. Whiting, and I was absolutely heartbroken at the end. Ellie smiled and touched her hand. Elizabeth twisted under Ellie’s gaze, her palm’s warmth, her sincerity.

There were nods and mumbles of agreement from a few people at the table. Her stepfather had probably passed out copies of the latest book to everyone in the family, as he had with her previous book and the three before that.

Well, I haven’t read it yet, but I know it was good. Ellie practically read it to me because she talked about it so much, Frank added.

Yes, I might have to reread it, Ellie said, and she squeezed Elizabeth’s hand as though they were sharing a secret. Elizabeth stared at her. Are you in trouble? Do you want to leave him? But Ellie just smiled her even-toothed smile and withdrew her hand to her lap.

No, read something else, Elizabeth said with a sigh. She considered yawning for show—only too ready to let the others at the table read her as callous and haughty, since they would anyway—but Ellie’s dampened smile made her soften. But I’m glad you liked it, she added.

The conversation shifted to ladies-only book clubs and then community centers and then the retiling of the high school pool. Just as Elizabeth’s mousy, large-spectacled cousin Abbie began bragging about her son’s latest triumph on the high school wrestling team, Bernie placed a small glass of red wine in front of Elizabeth and winked at her before returning to the kitchen. Ladies drink wine at parties, Bernie had told her one Christmas pointedly after Elizabeth’s third glass of Sam’s whiskey.

Elizabeth swirled the wineglass until the sides of it were stained a translucent scarlet and then set it back down and watched the color drain to the bottom. A lady indeed. She rolled her eyes. She stared at the multitoned red in the glass as cousin Abbie began listing the schools she expected would be offering her son a wrestling scholarship. By the time she concluded with Princeton and Columbia, Elizabeth had drained the glass and left the table.

Elizabeth made a pit stop in the kitchen, filled her glass, took a few mouthfuls, and then topped it off. It was not a vintage she felt guilty over gulping down, and she winced at the sweetness. She licked the sugary liquid over her lips just to feel it burn in the chapped cracks. She nursed the lingering sting, close-mouthed, as she edged through the dining room and through the TV room where the men were enjoying their own commentary of a football game. One or two of them said hello, and she smiled and nodded before reaching the patio. She slid the screen door shut behind her and let her shoulders slump; she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding them straighter. She glanced through the slider at the men in the room, again entrenched in their debate, and then down at her own stockinged feet. She took a step forward, out of view of the party.

Elizabeth pulled out a cigarette. Coatless and shoeless, she exhaled her gray smoke into the dry air and watched it peter out into increasingly invisible wisps. The voices and laughter of the house still popped in her ears, and Elizabeth closed her eyes and focused on dulling the sharp noise into muted, humming tones. One hour. Halfway done. The stench of garlic and overdone cookies wafted out of her clothes into the night. Doing well. The music began to fade away, and she took another long drag. Another hour or so. Then she could retreat back to her apartment, enjoy a heavy dose of rum in her tea, and look forward to sleeping through tomorrow.

The sliding door behind Elizabeth opened, and she tensed. Go away, go away, she hummed telepathically to the newcomer. She kept her eyes shut and tried to preserve the serenity, but it slipped away as she heard the haggard breathing behind her. The presence confirmed his identity with one click of a lighter, and Elizabeth opened her eyes. Her grandfather John was the only other smoker in the family. He was a grizzled man—as old as Sam but appearing a decade older. She smiled. John was acceptable company. Maybe even welcome.

Nice night, he said in his characteristic growl. It didn’t require a response, and Elizabeth gave none. John had always been a man of few words, and he had become even quieter since retiring. He’d been a machinist at a chemical plant until he’d nicked his finger on a saw blade. The company had given him a Band-Aid, looked up his birth date, and told him it was time to call it quits. At least that was how Elizabeth had set the scene for the old man. She ignored the two nubs on his left hand where the pinkie and ring fingers should have been.

They smoked in silence. As Elizabeth finished her second cigarette, cheers erupted inside.

Rick’s here, John grunted.

Yep.

Hmmmm, John murmured. He put out his cigarette in the empty Great Value Diced Tomatoes can on the patio table, nodded to Elizabeth, and went inside. Elizabeth took a single nicotine-free breath of the frigid air before following suit.

Elizabeth reentered the TV room and watched her stepfather, Big Rick, shake hands with some of the men in the room. It was his usual greeting: men got handshakes, and women received hugs from the six-foot-nine-inch giant, and everyone looked slightly pleased with themselves afterward. He asked about their aging Rottweilers, the leaks in their attic roofs he had fixed