An Adequate Vocabulary is the title of my unpublished manuscript, and the basis for both my podcast and this website. The story develops from the viewpoints of two main characters, separate in time and space, and told in alternating segments. Over the course of roughly half a century, through several states and countries, their sometimes mirrored stories wend until they find their common ground.
Meghan, the first character we meet, is voiced in the third-person by a disinterested, but hardly omniscient, narrator.
By the time she was eight, she knew every worker at every thrift store in the downtown… At ten she was making deliveries for Abe’s Deli and Beeler’s stationery store, and by age twelve she was racking balls at Delancey’s Billiards for a dime a rack. Denholm’s department store caught her shoplifting a pair of nylons when she was thirteen… At fourteen Meghan sold marijuana cigarettes, made out with upperclassmen behind Classical High, and hung with the teased hair and makeup crowd smoking Pall Malls on the steps of the Pavilion Ballroom.
And the boys buzzed around her like she was honey.”
The other protagonist is Francis, the first of several names he will take on; he speaks in his own voice, and narrates his own journey with whatever understanding and clarity he can bring to bear.
My earliest memories are of taunts endured, on occasion accompanied by rocks or other projectiles that often enough found their mark. My ma wrote off the sporadic blood and bruises to the rough and tumble of boyhood. “
Francis, however, finds solace in books, and becomes enamored of ideas, a trait that will follow him, for good or ill.
At an early age I learned to read, and my lack of friends precipitated a certain voraciousness. I devoured Every Dr. Seuss book that they had at the grade school library when I was six, and plowed through a dusty shelf of Nancy Drew mysteries when I was seven. By age nine I wandered through what they consider fit for “young adults.” Soon after I was plodding my way through Shakespeare, and had begun a superficial exploration of Plato and Aristotle of which any nuance and most substance was doubtless lost on me… they were my friends and I held them close.
Each is marked by their individual losses and traumas, and each sets out on their own odyssey with the arrogance of youth, a pinch of innocence, and a level of desperation for armor.
Think of this as Jane Eyre meets Bridget Jones, or Jason Bourne plays Oedipus Rex. Fate versus free will in an octagon grudge match! May the best characters win.