No Story to Tell

This novel is dedicated to all those who have traveled this
path with dignity and grace.

You are our teachers.

Thank you.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, the same could be said for creating a book. It is, at times, a solitary act, but one greatly influenced by a multitude of people. This novel exists because of many people’s inspiration, encouragement, patience, and knowledge.

I would like to thank Dona Sturmanis, my first writing teacher, who saw “veins of gold” in my early work and encouraged me forward. The Humber College Creative Writing program which was invaluable for me as a place to safely incubate and grow my fledgling endeavors. A heart-felt thank you goes to my mentor, Don Thomas, who woke me up to all the possibilities within.

This novel, however, would not exist were it not for Peter Murphy, who so charmingly shoved me out of my comfort zone, and Lou Aronica who so graciously caught me.

I am indebted to Fiction Studio Books for the opportunity to bring this amazing story to life.

And, a special thank you to Victor, Carrie, Chantelle, and Cara, who have always supported me in my “writerly ways.” You have been the wings of my belief.

I’m a fool for great characters. To me, a novel only truly comes alive if complex, identifiable figures populate it. I’m fond of stories and storytelling, but characters are what keep me turning pages.

You’re going to meet some fascinating characters in
No Story to Tell.
Victoria is intriguing on so many levels. She’s stuck, she’s conflicted, she’s confounded, and yet at the same time she has a spirit that compels her, even when she feels most incapable of moving forward. Elliot is worldly and accomplished, and just far enough out of reach to keep us wanting to know more about him. Bobby, for all of his considerable faults, has enough wrinkles in his persona to make him matter to us. Even the secondary characters like Rose, Pearl, and Sam bring the novel surprising levels of humanity.

If characters matter as much to you as they do to me, you’re going to feel very much at home with
No Story to Tell.
KJ Steele is a gifted writer on several levels. Her voice is sure, her ear for dialogue is sharp, and she paints vivid pictures with her descriptions. However, what she does best is fill her novel with people who seem very, very real. There’s someone in this novel with whom all of us can relate. To me, that makes for an extremely satisfying reading experience.

I hope you enjoy
No Story to Tell.

Lou Aronica,

Publisher,

Fiction Studio Books

“Won’t last the night. Be the lucky one to see the dawn,” the doctor had decreed, lowering his old owl head.

But she had lived to see the dawn and thirty-seven more years full of dawns not experienced by the good doctor himself. Life is a cruel joker and her birth was the cruelest joke of all. She had been a slimy, baby-bird embarrassment that had slipped out unexpectedly after the main show. The doctor was appalled to have the pathetic thing slide into his hands and quickly passed it off to his nurse, who dutifully bandaged it up in mountainous folds of blankets. Not quite knowing what to do with the unfortunate mass, she’d plopped it into a bassinet and pushed it aside, while the doctor assured himself and the bewildered parents that mercifully the tiny thing was too weak to survive and would soon die.

She did not die, however, but rather stubbornly held that gossamer thread of life until six days later fate, refusing to be outwitted, had delivered the other twin up in exchange. Her father had been livid, railing at the doctor to explain the actions of that bastard, fate, and his bitch dog, death. He insisted on a reversing of the facts, something . . . anything, to make life fair. But the doctor, the wisest man in their little town, could offer no more than a mute apology. The child had simply quit breathing and died in its sleep. The doctor sat like a great sagging Buddha; her father demanding a blessing, he offered up empty hands grasping for meaning they could not find.

When it became clear that she would not die, they grudgingly took her home and gave her a name. The name was not hers really, but rather borrowed from her dead twin who now lay anonymously under six feet of earth and a cross dismissing him blankly as “Baby Stone.” For the few days of his life, his name had been Victor—victorious one. But he’d failed to live up to his namesake, life cutting him down before he’d even lived a week. The name was simply transferred to her, the booby prize. And so, at seven days old she became Victoria and, thus christened, continued to tremble on into life despite the predictions against her. And perhaps, she mused now looking at the black-and-white photos, just perhaps, in spite of them.

The baby picture had not been taken of her but of her twin brother and was as close as she’d ever get to seeing herself as a newborn. She’d not been expected to live and therefore, in her parents’ minds, hadn’t really existed. Practical to a fault, they had been hardworking, hard-minded farm folks. No sense in wasting time on things that didn’t pay. Photographs chronicling her life hadn’t begun until she was just about a year old. By that time her parents had gotten past the disappointment of their loss and accepted the fact that she was there to stay.

She’d never seen the pictures of her brother until after her parents’ deaths, and she’d inherited the job of rooting through the cobwebs of their lives. Her mother had buried the photos deep in the attic, away from Victoria’s prying eyes so there’d be no occasion for prying questions. It was dead and gone and done with. No sense dragging up things you couldn’t change. It was her mother’s signature phrase, one Victoria heard over and over again. Sooner or later it referred to almost all the things in her mother’s life.

She looks closely now at the photograph which is tucked inside the frame of her dresser mirror. Off to the left side she can just see a fraction of another bassinet holding a bundle of blankets that she assumes must contain herself, inadvertently caught by the span of the camera. Or it could have just been another baby in the nursery. She tells herself it doesn’t matter. But it does.

The mirror is a collage of pictures, so full of photographs one can hardly see themselves in the small circle of glass that still reflects outwardly. Several times over the years she had started to take them down, but she could never complete the job, the thought of condemning her family memories to the bottom of some drawer filling her with guilt. Beside the baby picture are her mother and father staring out from the last photo taken of them together. One can hardly describe them as together. Her father spreads out across his recliner, his leather face crumpled into a tight-lipped scowl, as if life were causing him great pain. Beside him rises his cane, hard and unyielding, a constant companion in his later years. Across from him cowers his wife, perched lightly on the sofa’s edge gazing foggily into the camera with skilled confusion.

He died three weeks later, her mother waking to find him cold and stiff in the bed beside her. The doctor said he’d been dead for quite some time, and her mother had needed a sedative after realizing she’d slept soundly against his corpse for most of the night. She’d been almost giddy for the first few months after his death, but gradually a dull disillusionment settled over her as she realized that even in death he refused to leave her. It was a massive disappointment. She still felt his presence and heard his tyranny of criticisms roll through her head. Finding her few aspirations could not be extricated from under his dead disapproval, she’d finally relented and followed him to the grave.

Below the photograph of her parents, Victoria’s own head emerges from her father’s feet. Glistening brown hair tugged into a severe bun crowns what others called an attractive face. She was young when the picture was taken by her dance teacher. One could scarcely trace her to the feeble root she’d sprouted from. At seventeen, she smiled into life. Defied fate to hold her down. Bitterness touches her lips now as she looks into her own naive face so full of expectation. She looks at her young body, lithe willow wrapped in a green dress that fit like life itself. She envies her youth. Envies the luxurious optimism that only the uninitiated can possess.

Auntie May’s words come clear to her. As a child they had made no sense, hopelessly twisted and wrong. But they speak truth to her now.

“They said you’d be the lucky one iffin’ ya lived to see the dawn, Victoria, but I’m tellin’ ya the other one . . . now he is the lucky one, God’s truth. Gone straight home to the arms of Jesus. Oh yes, you’ll see you will. He’s the lucky one sure enough.”

She had no picture of her Auntie May. An odd duck. That was how her mother had described her own sister. Two bricks short of a load. Victoria could only recall snatches of their moments spent together, and the rest she made up to suit herself, creating an aunt a little less bizarre and a lot more brazen, with a laugh free and clear as a mountain stream. But the truth was she’d been the town’s crazy lady, and before Victoria’s seventh birthday she’d been conveniently swept away.

Overlapping her father’s recliner is a picture of her husband, Bobby, victorious hunter, resting one foot on the carcass of a deer, its frozen marble eyes fixed infinitely into a future they would not see. He was young then and still exuded all the charm and vitality of youth. She studies the smile frozen on his face, but it is not a smile. Even at such a young age he was pitted against an invisible enemy, and his kill, this conquest, was merely practice in annihilating his tormentor.