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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
24 Little Hours
I’ve been out of my mind for days. Or should I say in my mind. Nuts. Crazed. In shrink lingo: Harsh interjects. In my lingo: Up the wazoo. Everybody hates me. I look in the mirror: Horror show. The lamentable list goes on and on. To make matters worse: Outside, the Santa Ana’s seem to be raging just for me and my foul self-loathing state of mind. The air smells like fire. The other night when I woke up I thought drones were hovering over our house: That’s how the wind buzzed and whistled. Branches are down all over town. Red lights are broken. For gentle readers who do not live in California, there’s nothing quite like the winds that blow in from the East. The ones, I’m sorry to say happen way more often than they used to. It’s always Santa Ana season now. I wonder what Raymond Chandler would have to say on the subject. But this has been worse than the usual Santa Ana disturbance. My writing often mildly sucks. This past week, it really sucks. I hate every single word I’ve written. Not much to hate because I’ve erased more than I’ve typed. Everything is forced. I’m too disturbed to cook. I’ve been living on take out and kombucha. My husband is no help whatsoever. He’s off on one of those pilot benders. Truly, there’s nothing worse than pilots for film editors and their families. He surfaced briefly yesterday and had suitcases—not bags—underneath his eyes. Henry was glad to see him. He yipped and leaped and brought him the rope to play tug-y. Henry’s easy....Orphan
In a heart-wrenching article today in the Science Times section of the New York Times, Lisa Reswick writes about her banished brother, born with Down Syndrome and sent away by her physician father to become a ward of the state. She and her siblings grew up knowing about the existence of her brother Jimmy, but no one was allowed to visit him. No one was allowed to speak of him. The author only met her brother at the end of his life, at his deathbed and then at his funeral. It’s hard to think about the world advancing so much in empathy with the current likes of Trump, Cruz, and the extreme version of them: ISIS. Or just today, the state of Mississippi affirming business owners the right to discriminate against gay people based on religion. We do however live in more enlightened times in terms of our feelings about individuals with special needs like Down Syndrome, Autism Spectrum to name but two. Not even the Donald would risk diss-ing a Down Syndrome person. At least I hope not. But back in the Dark Ages of my childhood it was a different story. The author of the article in the New York Times was haunted throughout life by the notion of a brother she did not know. A brother who was different than she was. A brother who did not belong and therefore a brother who was sent away. And of course the hidden message in all this is: if I can send him away, I can send you away. Better behave! Though I have always had all my marbles (relatively) and my IQ is adequate, I too faced expulsion by my father to an institution: an...The Incredible Vanishing Husband
My husband has been home for a couple of months. It’s always nice the first month when he’s home. We go out to dinner, we cook, we go to the movies, we watch TV, we see friends, and we have for a while, a semblance of a normal life like other people live. After that month however, well… I want some peace and quiet and not to relate during the day. I want my freaking house back. I want him to shut up! Film people are always worried about the next job. I worry too. He doesn’t have to say it, it’s written all over him. What if no one hires me again? What if this is my last job? The same thing happens to me when I finish a project and I’m waiting to start another, will I ever write again? Will the powers that control such goings on betray me and condemn me to staring at the empty screen for the rest of my life? Since both of us have lived this way for nearly all of our marriage, doesn’t make the whole process any easier. We’ve done some version of this in New York, in Los Angeles, in East Hampton. Sometimes we’d land on one coast, when he’d get a call for an interview and turn around and be on the other coast within 10 hours of landing. The old canard about shoveling elephant shit and giving up show business is absolutely horribly true. I believe this is one of the reasons why our son has extremely short hair, lots of beautifully tailored suits, eight zillion ties and became a republican because it was as far away as he could get from the film...
The New Me
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