The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Silent Night - Revision history

Grlucas: Removed working banner.

2021-03-03T12:18:06Z

Removed working banner.

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Jules Carry: Undo revision 13249 by MKent (talk) you can't change the original text or syntax. - Fixed error.

2021-03-03T12:12:46Z

Undo revision 13249 by MKent (talk) you can't change the original text or syntax. - Fixed error.

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Jules Carry: Reverted edits by Jules Carry (talk) to last revision by MKent

2021-03-03T12:11:16Z

Reverted edits by Jules Carry (talk) to last revision by MKent

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:11, 3 March 2021
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	“You have to do it,” he said. “Convince her Paul.”		“You have to do it,” he said. “Convince her Paul.”

	I knew that this play, too, had a nude scene and that the theater owner wasn’t just complimenting my hair. He ran his fingers through the long strands and when I tried to step away he gripped my hair in his fist. In his other hand he held a plastic cup of wine and a cigarette. He was an English professor at a nearby university and had started the theater in the early ~~70s~~. He made me nervous, the way he stared at me, and held my hair, though I behaved as if he didn’t. I thought he was probably dead now, as were most of the people I knew back then. I smiled at him and sipped from my own plastic cup of wine. He wore a velvet jacket, as threadbare as the red carpet in the theater lobby. Outside, the wind blew white paper napkins in the street. I watched them flutter past the front window, waiting for him to release me.		I knew that this play, too, had a nude scene and that the theater owner wasn’t just complimenting my hair. He ran his fingers through the long strands and when I tried to step away he gripped my hair in his fist. In his other hand he held a plastic cup of wine and a cigarette. He was an English professor at a nearby university and had started the theater in the early times. He made me nervous, the way he stared at me, and held my hair, though I behaved as if he didn’t. I thought he was probably dead now, as were most of the people I knew back then. I smiled at him and sipped from my own plastic cup of wine. He wore a velvet jacket, as threadbare as the red carpet in the theater lobby. Outside, the wind blew white paper napkins in the street. I watched them flutter past the front window, waiting for him to release me.

	At the Christmas party, Paul steered me with a gentle hand on my bare back to the bar. The room warmed with humming voices—too early for the sharp laughter and raucous singing that I’d imagined. The office men, there with their wives, stood in clusters amidst swags of greens, around table tops balancing festive centerpieces. The room smelled of pine—there was a large glittering Fraser fir in the corner. Cigarette smoke wafted up from the groups, forming clouds above their heads.		At the Christmas party, Paul steered me with a gentle hand on my bare back to the bar. The room warmed with humming voices—too early for the sharp laughter and raucous singing that I’d imagined. The office men, there with their wives, stood in clusters amidst swags of greens, around table tops balancing festive centerpieces. The room smelled of pine—there was a large glittering Fraser fir in the corner. Cigarette smoke wafted up from the groups, forming clouds above their heads.

Jules Carry: Correction.

2021-03-03T12:09:35Z

Correction.

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:09, 3 March 2021
Line 43:		Line 43:
	“You have to do it,” he said. “Convince her Paul.”		“You have to do it,” he said. “Convince her Paul.”

	I knew that this play, too, had a nude scene and that the theater owner wasn’t just complimenting my hair. He ran his fingers through the long strands and when I tried to step away he gripped my hair in his fist. In his other hand he held a plastic cup of wine and a cigarette. He was an English professor at a nearby university and had started the theater in the early ~~times~~. He made me nervous, the way he stared at me, and held my hair, though I behaved as if he didn’t. I thought he was probably dead now, as were most of the people I knew back then. I smiled at him and sipped from my own plastic cup of wine. He wore a velvet jacket, as threadbare as the red carpet in the theater lobby. Outside, the wind blew white paper napkins in the street. I watched them flutter past the front window, waiting for him to release me.		I knew that this play, too, had a nude scene and that the theater owner wasn’t just complimenting my hair. He ran his fingers through the long strands and when I tried to step away he gripped my hair in his fist. In his other hand he held a plastic cup of wine and a cigarette. He was an English professor at a nearby university and had started the theater in the early 70s. He made me nervous, the way he stared at me, and held my hair, though I behaved as if he didn’t. I thought he was probably dead now, as were most of the people I knew back then. I smiled at him and sipped from my own plastic cup of wine. He wore a velvet jacket, as threadbare as the red carpet in the theater lobby. Outside, the wind blew white paper napkins in the street. I watched them flutter past the front window, waiting for him to release me.

	At the Christmas party, Paul steered me with a gentle hand on my bare back to the bar. The room warmed with humming voices—too early for the sharp laughter and raucous singing that I’d imagined. The office men, there with their wives, stood in clusters amidst swags of greens, around table tops balancing festive centerpieces. The room smelled of pine—there was a large glittering Fraser fir in the corner. Cigarette smoke wafted up from the groups, forming clouds above their heads.		At the Christmas party, Paul steered me with a gentle hand on my bare back to the bar. The room warmed with humming voices—too early for the sharp laughter and raucous singing that I’d imagined. The office men, there with their wives, stood in clusters amidst swags of greens, around table tops balancing festive centerpieces. The room smelled of pine—there was a large glittering Fraser fir in the corner. Cigarette smoke wafted up from the groups, forming clouds above their heads.

MKent at 04:03, 3 March 2021

2021-03-03T04:03:12Z

Show changes

Jules Carry: Fixes.

2021-03-03T00:01:53Z

Fixes.

Show changes

MKent at 23:16, 2 March 2021

2021-03-02T23:16:00Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:16, 2 March 2021
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	Though Carol’s parents continued to live in town, and Carol returned to live with them intermittently throughout the years, I rarely saw her. I didn’t know anyone who knew her, so for me her disappearance shouldn’t have made much difference. Still, when the fliers went up in the pharmacy and the Shop Rite and the bike shop, when they flapped on telephone poles on Park Road, I felt, as did all her old high school friends, a terrible loss. The local po- lice station began to receive sightings of Carol in New Britain, in Bridge- port. She was spotted in Vermont, in Lakeland, Florida.		Though Carol’s parents continued to live in town, and Carol returned to live with them intermittently throughout the years, I rarely saw her. I didn’t know anyone who knew her, so for me her disappearance shouldn’t have made much difference. Still, when the fliers went up in the pharmacy and the Shop Rite and the bike shop, when they flapped on telephone poles on Park Road, I felt, as did all her old high school friends, a terrible loss. The local po- lice station began to receive sightings of Carol in New Britain, in Bridge- port. She was spotted in Vermont, in Lakeland, Florida.

			But I knew she was none of those places. She’d been last seen leaving her parents’ house, walking down Gun Hill Road. Her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, couldn’t say the exact time. Her father had been in the base- ment watching the game on television and had fallen asleep. The night she disappeared, the barn at Folly Farm caught fire. The fire department re- sponse was swift, but the freezing temperatures hampered the fire fighters’ efforts, and twenty horses were lost to smoke inhalation. She had nothing to do with the fire—a spark in the wiring caused it to smolder and then rage— but everyone would associate the barn fire and her disappearance the way that people always associate tragedies. “They come in threes.”

			For me, the third loss was the death of my first husband, whom I’d long divorced. He drove his car off the road leaving the old Gun Club and hit a tree. If my sisters and I had stayed married to our local boys we would all three be widows now. Or we would have been in the car with them when the accident happened. Our bodies might have been found in shallow graves in the woods or asphyxiated in our station wagons in our garages. And even if there had been a chance to go back and start over, who’s to say what we would have done differently? Who’s to say how things might have turned out.

MKent at 23:14, 2 March 2021

2021-03-02T23:14:58Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:14, 2 March 2021
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	Somehow, I urged her back to the house, to the party. I found the friends I had arrived with, but they weren’t ready to leave, so I found the boy giving the party, the one who would become my husband, and he and I climbed into his car. We drove into a snowbank that night, and the police came, and I was taken home in a cruiser to my mother, who answered the door in her floral printed robe. “Aren’t you a little old for this sort of behavior?” she said, barring my way inside.		Somehow, I urged her back to the house, to the party. I found the friends I had arrived with, but they weren’t ready to leave, so I found the boy giving the party, the one who would become my husband, and he and I climbed into his car. We drove into a snowbank that night, and the police came, and I was taken home in a cruiser to my mother, who answered the door in her floral printed robe. “Aren’t you a little old for this sort of behavior?” she said, barring my way inside.

			Back in high school, we were like cars stalled out on a small back road— waiting for some kind of life to start, as if we needed only to remain still for it to find us. Eventually, you got a job at Travelers or Connecticut General or Aetna, or you married and had children and bought a little house in a suburb and were grateful. Changing diapers and letting out the dog you were happy you had security and a car in the driveway to take to the store for milk.

			Carol never wanted anything like that. She took up with an older man who kept her in an apartment downtown, not far from the Sheraton where I had my Christmas party. She didn’t have to work. She only had to be beau- tiful when she was with him—at business dinners and on trips to Napa. I’m not sure what else happened to her then. I was married and had two children I pushed in a double stroller around town—a replica of that scene created for the picture riddle book— sneaking my covert cigarettes. I passed Folly Farm on my walks, the baby throwing out his pacifier into the road, the horses coming to the fence for windfall apples. The smell of manure and hay and mud, the swarm of flies followed me along the fence. I was not myself then. I had become someone else at some indistinct point in my past, assumed a disguise and then grown so used to it I had forgotten the other per- son—the one in the peach satin halter dress who imagined the man from work undoing the bow at her neck.

			Though Carol’s parents continued to live in town, and Carol returned to live with them intermittently throughout the years, I rarely saw her. I didn’t know anyone who knew her, so for me her disappearance shouldn’t have made much difference. Still, when the fliers went up in the pharmacy and the Shop Rite and the bike shop, when they flapped on telephone poles on Park Road, I felt, as did all her old high school friends, a terrible loss. The local po- lice station began to receive sightings of Carol in New Britain, in Bridge- port. She was spotted in Vermont, in Lakeland, Florida.

MKent at 23:12, 2 March 2021

2021-03-02T23:12:42Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:12, 2 March 2021
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	I’d expected her to laugh about it, but her eyes filled with tears.		I’d expected her to laugh about it, but her eyes filled with tears.
	“It was you?” she said. “You fucked my boyfriend?”		“It was you?” she said. “You fucked my boyfriend?”

			It surprised me, to see her cry. She yanked her sweater away, and I felt the
			cold surround me. I protested, but she wouldn’t listen. Even if I’d told the truth about what happened, I saw she wouldn’t care.

			Somehow, I urged her back to the house, to the party. I found the friends I had arrived with, but they weren’t ready to leave, so I found the boy giving the party, the one who would become my husband, and he and I climbed into his car. We drove into a snowbank that night, and the police came, and I was taken home in a cruiser to my mother, who answered the door in her floral printed robe. “Aren’t you a little old for this sort of behavior?” she said, barring my way inside.

MKent at 23:11, 2 March 2021

2021-03-02T23:11:59Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:11, 2 March 2021
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	Paul walked off, and Carol told me how he would always love her and that hating him was her revenge. I admired her confidence in his feelings for her, and I confessed to her that she was right.		Paul walked off, and Carol told me how he would always love her and that hating him was her revenge. I admired her confidence in his feelings for her, and I confessed to her that she was right.

			“When I went out with him, he called me your name.”
			I’d expected her to laugh about it, but her eyes filled with tears.
			“It was you?” she said. “You fucked my boyfriend?”