Kitely's first section is about style-- the way in which a writer conveys their work. Exercise number one concerns parataxis. Kitely quotes the OED's definition of parataxis as "the placing of clauses one after another without showing how they connect (by coordination or subordination)..." (Kitely 29). He cites the way Hemingway and Gertrude Stein used parataxis as a more realistic way of describing life, because life itself "was far more complicated and less connected" (30). So here's my take on the parataxis exercise, using one of Kitely's suggested writing prompts.
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Tracy and her mother, Dolores Hague, sat side by side on a couch in Ms. Hague’s formal living room. A lamp was on. It buzzed against the cream colored walls, the low hum sinking into the musty couch.
“Don’t do it,” Tracy said.
“The marriage is happening, accept my decision.” Dolores lit a cigarette.
Tracy shook her head. “It’s not fair, you can’t do this.”
“Why not? I’m a grown woman, Tracy.”
“The drinking and the way he missed the last 15 anniversaries and the lying about going to Portland for rehab when really he was panhandling and doing God knows what else.”
Her mother sighed, the cigarette quivering between her fingers.
“He’s changed, there’s the church now, he’s got that heart condition. I can’t turn my back on those thirty years.”
Tracy rose from the couch, sat back down, clutched her knees.
“Heart condition? You mean the one where he doesn’t have one? Mom.”
Her mother furrowed her brow. She was a slight woman, Ms. Hague. Slight but precise. Defined chin, unwavering silver bob. Compulsory cigarette always at hand.
“It’s not like that anymore, Trace. It’s not how you remember it.”
“You know what I remember? Thirteen years ago. The Fourth of July. Him and Dan fucking Redman getting high in the car while the rest of us watched fireworks. I told you I was going to the bathroom. I went back to the car to make him come sit with us, come be a family with us. Dad was wrapping his belt around his arm.”
Ms. Hague clenched her fists by her temples. Tracy was scared she might catch her hair on fire with her lit cigarette.
“I get it, okay? He was a shit dad and you resent that, and I never did anything about it for all those years and you felt isolated. People change.”
“People don’t change. People learn to wear different clothes and perfect selling a different life. Him especially,” Tracy shot back.
The two women sat in silence, Tracy picking at her nails, Ms. Hague sucking on the last of her cigarette. Neither one ventured into the palisade between them.
Tracy’s mind raced across so many birthdays spent in tears and so many nights spent smothering out the sound of her parents’ arguing into her pillow, and of the countless postcards she’d been promised but never received, and the phone calls, and the Christmas visits, and the times she’d kissed her mother’s shoulders, her trembling shoulders wracked with sobs brought on by the man she was now going to remarry. Tracy couldn’t fathom this decision of her mother’s, much less be happy about it. Here was this man who caused so much suffering, who one day found God and a clogged artery in his heart, trying to fool his mother into believing he had bettered himself. And she did, she believed him.
The phone rang. Ms. Hague stood up slowly. Tracy remarked to herself how tired her mother looked. She picked up the receiver, cupped her hand around it, and glanced at Tracy.
She believes in him, Tracy thought.
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