Crossing the Moon by Alden Paulette

Author:Alden, Paulette [Alden, Paulette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Radiator Press ebook
Published: 2010-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

Jeff started law school, and he had a hard time catching on.

“I was an English major,” he’d exclaim. “I’m used to a lot of bull. I was so good at it at Princeton. But it doesn’t seem to work with law.”

One day I came in from getting some groceries to find him sitting on a bar stool in the dark apartment.

“What’s wrong?” I rushed over to him.

He shook his head. “It’s just so much,” he said, and his voice broke. His shoulders shook. “It’s just too much.”

I had never seen him cry. It frightened me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you can’t do it, you’ll do something else.” But I knew that this might be it for Jeff. He had staked a lot on law school.

He sighed deeply. I put my arms around his back, which was slouched over. I held him tight.

“I’ll fix you some supper,” I said. “You’ll feel better after you eat.”

“Then I’ll have to get back to the books,” he sighed. “I have a midterm in civil procedure tomorrow.”

Every night he’d study in the extra bedroom, trying to absorb endless case histories, sets of facts, rules of law. Every day he’d go off to classes. At night he’d grind his teeth in his sleep. I was alone a lot, and lonely.

I got a job as a waitress at a restaurant called “Poseidon by the Sea.”

Poseidon by the Sea was a big Victorian house on the Sound; we had to wear long skirts and ruffled white blouses, as if we were in a play. The owners were ignorant retired army people who treated the waitresses as servants. The “chef,” as he insisted on being called, was a retired army fry cook, a bully who would mess up or delay your orders if you didn’t laugh at his sexist, racist jokes. I wasn’t a particularly good waitress. I’d get flustered if the restaurant was too busy, forgetting which customer wanted extra blue cheese dressing and who needed more napkins.

I lasted about three months. Then I got a job as a teaching assistant at the school attached to the state institution for the mentally retarded, working with a class of severely retarded teenagers. After several months with this class, I was transferred to another classroom of less retarded, educable children who were severely physically handicapped.

I was writing short stories, though I was exhausted from my job a lot of the time. I was finding out what a lot of other people have found out, that making a living can kill off a writer. After Rainier School I worked for the Department of Developmental Disabilities, on a CETA job, helping parents secure services such as respite care and equipment so they could keep their children at home.

When funding for that job ran out, I moved to another CETA job at an organization that educated the public about child abuse and neglect. I wrote scripts for a group of actors who would perform humorous skits containing parenting information in such places as the welfare office, the mall, and at the women’s prison.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.