An incomplete work of fiction (1 of 3)

I sit down to write a story.

I write because fiction is so much more interesting than life. More controllable. The twists and turns of a good, complicated tale of intrigue and emotion and right and wrong, and all the moral ambiguities in-between, that’s the stuff that makes our own lives seem so much better in comparison. Or, maybe, not as good. Maybe it’s that the hope of a happy ending colors our reality, and the hope in that mirror, that our own reality might reflect those joyful colors, as well as all the complexities.

So, let’s tell a story.

Let’s just say, as a case of fiction, that a man’s mother dies. Let’s call him Ovid. She’s died of old age, as close to a case of natural causes as that vague term allows, and after a long slow mental death by inches from the ravages of dementia. That’s the inciting incident of the story, I think. That’s the event not that starts the ball rolling, but that all of the other events lead up to and from.

Okay, first we need some framework. We’d need to set up that Ovid is from a large family—three brothers and two sisters, of which Ovid is the youngest. We’d need to establish that Ovid is in his mid 40’s, and that the oldest sibling (we’ll call him Felix), one of the brothers, is past retirement age at 64. So in a sense, the mother’s death was not unexpected. But the emotions at the mother’s death are real, and repercussive.

But we need still more back-story. Rolling back the clock, we’d need to set up how the father had died nearly ten years previous, and how one of the things that the father had done before cancer ravaged his otherwise vibrant and healthy form, as to criticize Felix, as “greedy” and self-serving. And let’s make Felix a lawyer, just for the sake a plot device. Foreshadow a conflict here between father and eldest son, which Ovid can only guess at, like someone walking into the middle of a movie. Some things have happened that all the other moviegoers know, and which is key to the plot direction, but which the latecomer has to piece together as he goes. It’s a hell of a way to build a psyche.

But this can be a powerful scene, in context. Ovid and the next youngest brother (let’s call him Oscar), had gone to the fathers ancestral home in Mississippi from the family’s home in New England, to take care of the father, who was battling cancer. It was a good time for Ovid to take a break, because he’d just been downsized from his job of ten years, and while he had some prospects, needed the break. And there is an unspoken pressure of Ovid’s own family—his wife pregnant with their first child—to provide for. Family, and providing for family, is a recurrent theme in the story.

But within these scenes come an important connection between Ovid and the father, and a resolution of things often unsaid in a life, needing to be said. It ends with closeness, and warmth, and good feeling. And it’s short-lived.

Ovid leaves the recovering father to start a new job several states away, leaving him in Oscar’s care, with the understanding that the second-oldest sister (let’s call her Minerva) will be coming two weeks later for her “turn.” But this turns out to be the last time Ovid sees his Father, as the Father dies less than two weeks later. Ovid never goes to the funeral. Funeral’s weren’t his thing. He’d always wonder if he made a mistake in that.

Next, lets’ just put in, for the sake of a new plot twist, that the week before the father died, Oscar, alone, made a trip to the father’s safe deposit box, and took the fathers will. And destroyed it. Out of character? Inexplicable? Time, and our story, will tell.

Top that off with Oscar taking sole ownership of the father’s property as a result of a new will that he’d somehow had possession of, created in the span of time between Ovid leaving and the death of the father. Now we have some interesting intrigue, wouldn’t you say? We’d have to wonder at the motivation, of course, and what Oscar hoped to gain. A noble act for the benefit of the siblings, ensuring the father’s legacy almost against his will? He does make a point of delivering what he says is a 1/6th share from the sale of the property to each sibling. But he makes that delivery behind the wheel of a brand new car. But maybe it’s just cynical and mistrustful for Ovid to note that. In any event, like so many doubts and concerns he will evince through the course of the story, Ovid pushes the thought away.

To be continued.