To Love in the Past Tense: And Other Stories

By Gail Boyer Hayes

Imagine what happens when . . .

. . . a widow spots another woman, a stranger, putting flowers on her husband's grave.

. . . a boy genius climbs out his bedroom window to follow his cat to see where it goes at night.

. . . a lonely, depressed young woman encounters a silverback gorilla in her backyard at night.

. . . a joyful Dalmatian that bites forces a boy and his father to uncover family secrets.

. . . the Loma Prieta earthquake catapults a fading grandmother, documentary-making daughter, and rebellious granddaughter to Africa, where they can no longer ignore one another.

. . . an in-home cutlery sales pitch by a lovely young woman slices away years of deceit.


The short stories in To Love in the Past Tense offer some possible answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098393014

Book preview

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To Love in the Past Tense

Copyright © 2021 Gail Boyer Hayes

All Rights Reserved

Glass Houses originally published November 9, 1992, in First for Women

"Cut Flowers" originally published May 30, 1994, in First for Women

ISBN: 978-1-09839-300-7

ISBN eBook: 978-1-09839-301-4

Cover photograph by Gail Boyer Hayes, design by Bookbaby

For Denis, who for half a century has stretched my world beautifully while making it a better place to for us all to live

FOREWORD

At 78, I know I’ll never find answers to the really big questions: Do we have a purpose beyond surviving and procreating? Do our whispered prayers reach a godly ear? What the hell is love? But there are ephemeral moments when it all seems to make sense, when a sudden new perspective reveals a pattern that makes us inhale with delight. At these moments we believe in free will, in ourselves. Occasionally these moments change us; more often they brighten our lives, then fade. Such experiences are exceedingly hard to pin down in words, but that is what I’ve tried to do in most of these stories. A couple stories I’ve included just for fun.

My fiction writing has given me great joy. Two experiences stand out: John L’Heureux’s continuing studies Advanced Fiction Writing class in 1998-99 at Stanford, and a three-semester class in mystery and suspense writing at the University of Washington. The chemistry was so good among the students in both groups that most of us continued to meet for years, helping one another become better writers. Some of us went on to publish books and stories, some didn’t. In either case it was not wasted time, because we learned so much about ourselves in the process and formed lasting friendships.

I spent thousands of hours writing. Friends and family read and reread these stories, helping me improve them. This book is to thank and honor them. Every one of these stories came alive for me during the hours I worked on it, so I also want to honor the characters, as if they were sentient. They are clamoring to tell their side of things.

Contents

To Love In The Past Tense

Something Missing

Cut Flowers

Making It Home

Seeing In The Dark

Glass Houses

The Warm Front

Serrated Edge

The Halloween Howler

The Makaha Gate

Drawing Lines

To Love In The Past Tense

The cop on Suzy’s front porch had a thin line of latte foam on his upper lip. After getting over the shock of seeing a policeman at her door, she recognized him as a former student in her high school chemistry class.

Hi Rodman, she said. Nice to see you again. What’s up?

Uh, nice to see you, too. Still teaching?

This is my last year.

Been gardening?

Just tidying up before our Minneapolis winter starts in earnest. She tugged off her gardening gloves and resisted the urge to get a tissue from her pocket and blot the foam off Rodman’s lip.

I’m sorry to have to bother you, Mrs. Schultz, but someone filed a theft report. Did you steal a painting by somebody called . . . he glanced at the notepad he held, by Courbet?

Of course not. And it’s pronounced koor-bay.

Rodman sucked in his lower lip, exposing his front teeth. Aside from his lip-sucking tic he was a good-looking guy who had surprised her by earning a high grade in her class, something she hadn’t expected from a fullback on the football team.

Look, Mrs. Schultz, your brother James says you removed the painting from your mother’s premises and that you got it hanging in your study.

And?

I’m sorry, but I gotta take it back.

The painting belongs to my mother, who is still alive—technically. Before that it belonged to my grandmother, and before that to my great-grandmother, who had sex with Courbet in exchange for the painting.

Rodman now sucked both lips, as if trying to absorb this overload of information.

The Courbet is always passed down to the eldest daughter, Suzy said. Mom’s house might be burglarized, because it’s been vacant for so long, so I took the painting home.

James tells me that your mother is on life support and her mind’s in la la . . . that she’s no longer competent.

True. After Mom’s last stroke Jimmy insisted they keep her breathing and on infused nutrition. A cruel decision because she’s as close to flat-line as you can get without a ruler.

Rodman’s hardware-laden leather belt creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

I’m my mother’s executor, Suzy said. Mom’s will gives the painting to me. As you might recall, I’m a stickler for the truth, but I’ll show you the will, if you like.

You’re making this hard for me, Mrs. Schultz. It doesn’t matter what her will says, because she’s still alive.

Suzy glanced over Rodman’s shoulder. Well, well. It appears that Jimmy knew when you were coming.

They both looked at the late-model car pulling up. Jimmy was as large a person as his sister was small. He wore a yellow cashmere sweater under his suit jacket. Although the day had an icy edge, there were drops of sweat on his forehead.

Did you get the painting? Jimmy asked Rodman.

Hi Jimmy, Suzy said. As the painting isn’t under Rodman’s arm, it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t have it.

Jimmy faced his sister. You have no right to that painting. I’ve sold it.

"What! You can’t sell it. That the painting goes to me."

Rodman said, Let’s keep our voices down and—

I’ll handle this, sir, Jimmy said.

You pulled me into it, Rodman said. We got paperwork already.

So go get the painting then.

I won’t let anyone into my house without a search warrant, Suzy said, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her.

Mother gave me the right to act on her behalf and I sold the painting, Jimmy said.

"Why, Jimmy?" Suzy asked. It baffled her as to why their mother had given Jimmy powers of attorney. He had failed at one business after another.

"Mother trusted me to tell the docs not to yank the IV."

You can’t act against her express wishes in her will.

As long as she’s alive, the will’s irrelevant. Jimmy shoved Suzy aside and opened the door.

Rodman leapt after him, caught his arm, and guided him back to the front porch. Okay, okay. Let’s all take a deep breath here. I’m no legal eagle, so I’m gonna have to get some guidance on this. Mrs. Schultz, you go back inside now and think it over. And James, go home and do the same. Both of you sleep on it. Try to come to an understanding.

Suzy poured herself a Fat Tire beer, lit the fire in her fireplace, and clicked on the evening news. There was nothing she could do about Jimmy’s decision to keep their mother on life support, but she could darn well haul him into court and get the sale of her painting rescinded.

She was so still so rattled by the news that her brother had sold the Courbet that she didn’t immediately recognize her childhood sweetheart, Hiroshi Sato, when his face filled her TV screen. Leaning forward in her chair, Suzy punched up the volume. Good lord, it really was her Hiro! He was heavier and grayer, but still had the distinctive dark brows, wide and peaked, that looked as if they had been dry brushed onto his face. The caption identified him as a Japanese cabinet minister, and the interview was live. Hiro said that Americans did not understand the Japanese peoples’ fear that they would be subjected to yet another orgy of shaming tomorrow, December 7, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. He frowned and said that while it was true that over two thousand Americans had died, the American retaliation had killed a hundred times more Japanese civilians.

Suzy tensed; Hiro’s words would only encourage Japan-bashing. As if he had picked up her thoughts, Hiro smiled the lopsided smile she recalled so well, and Suzy relaxed. He said, Hey, there’s nothing any of us can do to change the past. Today, the U. S. and Japan have a good thing going together, and we should all work on making our relationship even better.

The interview ended and Suzy punched off the TV. Half a century had passed, but she’d bet her Courbet that Hiroshi Sato still thought of her whenever December 7 rolled around. And she was pretty sure he’d never had another girlfriend with fizzy orange hair. She absently ran her fingers through her hair, which was now white.

The logs burning in her fireplace crackled. On the mantle were framed snapshots of Suzy’s late husband, their grown sons, and Suzy’s grandsons. She’d never mentioned Hiro to any of them. How astonishing that he should pop up now. Above the snapshots hung the Courbet, a graceful oil painting of a woman lying in a hammock, her long, white skirt trailing to the grass below.

Suzy turned in her chair to look outside at the bare, tangled branches of an old oak. It was now dark; night fell early in December at this northern latitude. Beyond the oak, a third of the way around the world, was Japan. And another third beyond that, Stockholm. It would be morning in Japan, but the middle of a very long, deep night in Stockholm.

In 1956, when Suzy was thirteen, her family moved to Stockholm for a year so that her father, who was on sabbatical, could work at the Karolinska Institute. Stockholm was fifteen degrees farther north than Minneapolis, and she had not expected the shortness of Swedish winter days; even at high noon, buildings in Stockholm stood shoulder deep in one another’s shadows. The lambent light had a precious, golden quality that warmed the old stones and bricks and drew people outside, sometimes just to turn their faces to the sun, eyes closed. House cats followed the sun from window to window.

And at night Stockholm sparkled. The prettiest and oldest of the city’s buildings crowded the edges of islands, splashing their lights across dark water. From Skeppsholmen, the island used by the Swedish navy and also by The English School, it was possible to look across a channel and see the lights of Old Town and the Royal Palace, the Grand Hotel, and the Royal Opera House.

The Americans at The English School were louder and brasher than Suzy’s friends at home, and they formed the