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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
Schadenfreude
I’ve never cared that he’s one of the vainest human beings I’ve ever met. Nor do I judge him for the fact that the inside of his garage has two highly polished sports cars (one vintage), and is so perfectly organized and clean, you’d be happy eating dinner off its floor. I even like his preposterous outfits, one nuttier and more expensive than the next. And I don’t care that he is around my age, perhaps even older, and his little trophy wife is my son’s age, maybe less. I like his trophy wife. I even like him. But when it comes to Henry, he’s always made me feel terrible. I don’t want my dog bad-mouthed around the ‘hood. The aforementioned man lives next door. And in the past, whenever Henry would bark in the morning, or anytime at all, he’d complain. When I was out of town, he even confronted our dog walker. “What’s wrong with that dog!” Lupe said, “He doesn’t like you.” And it’s true: Henry hates him. Henry barks like he’s on speed whenever he sees him. Apparently Henry is the only dog this man has failed to charm. “All dogs love me,” said he on numerous occasions. He’s also said so many times, “You should train your dog! He wakes me up in the morning! My God, I’d know his bark anywhere. He’s like some horrible beast! I need my sleep!” And so on…. Then one day, his wife came home with a dog. And the dog is darling. The dog is adorable. Almost as cute as my Henry. He’s a little Pomeranian, with a...Road Rage Redux
Why do men shout behind the wheel of a car? It is some throwback to the cave? Some nod to the cowboy days when we women were home keeping the fires burning and they were out on the range, whooping it up with guns and ammo? My son calls my husband a “pioneer of road rage” and it’s true, he’s been cursing and shouting behind the wheel as long as I’ve known him. I just got back from a road trip with this trailblazer and Henry to downtown. LA is in the midst of an insane Santa Ana. The likes of which I’ve never experienced in my twenty years on this coast. Yesterday, when I was driving back to West LA from Santa Monica, the temperature was 103. Today, as we were heading further east, it was 107. And these geniuses who say they want to run the most powerful country in the world claim there’s no evidence of climate change! Climate change is all around us. When you live in LA, you see it every time you leave the house. The patches of parched earth where grass used to be. The giant Evergreen trees that are dead roots standing. You see it when you look at the dashboard of your car and read the temperature outside the speeding car. Henry knows climate change: when he hops up in my husband’s Beemer, he goes straight for floor, the coolest place to be in the car. And how about California! We are the first state to make it legal to break a window in a car and save a dog...Lost In Long Island
I was coming home from my dear friend Mae’s wedding in DC. Such a cosmopolitan affair, her husband wore a kilt, she wore a celadon colored silk gown that made her look like a member of the Chinese royal court during the Ming Dynasty. She looked regal and gorgeous and perhaps unlike a female member of the royal court back then: radiantly happy. I was trying to get back home to the little house in the woods where I’ve been staying all summer, and which I’ll be leaving, not without regret, day after tomorrow. I landed in the little Islip Airport, and caught a quick cab to the bus stop somewhere on the Long Island Expressway. The bus, a.k.a. the Hampton Jitney, stood me up. I wasn’t surprised—everything had gone so seamlessly well getting to DC and so far, getting back. Nut jobs were blowing up street corners in Chelsea, and the airport security was pretty tight and made me hand over my conditioner and tweezers. Still the plane left on time. And, forty minutes out of Baltimore we were at MacArthur, one of those small town airports that seem so charming to me, since I’m always going between the two behemoths—LAX and JFK. What do you do for fun on the expressway with two hours to kill and one convenience store and gas station, waiting for the bus? I hadn’t seen TV all summer since there isn’t one here, so I watched The Donald in a baseball cap and his chubby cheeked face telling the cameras what the Saturday night explosion means to us as a country. I watched Hillary do the same. She was infinitely more sane. And while I’m on the subject of Hillary, why...
The New Me
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