Candida Pugh | Updates

From Kipling to St. George

Candida Pugh — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 18:16:42 -0500

Except for a mother and her twin boys, I was alone on the platform at Kipling. The kids were probably about three or four and had curls like apricot foam haloing their baseball caps. At first, I thought the woman had a bad cold. Her face looked blotchy. She leaned against the wall, staring at her feet. She had one of those knotty bodies that put you in mind of trailer camps and empty Budweiser cans full of bullet holes.

I was coming from a session with my therapist in which I hadn't mentioned the fight with Matthew. Instead, I told Leila I thought she was too cold and detached to help me. She burst into tears. It wasn’t the result I’d anticipated. I knew she was touchy but I thought she’d get mad and tell me there was no point then in continuing what she liked to call “our work.”

At exactly 8:17 that morning, shoving his arms into his jacket sleeves, Matthew had called me a callous bitch. I couldn’t speak. I was seriously wondering, Am I a callous bitch? On the subway, all the way to Kipling, I kept hearing his words. But as I got off the train, it hit me that I wasn’t the dead center of our universe. I mean, don’t even try to talk to Matthew about torture or the Taliban or thousands of kids dying in the ghettos of North America. He’ll yawn and start hunting for our copy of TV Guide. But slip Evita! into the Blue Ray and watch him blubber.

As I climbed the steps to Leila’s office, I felt prickles on the back of my neck. It’s so like me to let anger swell up until I explode at the wrong person, like Dick Cheney shooting his friend in the face because the sun was in his eyes. The sun’s always in my eyes. That’s an insight I actually got from Leila so maybe seeing her wasn’t a total loss.

A classic case of transference, she’d said, blowing her nose. (For some reason, it sounded to me as if she’d said “transparence.”) Through the tissue, she listed all the caring things she’d done with her life. The list was impressive. She belonged to Amnesty International and wrote letters every Thursday night. She was a member of Therapists Without Borders and supported therapy work in war zones. She volunteered weekly at a soup kitchen. She drove cancer patients to their radiation appointments. What the hell had I ever done? To her credit, she didn’t ask me, but I was asking myself. All I could think of at that moment was that once I took brownies to the lady next door because she had gout and couldn’t get out. Other than that, I couldn’t think of a single unselfish thing I’d ever done. I wanted to talk with Leila about this, but our time was up.

The train clattered into the station and the woman leaning on the wall looked startled. She bent over to pick up the handles of an enormous bag I recognized as coming from Honest Ed’s dollar store. Cracks fissured the plastic, dragged open by the weight of all she carried. I thought she might have everything she owned in that bag.

She slouched toward me, her twins lumbering behind on short chubby legs, their short chubby arms flapping as if they might loft themselves above all the misery dragging their mother down.

The three of them sat opposite me. She wore a light coat, badly pilled and worn too thin for the wintry weather that had settled over Toronto in early November. The boys too seemed inadequately dressed, but their windbreakers and jeans looked newish and clean. They perched on either side of their mother, who slumped over her knees, her head supported on her hands. One twin patted her back in the awkward way small children mimic sympathy. Their mother didn't react. The boy kept asking, "What's wrong, Mommy?" A rivulet of snot drooled from one nostril. He didn’t seem to notice.

His brother said in a quavery voice, "Where are we going?"

I studied the freckles splashed across their belly-white faces, trying to jog my memory. Those splatters looked familiar. When something should be obvious but it doesn’t occur to you immediately, when it hits you, you have to think you’re an idiot.

It was Carol. (And who names his dog after an ex-girlfriend? Matthew, that’s who.) Carol’s a Dalmatian mixed with Chow and she’s covered with splotches pretty much like the muddy splats scattered across the boys’ noses. My dog-authority friend said you couldn’t brew up a more anti-social combination than Chow and Dalmatian. I’d reported this to Matthew, as if the information might mean anything to him. “That isn’t information,” he’d said. “That’s prejudice.”

At that moment, I was dripping blood and he was bandaging my hand. “Prejudice?” I’d said. “Am I bleeding? Or is that just my opinion?”

Glancing at the time, I saw that in less than fifteen minutes Matthew would enter the restaurant. I knew the sour face he would pull because I wasn't there. Imagining him repeatedly checking his watch, I grew anxious. It was his habit to greet me by calculating the precise number of minutes I'd kept him twiddling his thumbs. “Let’s see,” he’d muse. “Eleven forty-five? Wasn’t that the time we agreed on?” Agreed on was something of an exaggeration. Matthew set the time for all our meetings—dates—appointments—whatever. I simply concurred because, after all, his time is valuable and mine isn’t.

“And now?” he’d say, pinning me with those near-black eyes. “Twelve-oh-eight. Twenty-three minutes I’ve been sitting here when I could have been doing something productive. That is, if I’m not mistaken.” He was never, of course, mistaken.

And here I was, making him wait again. I never showed up on time, maybe never in my life. Even though I'd known my appointment so far from mid-town would make it impossible to meet him at noon, I hadn't yet told him I was seeing a therapist. Matthew regarded analysis as somewhat less sound than reports of the Virgin Mary materializing in pizza.

We usually lunched together at a neighbourhood bistro on the days he planned to work late on his book or on the next day's lecture. Matthew had always been conscientious about giving me a fair share of his attention, perennially in short supply since his was a leading voice in linguistic anthropology. Leila had often suggested I suffered from envy of his celebrity.

"Have you ever completed anything?" she'd asked me.

I'd had difficulty settling on a career. Or maybe settling on anything. Matthew had finally stopped asking me to marry him, although that might have been because he too had come to doubt the possibility of our ever living together compatibly. Whether that realization had discouraged him or my refusal to commit had done the trick, I knew my constant waffling exasperated him.

In graduate school I'd studied art history but dropped out when I realized I couldn't spend my life in a museum or an art gallery. So I took up painting, but the instructor advised me early on to return to my day job. Next I'd tried pottery but scoliosis kept my back from bending gracefully to the wheel. And my pots all listed to starboard.

After my pottery ambitions crumbled, I'd enrolled in graduate school in English with plans to teach at the university level. Holding office hours, however, incinerated my interest in pedagogy. Students, who from the lectern seemed relatively bright, routinely asked me questions that left me fizzing like a shaken can of Coca Cola. By that time Matthew and I were getting serious. When I complained that once again I was at a loss for what to do with my life, he'd said for the first time, "So why don't we get married?"

I admit that my first reaction was that this was something I could do. Maybe we'd have kids and all the nagging questions about my career would go away for eighteen years. I did love him, after all. It didn't matter to me that he was fifteen years older. I thought he was everything I wanted to be, if I ever grew up. But now, after four years, I believed that, in his view, I was little more than hired help, a not very competent someone to attend to the irksome trivia of his existence. His proposals had taken on the patina of a job offer.

Even so, we might have overcome our differences if hadn’t been for Carol. When she’d bitten me for the fifth time, I contemplated finding my own apartment. Matthew caught me scanning the listings and I felt my heart sink when he shrugged and, without a word, went into the kitchen.

“So you’re choosing her over me,” I whined. He didn’t reply. A few minutes later, I heard the apartment door close.

"Arriving at Runnymede, Runnymede Station."

The woman sitting across from me stood up and turned to face her little boys. Static electricity rippled up my spine. She was about to abandon them. Their expressions echoed my panic. She turned away from them, toward me, and noticed I was staring at her. Paralysis set in. A moment of indecision, I saw in her eyes. I wanted to tell her, Lady, do I know what that’s like. But she sagged back into her seat and turned her head away from the twins.

“Are you all right?” I said. And if she isn’t? What could I do about it? I made barely enough money to rent the apartment I’d checked out the afternoon before, a dreary little hole above Richmond. Working temp jobs as a secretary, I made barely enough to consider leaving Matthew. The landlady had said, “It’ll go fast. If you want it, better take it now.” I mumbled something about needing to talk it over, and fled. Without Matthew’s income, I couldn’t help anyone, not even myself.

The woman shot me a perfunctory smile. For the first time, the boys seemed to notice me.

Would you like a puppy? I thought. A nice biting puppy to take your mind off your worries about your Mum?

It all could’ve gone differently, much as anything could. Suppose she had leaped out. Those two darling little boys would’ve started wailing and I’d have been alone with them. Okay, there were other passengers on the train but none of them seemed particularly concerned or even interested. There was a middle-aged woman, reading Danielle Steel’s The Sins of the Mother, the irony of which perhaps was escaping her. Two men in business suits hunched over an iPad, murmuring softly, no doubt from fear that one of us would steal their terrific moneymaking idea. An elderly man dozed, his cane teetering precariously next to him. Two black schoolgirls giggled up front, their heads together and their backs to us. I wouldn’t have counted on any of them to rise to the occasion if these little boys were deserted.

If they’d been left, I would’ve had to make a decision. It was too much to ask. If that decision—the honorable one—the one Leila would’ve made in a nanosecond—slowed me up, I’d lose Matthew. He’d had it with me, I was pretty sure. Not arguing with me over the ads for apartments spoke louder than anything he might’ve said. One more little push from me and I’d be out the door.

The schoolgirls jumped up and flung themselves down the steps. The doors closed behind them.

I turned toward the front of the car, wondering if I could move to another seat without calling attention to myself. But what excuse could there be for such an obvious attempt to get away from a difficult scene? I was already close to the door, so I couldn't pretend I needed to be ready to get off at my stop. What a wuss, I told myself. Just move. But I couldn’t make myself move.

Matthew contended that I thrive on dissent, foolishly imagining that arguing could lead to harmony. "Quarreling," he would say, "doesn't change anything." This remark produced nearly unbearable anguish in me. "What then?" I remember screaming through his closed study door. "Just please tell me what will change anything?"

"You," Leila explained, in a tone she might have used on one of the twins. "That's all anyone can change in this world. You have to take responsibility for yourself."

It wasn't counsel I knew how to follow. It almost seemed as if, when Matthew grew serene, I descended into hysteria. Or perhaps it was that whenever I descended into hysteria, he became serene.

Case in point: I'd made a prawn risotto the night before and Matthew had washed the dishes. His investment in chores always struck me as measured. Secretly, I suspected him of consulting a calculator that spit out the fair-minded number of minutes he should contribute to our household.

That morning I'd gone into the kitchen and spotted my cast-iron frying pan full of water. "I was soaking it," he explained.

I pointed out the orange blot on the white sink and the rust coating the pan.

He said, "What would it cost to replace it, Nicky? Is it really worth getting this upset over?"

"I've asked you and asked you not to leave this pan wet, Matthew. Are you too lazy to spend a few minutes scrubbing it? I scrub it, you know. And when I get it clean, I put it on the burner to dry. So it won't—duh!—rust! Well that was a frigging waste of my time, wasn't it. But, hey, my time’s worthless, right? So no biggie.” Carol dashed into the kitchen, standing at Matthew’s side and growling. “Look at her, would you?” I demanded. “She hates me.”

Matthew went to the hall closet and took out his overcoat. He stopped at his study for his briefcase. I pursued him. "Of course it not a problem if it's my time wasted," I told his back. "The exalted Dr. Matthew Ingram can't be expected to waste his time cleaning a stupid pan. He's far too important!" Carol barked excitedly and started nipping at my legs. I kicked her.

Matthew turned, his eyes fully black. “Don’t you ever kick that dog. Don’t ever kick any dog.”

“She was biting me, Matthew!”

“I don’t care. She’s a dumb animal. You, putatively, are in control of yourself. You presumably understand what is going on here.”

"Mommy! Please! I want to sit there!" Across the aisle, the larger twin was trying to crawl into his mother's lap but her purse blocked his way. She didn't shift the pocketbook, she just continued watching me. What terrible thing had happened to her? Cancer? A parent dead? Her boyfriend gone? Had the bank informed her that her last nickel had vanished from her account? In some sense, I knew that I wickedly envied her. Her grief made her real, substantial. The enormity of it made her, in my eyes, weirdly magnanimous.

"Arriving at Ossington, Ossington Station."

She stood up. The boys each took hold of a sleeve of her coat and together they hobbled from the train. I felt torn. Shouldn't I run after her? I could offer to entertain the children for a bit while she pulled herself together.

Sure. A brain tumor. Take a few minutes to collect yourself.

Anyway, Matthew would be annoyed if I left him cooling his heels while I played Mother Teresa.

The doors closed and, as the train sped forward, my gaze dragged away from the stooped woman trudging across the platform, her crushed little boys dangling from her sleeves.

It could have happened that way. Three drowning people sinking below my sightline. No longer my problem, even hypothetically. But few things in life are that easy. Bodies are always washing up on the shore.

The woman did fix her dead eyes on me. She looked as if some violent wind had clawed everything out of her and left behind only the husk of a mother. I ached to comfort her unhappy infants. But instead I sat with my purse in my lap, my ankles modestly crossed, my gaze averted.

Matthew and I had talked recently about expanding from a couple into a family. But he had grown a bit wiser since offering to cure my career angst with an engagement ring. "My mother," he'd said, "tried to fill up her life with children. It doesn't work."

He had six siblings, five of them alcoholics. In his sophomore year, Matthew had come home from high school to find his eighteen-month-old sister wrapped up in yarn like a top prepared to spin, his mother crumpled on the sofa, grinning myopically.

"Pills," he said. "She lost the last baby in the fifth month of pregnancy, thank god. They advised her not to have any more. I wish they'd done that six kids sooner." I noticed that as the eldest, he had excluded himself from this post-birth abortion fantasy.

"Arriving at Spadina, Spadina Station."

The twins' mother lurched to her feet. She wheeled around to face her little boys, her expression warning them to stay in their seats. Without moving from the bench, the children cried, "Mommy! Where are you going?"

Turning to me, she begged, "Take them. You look like a good person. Please—just take them."

"I can't take them. And you shouldn't talk like that. You're scaring them half to death."

The train slowed and stopped at the platform. "They're good boys. You'll see." The doors opened and the woman, casting one last longing look at her babies, darted out.

I yelled at her fleeing back: "Stop! Wait!"

The wailing twins collapsed into one another's arms. As the doors shut, I crossed over to sit with them. Through the window, I saw the woman cover her face with her thin red hands. She was bent over so far, I felt terrified that she might topple onto the tracks.

But, childless and yearning, nevertheless, I didn't inherit a family on the Kipling line. Children don't arrive without their mother, natural or adoptive, spending some time in pain. What actually happened is this: She was slumped over, oblivious to her little boys and to me.

When the automated voice announced, "Arriving at St. George, St. George Station," she stood like a sleepwalker and the three of them disembarked.

Although Matthew waited for me, no doubt growing more irritated as the minutes ticked off his watch, I understood that I couldn't think about him just then, that his impatience with me couldn't weigh against this sad little family wobbling into the unknown. I followed them off the train, calling, "Please! Stop!"

The woman turned around and looked at me without curiosity. It came to me that she was merely waiting for the next blow to land.

"Look, I can see you're really upset. And maybe it's dumb of me, but I can't let you just walk away, seeing the shape you're in. I'd be happy to sit here with your boys and tell them stories for as long as you like. You could sit on that bench over there and maybe get some sort of start on dealing with whatever it is you have to deal with. I'm not a kidnapper or anything like that, I swear—I'd just like to help."

She hesitated, looked down the vacant platform, and then stunned me by nodding. She walked away, not even glancing back, and it occurred to me that she might hope I would kidnap the boys.

The three of us made ourselves comfortable on the bench. The twins were compliant as whipped dogs, snuggling trustfully close to me. But my mind was blank. I couldn't think what to do or say next. I didn't know any stories. I'd never told stories to children and my own story-listening days were twenty years behind me.

Nearby, the woman hung over her lap and moaned. The boys drew closer to me and their eyes clung to my face.

"Once upon a time," the bigger twin prompted me.

"Yes," I said. "Once upon a time . . . there were two little boys who looked alike."

"Is this going to be about us?" the smaller boy asked.

"Yes, it is about you."

"And does it end happily ever after?"

His brother looked at him gravely. "All the stories end happily ever after," he said, and then turned his face up to me.

"They do," I said. "All the stories end that way."

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Spare Us (partial)

Candida Pugh — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:21:03 -0500

When Zack turned 70, his attention turned south, in the direction of his nether regions. Women—young, middle-aged, elderly, whatever—became irresistible, his body rounding toward them like a cypress bending over the road, although not as awe-inspiring.

Initially, I chalked up his conduct to the shock of arriving at an undeniably old age. He’d settle down in a few months, I told myself—at most a year. Seventy-one would be far less traumatic. From birth, ages ending in zero signify more than those that don’t push their victims into the next decade. Go figure.

Seventy-one arrived, but his recovery didn’t. He dropped the divorce bomb on January 21, 2020, the day news of the Covid pandemic broke. Two disasters in less than 24 hours. Only a female sherpa could nimbly scale that mountain of rubbish. It took me a couple of boxes of Kleenex, but I managed.

When it came to dividing up our community property, only one “item” incited rancor: Cargo, our German shepherd-collie mix. Nine years earlier, I’d found him dumped on the side of the road. I’d named him for what the jerks who tossed out a puppy believed him to be: unwanted cargo.

The moment he saw the dog, Zack said “no.” He ordered me to surrender Cargo. After more than two decades living together, he seemed to imagine his command prompted my obedience. Then he remembered who I was.

While I put away kibble and treats, he begged. He wheedled—ugh, I hate wheedling and he does it so poorly. He said I could give the puppy to a German shepherd rescue group. “It would wind up in a fine home. With people who are crazy for the breed.”

“He—not it—already has a fine home.”

“Not if one person in the house doesn’t want him.”

I said that individual could take a long walk off a short pier. Zack said the cliché was beneath me and that it had never been funny anyway. I told him I wasn’t aiming for humor; I was just trying to shut him up. He followed me and Cargo through the house, moaning, groaning, and wheedling. Around midnight, I fell asleep to his droning voice, the puppy nestled in my arms.

In spite of his determined resistance, it didn’t take long for Zack to fall in love with Cargo. Soon, whenever we watched television, we competed for that soft, warm little body. Bickering over whose turn it was to hold him became rancorous, so I instituted a roster that I posted on the refrigerator door, like a child’s chore list.

Now, having jettisoned me, my insensitive goon of a husband insisted that, because he had paid for the lion’s share of Cargo’s veterinary care and feeding and had spent so much time with him, he alone deserved custody. After all, his salary had always been higher than mine, therefore—

“And why is that?”

Ostentatiously bored, he said, “Please. Not another women’s lib sermon.”

Zack went on to detail a list of his alleged contributions to Cargo’s care and feeding. There had been all the vet bills—tooth extractions, cleaning, neutering, and that terrifying surgery for bloat. Vaccinations. Annual stool test. And then there was all the equipment he’d paid for—the bed, the living room cot, the training, the leashes and collars. The toys. How Cargo chewed through toys!

“Give me a break. My paycheck covered some of that.”

He rolled his eyes. “You need to realize how much I’ve invested in him. Not only money. I can’t just give him up. Besides, we’re buddies. He’d be unhappy without me.”

“I’m the one who found him. I’m the one who fought to keep him. And now I’m the one keeping him.”

Zack’s face tensed into a frozen mask. “I’ll come and grab him when you’re not looking.”

“You’d dognap him?”

“You bet.”

“You really are a monster, Zack. Here I’m losing you and my home—my life for the past 35 years—and you want to take my dog? Want me to leave my cosmetics for your new love too? How about my clothes? She looks to be close enough to my size. Maybe she can ditch the coveralls. Hell, take my phone for her, why don’t you?”

He looked fleetingly uncertain, but, as always, quickly recovered his sense of entitlement. “C’mon, Gwen. Be fair. He’s more my dog than yours. You can get another dog. Another German shepherd. I’ll even pay for you to get a puppy. A pure-bred one. Cargo’s old. He won’t be around a whole lot longer. This way you won’t have to suffer through losing him.”

I gaped at him, not knowing whether to laugh in his face or punch him in the stomach. Lose him? “What?” I said, tossing my dog’s food and water bowls into a box. “Lose him now and avoid the rush later? People like you think dogs are things. When one wears out, you get another. That’s why you called him an ‘it’ when I first brought him home.” I ripped a strip of packing tape off the roll and sealed the box. “Cargo’s all that’s left to me of family. And I’m taking my family with me.”

“I’m warning you,” he whined.

Grabbing the box, I started for the door. But before I turned the knob, I stopped. “Here’s an idea. How about we let Cargo decide his own fate?” Zack quirked an eyebrow, listening. I described an exercise I’d seen on YouTube in which a couple called their dog simultaneously out of curiosity to see which one he’d go to.

As I knew would happen, Zack’s ego convinced him Cargo would choose him. After all, he and the dog ran together. They went to the dog beach every Wednesday, Cargo wading and occasionally swimming out after a ball. With a wide grin, Zack said, “Fine.”

“But you have to agree to abide by his decision.”

“As do you.”

“Definitely. I’m just making sure.”

He smirked. “Scout’s honor.”

We went outside and sat Cargo down, moving away from him and from each other.

I intoned, “One . . . two . . . three.”

Slapping our legs, we shouted in unison, “Cargo! Come!”

My boy loped straight to me.

As I hurtled north in my decrepit VW Bug, wiping my eyes, I fumed. The woman who replaced me, one Danielle Bickle, was at that moment—I was sure of it—making herself comfortable in the house I had called home for half my life. Zack had inherited it from his grandmother before I came along, and, therefore—unfortunately—it wasn’t on the skimpy list of our community property. Lovely. I was homeless and that night the woman my husband cheated on me with would sleep next to him in my bed.

Zack followed in a rented pickup with the bed from the guest room and other odds and ends I thought might prove useful, items he bestowed on me with the self-satisfaction of a generous benefactor. We were headed to a vacant apartment—the Terrace—in Fort Bragg. The Advocate-News had listed only one vacancy available immediately. It said nothing about pets, which I took for a good sign. Fort Bragg has a reputation for being dog-friendly.

Nothing in my no-longer-home town, Mendocino, could house me immediately. Pretty quickly I dispensed with the idea of looking there anyway. Pending vacancies specified no dogs, especially no large dogs. And then there was the thought of running into Dani or Zack (or, worse, the pair of them) at the grocer’s, which would be about as bearable as ingesting a bowl of spit. I could easily envision my life and Cargo’s shrinking if I stayed in that town. Zack would probably get himself another dog and he’d take over my boy’s favorite dog park. No. I couldn’t live near them.

Maybe Fort Bragg wasn’t far enough away. They might come up for the abundant fresh produce at the yuppie Harvest Market. But I told myself I’d be all right. Fort Bragg is bigger than Mendocino. For now, it would have to do.

At the corner of Morose and Tragic we found the Terrace Apartment, an ugly salmon-pink stucco stub jutting up from whiskers of brown grass. Zack pulled up to park behind me. I got out to tell him I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in that eyesore. We had decided that, if this didn’t work out, we would put everything in storage and I’d take a room in a motel until something better opened up.

Before I could tell him I’d changed my mind about The Terrace Apartments, a woman pulled up in a dowdy beige sedan. She peered hard at me and then hard at Cargo in my car. His snout poked through the passenger window as his solemn brown eyes reflected as much enthusiasm as I felt for the view.

She looked about sixty, with long straggly gray hair. Her body couldn’t be discerned beneath a bulky brown coat, but her feet were in slippers. Puffy ankles suggested the reason for this wardrobe blemish.

“You here about the apartment?” I nodded, but she shook her head. “No dogs. You should’ve said.” She sounded cross, having driven some distance to meet me. I suspected the slippers weren’t giving her the pain relief her swollen ankles needed.

Even though the look of the place depressed me, especially given my pre-existing sub-basement mood, I found myself putting up an argument. “He’s not a problem.”

“A German shepherd? What do you take me for?”

“He doesn’t bark.”

“But does he bite?”

“Never.”

“I’m sure he poops and pees.”

“I pick it up.”

“Right.” Her expression didn’t soften from the one I’d expect had I asserted that Cargo and I were fresh off the mother ship from Mars.

“Look—Mrs. Oberon? I’m desperate. My husband took up with a younger woman and I haven’t got anywhere to go. He kicked me out.” That wasn’t true and I could imagine Zack’s horror at my representing him as that sort of monster. Leaving immediately had been all my own idea.

Apparently, however, I had given Mrs. Oberon a tearjerker that touched her because her face softened, or at least it became less hard. Perhaps she too had dealt with a cheating husband. Putting a hand on her arm to up our new-found intimacy, I promised, “If anyone complains about Cargo for any reason, I’ll move out. Scouts honor.”

She pursed her lips. I gazed up at the grim box. Why was I begging to move into that casket?

“Can I put that in the lease?”

“Absolutely.”

She nodded and gestured for me to follow her upstairs. The apartment, happily, was in far better condition than the building. Although small, it felt cozy rather than cramped. Of course, the absence of furniture helped to enlarge it.

Recently painted with bright blue unsoiled wall-to-wall carpet, the place smelled surprisingly fresh, not musty like our house when we’d been away for a week. Maybe the former tenant had just moved out.

The tour took about forty-five seconds. All the walls were painted fog gray, which, given the weather on the northern California coast, seemed more than appropriate. The living room opened onto a dining area and, from there, into a short galley kitchen. The kitchen appliances had seen better days, but she demonstrated their reliability by turning on the stove’s burners and opening the refrigerator, inviting me to ice my hand in the freezer.

Only the bedroom had interior walls, but, had my arms been slightly longer, I might’ve stood in the middle and flattened my palms against two of those. The double bed would all but fill it. I’d have to opt for a very small dresser. The closet, however, looked adequate.

In addition to no terrace, the apartment offered no view. The bedroom window faced another building. The one in the living room looked out at the walkway from which we’d accessed the door. I’d have to keep the drapes closed for privacy, a significant drawback for someone like me who craves lots of light. Oh well, I told myself. At least 300 days a year, only faint illumination would’ve seeped inside through omnipresent fog. I wouldn’t be missing much.

You’d think that, after spending more than half my life in murk, I’d have acclimated. You would’ve thought so, but you’d be wrong.

“We’re only about half a mile from the beach,” she said as we descended the steps. I did not say the beach held little attraction for me, all that gritty sand whipped into my face by a tempest more persevering and violent than any Shakespeare could’ve imagined.

Mrs. Oberon led me to a door at the back of the laundry room. “We keep this locked. Your apartment key will open it, but be sure never to leave it unlocked. Not even for a minute.”

Before her warning I had never heard that this backwater burg was a hotbed of thievery. I’d have to keep an eye on my purse.

The door led to a patio, a concrete slab triangulated by three bay laurels. In the middle sat an unpainted wooden bench. To one side, a small picnic table with four rusted chairs completed the amenities.

Mrs. Oberon seemed inordinately proud of that sad little space. “Doesn’t get the wind,” she lied as the leaves on the bay laurels danced. Like Mendocino, Fort Bragg serves up gusty winds that should blow away the murk, but that never happens.

“If I see dog poop down here,” Mrs. Oberon warned me, “out!”

“No worries.”

“I’m not worried. You need to worry.”

This will be great, I thought. As the Brits say, this will be brilliant.

To buy furniture, we had to go to Ukiah, which was more than an hour away. Spending time in that truck with a man I didn’t want to speak to seemed an all but intolerable price to pay for having a fully furnished place to live. But my Beetle’s accommodations were sufficient only for Cargo, me, and a small clock radio.

I told my boy to get in the truck. Like a traitor, he instantly began mauling Zack, the dog’s weapon of choice being his tongue.

As my soon-to-be-ex drove, I mentally reviewed my wish list. If we couldn’t find everything used, this shopping excursion would prove disastrous to my rapidly thinning funds. Even used, my wants would have to be pruned. I’d just shelled out the first and last month’s rent, the cleaning deposit, and the $100 pet damage deposit Mrs. Oberon thought up at the last minute.

“I’ll buy whatever you need,” Zack said, ruffling Cargo’s fur. A long marriage turns everyone into a mind reader, I thought, although it didn’t take a mathematically proficient psychic to calculate the depth of my financial abyss. But I had vowed he wouldn’t buy his way out of looking up at me standing on higher ground. “Look,” he said. I get it. “You’re mad, but don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”

“Plunging into banal speech already?” His new paramour wore bib overalls and her hair jutted out like twin waterfalls over her ears. “A year or two with Miss Oshkosh and you’ll be gushing cliches like Baptist preacher.” Part of the glue that had kept us together for so many years was our mutual appreciation of language. He was going to miss that, judging from my brief encounter with the girl of his aspirations. “Remember our fight over keeping Cargo?” Why was I dredging up the past? Wasn’t I in enough pain? “When—when I said you should take a short walk off a long pier?”

He snickered. “Do you hear yourself?”

“No. I’m not listening to either of us.”

“I’m paying and that’s that.”

“Fine. Pay then. If all it takes to make you feel good about destroying my life is a few dollars for some crap furniture—great.”

“Who said the furniture would be crap?”

“I did. Because it will be.”

He shrugged. “Whatever’s your heart’s desire.”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” I snapped. “Considering.”

We didn’t speak again until we reached Ukiah. Then we drove from used furniture outlet to used furniture outlet without locating anything more salvageable than an end table. Finally we decided we’d have to buy new.

In Gordon’s Furniture Mart, I trundled through like someone in need of a bathroom, pointing to objects that got tagged, toted up, and placed in the bed of the truck. Zack had the decency to keep the total from me as he paid it.

On the drive back, we wisely chose to revisit silence. Together we carted the furniture upstairs. He assembled the bed while I tried out various arrangements in the living room. None seemed to make elegant use of the paucity of space.

“Thank you,” I said as he started for the door.

“No problem.”

“Indeed.”

He turned, frowning, and I wiggled my fingers in a mute goodbye.

I sat on my new couch brooding. How had this happened? I felt like someone who had been invited to a party and was hustled out the door holding my first drink. My inner critic reminded me that Zack and I had been married too long for that metaphor to work. Nevertheless, I sniffed, he’d shoved me out. Into the cold. Barefoot. With red wine spilling down my best dress. I croaked out a laugh.

The new woman in Zack’s life, Dani, as he called her, was about 35, although she looked closer to 16. She sounded like a talking squeaky toy and her every sentence ended in apparent indecision. My single encounter with her convinced me that my husband’s olfactory nerves were failing. She reeked of bergamot.

My husband. If marriage consisted of more than a piece of paper, he was no longer my husband. He was now just a man I’d shared more than half my life with, a man who now belonged to Dani.

Since he was well past his mid-life, this dalliance could be seen as a dotage crisis. If so, would I take him back when he recovered? Maybe. Maybe not. Whether to resume life with my cheating husband lay beyond my feeble stabs at clarity. His enchantment with this particular younger woman made zero sense to me since no one would characterize Dani as arm candy. Maybe he’d been looking for a home health aide for fast approaching decrepitude. From what I saw of her, Dani could serve in that capacity. She had arms like a lumberjack and hands that could close comfortably around a basketball. Dumpy and slue-footed, she amplified her zany appearance with denim overalls that, in my admittedly less than objective view, transformed an adult woman into a gargantuan toddler.

My brief exchange with Dani suggested IQ did not make up for her corporeal deficits. She apologized to me in tones suggestive of someone who had broken a knickknack that, after all, wasn’t especially valuable. When she gushed that she’d always admired the independence of unmarried older women, I excused myself to hide out in the bathroom until she left.

“Was that,” I asked my husband after she was gone, “a courtesy call?”

Other than thinking her a fool, I only hoped she’d have just enough sense to wear a mask in public and wipe down the groceries before Zack touched them. All in all, I was dubious.

In spite of her less than dazzling appearance, I tried to imagine her schmoozing with my husband over crudités at faculty functions. She was a chatterbox, I got that. Young chatterboxes make better party guests than morose old women. Of course, there were no faculty parties, not in my lifetime, but I wasn’t in any mood to wrestle with reality. In the realm of possibility, Grover Harrison High School would never host anything for retired faculty. And the school principal, Mr. Homer Vaughn, wouldn’t know a crudité if one were rammed down his throat. I say that because Zack had occasionally fantasized doing such a thing. Well, not with a crudité. He probably couldn’t identify a crudité either. And he’d probably had in mind something less palatable, like a wad of administrative notices.

Okay, I told myself. Enough wallowing. Eat something.

I’d just dumped a can of soup in a saucepan when someone knocked. A woman in her early seventies flashed me one of the most beatific smiles I’d ever seen. She had a cap of curly gray hair, and amazing green eyes. “Are you busy? I’m Bonnie. I live right under you.”

“Not a bit. Come in.” I went to the stove and turned off the burner under the soup.

“Oh. You’re about to eat.”

I shook my head. “Not really. No appetite. I was going through the motions.”

“I wouldn’t know the feeling,” said Bonnie, whose soft round body added an exclamation point to the remark.

I hovered between the kitchen and the living room. Well, I hovered in the dining room, although calling it a dining room gave it grandeur it couldn’t aspire to. Maybe dinette area.

“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? Wine? I think I have some.”

“Wine sounds great.”

“I could use some myself. But I can’t vouch for its palatability. I’m no connoisseur.”

“Me neither. Michaela knows everything there is to know about food and drink. She used to be a gourmet chef. Well, she still is. Just doesn’t get paid for it anymore. She lives downstairs. South of the laundry room. I’m north.”

I brought in the glasses. “So who’s on this floor?”

“Nearest to you is Eva Toffe. Believe it or not, she’s heir to a family fortune. Why she chose this dump, I’ll never know. We call it the ‘Spare Us.’”

After sniffing the merlot for sourness, I poured each of us a glass and sat down. “That’s cute.”

“You think so?” Bonnie’s smile was wry. “On the other side of Eva is Karin Thor. She’s Swedish, a bit of souse, but don’t tell her I said so. Also, don’t talk to her about politics. You’ll be sorry if you do.”

I raised my eyebrows but decided against encouraging Bonnie to say more. “So it’s all women, is it? I mean in the building.”

“Mrs. O doesn’t rent to men. And she doesn’t rent to young women. She doesn’t even rent to middle-aged women. Mrs. O rents to old ladies. That’s it. It’s a wonder she let you bring in your dog. She won’t let children visit. Of course, she doesn’t necessarily know anything about it. She lives in Comptche, so she’s not here all that often, thank god. Michaela sneaks her grandchild in whenever her daughter will condescend to bring her, but we keep that a secret.”

I wondered if complaints to California HUD had ever been filed.

Bonnie refilled her glass and mine, in that order. I liked her chutzpah. She eased back into the cushion and said, “Will you keep your name?”

“What?”

“I assumed you took his name when you married. In that era women all did.”

After she left, I sat back down, poured out the last of the wine, and brooded some more. Marley wasn’t really my name anymore, I supposed. When Suzy Coveralls took it, she’d be Mrs. Marley and I’d be—what? Nameless? One name? I supposed I could reclaim my so-called maiden name. Who came up with that one? Someone in the 16thCentury?

If I changed my name, I’d have to take paperwork to the bank where I’d just opened an account. And I’d have to change the name on my two credit cards. Well, actually, they had to go anyway since his name was on them too. He’d probably already canceled them, knowing Zack.

I felt amorphous, as if in rejecting me he had somehow dissolved me. Was I that “old school?” I was. My identity had been ripped away. I was like an enslaved person who had just been emancipated. However, the analogy made me wince, having hardly undergone sufficient pain in my life to qualify as kin to that of former slaves.

But in the next day or two somebody was bound to ask, “What’s your name?” I had to decide. Who was me? Where would my new identity come from? Someone else marrying me? Ugh. That was, as the saying goes, cringeworthy.

Maybe I could pick a name. If I wasn’t kin to the misery of freed people, I could share their first burden: what to call themselves. The idea reminded me of girls in school who changed their given names to something they liked better. Sissy became Chris. Terry became Teddy. Sonia went further afield and named herself Anastasia.

Could I become Gwen Anastasia? How about Gwen Forsythe? Someone rich, upper class. Tasteful. British, naturally. Looked as if I had no imagination. Anyway, if I changed anything, I’d love to change Gwen. I hated it, even more lately.

Maybe Diana? No. I’m about as far from a princess as anyone can get. How about Juniper? Sounded too much like a bush. What about Seraphina?

I started to giggle. This might not be all sturm und drang.

My neighbor Eva banged on my door the next morning. I was still in my pajamas, trying to decide whether I could stomach coffee after drinking too much the night before.

The glare strafed my eyes as I squinted at the petite figure at the door, barely big enough to have been the cause of so much noise. I tried to smile.

“I’m Eva Toffe.” An obviously confident woman, Eva spoke like a bank officer demanding my identification. That thought evoked the internal rumbling of the night before. I almost asked her, “Yes, but who am I?”

I offered her coffee, which she declined, saying it was ironic that she didn’t like coffee. I quirked an eyebrow, having forgotten she was heir to a fortune in coffee beans.

“I think I’ll pour some for myself, if you don’t mind.”

“You look a little ragged.”

I shrugged. “Drank a bit last night. I’m not used to it.”

She made a face. I gathered she wasn’t a fan of alcoholic beverages either.

“Came to ask if you wanted to take a hike with me.” She looked pointedly at Cargo. “He looks like he could use it.”

She probably meant he was overweight, which he was. But Cargo’s hips weren’t up for long walks and I told her so. “Nor am I, at least not today. Sorry, Eva.”

“Divorced?” she asked, taking a seat at my little dining room table. “Retired? Had a death in the family?”

“Huh?”

“Women don’t flock to this building. Some major life event forces them out of comfort into—” She hesitated and then finished lamely, “this,” her hands spreading outward to indicate she was referring to The Terrace apartments.

“About to be divorced,” I said. “And you?”

“Never married.” Eva’s knee jiggled. I gathered it was a chronic tic.

I thought uncharitably her single status might have something to do with her prominent teeth and large bald eyes, barely shaded by invisible lashes. Thin white hair threaded her forehead, on the verge of stabbing her eyes. I kept blinking, because I automatically take on someone else’s discomfort, even when they aren’t feeling any.

As if reading my unkind assessment of her appearance, she said, “You’d be surprised how many men want to marry an heiress.”

“I would not.” I thought of Suzy Coveralls and wondered if she had a secret stash of hundred dollar bills.

“What did you do with yourself before you retired, Gwen?”

The question made me decidedly uncomfortable. Secretarial work didn’t merit mentioning, even if I had to mention it. I mumbled something and Eva accepted it. “And you?”

“Mostly volunteer. You know. Women with money get to do whatever they feel like doing.” Now she sounded ashamed, which she shouldn’t.

“That seems noble to me.”

“Noble? Not really. In my twenties I was a member of the Red Cross Safety Crew at NASCAR races.” My eyes must’ve widened because she waved away my awe. “Took care of minor injuries.”

“How does anyone driving a car around a track at top speed get a minor injury?”

She smiled, which softened her sharp features, and she looked pretty. “Well, I do know CPR. And had to administer it more than once, so I guess you could say all the injuries weren’t minor.”

“What did you do after such feats of derring-do?”

“Took a motorcycle tour of Vietnam. That lasted—oh, I don’t know anymore. A while.”

“That’s enough,” I said, trying to sound light-hearted while discouraging her from recounting any more accomplishments that would humble me further. “I was well into my fifties before I got the nerve to eat in a restaurant on my own.”

“Money does that for a person.”

“Does what?”

“Once I got out of my twenties, I got serious about having so much money and time. Was I just going to spend my life amusing myself? I decided I had to try to make a difference. Soup kitchens. Women’s shelters. Tutoring reading. Ferrying cancer patients to therapy. Etc. etc. etc. Boards of trustees. Those were the worst. The older I get, the more I realize nothing makes any significant difference except time. And time doesn’t discriminate between good different and bad different.”

“How’d you wind up here? Is that somehow part of making a difference? If so, those of us without a choice salute you.”

She looked a bit hurt but seemed to shrug it off. “I took a cooking class from Michaela. She told me about Spare Us. I liked the idea of a building full of old women.”

That sounded less than tempting to me. Wouldn’t we benefit from young blood bouncing around? Then again, watching Eva’s knee do its rain dance, maybe not.

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When I Was in School

Candida Pugh — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:27:07 -0500

When I was a schoolgirl—approximately a millennium ago—hanging on the classroom wall was a diagram in the form of a triangle broken into horizontal sectors. Humans occupied the peak, while “lesser” beings were boxed up in order of their presumed intelligence, from supposedly higher level mammals down to reptiles. Since then, we’ve learned that crows plot vengeance over years, elephants mourn ritualistically, and ants can be trained. In other words, that chart was a bunch of hooey.

I’ve often wondered if we, who adore dogs, don’t unwittingly buy into that chart by “elevating” our dogs into little people in fur coats. Don’t we actually love them for the many ways they do not resemble us? I believe, in many respects, our dogs, in fact, surpass us. My German shepherd, Sparkle, and my Havanese, Liam, can each locate a tiny piece of kibble in a huge garden. Sparkle, who loves bubbles, can jump higher than my head to pop one. They both can hear a UPS truck coming from a block away, enabling premature barking.
But those are not the only ways in which my dogs are superior to me.

While I dwell on the past and anticipate the future, my dogs dispense with time. I ask Sparkle, “Did you have a good walk?” and she gets excited. I tell her Charles, her favorite person, will be home soon, and she begins searching the house. I envy her ability to focus on what’s important to her, which is NOW! NOW can slip past me, barely noticed.

Part of focusing on the present is acceptance of what it holds, which dogs do easily because of their innate humility. My heightened sense of my own importance frequently leads me to view interaction through the lens of how well I’ve been treated or how well I came off. Not so my dogs. Rejection? What’s that? Vela, my barky German shepherd, was like the gawky kid who never gets picked for the team. Her lack of popularity never penetrated her lovely skull. At the dog park, she pursued un-requiting lovers with gusto.

Sweet-natured children may grow into belligerent, sullen teenagers who regard spending time with parents as a punishment. Spending time with me is all my dogs want to do. They get ecstatic over a game of “find it.” It takes a whole lot more than a game to make me happy, let alone ecstatic. But everything I do delights my dogs, as long as it involves paying attention to them. If it doesn’t, they go to sleep.
Dogs’ ability to experience joy over simple acts was probably part of the reason my father often said he preferred them to people. That attitude is easy to understand, given how comfortable dogs make us. Just as they don’t ask themselves, “Am I really having a good time,” they don’t ask themselves, “Is this person worthy of me?” Unlike my dogs, my husband is acutely aware of my many faults, and I am aware that he is aware.

Although, in so many ways, dogs do not resemble us, they have been known to exhibit a few of our less desirable traits along with the lovelier ones, such as showing affection and trying to comfort someone who’s upset. It’s possible, for instance, for a dog to be neurotic. I recall a friend who never left her Hugo without spending ten minutes reassuring him that she would be back and she was so so sorry to leave him. That poor dog was a bundle of anxiety. He would’ve been so much better off if she’d simply put on her coat and walked out the door. Dogs don’t know what to do with a ritualized goodbye. It takes a sense of time to comprehend a promise to return.
Vela, in all her splendiferousness

Ever have a friend who imagines you have an entire day to spend with them, if they happen to want you to? Some dogs are like that. As I sit at my computer, trying to finish a project, Sparkle, for instance, urges me to “pet me, pet me” with vigorous nudges of her nose. No matter how many times I say, “No, off,” for her, as for Vela before her, rejection vaporizes before it ever materializes.

Another way our dogs can behave like people is in being rude. A huge Labrador jumped my petite elderly friend while she stood in her driveway, knocking her to the pavement with enthusiasm. She suffered several broken ribs. Many dog aficionados would say that dog didn’t know what he was doing. I’m dubious. What I’m certain of is that he didn’t know the seriousness of his act.

Even so, consider, for example, a husky that rammed me in the side of my knee. My offense? I was standing next to his beloved owner and she was engrossed in our conversation. She believed he did it by accident. Although she treated him as her child, she never noticed that he was jealous of everyone who laid claim to her attention.
Why would we deny our dogs the ability to direct themselves at a goal? My sister-in-law had two dogs, one of whom routinely outwitted the other. When Jobe perched on the coveted bed, Rudy began to play with a desirable toy, acting as if he were having the time of his life. Invariably, Jobe would jump down to take the toy, at which point Rudy would claim the comfy pillow.

When Henry, my giant poodle—mine for less than 24 hours—abruptly took me down to the sidewalk by bolting toward another dog, he instantly returned to sit next to me as I recovered. He knew what he’d done. When my first German shepherd, Jessie, yanked me to the ground because I’d stupidly thrown a ball farther than the length of the long lead I had tethered her to, she raced back to me and refused to chase the ball again until I unhooked the lead.

In the end, what I say of dogs is they understand us a lot better than we understand them.

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All Positive Dog Training?

Candida Pugh — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 18:04:24 -0400

What upsets me about the "all positive" dog training advocates is their rigidity and hostility to anyone who doesn't agree with everything they think, and that they seem not to have thought their ideas through very carefully. For example, they believe the notion that alpha dogs exist depends entirely on the studies of wolves in captivity, where apparently observers have seen alpha behavior. But dogs exist in captivity. Doesn't that give them even a moment of uncertainty? Absolutely not. Like Trump supporters, their beliefs arise from emotions and aren't subject to inquiry. Let me say that anything you believe that makes you furious when it's challenged needs to be re-thought. Also, why all the sensitivity to dogs and the absolute rage exhibited toward people? Don't we deserve all-positive reformation?

I'm reminded of when my children were in nursery school. Many parents were didactic in their notion of the perfect and perfectly raised child. One size fits all. Well, to me, dogs are not interchangeable. A shy dog needs gentle handling while a determined and self-confident dog might blow off that kind of handling. While I would never endorse abuse of a dog, I believe the training should fit the dog and not the other way around. This, by the way, I'm certain will earn me the undying hatred of the acolytes of all-positive training.

As for the existence of alpha dogs being "debunked," I have no idea how that could've been accomplished. For example, I'm a committed atheist, but even I know the existence of god hasn't been "debunked." Why? Because you can't prove the non-existence of anything. And, by the way, I know alpha dogs do exist--but they are exceedingly rare-- because I had the privilege of owning one for thirteen years. She was a calm, devoted, sweet and friendly German shepherd, but when she walked by, a lot of dogs bowed low. Of course there are dominant dogs, which does not dictate viciousness in training them. How can there be dominance in so many species, including our own, but not in dogs? It boggles the mind.

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Hostility

Candida Pugh — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:34:22 -0400

What upsets me about the "all positive" dog training advocates is their rigidity and hostility to anyone who doesn't agree with everything they think, and that they seem not to have thought their ideas through very carefully. For example, they believe the notion that alpha dogs exist depends on the studies of wolves in captivity, where apparently observers have seen alpha behavior. But dogs exist in captivity. Doesn't that give them even a moment of uncertainty? Absolutely not. Like Trump supporters, their beliefs arise from emotions and aren't subject to inquiry. Let me say that anything you believe that makes you furious when it's challenged needs to be re-thought. Also, why all the sensitivity to dogs and the absolute rage exhibited toward people? Don't we deserve all-positive reformation?

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Dogs

Candida Pugh — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:27:45 -0400

While we love our dogs for living in the present, those of us inclined to fault ourselves for not being perfect will find plenty to fault ourselves for in our relationships to our dogs. Do we walk them enough? Play with them enough? Pay enough attention to the changes in their bodies? in their disposition? Have we been consistently positive in our training or did we lose it a time or two? Are we perfect? No, but do we forgive ourselves for not being perfect? Do we forgive anyone else for not being perfect?

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Forgiveness

Candida Pugh — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:24:19 -0400

The most difficult thing to do is to forgive yourself. Sadly, when we can't forgive ourselves, we can't forgive anyone else.

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Writing Dialogue

Candida Pugh — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:38:19 -0400

Have you ever listened to a recording of an actual conversation between two people? If so, you’re probably aware that “real” dialogue doesn’t sound authentic. If you pasted the words of that recording into your novel, you would risk losing observant readers. In fiction, credibility isn’t boosted by fact. Fiction should be an artful interpretation of reality.

But how can a writer make dialogue sound credible if real conversation doesn’t? Unless your work is primarily narrative, you need the writerly muscles that produce engaging, believable conversation.

First, read your conversations aloud. (Actually, it’s good advice to read everything you write aloud.) Develop an ear for the off-notes, such as incidents of excessive articulation: “I have done what you had previously asked that I would do.” Be conscious of contractions and their absence where they ought to be. Constructions such as “I am going,” in the absence of a purpose for that meticulous form of speech, should instead be simply, “I’m going.”

Second, never have one character tell another something that individual already knows. This is a freshman mistake. Think about it. You wouldn’t say to your mother, for example, “When you had me in December of 2011, you almost didn’t make it to Second Rate Hospital in time.” Find some other way to get vital information into the narrative.

Third, dialogue doesn’t always involve complete sentences. A great deal of it consists of, “Last year.” and “That month we spent in Phoenix.” and “So?” and “Well?” “Uh” is useful, but only now and then, unless your character stutters. In recorded conversations, you’ll hear a great many utterances of “uh.”

Fourth, have sentences that break off. Few people consistently pre-conceive of exactly what they’re going to say. Often they begin a sentence only to break away to take a different direction. “I told her we—damn, I screwed up.”

Fifth, be certain the dialogue you write is essential to advancing the plot or developing the characters. Dull exchanges that aren’t meant to convey the dullness of the situation or the people merely bore the reader. And keep in mind that there must be a distinction between conveying a sense of boredom in the book and boring your reader in actuality.

Sixth, pay attention to how each of your characters speak. Do they have conversational tics? If they all sound the same, they aren’t distinctive enough to be interesting. Conversational tics include themes that obsess a character and phrases that repeatedly occur (such as teenagers saying “like” as in “She was like ‘I’m not going,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not going by myself.’” A character might be passive or circuitous in expressing herself. Certain words can attach to an individual. You probably have friends who repeatedly use a particular word such as “totally” or “man” or “cool.” Their choice of vocabulary conveys important information about the people you’re creating. Above all, believe in the dialogue you write. Don’t force it. If a character refuses to say something you want him to say, drop it. The best advice any writer ever gets is “Murder your darlings.” When you feel something you’ve written is too precious or brilliant or true, strongly consider killing it. What you remove often does more for your story than what you include.

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Excerpt from BURN SCARS, not yet published

Candida Pugh — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 13:15:21 -0500

The Bear’s Lair was deserted. Josh opened ten packets of sugar, splitting them between two cups of coffee. After that, he added several packets of Pream to each one. “This,” he said, handing her a stirring stick, “is how to drink bad coffee. Think of it as dessert. Or, if you’re me, lunch.”

She took a swallow. “Ugh.”

“I didn’t claim it made coffee taste good. Just sweet.”

“No, it was false advertising. You said it would be drinkable.”

Rubbing his mouth, he flashed his hazel green eyes at her, and she melted. “How’re things at State?”

“Lousy. I’m on probation. I dropped too many units, something my mother loves to point out. You were right. I flunked history. Well, I got a D+.” She took another sip. It tasted awful. “How about you?”

“I’m hoping to get to Golden Gate. First I have to scrape up tuition. My family sends me as much as they can, but no way can they cover law school. They’re already stretched too far.”

“What kind of law would you study?”

“Civil rights. Or international, maybe. I haven’t decided.” He took off his beret, and ran his hand over his nubby hair. “When I got here, I thought the sky was the limit. Now I’ve reached my limit, but it isn’t the sky.” He stirred his coffee.

“Couldn’t you get a scholarship? You’re a good student, right?”

“Fair to middling. I’ve had some major hills to climb. My high school text books listed forty-eight states. History stopped at the Korean War. Our biology teacher, bless her, taught us all she knew, but it wasn’t much.”

“Okay, but you’re at Berkeley. And you haven’t flunked out.”

“Which proves what?”

“That you’re smart. You have what it takes.” She drew her finger through a mound of spilled sugar. “Use whatever you can. Can’t you get some help from affirmative action policies?”

His eyes roamed the room. Panic rose in her chest. They hadn’t spent an hour together, and he was already looking to get away.

“Can I ask you something? When did you get into—this nationalist stuff?” Great idea. Head right back into the one topic they shouldn’t discuss.

He tapped the edge of his cup with the stirring stick. “I’m not into ‘nationalist stuff.’ I’m into raising consciousness in Black people.”

“It just seems like the Muslims and these guys who don’t want whites in their movement—they’re more about dividing people. I thought the civil rights struggle was about getting rid of difference.”

“The civil rights movement is about equality of opportunity. We have a right to our differences.”

She folded a napkin in half and in half again, too nervous to meet his eyes. “As long as whites are the majority, Josh, Negroes have to work with them. I mean, what else would you be doing practicing law if not finding ways to compromise?”

He didn’t seem angry, just tired. “This is why I stopped calling you, Nat.”

She flipped her hair out from behind one ear. “Well. Okay.” She climbed down from the stool and picked up her backpack from the floor. “Thanks for the coffee lesson.”

He put out his hand to stop her. “Look, I’m not giving up my identity so whites can be more comfortable with theirs.”

“You think that’s what I meant? That I’m asking you to give up your identity?”

“I think you don’t know what you’re asking. Look, you grew up with a lot of privileges, most of which you never knew you had. I’m a guy who grew up with none. Ok? We’re oil and water.”

“You might be surprised.” She adjusted the shoulder straps on her pack. “I see that look. Don’t worry. I won’t launch into some poor little rich girl speech. You should just know that whenever you talk about your loving mother and father, I want to go home and swallow a bottle of aspirin.”

“What do you—wait. Your parents are dead?”

“Sometimes I wish they were.”

“Why? Did they beat you?” The question bordered on flippant.

“No, Josh, they just didn’t know how to love a kid they didn’t want.” She turned away, trying not to cry.

He reached over and slid her pack off her shoulder. “Sit down.”

“Why? So I can stick my foot in my mouth again? Or am I sticking my foot in your mouth?”

“That sounds awkward.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Seriously. Sit down.”

She sank back onto her stool. “You need to be gentle with me, Josh.” She added, only half-kidding, “I’m fragile.”

“I’ve known buffalo more fragile than you.”

“You know buffalo?”

“Intimately.”

“I think there’s a law against that.”

“That’s something I’ve missed. You’re quick. Always the snappy comeback.”

“I’m quick, all right. Stupid, but quick.” She twisted a curl. “I am stupid. I don’t know what you have to go through in life as a Negro. Excuse me. As a Black person. But I want to. So don’t teach me how to drink coffee. Teach me how to talk without making you angry.”

He cupped her cheek and kissed her softly. Looking into her eyes, he murmured, “I am going to regret this.”

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The Dog That Came in Peace

Candida Pugh — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 13:06:26 -0500

On YouTube, I watched a video that must’ve been filmed on the grounds of a doggy day care facility, possibly somewhere in Latin America. Two dark-skinned, dark-haired men stand watching the dogs, who, except for one hyperactive husky, are all playing nicely. The husky, however, won’t get control of himself. The men watch without intervening as the husky rampages, bumping into dogs, mounting, and otherwise challenging them. The well-socialized dogs ignore him and move away.

The husky zeroes in on a long-haired German shepherd female who seems cowed. He starts to mount her. Instantly, a huge male German shepherd lopes over, knocks the husky to the ground, and straddles him. The shepherd stands over him, not looking at him, not showing any aggression. In fact, the shepherd looks around as if he’s captivated by the surrounding scenery. After a few minutes, when the husky has settled into calm, the big shepherd ambles off.

I watched this video through tears. The beauty of the shepherd’s unflappable discipline of the husky thrilled me. He made that dog understand he could not continue his disruptive behavior, and he did it without a flicker of teeth, without a growl.

Wise, imperturbable leadership is rare, even in the dog world.

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This isn't a poodle!

Candida Pugh — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

But it is one of the dogs in My Life in Dog Years, available from Ingram Sparks, Amazon, or your local bookstore.

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My Life in Dog Years: A Poodle Named Henry & Other Melodramas

Candida Pugh — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Dog-Years-Melodramas/dp/B0DLFR2G8R/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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Mutts

Candida Pugh — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of the dogs I've owned in my life were cross-breed, otherwise known as Heinz 57 dogs because of all the breeds one dog can represent. They were perfectly wonderful pets, but my interest in specific breeds began on a visit to Oregon to see friends who owned a giant poodle, Maxi. Later I learned almost all poodles are named Maxi. I wrote about her, noting she would've made a stereotypical hippie if only she'd had a prairie dress and a bong. She was an adorable reprobate. As someone who particularly loves obedient dogs, I was surprised by how delightful I found her. She had a stuffed bear, and she couldn't and wouldn't go to bed at night until it was lodged between her front paws. She roamed the considerable acreage my friends owned with no intention of heeding any calls except to dinner. And she adored everyone who came through their door, including me. I had to have my own giant poodle, I thought, albeit better behaved. I had no intention of harboring a permanent sore throat from fruitlessly screaming for my poodle to come.

In my book, My Life in Dog Years: A Poodle Named Henry & Other Melodramas, I reveal the mess I got myself into when I went to a local shelter and adopted a very large poodle, namely, Henry. His recall was fabulous. He would down in a split second when asked to. I'd say, "Who's a good dog?" Henry would come over with a huge grin, and I'd add, "Show me!" He'd plop his rear end on the floor, stick out his impressive chest, and look up at me as if to say, "Aren't I just the grandest dog you ever had?" He also played a joke on me, often. But I'll save that for the book.

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How many dogs does it take to change a lightbulb?

Candida Pugh — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

– Author unknown

GOLDEN RETRIEVER: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned out bulb?
BORDER COLLIE: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code.
DACHSHUND: You know I can't reach that stupid lamp!
ROTTWEILER: Make me.
LAB: Oh, me, me!!!! Pleeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I?
TIBETAN TERRIER: Let the Border Collie do it. You can feed me while he's busy!
JACK RUSSELL TERRIER: I'll just pop it in while I'm bouncing off the walls and furniture.
POODLE: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.
GERMAN SHEPHERD: I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, checked to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.
COCKER SPANIEL: Why change it? I can pee on the carpet in the dark.
DOBERMAN: While it's dark, I'm going to sleep on the couch.
BOXER: Who cares? I can play with my squeaky toys in the dark……
CHIHUAHUA: Yo quiero Taco Bulb.
IRISH WOLFHOUND: Can somebody else do it? I've got this hangover….
POINTER: I see it, there it is, there it is, right there….
GREYHOUND: It isn't moving. Who cares?
YORKSHIRE TERRIER: I'm over qualified, have the boxer do it!
AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD: First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little circle..
OLD ENGLISH SHEEP DOG: Light bulb? I'm sorry, but I don't see a light bulb.
HOUND DOG: ZZZZZZzzzzz.z.z.z..z..z..z…z
SCHNAUZER: Bark bark bark. Mom, the lightbulb is out…bark bark bark bark…MOM! I said the lightbulb is out! Bark bark bark bark bark…MOM!!! WHAT PART OF THAT DIDN'T YOU HEAR? I MEAN HELLO????
SHIH TZU – Who, me change a light bulb? We have staff to do that.
HAVANESE - If I charm you, Mom, you'd change it for me, wouldn't you?

And what about CATS?

CATS: Dogs do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So, the question is: How long will it be before I can expect light?

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