 The title story “You Can’t Get There From Here,” is the last story in Part I of the book. Mitchell Garvey is the night manager at Winn-Dixie and he prides himself on noticing things like ‘how rain in the city smell all stale and musty’ and ‘how they’re not allowed to drink beer in beer commercials’.
Reviewed by Rita Quinton
You Can’t Get There From Here
by Leonard Nash
Kitsune Books
ISBN-10L 0979270014, ISBN-13: 9780979270017, 177 Pages
Many gifted writers say they start with a character and build their story from there. Leonard Nash has authored thirteen such stories and in each one the character is so strongly written the reader comes to feel he knows this person. You Can’t Get There From Here stories will hold your attention. Here are a few.
Anyone who has ever bought a used car will identify with the first story in the book. The title is “Sharks,” and who hasn’t felt like he was being devoured by sharks when trying to get a reasonable deal on a used automobile. The hero is Mitchell, an honest salesman. Reading his thoughts and following his actions we find ourselves rooting for him, but, alas, the used car industry is filled with Sharks. Mitchell is a mere goldfish among them. We can’t help but cheer for him even as he is sent off with his chair and meager personal belongings. Mitchell balances the chair as he walks home, jobless, but not defeated. We can only hope he finds a job in the place where we next go to buy a car.
We all have our dreams and in Nash’s “We All Dream A Little Sometimes,” we are introduced to Jack and Martha, a couple whose dreams far exceed their realities. They adopt a stray dog and max out their credit card to restore the animal to health, then find themselves being evicted from their apartment because the lease states No Pets.
Typical of their longing for better things they check out an apartment in a new development. It’s obvious right from the beginning of the Real Estate lady’s spiel that they can’t afford the place, but Martha dreams on. She refers to their pyramid of egg crates from Target as their “entertainment credenza.” Sounds good and impresses the Real Estate woman, but reality hits and they end up renting a much cheaper place. There’s a problem when they move in – the strange old lady living there has not moved out. She says she will go when her daughter gets her into Betty Ford Clinic in California.
It’s a stalemate but her cat and their dog do get along.
People often feel boxed in by circumstances, and we see a trapped Audrey in Nash’s story “Boxed.” She’s diabetic, has lived with her parents all her life, but now they are gone and her sister Jeanine wants her to move from Miami to Los Angeles. The sister was no help when the parents were ill and now admits to being jealous of Audrey because the diabetes made her special to the parents.
Jeanine leaves Audrey to deal with picking out a dress for the mother and to notifying friends of the funeral arrangements. Audrey adjusts, she always has adjusted. . Sounds of the old house and memories of the love she shared with her parents and her brother who was killed in Vietnam comfort her. She’s not ‘boxed’ by any circumstances. She is exactly where she wants to be.
The title story “You Can’t Get There From Here,” is the last story in Part I of the book. Mitchell Garvey is the night manager at Winn-Dixie and he prides himself on noticing things like ‘how rain in the city smell all stale and musty’ and ‘how they’re not allowed to drink beer in beer commercials’.
After a skimpy micro dinner Mitch rests for a while and as he sleeps he dreams of who, when, where will he meet the woman he will love. When he wakes he goes to the Coral Gate Diner. Here, at least, he feels at home and there is always Regal and Pedro, two men he knows and, of course, Irene, the lovely waitress. He’s trying to get up courage to ask her out.
Between serving people Irene is always scribbling in a little notebook and Mitch tries to imagine what she is writing. This evening he feels bolder and he talks more to Regal and Pedro. He also asks Irene about her writing and is very surprised to find that she is composing poetry. Many other surprises come up when he learns that Pedro and Regal are not at all as he imagined they were. His observant nature has failed him when it comes to the three people he meets almost every night at the Diner.
He does get up the courage to have a conversation with Irene and she confesses that her dream is to go to Oregon. When he asks why she doesn’t just go ahead and go she replies, “You can’t get there from here.” They exchange favorite dream places and even though Irene turns him down to go have a drink with him, she shocks him with the suggestion they take off together for Oregon and California. He thinks it is too wild of an idea but asks her out to dinner on the following Saturday night. She says yes and asks that he take her to a nice quiet place near the water.
Mitch doesn’t think either one of them is ready for Oregon yet, but he has hopes now, and on the way home thinks of his victory when he bowled a perfect game in the league finals tournament. Who knows, sometimes you can get there from here.
Part II of the collection is comprised of five connected stories that tell the tale of Adam. In “Natalie and Gina” Adam tells us during college days he meets Natalie at a Tupperware party. Within weeks they are living together. Natalie is passionate about protecting the environment and wildlife, but her passion for their love comes to a halt at graduation. He should have known because she never did unpack all her Tupperware. She leaves for California to further her studies and then on to Europe to study art history and do some painting.
After Natalie leaves, Adam meets Gina who is the exact opposite of Natalie. She is an earthy character, but also a romantic soul who paints glowing stars on the ceiling of her bedroom. She does not have a privileged background like Natalie and life has dealt her some seriously raw experiences, but she is a great comfort to him as he comes to the awful knowledge his beloved father is dying.
In “Dad’s Fish,” Adam takes his father for one last visit to New York. Even with all the difficulty of his father’s illness Adam is able to take his Dad for a trip along Broadway, and a subway ride to Columbia University. Adam is not entranced by the subway, but his father tells him to appreciate it as “a cross section of society like you’ll never find anywhere else.”
Adam tries to fulfill every wish of his father’s because he knows it is a final trip for the old man. He even purchases two goldfish because that’s what his father wants. No matter how much difficulty they encounter getting back to their hotel his father clings to that plastic bag with the fish in it. His dad also tells him he likes Gina because she is not as uptight as Natalie.
“No Deposit, No Return,” brings Adam back to Gina and more worry about his father’s health. Adam passes the bar exam but when his father dies he decides he doesn’t want to be an attorney, at least, not just right away. He wants to go for an adventure to New York, and then perhaps on to other places. He invites Gina to go with him, but she says it is his personal adventure and in time she would spoil it for him.
“Humboldt County” is the last story in the book Adam heads out on his own. Instead of New York, he travels to Oregon and California, tries to contact Natalie but she no longer has the same phone number. In Northern California he settles down for a while at the Eel River Redwoods Hostel where he meets a lot of interesting people. They all chip in efforts to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner without turkey. Adam enjoys himself at the Hostel but a couple of years later when he tries to go back he finds the place has been closed. He pretends that Cecil, the self-described “old hippie” who managed the place, is still making life interesting for new travelers.
About the reviewer: Rita Quinton is a freelance writer, residing in Plantation, Florida. She has been a reporter, columnist, and the editor of both a weekly and a monthly newspaper. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such diverse publications as Woman’s World, The Lamp-Post (CS Lewis Soc. Of CA), Buffalo Spree, Alive!, The Storyteller, Writer’s Journal (Minnesota Ink), Talers Tales, What’s Love, Chrysalis Reader, Mature Living, Real Fiction, Raven’s Tale, Dogwood Tales, Yesterday, Woman, Lines in the Sand, Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy, My Legacy, Christian Home, Mature Years, Grit, Good Old Days, etc. She has written several novels, and continues to write short stories, flash fiction, a personal column under the title Almost Mature, essays and memoirs for a wide variety of magazines.
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