Rebecca Dubois

Finished the novella, Beelines in Winter, so will be posting chapters starting next week to those of you who signed up, then got right back into these little stories which I didn’t realize I’d missed until I started again, this is the latest one, the latest ones are always my faves, it’s from this morning.

I’ve been reading some of the classics lately, ones that I’ve read before so I can just flip through them without feeling guilty about it, I am a big re-reader, happy when I don’t need to worry about following the story so I can just look at the writing. I’ve got the paperbacks in the basement but at night I like to read on my ipad so I download appropriate formats when I can, usually for about 99 cents. Got a message this morning from one of the sites I use, with this headline: New from Robert Louis Stevenson which made me wonder if he is writing from his pirate grave.

Here is Rebecca DuBois, hope you like it, hope it gives you something nice, thanks for being here.

Rebecca DuBois by Sherry Cassells

I wasn’t going to write today but the sun came into this room on such a slant I mean how could I not, couldn’t decide if I should make people up or if I should just keep telling the truth, you know, things like the way my cat sits looking at me I can’t tell if it’s love or hate but it’s pure one or the other, and the little candle that changes the colour of the walls, my snowpants hanging on a chair like decor, there’s a vine in my window it’s all stem just a single white leaf of surrender, it’s called minimalism. I just read something about justice sensitivity, they got words to explain all kinds of behaviour don’t they, it’s like you don’t have to take responsibility for any of your own batshitness.

If I were to make a person up today I think her name would be Rebecca because it takes an entire exhale, and then some, to get her out of your head.

Everybody knew Rebecca because of her father who lived under Brighton bridge – we lived in Brighton, Minnesota – she took him dinner across town every evening like a waitress in a gigantic diner, a white plate with one of those metal lids, a backpack which I presumed contained clothes and bedding. I waited for her return, sometimes I sat on the porch but she didn’t see me, it was like she was sleepwalking, I heard the soft cymbals of the used dinnerware in her backpack, felt them in my bones, her footsteps across my heart, Rebecca.

I was going to say that the rest of the time she was normal, that it was only an hour or so at dusk she was not, but when I got to know her, I realized it was the opposite, the real Rebecca was the waitress version, the other one simply took normal for a test drive at school. It wasn’t until she joined the drama club I got to know her, when she walked into the room we stopped it was like we were suddenly inside a marshmallow, thick sweet white silence, the teacher almost instantly asked her to read for the lead and you could see it happen, we all fell in love at once but it was my thousandth time, I felt my persistent devotion and perhaps my name gave me the right to sit by her side in the auditorium during auditions, and I ran up to her on the way home, shameless, I matched her stride.

Rebecca. She got the part. She was Blanche DuBois. She was Blanche DuBois. I have never before or since seen any actress play that gorgeous fragility so well, she was incredible, she was more than the audience could comprehend, they were breathless and giddy and not sure why, some would never forget that feeling, but they did not know to attribute this to her alone, praise was lavished on all, including me for my rather insignificant parts in scenes seven and 10.

In perhaps the finest moment of my life I alone understood her greatness.

In private I called her Rebecca DuBois which emptied me throughly, I see her face now edge to edge on movie screens, I sit in the front row, my whole body could curl into one of her eyes. Rebecca. I asked her once about her father, something stupid and rhetorical like did she wish he’d come home – never before had I known words to break apart and fall into such a vortex; they still reside in some far-off cells – I take him everything he needs so he won’t ever come back she said.

Rebecca. Loving her gave me many things but it did not give me the right to ask her why.

She gives interviews of course, she's shy and private, one time one of the late-night Jimmies asked her where she was from and I got that vortex again, she said my name instead of Brighton, she said I am from Tennessee.