Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment for 30 Nov 2005
Prompt: Two People eating together, with particular attention to voice
Like a lily pad on tepid waters, the waitress sashayed across the restaurant and careened into our table. "Excuse me ma’am and ma’am, my name is Denise and I will be your waitress tonight. Tonight, we are featuring boiled crab escargot, caressed with a delicate mussel white sauce, served with a side of torpedo fries and a dollop of sour cream ranchero. And may I suggest our house wine, a sweet domestic red from the vineyards just down the road; I think you will find it amusing. What can I get you all?"
Woman #1:
Well, Denise – I would like the filet mignon, medium-rare, with a baked potato – plain; no sour cream or butter, beans almandine, mixed greens with basil vinaigrette dressing, and a carafe of the house burgundy.
Women #2
And for me, I would like the same, except please substitute mousaka for the filet, rice pilaf for the baked potato, and some Liebfraumilch for the house burgundy. Thank you, and here are our menus.
Denise
Very good, Mesdames.
(Denise turns and sashays back to the kitchen)
Woman #1 to Woman #2
(gesturing toward the centerpiece: a woven plastic basket with many white plastic eating utensils)
Could you please hand me a set of cutlery?
How DO they make storks out of paper napkins?
Woman #2Sure.
(Passing #1 the cutlery, the handling-end, first)
Here you go. No salad fork, though. So, just lick the dinner fork clean, I guess.
The stork figure sure is clever, isn’t it?
I have no idea how the paper holds the creases, though.
Wish I did. I would love to be able to make origami-napkins at home.
It would be such fun!
Denise
Hi, Denise here.
Here are some hot damp towels for you.
Woman #1 and Woman #2
What?
Denise
(Standing by the table and demonstrating how to use the towels)
Oh – you aren’t from around here, are you? Well, folks around here like to wrap their hands in them before eating; they find them soothing and hygienic at the same time.
Oh – one other itsy bitsy little thing; people around here scoot their legs into the sunken space under the table when they eat out, just like they do in Kyoto. In their homes, though, people here just kneel or sit cross-legged like our Native Americans.
Well, here are your dinners, cooked to perfection by Chef Don in the back there. Hope you all enjoy! And if there is anything I can do for you, please just call me. In case you forgot, my name is Denise.
Women #1
Thank you, Denise.
(Slight Pause)
And since you asked, could you please massage our necks and shoulders before we begin dining? It would enhance our gastronomic experience immeasurably. And then, could you please ask Chef Don to rustle up a birthday cake in dark chocolate, trimmed with chocolate roses – a shade lighter – and adorned with twenty-nine blazing candles? And could you please arrange for several members of the wait staff to assemble around us and sing Happy Birthday, with gusto and reverence, simultaneously?
Denise, the dinners look lovely.
And again, thank you, Denise.
Denise
(Standing and hovering, wide-eyed and visibly trembling)
Oh. Am I that easy to read? I may as well cry then right here and now.
My baby son was kidnapped last night. This morning, my beloved mother was run over by a train before she passed on the secret family recipe for her blue ribbon apple pie, and my balladeer husband ruined all of us with his gambling, drinking, and fee landering. The only silver lining is that he is out of my life for good. I think I need a drink.(pulls a chair up to the table and pours herself a glass of the house red. Dabbing her teary eyes with the corner of her serviette and turning to Women #2, Denise adds)
Oh – and dear, a very happy birthday to you! I hope I look as good as you do now when I am 29. And while you are in town, I hope you catch a show or two.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
The Yellow Robe (Part I), Faith
Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment, 5 October 2005
"I felt the consecration of its loneliness." - from Jane Eyre
A ten-year old girl hooked her thick eye glasses over one of the metal spokes on the underside of the beach umbrella. She memorized the colors of her cousins’ bathing suits and ran after them towards the ocean. As always, her father had draped his screaming yellow beach robe over the top of the umbrella.
Moments later, after breaking through the white foam of a big wave, she realized that her cousins and their bathing suits had already melted into the folds of loud children playing and shouting in the ocean. She was alone.
Standing waist deep in the cool ocean water, hands shading her eyes, she searched the shoreline. All of the buildings behind the boardwalk looked pretty much the same – a stretch of white and pink rectangles and squares. She squinted and peered, looking for the beach umbrella that was draped with her father’s yellow beach robe.
“Where was it?” She had made a mental note of its location when her family had established a beach head that morning. Usually, that extra checking was enough to guide her. However, it didn’t look as if it would be enough this time. This time, she had lost track of her cousins, too
Hopefully, she thought that maybe they would lunge up out of the next wave. Then, she would recognize their shouts of glee and look in their direction and identify their colors.
But there were no familiar shouts of glee or familiar colors. With heart pounding, she covered her left eye – the weaker eye – to better focus. Her view changed from a complete blur of colors to a more focused blend, enough to allow her to distinguish individual colors. Out of the bewildering patchwork of a public beach, she was able to make out the screaming yellow smudge flagging her family’s location.
She was safe again, and no one would know that she ever felt otherwise.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The Treasure
Elizabeth Milligan
Writing Assignment for 25 May 2005
A story sandwiched between a random sentence from two books. I used Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
\
THE TREASURE
“Not at the station, at Plastunov’s, at the inn, it’s a way station, too.”
It was a dark and dreary winter night and we had a week to covertly transport the treasure from Casca across the continent to Trevi. Stella knew that it was important to stay hidden from the robbers and that robbers hung out near way stations – making travelers who stopped there easy prey.
Discovering the treasure was such an intense twisting and turning of events. Where to begin? I’ll begin with Stella (that’s me) and my friends. We lived in the dreary streets and alleys of Casca. We were, what you call, pretty low profile. Only the police noticed us.
Several years ago, we befriended Rosie when she wandered into our life and made it better. Petit, wizened, and gray Rosie always hid behind sections of greasy, gray streaked strands of hair. She never ever parted with the plastic shopping bag, the color of Dijon mustard except for the green and blue flowers covering it, slung over her good shoulder. Somehow Rosie knew exactly where the police would be, when they would be there, what they were or were not allowed to do, and how we could talk with them so that they left us pretty much alone. We exchanged cell phone numbers and always alerted each other of police-on-the horizon.
Late last night, at one of our regular head counts, we found Rosie dead and frozen in a recessed side entrance to the Cia’s department store. She was curled tightly in a corner for warmth, her knees tucked under her chin. Her gnarled hands clutched the plastic bag, still on her good shoulder, in a death grip. Believe me, it was no easy task to get that bag away from Rosie so that we could see what was inside. We were disappointed.
All we saw was a bundle cocooned with layers of ragged gray cotton and linen like the tattered clothes Rosie always wore. Although it was tempting, we did not scatter to search out heat vents. We blew on our hands for warmth, wrapped our clothes around us even more tightly, and peeled off the layers of cloth swathing Rosie’s bundle. We started to feel packets of bills; lots of packets of bills. We were amazed. We were freezing, too. Our fingers were cracking from the cold and we could not feel our brilliant red noses and ears. We moved our investigation to the closest, best sheltered, and least policed heat vent.
There were 27 bundles of ten $1,000 bills each wrapped with soiled white paper. And there was a note from Rosie. She wanted us to take the money to her old orphanage in Trevi. All of it except what we would need to spend to transport it and to buy ourselves warm clothes, new shopping carts, and medical insurance.
I edged a cell phone from under the torn lining in my jacket sleeve, called information, and got the number for the only orphanage in Trevi. I spoke with the Sister Superior of the orphanage, told her that we were coming, why we were coming, and that she could expect us in about a week. You know what she said?
“Dear Lord, she begged, Make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in life.”
Writing Assignment for 25 May 2005
A story sandwiched between a random sentence from two books. I used Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
\
THE TREASURE
“Not at the station, at Plastunov’s, at the inn, it’s a way station, too.”
It was a dark and dreary winter night and we had a week to covertly transport the treasure from Casca across the continent to Trevi. Stella knew that it was important to stay hidden from the robbers and that robbers hung out near way stations – making travelers who stopped there easy prey.
Discovering the treasure was such an intense twisting and turning of events. Where to begin? I’ll begin with Stella (that’s me) and my friends. We lived in the dreary streets and alleys of Casca. We were, what you call, pretty low profile. Only the police noticed us.
Several years ago, we befriended Rosie when she wandered into our life and made it better. Petit, wizened, and gray Rosie always hid behind sections of greasy, gray streaked strands of hair. She never ever parted with the plastic shopping bag, the color of Dijon mustard except for the green and blue flowers covering it, slung over her good shoulder. Somehow Rosie knew exactly where the police would be, when they would be there, what they were or were not allowed to do, and how we could talk with them so that they left us pretty much alone. We exchanged cell phone numbers and always alerted each other of police-on-the horizon.
Late last night, at one of our regular head counts, we found Rosie dead and frozen in a recessed side entrance to the Cia’s department store. She was curled tightly in a corner for warmth, her knees tucked under her chin. Her gnarled hands clutched the plastic bag, still on her good shoulder, in a death grip. Believe me, it was no easy task to get that bag away from Rosie so that we could see what was inside. We were disappointed.
All we saw was a bundle cocooned with layers of ragged gray cotton and linen like the tattered clothes Rosie always wore. Although it was tempting, we did not scatter to search out heat vents. We blew on our hands for warmth, wrapped our clothes around us even more tightly, and peeled off the layers of cloth swathing Rosie’s bundle. We started to feel packets of bills; lots of packets of bills. We were amazed. We were freezing, too. Our fingers were cracking from the cold and we could not feel our brilliant red noses and ears. We moved our investigation to the closest, best sheltered, and least policed heat vent.
There were 27 bundles of ten $1,000 bills each wrapped with soiled white paper. And there was a note from Rosie. She wanted us to take the money to her old orphanage in Trevi. All of it except what we would need to spend to transport it and to buy ourselves warm clothes, new shopping carts, and medical insurance.
I edged a cell phone from under the torn lining in my jacket sleeve, called information, and got the number for the only orphanage in Trevi. I spoke with the Sister Superior of the orphanage, told her that we were coming, why we were coming, and that she could expect us in about a week. You know what she said?
“Dear Lord, she begged, Make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in life.”
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