Friday, May 18th, 2007
There was no meeting at Barnes and Noble last night. The woman who was supposed to run last night’s meeting (they are now rotating, taking turns), Penny, did not show up. I was very excited when I found out Penny was going to run the meeting because I love her so much, and because she knows so much, she has the answers to all the questions I have. She is exactly who I wanted to run our meeting. I didn’t know it was going to be Penny. The last meeting I went to was in January, and then Dew Anne was still running the meetings. But Maria told me on the phone last week “Dew Anne no longer does it, now it is 2 men who do it together, and they are both wonderful, and she is so happy, because she found Dew Anne aloof, plus Dew Anne did not have good information for us, and Steve was so great, he was perfect, it’s too bad we lost Steve.”
I arrived early. Bill went to find the UFO magazine he likes to read. Barnes and Noble has two kinds of magazines he likes to read, and they are too expensive to buy. Either he likes to read about the NFL draft or he likes to read about UFOs, and each magazine costs $20. So he no longer protests when he has to drive me to the meetings, he sits in the comfortable chair and reads the magazines.
I hung around the clerk station in the middle, and a woman showed up with a book she wanted to get and also to ask, did they have the books she was looking for? And while the clerk was looking it up, I said “what a pretty blouse, where did you get it?” And she said “at Dillard’s on clearance.” Since shopping is my favorite activity, I asked a lot about Dillard’s and their sales. “Dillard’s has nice stuff” I said, “but it is expensive, how do you find out when it is on sale?” We must have still been talking about shopping when I confided I didn’t know how to drive and my husband drives me. And to my absolute and total amazement, she said “same here, she doesn’t drive and her husband drives her everywhere, and he is in the store looking around right now.” And we both confided to each other what that experience is like. “I try to be so careful” I said, “I don’t want to impose.” “I don’t want to take advantage” she said. We both said to each other how much thought, care, and effort goes into it.
She was very curious about the writers meeting. “Come stay for it” I said, “it is only an hour, it is over there, in the coffee bar.” “I can’t because of my husband” she said. And I instantly understood. “We just came back from going out to dinner.” “How nice of him to take you out to dinner” I said. “I just retired from working at the library” she said, “now I have time, maybe I will write.” “Do it” I said, “do it, it is so much fun and it is easy.”
Then Maria found me and we all introduced ourselves. She said her name is Rita. Maria said she is Maria. And Rita said that is her mother’s name, Maria Louisa, and I said “and my mother’s name is Marion.” Maria said her middle name is Anna. Maria was excited out of her mind. “I just finished my book” she said. “Congratulations Maria!” I yelled for joy. “Congratulations! Mazel tov! Congratulations! Great! Great! you did great!”
In early March Maria had told me “I am going to write a book and I am going to finish it by June before I leave for Poland.” And here it was mid-May and Maria had finished it. I don’t know how she did it. All Maria had written before was a screenplay, writing a novel is a whole other thing. And I still can’t believe it because I taught Maria how to do email. And her emails were always 5 illiterate incomprehensible misspelled words strung together. She didn’t know how to type or her way around the keyboard. English is not her first language, she came over here when she met her husband visiting Poland from America, and she was not so young when she got married.
But she had told me she had hired a girl to help her. And since Maria has very little money, and was paying so little, it must have been a labor of love on the girl’s part. Because Maria had the 225 page manuscript in her hands at Barnes and Noble, and wanted me to sit at the table and read the beginning of it. It had been printed out on her computer. I guess Maria (who won’t write at home) went to Barnes and Noble every day and wrote her heart out long-hand. The girl must have started out by sitting down at computer with Maria, and taking down dictation. Then she typed up everything Maria wrote. I really don’t know what went on. All I know is it is a brilliant well written book.
The problem for me is the topic. When Maria was 20 in Poland, she met a student at the university also 20, maybe they met in a train. They became the best of friends, very very close, not boyfriend and girlfriend but like brother and sister. And eventually he told Maria his story. He was Jewish, and as a child he had been in the big Nazi concentration camp. And Maria had written the whole story of how they met, how they became friends, everything about him and her, and also all his experiences in the concentration camp as he had told them to Maria.
“I cried and cried as I wrote the book” Maria said “that my beloved friend went thru this.” No way did I want to read Maria’s book, I thought it would upset me. But we went over to the table which had the sign “Writers Meeting” on it, in the coffee bar. And Maria said “read the first two pages,” which I did. It was very interesting. And then she said “read another page in the middle.” I said “I don’t want to read anything where something bad happens.” Which for some reason made Maria crack up. I guess when you have written a book about a little boy at Auschwitz and your friend says “I don’t want to read about anything bad which happens,” what can you do but burst out laughing.
Somehow Rita found us, and I said “Maria just finished her book, here why don’t you read some of it.” And Rita sat with us at the table, and Rita really liked it, she kept on going, and did not stop where I stopped. “It’s as if you are talking” Rita said, “just as if you are talking the story, and everything you say, I can see clearly right in front of my eyes as if I am living it.” Maria did not understand this is the greatest compliment a writer can get. She thinks a compliment is “brilliant writing,” but a compliment is someone saying “I am having the experience.”
Maria had written her screenplay about this, but they told her “you will have an easier time selling your screenplay if you turn it into a novel first.” Which is exactly what Maria did. Maria told me and Rita, now she will start her second book, it will be about cosmetics. When Maria got married and her husband brought her back to USA to live, he was a music professor, Maria went to school for skin care. She had been a brilliant chemist, the nun who taught chemistry in high school wanted Maria to be a chemist. And she found skin care very interesting. I guess it was a beauty school, but Maria said she wanted to find out what was underneath it all (I guess she meant under the skin?) and taught all that to herself. And then she went to work for Elizabeth Arden. And when she and her husband and their son moved from Missouri to Tucson, Maria was employed for a long time at the very fancy resort here, La Paloma, in the Elizabeth Arden salon, where she did facials and stuff like that. And now Maria wants to write all her expertise in a book, how to look beautiful.
Rita said to Maria “you have beautiful skin, what do you use?” And Maria said she goes to Trader Joe’s and buys jojoba oil for $5, “you just put a few drops on your face, but be careful because so much comes out at once, and all you want is a few drops.” And since I had brought my little notebook with me, to write down useful hints about how to get published, I wrote down “jojoba oil, 5 dollars, just use a few drops.”
Then Maria said “Penny never showed up, let’s go over to the back where the author is giving a talk about her book.” So Maria and Rita went over there, and I found Bill reading his UFO magazine. And he said “time to go?” and I said “yes.” I said “there was no meeting.” He said “there wasn’t? You were there for a whole hour, I thought it was a meeting.” I said “Penny didn’t show up, but Maria finished her book.” And Bill was very impressed Maria did that and very interested in her book. “Maria did a great thing” he said. “Yes she did” I said. He was worried I got cheated because there was no meeting, but I said “I had a great time and Maria, Rita, and I had our own meeting and it was very good.”
So he was relieved and we drove home under the most beautiful desert sky there ever was. And I saw a beautiful bright star up there. “O that star is so beautiful, what is it” I asked “Venus?” “It is Sirius,” he said, “the brightest star in the sky.” And life just seemed perfect to me with that beautiful evening desert sky, spread out before me, and that exquisite bright star set in it like a jewel.
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