Begin Again: Short stories from the heart Read online

  Begin Again is a collection of emotion-filled short stories that served as a springboard for Mary Campisi’s later novels, including the much talked about A Family Affair. Along with her short stories, Mary also shares how the themes from these offerings led to full-length works.

  This collection includes: Beauty, Suffocating in Suburbia, Sam & Jack, The Landlord, Oh Christmas Tree, The Death of Mary Alice Olivetti, and Across the River. Mary also provides alternate endings for A Family Affair and Pretending Normal.

  Begin Again:

  Short stories from the heart

  by

  Mary Campisi

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Beauty

  Chapter 2: Suffocating in Suburbia

  Chapter 3: Sam & Jack

  Chapter 4: The Landlord

  Chapter 5: Oh Christmas Tree…

  Chapter 6: The Death of Mary Alice Olivetti

  Chapter 7: Across the River

  Chapter 8: Four Days a Month

  Chapter 9

  About the Author

  Other Books by Mary Campisi

  Dedication

  For those who believe in the beauty of the second chance.

  Introduction

  Some time ago, I began cleaning out files and came upon several short stories I’d written years earlier. Of course I had to read them all. I look at writing as a continual learning process—the more I write, the more I learn about it. More importantly, the more I learn about myself. I wrote some interesting pieces, some first person, some with animals as the characters delivering the greater message, some with points of view that bounce back and forth—kind of like trying out different tennis shoes or brands of coffee to see what suits me best—at the moment.

  One thing I discovered was my repeating theme—that old second chance, usually hindering on betrayal of some sort. I have lived through and seen the fallout of other people’s bad choices, but I have also survived and breathed the hope of the second chance.

  What I write is merely a perspective on something I’ve chosen to explore. Relationships in many forms intrigue me. I’m also a huge champion of the underdog—throw bad stuff on a main character and just when you think she will suffocate in the muck, she’ll dig her way out and be much stronger for that very muck. Love that stuff. I also write about people who make choices for a perceived happiness or because they aren’t up to the task of the ‘hard stuff’ of living. Sadly, they lose in the end, like Gloria Blacksworth, of A Family Affair. There are also those like my buddy, Harry Blacksworth, again of A Family Affair, who have dodged accountability for years and despise themselves for it. Redemption comes in many forms and for those who can tolerate Harry’s vulgar mouth and incessant womanizing to glimpse the fractured soul beneath—there is hope for him.

  I’m offering these stories to readers so they may see how certain novels evolved. Chunks of thought, bits and pieces of a theme, all topsy-turvy but eventually smoothing out into a full novel. Or two. Or ten. Enjoy!

  Chapter 1

  Beauty

  He watched her as she stroked the brush across the canvas, her long, black hair swaying with each movement. She wore it loose today and he knew it would smell of raspberries and honey. How many times had he imagined her standing just like this, the late afternoon sun casting her face and body in perfect profile?

  “Angela.”

  His voice startled her and the paintbrush thudded to the tiled floor in a splash of bright red. She lowered her head and did not turn.

  He moved toward her, stopped when he was less than ten feet away. “Angela,” he breathed again. And then, he forced out the word he’d carried with him for five months, over an ocean, across a continent, through dozens of cities. “Why?”

  Her shoulders drooped and he thought of the smattering of tiny moles high on her right shoulder. He’d once told her they reminded him of the constellation Orion and she’d gifted him with a laugh—rich, golden, mesmerizing.

  “Do you have any idea how many Jensens there are in Minnesota? Three hundred fifty-two.” Why wouldn’t she look at him, at least give him that? “I know you’re probably wondering how I even knew to look in this state, after all, Rome is a long way from Minnesota.” He let out a small laugh but it plunged to the floor and splattered between them.

  Her head bent lower, and still she said nothing.

  “I guess I have Mary Tyler Moore to thank,” he went on, wondering if she was going to shrink inside herself right in front of him. “You told me how your mother loved that show and how she’d take you into the city, to the same street where Mary Tyler Moore yanked off her hat and threw it in the air. You used to do the same thing, see how high you could throw it.” How ridiculous, that an insignificant scrap of conversation would lead him halfway across the world… to her.

  He took a step closer.

  “No!” She held up a hand, bent her head lower. “Please. Leave.”

  “Angela—”

  “Please.”

  The request gouged the center of his heart. He couldn’t leave, not without answers. “Look at me and tell me Rome meant nothing to you.”

  When he knew she wasn’t going to answer, he said, “I don’t get it. We share three incredible weeks together and then I leave for a four-day assignment and the whole time all I can think about is getting back to you. But when I return, everything’s gone—you, your paintings, us. And all anybody wants to talk about is the guy who went berserk and threw acid on ‘beauty.’”

  Had she just whimpered? And then it dawned on him. “It was your work he destroyed, wasn’t it? That’s why you ran away.”

  She tried to bury her face in her hands but he stepped in front of her and grasped them. Swollen red scars smeared the left side of her once flawless skin. “Angela.”

  She spoke then, a mere whisper of breath. “Now you understand. Please. Leave.”

  He reached out, trailed his fingers over the red flesh with reverence. How could she think he didn’t want her anymore? Didn’t she know her physical appearance was just a shell that housed the real beauty—her heart, her soul?

  Didn’t she know he loved her, would always love her?

  “Beauty,” he whispered, placing his lips where his fingers had been, planting small kisses on her scarred flesh. “My beauty.”

  The End

  It would appear I like to write about that one true love that does not die or fade, no matter time or circumstance. Beauty is a very short story in which a couple meets, has an instant connection and then is separated. The hero searches for his one true love—tirelessly, with determination, and boundless hope. When he finds her and learns the tragic story that has shattered her and caused her to give up all hope for a life with him, he embraces her and loves her more. Boy, don’t we all want that? When our man sees us without makeup, ten pounds… okay, twenty pounds heavier…. distressed, throwing up, you name it…. don’t we want to know he will still love us? No matter what we toss in his way—as a test of sorts? The books that grew out of Beauty are Pulling Home, Paradise Found, and The Way They Were. At some point, I would like to write a book based on the premise behind Beauty. Maybe three parts. His story, hers, and theirs. For those who have not read the aforementioned titles, I’ve provided a brief overview of each.

  I would like to take this moment to mention my subconscious affinity for selecting titles that begin with ‘P’…. I would also like to state that those days are done!

  It's all about that second chance...

  Sometimes we're lucky enough to get that second chance-in life and in love. That Second Chance Series are stories of strong
women who battle heartache and loss with courage and determination to find new paths and true love. These books are standalones and are NOT related. Therefore, the characters from one story will not appear in another. What ties them together? A common theme-belief in the beauty of that second chance.

  That Second Chance Series:

  Book One: Pulling Home

  Book Two: The Way They Were

  Book Three: Simple Riches

  Book Four: Paradise Found

  Pulling Home

  She'll risk anything to save her child...even the truth.

  It's taken nine years and a cross-country move, but Audra Valentine Wheyton has kept her secrets safe. She's created the perfect life-a husband who loves her, a daughter she adores, and a position as head writer of an award-winning daytime soap. When her husband dies suddenly, Audra returns to her hometown for the funeral and faces a community that has not forgotten her meager beginnings and a man who has never forgiven her for marrying his brother.

  Jack Wheyton is a successful pediatric neurosurgeon who is about to become engaged when Audra walks back into his life with her daughter. He forgave his brother long ago for taking something that had been his, something he hadn't even realized he wanted until it was gone. But forgiving Audra is another story...and forgetting her? Near impossible.

  When a shattering illness strikes Audra's daughter, she turns to Jack to save her child and risks exposing a secret that will change their lives forever.

  The Way They Were

  Tragedy tore them apart. Destiny will bring them back together.

  He hasn’t spoken her name in fourteen years. She keeps a journal hidden in the back of her closet and permits herself to write about him once a year—on the anniversary of the first and only time they made love. They promised to love one another forever, but tragedy tore them apart. Now, destiny may just bring them back together.

  At eighteen, Rourke Flannigan and Kate Redmond thought they’d spend the rest of their lives together—until a family tragedy tore them apart. Fourteen years have passed and they’ve both carved out separate lives hundreds of miles apart—hers as a wife and mother, his as a successful, driven businessman. But once a year, on the anniversary of her daughter’s birth, Kate pulls out a red velvet journal and writes a letter, which she’ll never send, to the man who still owns her heart. Once a year, on the anniversary of the first and only time they made love, Rourke permits himself to read the annual investigative report detailing an ordinary day in Kate’s life.

  When a subcontractor at one of Rourke’s holding companies is killed, Rourke decides to pay the widow a visit and offer condolences, never dreaming the widow will be Kate. As they embark on a cautious journey of rediscovery, one far greater than they could have imagined, secrets and lies threaten to destroy their newfound closeness—forever.

  Paradise Found

  How does one see truly--with the heart or with the eyes?

  Matt Brandon has it all—wealth, power, looks, and talent. Women want him, men want to be like him. When a freak ski accident strips him of one of life's most basic needs—his sight—he struggles to accept the possibility that his blindness may be permanent.

  Enter, psychologist, Sara Hamilton, a woman who has known her own share of grief and loss and may just be the one person who can help Matt redefine his new world. Sara is every woman's woman—she's not a toothpick or a Cosmo girl, has never been prom queen, or dated the blond-haired god with the big white teeth. She's honest and decent and real...and lives on the perimeter, applauding her patients' successes, nursing them through their failures, but never acknowledging or accepting her own lackings. She's loved and lost once and has been so emotionally scarred, she's not willing to risk those feelings again.

  Of course, she's never met a man like Matt Brandon. As Matt and Sara explore the delicate balance between 'blind' trust and hope, they will discover that sometimes you have to lose everything to find what you are truly looking for...

  Chapter 2

  Suffocating in Suburbia

  It is late afternoon and I am peeling potatoes for dinner. The dryer thumps in methodical cadence while Black Eyed Peas hammers my brain from the floor above.

  I set down the peeler, stare at my hands. The knuckles are chapped, the nails short, the cuticles rough. Eighteen years have stolen the sparkle from the ring on my left hand. I should take it to the jeweler’s but there is always a list and never an end.

  I should clean the corner behind the stool where the dog hair piles up in black fluffy clouds, vacuum the furnace grates, suck up the tiny stones and bits of dirt—and more dog hair. I should sew the last seven patches on the Girl Scout vest so there will be no more snippy remarks about another meeting passed without patches. I should buy bread — unsliced Italian in a brown bag—the kind he likes with beef soup. And I should definitely go to the basement, right now, hop on the treadmill and walk, beginner level, fifteen minutes, no incline. I scratch my knuckles. They begin to bleed. Jergens Intensive Care, that’s what I should really do.

  I should do all of these things, perhaps at least some of them. Maybe even one.

  And I should care that I have not.

  I grab the potato peeler, clutch it so hard my thumb hurts. I want to scream, I am done with the taking, the expecting, the crowding, but I cannot let it come out. I sink further into indifference, my own and theirs.

  And I do not even care.

  But I did care once, when I had a brain that calculated more complicated tasks than the number of potatoes that serves four for vegetable soup, back when I had something to say that didn’t end in discipline or disappointment. Or disillusionment.

  I want my life back. It is a faint whisper rustling through my body.

  No one hears because they are too busy with their own needs, their own perceived emergencies, to see I am dying, breath by breath, right in front of them. Even he is deaf to my quiet pleas. Do I not speak loudly enough, or clearly enough, or with enough conviction? Do I not understand what it is I am asking for? Is there no room for asking, only taking? How would I begin to take when I have been the giver for so long? And what would I take? Time? Peace? Energy?

  The garage door opens signaling his arrival. 5:20. Dinner is always at 5:30. I get up, walk to the stove, stir the soup.

  I dream at night, only I think they are not dreams at all, these long imaginings of myself laughing, talking, smoothing my hair back from my face—smiling. I am thinking these things outside of sleep, thinking this is how I want my life to be, how it should be. How I need it to be. And then, he says, “Did you remember to pay the line of credit today?”

  I do not open my eyes. “Yes.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  I start to drift back to the place of my imaginings, where I am happy, at peace.

  “You feel wonderful.” His fingers move down my hip. “So soft.” He brushes his lips over my temple.

  I know this dance, each step, each turn, each gasp, in darkness or light it is all the same. I reach up, turn out the light.

  I do not open my eyes. I do not need to. It is all the same.

  The End

  Suffocating in Suburbia embodies a woman’s struggle with her life of discontent. She has a husband, children, a home, but somewhere along the way, she has lost herself. I wrote this story years before I penned Not Your Everyday Housewife, which many know sprang from the time period when I had my mother recuperating in my living room from a fall where she fractured her humerus, and which necessitated me sleeping on the couch for a month. The morning my mother returned from the emergency room, my then sixteen-year-old daughter was hospitalized, (different hospital), with pneumonia. It was a period of time with too many teenagers in the house and during which I decided to write a wry and humorous take on life after forty, which included blubber, exes, and starting over. Many readers tell me they recognize themselves in this tale. Yes, it might be a bit over the top, but it was the best prescription I could write at the time and I am always delighte
d to share it with others.

  Not Your Everyday Housewife

  A wise and humorous tale of living large after 40 as women finally make peace with themselves— wrinkles, blubber, neuroses, exes, and all.

  Three women embark on a month long ‘discovery’ journey and uncover quite a few tidbits along the way … one bottle of Clairol Midnight will not cover a full head of red hair, and never talk to men wearing polyester pants hiked up with a tan belt. But most of what they unearth is about themselves—who they are, what they really want, what they really DON'T want. The center of controversy is a Maid-for-You mixer which symbolizes a boring, routine suburban life with NO second chances—then along comes insight in the form of Tula Rae, a sixty-something Salsa dancing, Dalai Lama quoting, four-time widow in spandex and a gray braid who gives them a different perspective on life, love, do-overs and the real reason a man buys his woman a Maid-for-You mixer, (which she says is all about S-E-X.)

  Suffocating in Suburbia also planted the idea for Pieces of You, Book One of The Betrayed Trilogy. The mother in this story, Evie Burnes, drives to the grocery story in the small town where she lives and disappears. What she leaves behind is a family struggling to deal with what has happened and a son who discovers the horrible truth behind her disappearance. This truth leaves him scarred and incapable of trusting anyone. The overview follows, but many readers say they don’t understand the mother’s choice, feel it’s selfish, hurtful, and truly dislike her. I have children and can’t even contemplate such an act. Yet, this woman does. When book three of The Betrayed Trilogy is available, I will release a novella about Evie Burnes and the life she led before the disappearance. It will be a culmination of sorts for readers who have many questions.