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News – Sarah Dessen. Hello, everyone! Well, it’s been a BIT of whirlwind lately. The ONCE AND FOR ALL tour is done (and it’s number four on the NYT list this week, thank you for that!) and I was SO honored to receive the Margaret Edwards Award at ALA in Chicago.
I’ve been home for ten days, basically reading, watching Bravo and sleeping. It was QUITE a scene, and reminded me of the first show I went to with him when he was just beginning to be into this hobby, many years ago. I wrote a story about it, which ended up winning second prize in a local paper’s short story contest about a zillion years ago. I was digging through MANY boxes today trying to confirm, but with no luck.) Anyway, just for fun, I thought I would post it. I used to write short stories, believe it or not! I actually have quite a few. Maybe I should do something with them.
The morning I arrive to drive him to the reptile conference the latest defector is Suzanne, who is nowhere to be found when I knock on the door seven times before pushing it open. All the signs are there; large square empty spots on the walls, a shade lighter than the space around them, several empty boxes left behind, unneeded, a conspicuous lack of seating. The couch belonged to Suzanne.“Richard?” I call out in the quietness of the house, and his voice answers me from behind a wall.“In here.”It’s the last door on the left, at the end of the hallway. When I open it I immediately begin to sweat; the heaters are going full blast, the one window fogged up with a thick wet mist. He is in front of the big cage, stroking the chin of his biggest one, Liza. She was named after another lost girlfriend, who left many years ago with the dog and the washing machine and the only ring Richard ever bought for any woman.
The engagement was assumed to be off when she surfaced in Idaho with a potato farmer, sending a curt postcard that listed Richard’s faults, one by one, like an inventory list.“Where’s Suzanne?” I say, but I know. We go through this each time. He is still scratching the lizard’s chin, a rough raspy sound as she turns one eye to glare at me.
Liza does not like other women. Harriet, the dancer girlfriend, once found her loose and chased her around the house with oven mitts on and the broom in hand, attempting to catch her. Richard came home to find Harriet, oven mitts and all, weeping on the front porch and Liza sitting triumphant on the bed, keeping even the cat at bay. He says to me slowly, “She left yesterday. I came home and she was packing.”I liked Suzanne, but I like most of them. She was a teacher, kindergarten, with the kind of long brown hair that little hands love to grasp and a chirpy voice that always made her sound happy, even when she wasn’t. She liked to mother Richard, making him tea and bleaching his T- shirts.
She was too sweet for Richard, to simple to understand his utter lack of commitment to anything. They all think they can change him, calling my mother and coming to Christmas dinner to take their place at the table as though they are permanent. We smile at them and let them think this, envisioning all the others that came before them to other Christmases in other outfits with other baked goods.“I’m sorry,” I say, taking off my jacket as the heat of the lizard room is overcoming me. She has her own cage now, having dwarfed the growth of any other iguana put in with her; she is a bully, climbing over all the others, her feet splayed across their eyes as she clambers over them en route to the food dish.
They would go in healthy and within days be losing weight, shrinking in front of your very eyes. He lost a few that way. I watch Richard load her into a big carrier, the kind they use for cats or small yelping dogs. He has a few other things he’s taking as well, all stored in little Tupperware containers with holes pricked in their auto- seal lids. He sees me watching and says, “It’s okay. It’s the best way to transport them. Really.”“Whatever you say.” I am going on this trip in protest, recruited at the last minute because my father sprained his ankle playing croquet the day before and could not drive Richard as promised.
Richmond is only two and half hours away and I have been assured I can come back by evening. Besides, my mother told me as she pressed gas money in my hand on the way out the door, Richard and I have never spent much quality time together, at least not since I went off to college. I am on winter break after exams and do not want quality time with my brother, really. We are not close but look alike, with the same blue eyes and round cheeks, and though I know very little about my brother I am always amazed at how much I resemble him, and he me.
It seems a contradiction of sorts. I open the back door and watch Richard load in the carrier and the Tupperware containers, distributing them on the back seat so that they are level. I can see the little ones moving around in their plastic homes, lifting their heads as if perplexed at the sudden blue interior of my Toyota. I follow Richard back in to see if he needs any help, but he is only shutting off heaters in the lizard room and turning off lights.
All the cages are empty now. We get in the car and Richard immediately turns on the heat full blast and directs all vents between us to the back seat. I pull out of the driveway and head up the street, towards I- 8. Richmond. After we stop for coffee and donuts and a final check of Liza, who is slapping her tail against the side of the carrier and creating loud rustling noises that are making me nervous, we are officially on the road. After a few miles of her banging around I say, “She can’t get out, can she?”He turns back, checking again, and says, “Oh, no. She just hates that carrier.
Usually I let her just crawl around the backseat, or I did when we had the truck. She loved that. But Suzanne took the truck.”I realize about twenty miles down the road, when the billboards and interesting scenery have given way to the long rows of trees that are the only thing to look at until Charlottesville that I have very little to say to my brother. Normally I would ask about Suzanne—this gets me through most family gatherings, the stock girlfriend questions—but now I am at a loss and I turn to the only other topic I know Richard responds to.“So are you buying stuff at this lizard conference?”“It’s a reptile conference,” he corrects me gently. It depends on how much I get for the little guys back there.” He gestures to the Tupperware lizards in the back seat. They have bright blue tongues. But they’re expensive, so I don’t know.”“Oh.” I say, pretending this is interesting, nodding as we pass a minivan full of kids all up against the back window, waving at us madly.
We wave back, my brother and I, in transit. The Greater Richmond Reptile Conference is being held at a Holiday Inn. It has a big lobby full of plants and fountains, with people mingling around bringing in boxes and carriers. Many of them are wearing lizard T- shirts, although some have frogs. Bollywood Thriller Movies I Dream In Another Language (2017). The woman in front of us is wearing a T- shirt emblazoned with a bright purple frog in a pork pie hat, a souvenir from another conference, in Florida. Apparently, there is a big underground market in lizards and frogs of which the ordinary layman like myself is completely unaware. Once registered we get on our nametags and proceed to the main conference room, where there are tables set up and lots of people milling around checking out each other’s goods.
There are tables showcasing reptile health care, speciality cages, even a lizard magazine that promises a reptile centerfold every month. The girl at that booth is my age, obviously a moonlighting college student, who doesn’t seem to realize how strange it is to see her holding the magazine open, Playboy style, to display a lizard lounging languidly across a rock. I smile and move on, with Richard giggling behind me.
There are terrarium displays, tablefuls of snakes and lizards and frogs, most of which are contained in smaller packages than Richard’s tupperware.
Will Smith Defends Netflix at Cannes. The Cannes Film Festival has never had a juror quite like Will Smith, who strode into the Palais to roars of applause that brought to mind the premiere of one of his action movies (think “MIB in Paris”). The star of such popcorn hits as “Independence Day,” “Bad Boys” and “Suicide Squad” had the crowd of journalists so captivated at a Wednesday afternoon press conference, he didn’t leave much speaking time for his fellow jurors — like Jessica Chastain or a totally silent Paolo Sorrentino. Even the Cannes jury president, director Pedro Almodovar, had to succumb to the Will Smith show, admitting he’d always wanted to work with the movie star.“When I first got the call, I was really excited,” Smith said, recounting the back- and- forth between him and his publicist with dramatic flair. Three movies a day is a lot!” He stressed the unforeseen challenges that might arise from all those 8: 3. When a reporter noted that ex- juror Kirsten Dunst donned 2. Smith had the jokes ready.
The Oscar- winning “Talk to Her” director spoke of tensions that have grown in a film industry that’s trying to grapple with new players like Netflix that don’t always premiere movies in theaters. French distributors have protested that two of this year’s in- competition titles, Netflix’s “Okja” and “The Meyerowitz Stories,” didn’t until recently have a theatrical release in France. Almodovar made it clear which side of the debate he stood on.“I personally do not conceive, not only the Palme d’Or, any other prize being given to a film and not being able to see this film on a big screen,” Almodovar said. I do.”“I’ll be fighting for one thing that I’m afraid the new generation is not aware of,” he added. It should not be part of your everyday setting.
You must feel small and humble in front of the image that’s here.”That seemed to be the last word — until Smith chimed in a few minutes later, launching into a defense of Netflix, as it related to the viewing habits of his three kids. Netflix brings a great connectivity.
There are movies that are not on a screen within 8,0. They get to find those artists.”.