Jace Rose Malmquist

Story Statement: By looping through memories of old Florida summers with Gram and too much time in Ohio, the protagonist processes anger with their mother, grief for their brother, and their longing for a home that no longer exists. 

The Antagonists: Sometimes, because of their OCD, the narrator is their own antagonist. Other times, it is the mother (depressed, too thin, deeply into the aesthetic side of life) because the protagonist believes she sent them away to live in Ohio when they were four. And sometimes, the antagonist is the protagonist’s faultless husband who the protagonist believes wishes for someone else.

Breakout Title: Beautydance. I would list other options but this is the only title I’d ever agree to publish the book under.

Comparables: Beautydance is a story about how illness, religion, relationships and adventures all swirl together in our childhoods, similar to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. It’s also a story about traveling: the people you meet and relationships you make along the way, as in William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways.

Hookline: Missing those good old summers in Florida, a young woman returns to the place of her favorite childhood home, facing—along the way—anger with her mother, grief for her brother, and the heavy impermanence of everything.

Turmoil: The character’s OCD manifests as loops; sometimes, they loop through memories, and sometimes, they get stuck on certain thoughts and behaviors. This underscores “the thing” with Ohio, guilt over the brother’s passing, fear of the husband leaving. Character resolves most conflicts by looping through memories and ideas over and over until she gets closer to, or right at, the heart of things.

Setting: One of the first and most important settings is Gram's jungley Florida cottage home: wet green everywhere with a screened-in porch and mulberry bushes far in the back. Kids (and Gram) run around barefoot and the street is quiet, not too many houses on it yet.

I’m working three jobs leading up to this conference or I’d take time to write more today (sorry all of this reads so rough drafty; it totally is)—can’t WAIT to be there!

Jace

This excerpt is from the beginning of my first novella, Beautydance (still in the process of reworking it for my thesis). Opening scene introduces three main characters (protagonists, I guess: myself, Bob, and Gram), shares a core setting (Gram's cottage home in Florida), and foreshadows one of the story's main conflicts (brother's illness).

Oh, you know what I’m talking about, she says, laughing her way through saying it. 

I really don’t, I say, laughing with her. 

Tennessee, that’s where we are, Gram kicking her feet out and rocking back in her pastel-colored dining room chair, the cushiony one that looks like Florida, rosy lips stretching to show all her teeth and eyes closing tight cause when she laughs like this, she can't handle herself.  

My stomach does a little lurch, dreading that part of the future when her round body and bright eyes will relax completely and there will be no more of this sound. I think about it pretty often, what’s going to happen, because of what’s already happened. So I pay attention when she laughs; look down for a second; shut my eyes; try to record it all in my head. 

I’m TALKING about the time you and Bob wanted to get asked to that little neighbor's birthday party ‘cross the street from my house, remember that?  

Yeah, I remember that. 

And do you remember what I told you to DO, her last “do” going up and getting loud, ending kind of punchy. 

I smile. Yeah, I say, changing the way my legs are crossed. You told us to go outside and look bored. You said we should stand in the front yard and walk around for a while, kick our feet and try to look sad.  

We did: I kicked up and down the tall bleached grass that day, barefoot in Gram's old Florida cottage yard. I looked this way and that down her long skinny road, pretending to be checking for people and cars, while my brother Bobby, a bony, bald-headed child, stood and stared at the neighbor’s house openly. I knew we were supposed to look everywhere but there, the place we wanted to look at, but Bob never beat around the bush about anything, and I couldn’t tell him what to do. You try to do that and he would scream, darken his eyes and shake his fists and say your name like a curse you’ll never get lifted.  

Gram’s laughing and nodding now, enjoying the feel of conspiring all over again. Worked, didn’t it?  

Yep, it worked, I say. We had a blast. That day was so fun.  

Oh, you scared me to DEATH when you went off in the DEEP end of the pool. You remember that, Rosebud?  

Shaking her head.  

I specifically told you to stay in the shallow part, but you just HAD to go off in the deep end! Shaking, shaking. 

She wants me to go on and on about the pool, the party, Bob, the whole thing, how we were standing there kicking until a middle-aged neighbor lady with sure eyes and a slight smile came to stand at the edge of the yard. I’d watched her walk toward us with her arms swinging lightly, the toe of her moving foot pointing up each time she took another step. While my mom would say she was fat, the lady looked good to me: healthy, strong, like she knew how to use her weight, and happy too. I think it was her quiet strength and easy smile that I noticed and liked the most.  

We’re having a little party in the backyard for my daughter’s birthday today, she said. Would you two like to come over and join us? She nodded up and down encouragingly, looking from me to Bob, staying on Bob a little longer. Do you both have swimsuits?  

I don’t think I even said anything back to her, just nodded a few times in disbelief. Gram was right: look bored and people will notice you, will be kind to you, will invite you to things and help you out and show you a really nice time. That’s helped me out over the years, the “be shy, look small” thing, but it also made me put off being brave and extending those friendly invites myself.  

As far as getting to the pool party, boredom was perfect bait. We ran across the street barefoot, me quick as a bear and Bob in his slow way. In the backyard, he lingered at the snack table as party hat boys and girls grabbed things: toothpicks and grapes and cheese curls in white styrofoam bowls you could punch a fork through and spray-cheese cracker plates with chips that had a speckled dip beside them. I watched Bob stand there with his own small plate. It was shaking a little though he was holding it so carefully in his left hand while looking at the table considering things, everything. He looked content and everyone blurred past him, too busy to bother him, so I turned around, chewing on a pretzel that had lost its crisp. I headed towards the pool.  

The pool: The easy side I knew, the big side? 

I knew what I was supposed to do and knew that Gram wasn’t watching me, but she would cross that warm street barefoot herself, probably doing it now, checking for people and cars, so I went for it feet first, knees up, and eyes clenched closed, feeling nothing but beautiful cold on a warm summer body for the first two seconds. 

Wonderful. Then, pain in my nose, thousands of silver pin pricks on the weird inside and the sick smell of chlorine. I remember the sound of my own breath coming up with the kicking and then my body dipping a little but coming back up again with more kicking. I made my arms into windmills, figuring out how to keep my head above the blue so my breathing could steady, steady; after a few seconds of not-dipping, I was steady. And the magic. My feet touched nothing here. I was more than half in and a little bit out, ready for Gram to see. 

Rosebud! she hissed, right on cue and loud enough just for me. WHAT are you DOING! I tilted my head back and found a watery and angry Gram putting me in shadow, high in the sky and trees: pouty lips, squinty eyes, fisty. She never used her fists but she’d make ‘em, and you’d better not laugh when she did. 

Get over to the side and get out now—RIGHT, NOW, she stomped. Come on, girly; OUT!  

I don’t think I said anything then either, chlorine water making my lips slick and my smile slippy as I kicked and moved my arms around, wild, no bottom or ceiling, in the big.