Elizabeth
Joy Arnold 
Promise the Moon
Deleted Scene
Natalie's Writing Aspirations
(Took this out to keep up the pace of the book...)
Natalie
In college, I’d decided I wanted to be a novelist. I adored books, the way they took you into other peoples’ heads, and I guess I’d thought that was the only necessary prerequisite. Until my senior year, when I’d written a first chapter. Started it on a napkin, actually, inspired at a bar by the sight of a woman looking for oblivion in her fourth whisky. Tessie I called her and, based on the woman’s thick una-brow, I made her into a transvestite.
I wrote for a week about the hell Tessie’s life had become, the dreams she’d had in college, the way they’d been shattered one by one. The words had poured out of me, and when I’d finished the chapter I’d typed it all up and then actually hugged the computer monitor.
But this was the beginning and end of my writing career. I’d printed the story out and then given it to my thesis advisor, who’d read it on the spot. I’d watched her face as she read, to see if she’d get the little jokes, feel Tessie’s pain the way I could feel it, be astounded by my use of metaphor. But her face stayed blank until the end, when she handed the pages back with a tight smile. Before she could say anything, I’d rushed out of the office and back to my room.
And when I read the chapter, I saw it. The level of my untalentedness. The story was melodramatic and syrupy, complete clichéd dreck. I crumpled the pages one by one and crammed them into a plastic cup, then lit a match. The smell of plastic and smoke. The glop of melted plastic oozing slowly, mockingly, across my desk. The fire alarm and a parade of students from the dorm onto the lawn, all of them knowing what they were going to do with their lives.
But now, the day after I’d read Dan’s article, I started trying to write my own. Maybe I was fooling myself and it was crap as well, but it didn’t feel like crap. I’d realized after rewriting Dan’s story that I could do what he did, and probably do it better. I wasn’t meant to be a novelist, but I did know how to write.
The article was the truth laundered with chlorine bleach, but for now it was as much truth as I was willing to face. It was similar in a way to Tessie’s story, in that it was about dreams and the loss of dreams. But it was more than that; it was about the sacrifice and unexpected joy of raising a family. About the differences between what had kept me alive at twenty and what was keeping me alive in my thirties. And it was about too many things, was much too long, but it felt wonderful, cathartic. As I wrote, the heaviness drained out of me and onto the paper, and I started to feel…light. Sort of.
A week after I’d started writing, after more than thirty pages, I stopped. I made myself stop even though I still was inundated with things left to say. The Chronicle had called that morning, asking me to confirm I was okay with having our story published, and I’d asked for the name of an editor I could submit the article to. I’d get Dan to give me a referral and then, maybe, I’d change our lives.
I reread the article, with a sense of something close to panic. It was eight o’clock, almost the children’s bedtime but I needed to get out, to move. I turned off the computer, thought a minute and then pulled the flashlight out from my nightstand drawer and went into the kids bedroom.
Both children were on the floor, Anna reading a textbook and Toby tracing his hand on paper. “Anna?” I shone the flashlight into her face, back and forth and then in circles. “Hey, kiddo.”
She squinted at me, rubbed her eyes. “Stop it! I’m doing homework.”
I reconsidered, then un-reconsidered again. I wanted to play. We all needed to. It’d be a way of finding each other again.
“C’mon, Toby,” I said. “Let’s go outside and play flashlight tag. I’m letting you stay up past bedtime, and this’ll be the last time in your life I’ll ever make you that kind of offer.”
I remembered playing with Josh, a moonless night on a trail in Virginia. I’d hear him laughing before I saw any sign of his light, and it was his laughter I’d follow. He had better night vision but I was faster, more nimble, and I’d grabbed him from behind, held on. What do I get for catching you? You get me. I bent to retrieve their sneakers from under the bed, and helped Toby discern left from right.
“You’re crazy, Mom,” Anna said. She sounded more annoyed than amused, the voice of an embarrassed teenager, and I felt a punch of hurt. But then I thought about my own mom, how she’d dress up to answer the door on Halloween, how she’d thrown a bucketful of confetti on me as I walked down the aisle at high school graduation. Profoundly embarrassing at the time, but now so precious.
“You’re right, I am crazy,” I said, “but someday when you’re all grown up, you’re going to look back on this and think how lucky you were to have a crazy mother.”
I walked outside, the kids following and both smiling now, and I pulled a second flashlight from my glove compartment. “The two of you take this and stay together, okay? These are the rules, Anna, you take Toby’s hand and don’t let go, and stay in the woods. No going onto the road.” I walked several steps away from them, held the flashlight to my face so they could see my wicked smile and said, “Ready? Okay…I’m it!”
They hesitated, watching me, but then suddenly, Anna shrieked and they took off. I followed a good distance behind, keeping an eye on their flashlight beam while pretending I couldn’t see.
Our lights dodged between and around the trees, fairy lights, bodiless and weightless and worry-less, unburdened. And from that distance I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in months. The sound of my children laughing.