As part of my promise to keep you informed, I want to share a common dilemma: how to create characters based on real people without making them so real that the reader knows who they are? My story, which takes place in a small town in Ohio (uh huh), involves a young woman who works in a department store (uh huh). In reality very few of the characters in Lies Between Floors are based even loosely on real people. But I do have some. My biggest fear is that local readers might assume that the owner of Graham’s Department Store, John Graham, is based on my father. John starts out a good guy but ends up kind of a cad, not my father!
Margaret does get caught writing stories based too much on real people. She’s writing for a true confessions magazine, way below her talent and upbringing; but it keeps her entertained. She is writing under the pseudonym Lydia Bailey. In the following scene her friend Lena is the subject of a story about being seduced by Santa. Mrs. Gibbons is the town gossip; Mr. Beals is the old guy who has the job Margaret wants; Pete is the traveling salesman who has been harassing Margaret. Has Margaret taken too much for granted? Has she let opportunity cloud her judgment? Mount Vernonites…have I crossed any lines here?!!!!! Following is an excerpt that describes the consequences. Comments welcome.
Chapter 19 – Margaret Gets Published
The boy and his father didn’t come into the store after Christmas, and they disappeared from my thoughts. The snow, however, was ever present. The winter passed as only winters in Ohio do—slowly, chillingly, and with heavy gray skies. Mother was still hanging on, and Mrs. Beals died just after Christmas, so I didn’t even have her as an unwitting ally hassling Mr. Beal to retire. In fact, Mr. Beals’ rosy cheeks grew rosier with each snowy day.
Pete had been on the road doing his carpet salesman thing, and I felt blessed that business kept him occupied with customers in other towns. The green and white car hadn’t made another appearance, either, so my life was comfortably boring. Good.
I continued to write my stories in the evenings after a day of working in my vertical cell, and I had finally mailed three stories to Forbidden Loves Magazine: Seduced by Santa in April, Waltzed into Her Arms in May, and The Gossip in June. I had carefully wrapped each in butcher paper, and cradled them to my breast as I marched to the Post Office. Handing them over was made easier by the post clerk’s promise to gently place them in the outgoing bin. What happened to them after that I had no choice but to entrust them to the U.S. Postal Service and to the anonymous secretaries who would deliver them to the desks of over-worked editors.
I had opened a post office box for any replies to Lydia Bailey, and checked its contents once a week for responses. One day in March, when nature was teasing us with chirping robins and warm sunshine, I checked the post office box for the second time in a week. I put the key into the brass keyhole, and hesitated before turning. As I did every time, I pictured a letter sitting there, forming a hypotenuse to the right angles of the box. I swung open the solid little door and had to blink. There was a letter—positioned exactly as I had imagined!
My hand grabbed the envelope in time with the beating of my heart—I thought I might faint. I ripped the envelope open and out fell a check from between the folds of a letter. I picked up the $25.00 check, whose amount didn’t excite me as much as its symbolism of my writing’s worth. “Dear Miss Bailey” the letter began. Oblivious to anything that was going on around me, I read an editor’s gushing review of my Santa and Waltz stories and one would be published in April and the other in May. Published!
I twirled and held the letter to my breast, then caught the eye of the postman who was catching up on paperwork until another customer came.
“Margaret, you seem pretty excited,” he said, tilting his head in anticipation to my response. “Are you receiving love letters on the sly?” He winked.
My heart sank because I couldn’t share my good news with him. I came down from my mountain peak of headiness. “Oh, nothing like that. Just a response to a foreign pen pal I have.”
“Must be some pen pal,” he muttered, and he went back to work.
I wanted to run to the front steps of the Post Office and wave the letter to all who passed by. I couldn’t tell my mother because she would want to share the story with everyone at the hospital. I couldn’t tell Lena because she is the subject of one of the stories. I was trapped in my own private world of celebration.
I went home and celebrated alone with a congratulatory gin and tonic. I sat in my chintz chair, the scene of my writing revelations, and stewed about my dilemma. My drink was not enough company, and I realized that writing under a pseudonym had its downfall. But I told myself that to ignore the dramas I witnessed each day on the elevator would have been an aspiring writer’s loss of opportunity .
A few weeks later I received my own copy of Forbidden Loves. There, on the cover, was the feature story, emblazoned in red: “Seduced by Santa – by Lydia Bailey.” On the cover! I could scarcely breathe. If I could have wallpapered my living room with the magazine I would have.
I took the magazine into my den and sat down to savor the moment. I caressed the glossy paper as though it were my child. With my finger I traced the letters that spelled out “Lydia Bailey,” and in my mind the letters metamorphosed into Margaret Landings. I opened the magazine and slowly turned the page to the table of contents. Page 10. My story has a home—page 10. Ignoring the other stories, I turned to that page and gasped. The illustration of Santa and Louise was dead on…it was Lena. I had described her too well, and the artist followed my lead. My hands and feet turned to lead, and my heart thumped. “Oh, this is bad, really bad,” I said to no one.
********
I went up to the employee lounge one afternoon, and flash of red caught my eye—there on the table was the April copy of Forbidden Loves. I was stunned—and confused. Forbidden Loves had never been one of the magazines that people brought to the lounge.
My chest felt hollow, and my face grew hot. Never have I had such conflicting emotions—pride at seeing MY magazine article on a coffee table and fear that people in Liberty would recognize Lena and try to identify the author.
I looked around the room to see if there was a bag I could put it in so I could take it with me. There wasn’t any so I grabbed the magazine and hid it under a cushion of the couch; I’d come back for it later.
I went back to my elevator station and watched to see if anyone treated me differently. Mr. Beals walked by with a sign for the front window. He gave me a little wink like he usually does. Mrs. Remington was whistling and dusting her glass cases, her flabby upper arms quivering with each swipe of her dust cloth. John Graham smiled at me as he headed towards the office. I looked from person to person but saw no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. But who would have put that magazine there?
“Hi, Margaret.” Lena smiled at me from the pile of men’s shirts she was arranging. She had softened once the new year began. She always was a believer in carrying out New Year’s resolutions and maybe being nice to me was one of them.
I returned a weak smile and scrutinized her face for any sign of sarcasm, accusation or judgment. Nothing.
Ding! Someone on the second floor needed a ride. It was Mrs. Gibbons.
“Hello, dear.” Mrs. Gibbons was, I thought, being a little too friendly. Her smile was big and her gait a little too springy. Or was I imagining things?
“Hello. How are you today?” I watched her face for any signs that she knew about the magazine article.
“Oh, I was just looking for a dress for a wedding. You wouldn’t believe what I saw in one of the dressing rooms.”
“And what was that, Mrs. Gibbons?” I pictured underwear or a torn dress put back on the hanger.
“Someone left one of those trashy magazines in there…Forbidden Loves. Who reads that awful stuff?”
That hollow feeling struck my chest again. Another one? “Did you look at which issue it was?”
“The issue doesn’t matter…I would be too embarrassed to open its pages. I sure hope someone doesn’t think I left it in there. I gave it to one of the clerks to throw away.” With her gloved hand she mimicked tossing something disgusting into the trash.
“That was probably the right thing to do,” I said.
I opened the doors on the first floor, and Mrs. Gibbons stepped out. She turned back and said, “I hope you don’t read that kind of thing, dear.” She walked away. She may as well have told me that my slip was showing again. People are able to humiliate me for a variety of reasons—this time it’s the possibility of Lydia Bailey making her literary debut as Margaret Landings.
When I took my break, I hurried to the employee lounge to get rid of the magazine under the sofa cushion. I had to pretend to be fixing my hair until the notions clerk left, then I dove to the sofa. I reached under the cushion and expected to feel the edges of the magazine only to feel—nothing. I was sick. Somebody had obviously taken it, but who looks under cushions in an employee lounge? I was a mouse, being toyed with by a noxious cat.
And from the next chapter:
I entered my mother’s room to see Betty the nurse and my mother giggling, as much as Mother could giggle in her weakened condition. Her weak and air deprived giggle gave me both pleasure that she was having some fun and sadness that she was so ill. Betty was reading something to her—from a magazine—the April issue of Forbidden Loves. The sight punched me in the stomach.
Betty looked up, laughing. “You’ve got to join us, Margaret. I’m reading this hysterical story to your mother about a woman’s affair with Santa.” She brandished the magazine towards me. “It is so funny. Who in the world thinks up these things?” She pulled the magazine back and read aloud. “ ‘Do you have any toys for Santa in there?’” Betty giggled, and my mother grinned. “And get this…the illustrator drew someone who looks like the woman who works in Grahams menswear department…really now, that woman who would never mess around with Santa or anyone else, for that matter.” She winked at Mother.
A thundercloud of emotion opened and dumped its torrents on me. I could not escape the fallout—the story that I wrote with glee in my fingers I now regretted with my heart. I turned and bolted out of the room—the image of a delighted Betty holding up the magazine searing my brain. I went to the end of the hall where a small alcove gave me some cover, and the thunderbolts of reality crashed.
