The Theory Of Big and Small I: Miss Sarah Walks the Dog

It was a grey day, not much for walking but Sara thought it would be good for her baby. Bertie had been moping around quite a bit lately and had taken to watching her every move under shaggy brows.
“Let’s go then!” She snapped on his leash and took the keys from the wall hook, quietly closing the door behind her. Cold for early September. Not promising.

Looking up at the uncertain color of the gathering clouds she stood with her back against the door on the small cement landing and thought about going back inside for an umbrella. But Bertie resisted and for a moment she felt trapped, the heaviness of shut places, the brief snarl of the terrier, the sky closing in. Thinking about it later she wondered if it had been a warning. A signal like so many she’d ignored in the past. Bending forward a little, just enough to see past the entryway, she looked down the street to the familiar places she’d been with Bertie for six years.

Sara had been walking Bertie the same two-block radius since he’d come home a bright and enthusiastic puppy, all hair and attitude. He’d never lost the enthusiasm of that first time, investigating every tree and blade of grass along the way day in and day out. She loved his curiosity - he never seemed to mind the sameness and Sara thought perhaps he lost his memories each night as he slept and when it came time for the morning walk it was as if everything were new again. It seemed like a blessing.

They started out down the long drive and Bertie strained at the leash nearly pulling her over. He sniffed at the mulberry bush, as was his custom, and then unceremoniously peed on it. Then he stretched, first one back leg, then the other and pawed at the ground in a curiously aggressive way as if he were getting ready for a cock-fight.
“Good dog!”
Instead of turning left this morning, perhaps with a mind to the darkening sky and missed opportunities for shelter, she decided to go right. Bertie seemed nonplussed and sniffed his way along without breaking stride. “So you really have forgotten?” she said, now more convinced than ever that left or right, up or down made no difference.

Sara had never turned gone this particular way before because it led to a main street and she was nervous of the traffic. Bertie was the runt of a terrier litter, all scruffy and stiff with energy, but he was tiny and he had no idea of the power of cars. He just saw them as noisy nuisances, along with children in strollers and anyone on a bicycle. Once they hit the main thoroughfare Bertie was quivering with a mixture of excitement, indignation and fear, bolting sideways when anything came near.

The sidewalk was stained and gummy with lots of small things for a curious dog to investigate so it was slow going. She was beginning to regret taking this diversion and his lead got shorter and shorter as she fought to avoid crashing into an assortment of legs, wheels and other small impediments. Bertie took this as an insult and began to strain, taking out his aggression on anything near. When he started barking at an old woman coming out of the green grocers she hastily pulled him onto the next side street and pulled him up short.
“Bad boy!”
He ignored her for a moment, turning to bark furiously at the apparition with a large shopping bag and she had to drag him behind her, face flaming with embarrassment. Once he quieted down she looked up and around at her surroundings. In all the years she’d lived in this quiet neighborhood in Toronto she’d never come down this street. It loomed with arching trees, gnarled and old, like the tainted cornfields from The Wizard of Oz, beckoning her take a chance toward a distant light. She looked around for a name but the block was very long and there was nothing to help her.

“Come along….” She said smartly, picking up the pace and Bertie marched up ahead of her looking around with interest. With the wind picking up the back of her skirt Sarah tried to figure out how to get back to familiar territory, all the while briskly click clacking down the paved sidewalk in her black pumps. Perhaps a block or two down she could find an alley to cut across….. Nothing seemed right, and although she knew she was not far from home it was like looking at a book upside down and tried to read the familiar…. she cursed her stupidity for losing her way. Where was the weeping willow that took up the whole of the front yard of the Millers, visible forever? And the big lilac bush two doors down at the Simpson’s. She’d lain under it as a child in the summer and the fragrant blossoms had been so heavy the branches had bent to touch the ground. She’d spent hours there on her back hidden from sight, the heady ambrosia all around her like a swaddling blanket. She could feel the milky promise of the early morning sun beginning to turn and the memory of warm, drowsy afternoons was sharper. She hurried along in the memory of the lilacs, waiting for her nearby. Somewhere nearby.

The block was longer than she thought and although Bertie seemed energized she was beginning to feel a mixture of panic and exhaustion. She thought she might have to sit down.

The letter had been sitting on the entry table. Next to the big silver vase kept fresh with garden flowers. They spilled everywhere in a profusion of colors, pink and pale yellow, white, red and pale lavender. But all she saw was the letter, white against the dark wood. Upright and stern, reflected in the surface. One letter real, one ghostly and unreachable.

Bertie froze to standing attention and she almost ran into him.

“Help!”
It was very faint. But desperate. A real cry, not something from a child playing a game. Bertie cocked his head to the right and quivered. “What?” She looked at him in an attempt to ignore the persistent sound.
“Help, please!” The dog looked at her and grimaced. Sara locked eyes with him and they stood motionless for a moment. The next cry was fainter but infinitely more fearful. “Please….!”

“Alright” she said, and turned to look for the source at the nearest house. Bertie took the lead and pulled her toward the walk. “Well, really!” she exclaimed with irritation and yet she let him take her closer.

It was an older house, one of the original tenants of the neighborhood when it had been on a horse farm long before the expanding city had taken over the open land. She’d heard once that Northern Dancer, the most famous Canadian racehorse had once been to stud there before it had been sold and subdivided, but she had no idea if it were true. She had a vague memory of a distant row of white clapboard houses with green trim that she supposed had been for the grooms or trainers. Though small, they’d always been neat, well kept and the developer had saved them so he could give the neighborhood a visible provenance. Somewhere she’d seen a sign hanging between two white posts: Lassiter Farms, est. 1812. Now the little enclave was an anomaly, book-ended by expensive brick homes, four car garages and manicured landscaping.

Bertie continued to urge her up the walk toward one of the clapboard houses. On closer inspection she could see it was worse for the wear. The neighborhood association would be after them soon for letting the values go, she was certain. The porch was a single block of salmon-colored concrete, with spindly wrought iron railing.

Bertie strained. Sarah leaned forward so she could see the entrance facing into the porch on the west end of the house. There was a motley screen with a broken handle door and beyond that, darkness. It was obviously open. Conscious of the now-drawing cold, she knew something wasn’t right but still felt reticent. It was private property, after all. Not her business.

She heard the thump first, then a groan. “Oh hells bells”, she thought, and climbed the steps, Bertie bounding ahead of her, nails scrabbling on the huge steps. She inched forward toward the opening, peering into the dark interior.

“Oh, thank God!” came the voice. A man’s voice. Sara instinctively stepped back, the hairs on her neck rising.

“Please don’t go!” the voice entreated, stronger now. “I can’t get up.” Sara was not convinced. She stood her ground trying to adjust her eyes to the interior, which was shuttered and dim.

“Seriously!” The voice sounded younger than it had at first. More like a teenager. She put one foot on the doorstep, pulling Bertie behind her so’s not to have him jump on the screen door. She saw him then, lying on a beige rug in the middle of the living room. There seemed to be more than one person. Or at least more than one person should be.
She put her hand on the screen door handle. It felt flimsy beneath her gloved hand.

“It’s freezing in here!” Now he sounded like a little boy, but nothing that big could belong to a child. She stepped in, still reigning in Bertie who was hopping around her legs, his nails scratching the hardwood floor.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, knowing it was an obvious question but unsure of how to begin.

“Whadda ya think?” came the reply. She tried to which end was speaking. The mound was so large she couldn’t tell heads from tails. Then he raised an arm. Folds of fat and skin had turned it into a giant, fleshy hammock but it was unmistakably an arm, for the hand, ballooned out like a fan of sausages, waved at her.

The screen door shut behind her with a rusty screech. With a start she let go Bertie’s leash and he bounded off into the dark recesses, the red cord whiplashing behind him. “Bertie!” she cried to his backside.

“Oh, don’t worry, he’s only after the cat’s dish,” said the voice. She inched closer, determined to get a better look. She could see that the shape was wearing a giant cloth of sorts, like a muumuu, all the more incongruous in the winter weather by the bright pattern of parrots and palm trees.

“I’m sorry…..” she began.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” and the hand gestured toward what was obviously the speaking end. Then she saw beneath a series of enormous chins, a tiny face. It was so tiny, so incongruous, so perfectly formed as it was, lost in the giagantic proportion of the rest of him that she was stunned. Only his face showed the person he had or might have been once. A perfectly normal nose, two green eyes, and a full mouth. The face of an aristocrat, almost.

She realized she was gaping. He looked at her steadily and then raised his eyebrows.

"Done looking, are we?"

The Theory of Big and Small: Introduction

Starting next week I will be serializing my new novel, The Theory of Big and Small and presenting it here on Playdate.

The Theory of Big and Small is about a 30-something woman and her relationship with two brothers.

Most of you know my first book, How To Cook A Wolf, will be coming out next year (really). This novel was the result of a year-long journey to northern Canada and a complicated, politically-charged relationship with a First Nations Chief on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Despite an enthusiastic reception from a sucession of literary agents - my first agent had only a handful of clients, one of them John Grisham - Wolf was a puzzlingly tough sell with the houses there and a very frustrating experience for me.

So now I say, why bother with the middle men (or women)?

I've come to realize that I can use the net to become my own publisher and from time to time I will do this on Playdate. And soon I'll be moving to a private website where it will be easier to navigate my archived work and view back installments of the upcoming novel. Also, the installments will be longer - I don't want this to take an entire year to read, so a more efficient format will make reading and printing individual chapters easier. But if you are someone who likes the romance of reading in smaller bites, you can come back as often as you like and go at your own speed.

Save a tree. Read my book online......


'till next week when the story begins.

A Thanksgiving Heirloom

More on "Big and Small" on Thanksgiving is coming up and I had to share a little miracle with you.

Our three-year-old, Sweetpea, loves to play with her dolls and has spent many hours in a world of ever-flowering imagination as she spins out complex storylines with her small charges. Kids are notoriously fickle with their belongings so as an experiment I've purchased a few items from local garage sales, not sure if they would inspire creativity in Sweetpea's world. Take the yellow and green plastic kitchen I scored for a quarter from the nice lady down the street. Sweeetpea bonded with it the instant it appeared in her room and after many meals of plastic food served up to us and to her various stuffed animals, I found her a more durable, wooden kitchen from Little Colorado Company in Denver. I ordered an unfinished version so after we move to our new house we can paint and decorate it together. It's old-fashioned in concept, but solid, sweet-smelling and lovingly constructed from maple with simple working parts and a removable metal sink. With it came a wire basket of wooden food, glorious in variety and color. Having served its purpose as a toy-in-waiting, the plastic one will now grace our next garage sale and the home of another little girl.

The other thing that Sweepea loves to do is play house and for this we purchased a small, fold-up (and also plastic) dollhouse. Again it stood up to the test of time, even though the rooms were tiny and the furniture fell out every time Sweetpea tried out a new tableau. So about a year ago I started looking around for a more substantial, wooden version and realizing how expensive they were, moved on to ebay for something pre-loved. I saw a lot of dollhouses, some very expensive and elaborate, some very cheap and falling to pieces; old ones, new ones, they came and went while I lurked, wondering if I would ever find the perfect fit. There were tin ranch houses from the 60's (hello memories!), delicate gingerbread confections from balsa-wood kits, and many different plastic wunderkinds of all shapes and sizes, some standing six feet tall with hundreds of pieces of matching plastic furniture. But none were just right.

Then a couple of weeks ago on a late-night perusal of the latest items for sale, I saw a simple but sturdy-looking Federal-style dollhouse up for sale from a family in Plymouth. Since this town is our family's entry point to the Americas (fresh off the Mayflower) I thought this to be an inspired gift to our daughter who is folding into an family of immigrants with her own story to tell. This house seemed to call out to me as a visible talisman from my distant roots, one that would over time become part of Sweetpea's adopted history.

Notwithstanding its provenance, it was a beauty: Tall and elegant, white with green shutters, a peaked roof, and when turned around, an open back to play in with generous-sized rooms finished in old-fashioned wallpaper. The starting price was very low (too low for such a fine bit of construction) so I didn't hold out much hope it would be affordable. But as fate, or luck would have it, when I put my last-minute, inexpensive bid in, I was the winner.

After some correspondence with the seller I learned the house had been built by her husband, a Martha's Vineyard carpenter, and she assured me it would make the trip out west without any problems because it was very sturdy. But nothing prepared me for this work of art when I pulled it from the enormous box and yards of protective bubble-wrap.

It sits now on the floor of our living room, soon to be hidden away again for Christmas. And it is the most exquisite object my child-heart has ever laid eyes on. The house stands four feet tall and every inch of it is crafted with care. The painted white exterior is sheathed in a replica of eighteenth century wood siding, each of the six faux-glass windows are four-paned and graced with forest-green wooden shutters. The roof, high pitched with a chimney at the peak, is laid with hundreds of individual, overlapping shake shingles, still in their natural color in shades of walnut and sienna. Solid, wooden steps lead to the paneled front door and the turn of a tiny, filagreed brass knob opens up into a gracefull entryway and a beautifully made staircase leading to the second and third stories. The floors are 1/4" wood, made to look like tongue & groove hardwood, and each room is wallpapered in a miniature version of Republic-style wallpaper. Tiny roses, stripes, polka-dots, ribbons.

When my husband came home he saw me on the floor, peering through the tiny windows. I was thinking about moving in.

"Look!"

He walked past.

"You know," he said kindly, after a moment "this dollhouse isn't for you, right?"

Any toy that mother and daughter can delight in equally is a good toy in my book.

That's my motto now.

Thank you Plymouth/Martha's Vineyard family for giving up this treasure. I don't know how you could have parted with it but it's staying in our family forever. And one day very soon, like any house worth its salt, the new owner will fill it with many bits of furniture, a family, laughter, and love.

I can see it already.

Eric Roberts IX: The Eyes Have It

You may not remember Eric Robert's promising body of work in the early 80's but you do know his sister, Julia, who has proved to have a much more durable career. She was still in school when Miss Lonelyhearts was in production but her breakout film, Mystic Pizza, was only a couple of years away, along with her rise to stardom and the eclipsing of her older brother's fragile hold on fame.

As the older sibling, Eric was the first to reach movie star status and based on the extraordinary films he made over a few short years in the 80's he had more talent and potential, but the same genes that made Julia a quirky comedienne (Rupert Everett recently referred to her in his new book as 'beautiful but slightly mad') had a much darker manifestation in her older brother. As serene and innocent as Julia appears, Eric is the dark spirit, the sinner, the shadow. Combined with his sweet, vulnerable side this unpredictability gave him the complexity for more interesting roles. His films, including Star 80, The Pope of Grenwich Village, The Coca-Cola Kid, and Runaway Train, were all critically acclaimed, the last one garnered him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But by 1985, only two years after we filmed Miss Lonelyhearts, his rise was over.

In the beginning there was no mistaking the siblings' raw material in Hollywood terms: between them Eric and Julia had the requisite movie-star looks with mirrored male/female features. Although he had a strong profile, Eric was as strikingly beautiful as his sister, with the same luxurious wavy hair, expressive blue eyes, full, sensual mouth and dazzling smile. He was a also a complicated, angry, enfant terrible who forged relationships that were as murky as the roles he played. He was, in short, fascinating to be around.

He was perfect for the role of Miss Lonelyhearts and the strong, experienced support cast created a powerful atmosphere to work in. It is a dismal tale about the underbelly of ordinary lives and culminates with the young advice columnist being murdered by the jealous husband of one of the women he'd sympathetically befriended after she had sent him a desperate letter. We all felt the pull of the story as it wound its inexorable way to the climatic ending. But as the producer and director of our ambitious student movie soon found out, the brooding, character and very heart of the film was gradually taking over the fractured ego of our young star.

So when Eric failed to show up on the last, but critical week of shooting, there was both a sense of disbelief, but also a vague undercurrent of inevitability. We'd lived in dark, stained rooms for too long, watching silently from the shadows as the cast steeped themselves in a morass of despairing emotions and the particular exhaustion of people who are stuck in hopeless situations. The sets may have been false fronts, but we were working 18 hours a day, stumbling home in the dark to sleep and then rising again pre-dawn for another round so it had in many ways become our reality too. Blinking, we were forced into the sunlight for the first time in weeks and for a while got on with our lives, the mystery of what had happened to Eric open to maddening speculation.

When Lydia called me several weeks later to ask if I would be interested in particpating in the reshoots, they had a plan to work around the missing footage and get their deal with PBS. It was then I heard what had happened the day Eric disappeared.

Apparently he got on a plane and flew back to Long Island, to Sandy Dennis' house. Didn't tell anyone, just walked out of his hotel room and took a cab to the airport. Whatever strain there was between this odd couple certainly hadn't been helped by Eric's erratic behavior in L.A. and if they argued when he returned home we don't know the details. The only thing we do know is what was reported in the press: Eric was out of control on a highway near their home, speeding along in his open Jeep when it flipped over and crashed. He had extensive injuries, and his face was badly torn up requiring reconstructive plastic surgery. There was something eerily familiar about this story: thirty years earlier another promising and brilliant young actor, Montgomery Clift, had suffered the same fate and his career never recovered.

It seemed only fitting when I saw photos of Eric's lumpy face months later that he now resembled a prize fighter. His delicate, almost feminine features were gone, and with them the gentleness and whisper of naivete that I'd found so compelling. Now he looked mean, battered and defensive, the scars barely visible except for a crooked nose and the thickness that comes from damaged skin and muscle.

The man who emerged to star as the abusive, controlling husband in Star 80 and the misfit in Runaway Train was transparent to me now - and although he retained some of his handsomeness, more rugged in a powerful frame, the allure was gone. And his career lost momentum, with only the financial, man-cult success of his martial-arts character in the Best of the Best series to follow over the next decade.

His decline to B-movie status may seem puzzling to those who could not understand why such a promising actor failed to capitalize an amazing string of successes, but it's not a surprise to me. This past year Eric appeared in The L-Word, a popular series about a group of gay women friends in L.A. His character was the father of one of the main players, a soft-spoken, intelligent man who seemed determined to mend his estranged relationship with his daughter. But in the end he turns out to be a slick, deceitful manipulator. True to form.

The last time I saw Eric was outside a grocery store on Olympic Boulevard, a couple of years after Miss Lonelyhearts wrapped and sucessfully aired on American Playhouse. I was engaged to Michael, we were preparing to work on Pee-wee's Big Adventure and my student film days seemed very far away. Eric was lurching a bit, he seemed high on something and had his arms draped around two skimpily-clad young girls, one on either side. He was boozily regaling them with some story and to my astonishment, his stutter was completely gone.

"Eric!" I exclaimed. I couldn't help myself. He glanced over at me, gave me a look of utter distain and kept on going.

But for that familiar look I wouldn't have known if he'd remembered who I was.


Photo: Eric Roberts and Arthur Hill. Author's collection.

My email exchange with Scott Simon at NPR Radio

In mid-2004 radio host of an NPR syndicated program, Scott Simon, and his wife returned home after adopting a daughter from China. He subsequently broadcast a beautiful, lyrical, but finally China-critical commentary about the new life she would embrace in the US. I wrote to him and expressed my dismay that as a journalist he would choose to use his public platform to thumb his nose at the Chinese government after they had made it possible for him to become a father and expressed my fear that it might have an impact on waiting families (including us).

He wrote back immediately and lambasted me for being 'naive', saying that his remarks would have absolutely no impact on adoption policies.

Well, here we are three years later and I finally wrote him back:

Hello Scott:
You and I corresponded in 2004 when my husband and I were waiting for our China adoption referral. You were responding to my concerns that, as a public figure with a national platform, your commentary about your daughter’s new life could potentially embarrass the authorities who set the policies for international adoptions.

You responded immediately, and were quite passionate in your defense of these remarks saying that your opinions about the positive aspects of her future in the US versus what she might have faced in China were the truth as you saw them and you felt it would have absolutely no impact on future adoptions.

Here I am finally replying – it took three years but I do believe public comments like yours did have an impact and led to an eventual tipping point. Over the years the Chinese government has been bearing increasing negative public opinion around the world regarding their one-child policy and the social consequences of a male-skewed population (not to mention the abandonment of so many girls). Was this justified? No question. But public comments from adoptive parents like you about the ‘better life’ these transplanted children would have in their new countries was bound to add salt to the wound. Rightly or wrongly, this has, in my opinion, had consequences for the children in orphanages who are now being restricted from leaving China.

You may argue differently but at this stage no-one outside the Chinese government can say for certain what caused these changes. Although the CCN claims it is because less children are available for adoption this is not borne out by the figures of orphanage populations. Many questions remain as to the cause of this major shift in adoption policy.

And in an bit of final irony (or perhaps a prescient fear on my part), if had the new rules been implemented before our turn, we would have been ineligible to adopt. But we were lucky. As it was we traveled to Guangzhou in November of 2004 and came home with a beautiful, intelligent, healthy little girl. She is much-loved and truly one of life's treasures.

Our little family is made up of citizens of three different countries and because of this we feel that homelands (no matter how brief the occupancy) play an important part in our identity. We live the concept of a global community in our home and to that end we hope one day she will return as a visitor to appreciate and embrace the China of her future. Being as loved as she is we can only hope she will bring our values, our strengths, and our vision with her.

Valen Watson