100th Blog Entry

Dear readers,

That does sound very 19th century, doesn't it?

This is my 100th blog entry. Over the past eleven-plus months and 200 pages of writing, I have shared with you chunks of research, family stories, musings, history, short stories that are if not 100% factual at least truthful, observations and discoveries about my paternal great-grandmother Leta's scandalous and remarkable life. I hope you have enjoyed reading the various entries. I also hope you are interested in reading the book, once it's finished.

For this entry, I have a kind of puzzlement. On occasion I have had to seriously contemplate how to approach more sensitive material. After all, some of the people in this story are still living (including myself) and a couple of them are quite sensitive about what I’m sharing. It seems to them that I am airing some family dirty laundry, and that by studying and writing about my great-grandmother's life, I am disrespecting her. On the other hand, I believe that I am attempting to honor her by sharing her incredible story.

But lately I have been considering another aspect of the story that could be construed as far more scandalous, and maybe even a bit embarrassing. The information is highly sensitive.

I think there is a family secret, and it seems to be fitting more and more prominently into the novel, or at least into my background work on it.

I am nearly positive that including this information in the story would be met with quite a lot of resistance and not by only the more sensitive members of my family either. Still I am also thinking that to write about it in a more surreptitious way would be dishonest, not to mention obvious anyway. So that is my current dilemma.

This dilemma will need to be addressed at a later date, however.

I am sad to share that for the next few weeks, Scandalous & Remarkable is going on hiatus. This is because I need to focus my creative energies on my new solo play—Mercy Buckets—which is premiering at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September. I want the blog writing to be good; I also want the show to be good. With a new day job in the mix, I don't want to take the chance of either one being less than it could.

However, I will be back, for there is much more to Leta’s story to consider and write. Catch you later.

Marrying Butts, Part Six

Leta could see them across the room, like a pack—her date Mr. Butts, the minister she had a back seat dalliance with and the minister’s overly pleasant wife. She was regretting that she agreed to come to the afternoon lecture on flowers, but she was there, and so were they, waiting for her. She walked over to them, and Mr. Butts handed her a glass of lemonade.

"Thank you," she said, wishing it had a large splash of vodka. She downed it like it did, however.

"We've been talking," Mr. Butts said, "and Dorothy was telling me how she loves African violets, too."

"Only I can't keep them alive," she added sadly. "They just die on me."

There was a kind of pleading in her eyes for assistance, and when Leta turned her attention briefly to the minister, he had the same look for, obviously, a very different reason.

"Are you sure you have the right soil?" Leta asked. "Violets require a specific soil mixture."

"Well..." Dot stammered, looking over to her disapproving husband. "...Reverend?"

Leta was startled, and dismayed. Dot called her husband by his title? What kind of place had Mr. Butts brought her to?

"Of course, Dot," the minister said authoritatively, "you must use the proper soil."

Dot looked at him quizzically, and quickly put her chubby hand to her mouth to signal to herself that she had better not respond. Still, Leta understood the signal. The boorish flower specialist had been the one to insist that one soil was as good as any other for a plant.

Some sort of argument was brewing, and she wanted to be out of there before it did. Mr. Butts seemed to sense the same and suggested that they depart to leave the church folk to resume their day of rest. As they thanked their hosts again for the lecture, hospitality and conversation, Leta and Mr. Butts excused themselves. She shook Dot's limp hand once again, and felt sorry for the other woman, not only because her husband was seeking sexual and emotional satisfaction outside of their marriage, but also because she was devoted to him.

"Shall we get a bite to eat?" Mr. Butts asked her when they were back on the sunshine.

While Leta simply wanted to go home, she said yes. She was hungry, and there was something unusually sincere and present in his demeanor. It made her curious, because he could not have any particular pleasure from the last few minutes with the minister and his wife, which had been awkward at best. But there was, looking at her and exuding a warmth she had not felt so far in their acquaintance.

After the server took their order, he asked her about the lecture, and she replied that she hadn't found the minister that knowledgeable about the subject, at least not more knowledgeable than she, and she never considered herself an expert. He agreed, and shared that the presentation was more of a recruitment tool, to draw people into the parish. When she was in the lavatory, they had applied no little pressure in getting him to return for worship.

"I told him that we were already members of other churches, but it didn't stop them," he said. "I was glad when you returned."

"I don't have much patience with that sort of thing," she noted.

She sipped her tea, its warmth flowing into her body and relaxing her. This day wasn't turning out so badly after all.

The next thing she knew, Mr. Butts had pulled his chair closer to hers and took her left hand in his.

"Mrs. Bassett--Leta," he said, looking her right in the eyes. She had never noticed that for such a fair-skinned man he had very dark eyes. She looked right back at him. "I like being with you, even when we're doing something neither of us much likes. And I'd like for us to be together all the time. As man and wife.

"Now, I know that we haven't known each other very long," he continued, but we're neither of us getting any younger, and before too much longer I'm going to be really busy with the harvest. I'd like you to be there with me. So what I'm asking is if you'll marry me."

Leta was more surprised by her own reaction than she was by Arthur's proposal. She realized that she also wanted to marry him, and so she agreed.

Two days later, she was Mrs. Arthur Butts.

The End 

Marrying Butts, Part Five

The dreaded moment arrived. Leta would have to interact with a man with whom she had frolicked in the backseat of his car, a minister no less, who had just finished delivering a somewhat mediocre talk on flowers at his small church. At this moment, she regretted the moment she first consented to attending with her current beau, Mr. Butts. But here they were. Mr. Butts was introducing her to the minister and his plump and frumpy wife.

"--my friend, Miss Bassett," Mr. Butts said quickly.

Leta offered her hand politely, and the minister shook it vigorously, a little too vigorously. Although he seemed a cool as a cucumber, a glint of panic raced through his eyes, and Leta knew he recognized her.

She had experienced that look once before. He was subtly begging her not to indicate anything that might be considered any kind of recognition or familiarity. Like most men, he didn't for a second consider that she might have as much, if not more than he, to lose.

"How do you do?" she said.

Then she shook his wife's hand.

"Do please stay for refreshments," she said graciously.

"Thank you," Mr. Butts said before Leta could excuse them, "we would be delighted.

Leta gripped her handbag tightly and smiled.

"Come," Dorothy said, guiding the couple to the small table.

"Leta raises violets," Butt said, as they walked.

Leta growled a sigh again, her third for the afternoon. For a man of few words, Mr. Butts was awfully loquacious in this setting.

"Is there a ladies' room?" Leta asked, suddenly terribly concerned about her appearance.

"Why yes, dear" Dorothy said in that annoyingly motherish condescending kind of way.

As Leta entered the small room with it's equally tiny mirror in which she could barely see half her face at one time, she shook her head to no one in particular. No wonder the minister sought female companionship, she thought. Dorothy's personality would drive any kind of passionate man to seek release elsewhere.

Then she stood back a bit. She looked worse than she thought. Her hair was lopsided with a large clump following it's own style, and the bags under her eyes were growing. Plus, her skin looked rough.

"Dammit," she said aloud and then quickly covered her mouth with her hands. She was in a house of the Lord, after all. Such inappropriate language signaled to her that she was fading quickly. She needed to get out of there before her growing irritation—born in sleep deprivation and exacerbated by the situation—caused her to say something she would regret.

She washed her face with a little water, pinched her cheeks and applied a little lipstick. Then she adjusted her pantyhose, hand-pressed her dress and adjusted her collar. She quickly ran a comb through here matted and tangled hair. It would have to do. She arched her back and left the lavatory.

But there they were, the three of them. In those few moments, Mr. Butts had ingratiated himself with the minister and his wife, or vice versa. Actually, she didn't care which. Seeing them Standing in a little clump as they were was like getting pushed by a bully. 

To be continued. 

Marrying Butts, Part Four

Leta and the man she would later learn was a minister had several more drinks and developed a laughing rapport. Before they knew it, the bar was closing, and they were headed out.

Neither actually said a word, but they walked side-by-side to his car, where he opened the door for her like a true gentleman, the door to the back seat, that is.

"Not here," she whispered, standing closely enough to him to mingle their body heat. "Don't you know a place a little more private?"

He thought for a moment and then switched doors.

An hour later he dropped her off across the street from her home.

The memory vanished, and there he was, this same man, only now in clerical collar, talking about perennials at a small church where Arthur Butts, the man she was seeing, had taken her for an afternoon lecture.

She glanced at Mr. Butts. He looked as though he was paying attention, his eyes were focused on the speaker, but his mind could have been anywhere. No, she corrected herself, he didn't have that capability. He was actually trying to learn about flower maintenance.

She looked at the minister once again. He was droning on, but not really saying much of any value, at least not to her. Although no flower expert, she did know that whether kept inside or out, flowering plants required sunlight, water and fertilizer, and African violets special soil.

But at least he was brief, and there were only a couple of questions. He thanked everyone for coming and invited them all to lemonade and cookies before they left, and if they had a Christian heart to drop a donation into the basket near the door. More importantly, if they hadn't adopted the will of Christ into their lives, to consider returning the next Sunday for their ten a.m. service or even returning on Tuesday evening for weekly adult Bible study to learn what God wanted for them.

Then he walked down the aisle and stood at the exit to personally greet everyone.

Leta sighed a growling kind of sigh.

But she couldn't just sit there. Mr. Butts was already standing. There was no way to avoid it; she would have to greet the minister. So she did so the only way she knew how, standing tall and confident, like a woman with nothing concealed.

At first, he didn't seem to see her. He focused his attention on Mr. Butts.

"Welcome, brother, welcome," the minister said, vigorously shaking Mr. Butts' hand. "We are pleased to have you."

"Thank, you, Reverend," Mr. Butts said.

"I hope you enjoyed the lecture," the minister continued.

"Yes," Mr. Butts answered, "indeed we did.

"Let me introduce you to my wife, if you don't mind," the minister said. Then he scanned the small group quickly and called to a coterie of women standing near the corner. "Dot! Dot! Come over here and greet our visitors."

Still standing mostly behind her companion, Leta watched as the frumpy woman from the beginning of the lecture waddle away from the others and over to them at her husband's bidding. Leta felt a lump in her throat. Now what could she do?

"Darling," the minister started to say before she had arrived, "this is Mr. Butts, who has joined us today, along with--"

And with this, he reached around Mr. Butts to greet Leta properly.

To be continued. 

Marrying Butts, Part Three

There weren't enough people in the small parish for Leta to blend into the crowd, but she wished she could. She had not accepted Mr. Butts’ invitation to attend this lecture on a Sunday afternoon to be put in this position. Yet it must be inevitable that she would encounter one of her trysts at some point. That he would be the flower-lover delivering Christian minister was more than she could have anticipated.

Of course, she hadn't known he was a minister the night they met in the bar, not that it would have made any difference. He was charming and highly complimentary of the new brooch she had received from her daughter for her birthday only a month earlier.

"Someone must like you a lot," he said, his voice thick as bourbon, "that's a beautiful bauble you have there."

She liked how he said "bauble."

"Why, thank you," she responded demurely.

"A beautiful bauble on a beautiful lady," he continued.

She smiled and opened her eyes wide so that he could see how blue they were.

For a moment, she thought he might shy away. Years ago, she had stopped batting her eyes. That was the gesture of a schoolgirl, and she was a mature woman. But because of his reaction—he suddenly looked down—she wondered if she had made a mistake. He was a sturdy man, he seemed direct and he held his glass of whiskey as if he was holding a dear friend. These were all the signals of a man who knew who and what he wanted. Yet the timidity of the eyes signaled a much different sort of man.

"Your glass," he said, gesturing just a little.

"Yes?" she responded, almost anxiously.

"It's nearly empty," he continued. She looked at it and observed that he was correct. Then she realized why he looked down, to her hand, her left hand.

"Yes," she agreed.

"That 's not good."

"No."

Then he gestured to the bartender. By this time, they were meeting at the eyes, and Leta was far more relaxed.

"And a lady should never drink alone," he continued.

The bartender replaced her gin and tonic with a fresh one.

"Thank you, Charlie," she said, and he nodded. Then she turned to the gentleman and raised her glass.

"I'm not," she smiled.

To be continued.