Since the mid-1980s, Laura McHale Holland has
contributed to the Noe
Valley Voice in a myriad of ways. She started out
writing the
occasional feature, and as time went on became the go-to
writer for Store Treks
and Short Takes. She was an associate editor for the paper and
had a column,
“This ’n’ That,” which covered milestones in neighborhood
residents’ lives.
“That was particularly rewarding because I got to spotlight
all kinds of
creative and worthwhile things people in the neighborhood were
doing,” she says.
The Voice is pleased to return
the favor,
spotlighting McHale Holland’s second book, a collection of her
flash fiction
titled The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song (Wordforest).
She defines
flash fiction as short stories of 50 to 1,000 words. In 2011,
she decided to
post one flash fiction story per week on her blog, www.lauramchaleholland.com. “I
found
that I really like the genre,” she says. “I used to write
songs in the
1970s, and while I never got anywhere with that, I think the
discipline of
telling arresting stories in songs paid off in writing very
short fiction. The
stories are varied, but they all tend to take everyday people
and experiences
and tilt them in unexpected directions. The world of the
stories is similar to
the one in which we live, but the rules are a little
different.”
For almost 20 years, McHale Holland lived with
her husband Jim and
daughter Moira on the Upper Noe end of Sanchez Street (she’s
also step-mom to
Jim’s two sons). In 2004, they moved to Rohnert Park in Sonoma
County. She runs
the editorial department for a financial services trade
publication based in
Santa Rosa. “I feel part of my heart will always be in the old
neighborhood
[Noe Valley], especially having raised a family there. The
memories of that
time are so rich.”
Her first book, Reversible Skirt (Wordforest,
2011)
is a childhood memoir about a difficult subject—the effects of
a parent’s
suicide on surviving family members. It won a silver medal in
the 2011 Readers
Favorite book awards, and is available as an ebook and in
paperback. Her new
book is only available as a paperback for now but will soon be
out in ebook
format. Readers can find out more at her website or at lauramh@mac.com.
—Olivia Boler
Flash Fiction
by Laura
McHale Holland
They Knew Not
Keys in hand, she shuffled up the drive. She’d
had a long day
cashiering at a nearby convenience store and was picturing the
wilting veggies
in the fridge she’d have to use right away or toss. She didn’t
notice the
package by the front door until her sneaker bumped it.
About the size of a shoebox, the parcel was
wrapped in brown
paper. Her name and address were printed in bold black
letters. No return
address. Once inside, she unwrapped the package. It was just
an empty cardboard
box.
She tried to squish the box so it wouldn’t take
up too much room
in her recycling bin, but it was surprisingly sturdy. It
wouldn’t even smash
when she jumped up and down on it, nor could she cut it with
scissors or a box
cutter. So she threw it whole into the bin. It was carted away
a few days
later.
The next week, she arrived home and found a
package wrapped in
brown paper. It was the same, empty box, or one exactly like
it. She buried it
that night in the middle of her backyard.
The next morning a sapling stood where she’d
buried the box. Over
the next several months it grew into a sturdy tree that
flowered and bore an
exotic fruit: blue pears. She thought the pears might be
poisonous, but she
couldn’t resist tasting one. It was delicious, sweet, juicy,
intoxicating.
She took a wheelbarrow of the pears to the local
farmers market,
where word of their delectable taste spread quickly. Every
week thereafter the
tree produced more exquisite, azure pears. And every week she
went to the
market and sold them all.
People couldn’t get enough of them. Children
cried for the taste
of their juice; judges on the bench fantasized about biting
into their cerulean
flesh; restaurants clamored for them; artists drew murals of
sparkling blue
pears in the town square. The local newspaper wrote a feature
article about her
pears. She said the tree had grown in her yard on its own. She
didn’t mention
the box. Who would have believed her anyway?
She quit her job and developed a booming cottage
industry. She
made all manner of products from her prized pears: pies,
cobblers, jams,
jellies, soaps, lotions, balms, perfumes, incense, even blue
pear charms and
other trinkets. She and the town prospered for decades until
one day, old, gray
and feeble, she took to her bed.
She left her home, business, and considerable
savings to her
nephew and his wife. But the precious pear tree died the day
they moved in. A
couple months later, an empty box appeared at their door. They
were having
guests over for a barbeque that night to celebrate a
state-of-the-art outdoor
kitchen they’d put in right where the pear tree used to
flower. They used the
box as kindling for their fire pit. The flames were deep blue
and mesmerizing.
Nothing grew from the ashes; no more empty boxes
appeared at their
door. But they didn’t suffer, for they knew not what they’d
burned. ¹
Better Things to Do
He pads to his office
window and opens the blinds. Sun bathing his face, he loosens
his shirt collar,
sighs, closes his eyes. The warmth lulls him, and he groans,
repelled at the
thought of the presentation slides in his laptop. He gulps a
breath and another
and another as sunbeams flow in and around and through him,
filling every
crevice in the room. Then his phone beeps, a reminder of the
morning staff
meeting.
He spins from the window, snatches his laptop,
and dashes out his
office door. His mind crackles with percentages and profit
margins as he darts
toward the conference room. Racing through the reception area,
he glances in
the wall mirror and sees a halo pulsating around his head. A
21st-century
Jesus, he has a halo, a halo.
He drops his laptop on the reception desk, rips
off his employee
badge, and slaps that on the desk, too. Then he struts out the
front door. His
father is calling him. He has better things to do than stay at
work. ¹
Drifting
She is a rainbow fading as she loads the laundry.
He is an old
Chevy idling on the couch. He sees a brilliant arch of color
turning as she
reaches for the Tide. She turns toward
him and sees a fast ride down a dirt road on a long-ago
sun-burned evening.
She shakes the detergent box and hears seashell
and driftwood
chimes. She pours the powder into the washer, closes the lid,
turns the dial.
The machine rumbles, the waterfall comes.
“What would you like for lunch?” she asks.
The coffee table is a creaking pier, the carpet a
beach of
turquoise sand. “I think I’d like…”
He closes his eyes and becomes a boat drifting in
a leather sea.
She sits in the rocker facing him. She rocks. She rocks. She
rocks and becomes
the wind. She becomes the wind blowing him to shore.
He opens his eyes.
“What would you like for lunch?” she asks.
¹
The Ice Cream Vendor’s Song
The day his father drove away, Danube watched the
Jeep sweep the
house, yard, and block of laughter as it roared out of the
parking place, down
the street, and around the corner. Danube stayed on the porch
as blackbirds
preened in the branches above. He remained as neighborhood
friends chased the
ice cream vendor’s melody. He stayed on as the sun flung
purples and oranges
and reds across a gray-blue sky and as crickets sang into the
void where his
hope had been.
The first few nights after his father drove away,
Danube fell
asleep outside, and his mom carried him to bed. Then she
insisted he come
inside for supper, then earlier and earlier, for he had
homework to do and
chores and a future to build from marathons, tests, and kisses
year by year.
Now, a father himself, Danube drives a Jeep; he
doesn’t know why.
And when he visits his mom, he sits on the front porch in the
late afternoons,
his arm around his son’s shoulders, and he feels melancholy
squeeze his heart
momentarily, until he takes his child’s hand and runs block to
block, chasing
the ice cream vendor’s song. ¹
What For
Pierce wakes up the morning after. Yolanda, still
sleeping beside
him, had been wrong about the world coming to an end. He
wonders how his wife
of twelve years, the mother of his children, could have been
so stupid, so
snookered in. Yolanda had even seemed disappointed last night
when they’d
watched the news on TV. Not much had happened: a twister
ravaged a section of
southern Nebraska; another levee broke along the Mississippi;
a plane carrying
186 people disappeared over New Hampshire; a 5.5 earthquake
hit San Luis
Obispo, California; a few terrorists were detained at O’Hare
airport and
managed to shoot a customs agent before they were overpowered.
But that was it.
Pierce smiles at the sunshine coming through the
bedroom curtains,
as it always does on clear days. He swings his legs to the
side of the bed and
slides his feet into his comfy, fleece slippers. He takes a
step, but there is
no floor beneath him. He falls down, down into a vast, black
sky, and spins far
away from his home, his neighborhood, his life.
He screams as he loses sight of the earth, and
Yolanda stirs in
her dream. She wakes up and wonders where Pierce is. It isn’t
like him to leave
for work without kissing her goodbye.
She sits up and stretches while swinging her legs
to the side of
the bed. She slides her feet into her slippers and stands up.
The floorboards
creak as she makes her way down the hall and looks in on her
children, still
asleep, surrounded by stuffed animals in their beds. She
smiles and shuffles
into the kitchen, where she sees that Pierce didn’t take out
the garbage last
night; of course, she thinks, he was too busy hounding her
about what a fool
she was for believing the world was about to end. Irked, she
pulls the garbage
bag up from the can and vows she’ll give Pierce what for when
he comes
home. ¹
***
The Noe Valley
Voice invites
you to submit
fiction, creative nonfiction, photographs, or poetry for
possible publication
in Other Voices. EmailOtherVoices@noevalleyvoice.com or
write Other
Voices, Noe
Valley Voice, P.O.
Box 460249, San
Francisco, CA94146.
Please
include your name, address, and phone number, and a
self-addressed stamped
envelope if you want items returned. We look forward to
hearing from you.
