The Silver in a Michi-Gray Day

Joanna Schultz

Description

Retired professor Nora Reinhart unexpectedly finds herself the owner of a villa in Berlin, Germany. A beloved travel companion bequeathed her his house. Nora quickly realizes she has inherited more than a home when her guests present a host of complications. Despite her age, Nora dives into these challenges with gusto. She re-discovers a strength she thought she’d exhausted facing her own demons. 

Sujets

• Literary
• Women
• Literature
• General officer
• Woman
• The Women
• General
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 22 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977264213
• Langue: English

Extrait

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The Silver in a Michi-Gray Day All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Joanna Schultz v2.0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 978-1-9772-6421-3
Cover Photo © 2023 www.gettyimages.com . All rights reserved - used with permission.
Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part 3
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 4
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Ode to Bangkok
An old man trudges past Bangkok’s Central Chidlom department store
Hauling his cart of handmade brooms.
His feet are shod in ancient flip-flops bleached the color of dust.
A frayed straw hat offers meager protection from the sun.
Business is good, he thinks,
Though it’s funny that so much sweeping yields so little result.

The traffic on Chidlom is a blur of fluorescent pink and green taxis
Tuk-tuks spew exhaust; motorcycle taxis whine, and ancient buses sputter while their exhausted riders
Hang from open windows.
The sky above the Big Mango is a blanket of haze,
Heavy with pollution.
Skyscrapers stretch to find a patch of blue.

Inside a luxury mall, a young woman hauls her cache of designer shopping bags up the escalator.
Prada is emblazoned on her T-shirt and an ample supply of credit cards in her Birkin bag.
For a lark, she teeters into Zara in her favorite Jimmy Choos.
They’re the ones with the four-inch platforms.
She’s filling her day with shopping until she can pick up her daughter at her private school.

Her driver jockeys for the "Ozzie spot" in front of the school.
A gaggle of subteens giggle on the school steps in identical pleated skirts.
A school uniform is the great equalizer.
Their leather belts feature a silver buckle emblazoned with the school crest.
A barrage of pins and badges parade across each narrow chest.
Cars await the little princesses, humming their deep-throated sighs.
They’ll soon be carrying Bangkok’s future high-so’s.

A block from school, another girl waits.
She’s lying on a blanket on the sidewalk, watching a cartoon on a tiny screen.
Mommy’s sold almost all her pineapples.
Her kiwis are already gone.
Soon, mom and daughter will pack up their stand and
Go home to their three-sided flat near Ban Bok village
Where custom beggars’ bowls are sold.

Spirit houses guard the souls of ancestors,
Fed by bottles of red pop and adorned with garlands of orange and gold carnations.
A billboard near the airport reads, "Buddha is not for decoration."
Welcome to Thailand, the land of smiles.
Guy’s face pales as he sinks to his knees on the deck of the Bangkok river taxi. An overload of Chinese tourists had forced him to stand. As he slowly crumples to the floor, banging his head on a nearby seat, a chatter of Mandarin rises to a din. "Help!" Nora screams. A middle-aged man with three tiny girls in tow emerges from the crowd. "I am doctor," he says in fractured English. "I help him."
Part 1
Chapter 1
It pains me to admit it, but Nora Reinhart (that’s me) is getting old. It’s not just my body that’s aging. Oh yes, like most 72-year-olds, I hear the inevitable creak when struggling to rise from my favorite chair. But that’s less annoying than the way my memories have piled up. It just isn’t natural. I’ve been to too many places and seen too many things. My mind is buzzing with what was , not what will be.
I read somewhere that each person has a different time orientation: to the past, the present, or the future. I feel the pull of the past, but I prefer to look toward the future. The present is simply a stepping-stone to the intriguing things that lie ahead.
When my past outweighs the future what was versus what could be , I will get anxious. I like to think travel is the antidote for ruminating on the past. Travel transcends the boundaries of time. My brother, Cary, who lives in Berlin, believes that each trip is actually three trips: the trip we plan, the trip we take, and the trip we remember. When the travel balance sheet tilts heavily toward the trips remembered, it’s time to get on the road again. That’s how I ended up in two memorable cities, Bangkok and Berlin.
I’ve traveled from one end of the globe to the other, often with my best friend and travel buddy, Guy Guzman. But now Guy is gone felled by a heart attack in Bangkok last year.
Before Guy, I lost my son Michael. He was killed by a drunk driver while pedaling his bicycle around a blind corner. Michael was my free-wheeling son (pardon the pun) whose unclouded disposition always cheered me. Only one exception: there was that time during my first sabbatical in Berlin when Michael’s worldview darkened considerably. He was mourning the loss of both his father and his first serious girlfriend. But Berlin was also where he met his wife Kelly who made his old girlfriend obsolete.
Despite sharing a first name, Kelly #1 and Kelly #2 couldn’t have been less alike. The first Kelly was a silly, self-obsessed bitch. Michael’s wife Kelly is bright and articulate. She’s devoted to both her research and the three children she and Michael parented: Ella, who is 12, Dominica (a.k.a. "Minnie"), a very grown-up nine (adopted at birth), and five-year-old Mitch, named after the grandfather he never knew who succumbed to cancer in his early 60s. Unfortunately Kelly and the kids live in California, so I don’t see them as often as I’d like.
About my husband: my union with Mitch was not always a happy one, but I’ve made my peace with it, thanks mainly to Guy. He encouraged me to face my guilt over my part in a fractious marriage. Years of therapy also helped me put those memories behind me. Now, when I look back, I recognize that Mitch really was my better half more honest, more supportive, and more affectionate than I ever could be.
I feel the losses of Guy, Michael, and Mitch deeply. Each of them played an irreplaceable part in my life. But I still have lots of wonderful friends and a loving family. My younger son Trevor lives in Ann Arbor so I often see Trevor and his wife, Emily. Trev and Em have only one child Morgan, a student in the School of Architecture at the University of Michigan. Despite their battles over a choice of school for Morgan (she wanted a school farther from home), Morgan and her parents are closer than what’s healthy, in my opinion. But Trevor seldom asks his mother for an opinion, and Emily is determined to keep her "baby" close to home as long as she can.
Morgan says she has two role models: her aunt Kelly (Morgan pictures herself as an equally adept researcher someday) and her grandmother Nora, the world traveler.
When Morgan was 13, she and I went to Germany to visit Cary and his wife, Monika, in Berlin. Although few of the old buildings still stand, Morgan was captivated by Berlin’s prewar architecture. Berlin was bombed more than any other city during World War II, which make the ancient Prussian structures even more remarkable. Morgan says she plans to write her doctoral dissertation on the contrast between the Gothic and the Baroque styles of Berlin architecture.
Although Morgan is Trevor’s daughter, her temperament is more like that of her uncle Michael. She looks like Trevor but acts like Michael. She’s a little bit wild, the teensiest bit out of control. When I’m with her I can’t help but think of Michael.
Trevor and Michael were opposites in so many ways. Trevor is undoubtedly more politically conservative than Michael was. Trev is a stockbroker. I believe you can’t get much more conservative than that. Trevor is a novelty in a left-leaning town like Ann Arbor, Michigan. He likes to say he’s an economic conservative but a liberal humanist. I’m not sure that’s possible, but what do I know?
Michael always described himself as the classic bleeding-heart liberal, much like his mother. He was right on both counts. Inside my college professor exterior I’m still the 60’s hippy-girl who ironed her hair and strummed folk songs on her out-of-tune Martin guitar.
Despite their different worldviews, Michael and Trevor were passionately loyal to each other and me. They also shared a love of language. My boys were one still is real wordsmiths. Both coined terms and expressions that have become part of our family lore. An eight-year-old Trevor once looked out our kitchen window at the morning fog and wistfully pronounced it "a smeary day," so common in Michigan. Hence, Michael’s term, the "Michi-gray day." Trevor took the word "groupie" and shuffled it into "zoopie," which described his obligation to attend all his brother’s t-ball games. Was zoopie a statement about the zoo-like behavior of the dads who hooted like baboons when their sons came up to bat? Not sure of the etymology of the word but somehow, everyone in our family k