Pink Cotton Candy is Sometimes Green
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CHAPTER 1 (Sunday) The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. --Carl Sandburg, 'Fog' It was late March in early 1991. The place was my new home, Northern Virginia. That's the time of the year when spring frees the landscape from the icy fist of winter, transforming the land, and lightening the heart. The mornings of having thinly crusted morning-ice on windshields and grass gives way to sunny days and sunny dispositions all around. For me, early spring is the most wonderful time of the year. It is both warm and frosty, arriving with the rains and bringing visions of red, blue, orange and purple-green kites floating in the air. It was also the time of the year when I returned from the Nam. I sat at the kitchen table eating a full breakfast of Rice Krispies and bananas. Floating and sinking in my bowl like the Loch Ness Monster, I played with my bananas. Eating cereal is really neat when I wasn't being hurried. 'Just when you think all the bananas are gone, I find another, Daddy,' said my little Maureen, also playing with her food. 'Hi,' spoke my wife, Lydia. Her voice flat. She entered the kitchen upset about something. Call it husband intuition, or years of experience being married. How can I describe Lydia. Well, it's always good to paint the temperament side of a woman first. She is of sturdy temperament, which means she can hold her own while still dishing it~out. Her quick Irish tongue is the scourge of the neighborhood. She can excoriate, castigate, malign, and otherwise denigrate any targeted adult, or child for that matter, with ease. Standing tall in her shoes at five feet and two inches tall, her red hair and buxom form lent a note of attractiveness to her face, with its cute pert nose. Her cheeks are full and high as if some Cherokee Indian had been a nocturnal bed friend with one of her pioneer ancestors. Lydia stepped up to the table and peered intently at me like a purchaser in a pet shop, scrutinizing a pet for some possible shortcoming. 'It's Saturday,' she stated finally, twisting her mouth to one side and waiting. I knew she was going to pull a honey-do list out of he~ pocket a mile long. She stood there waiting with her lips together without smiling. It didn't take Einstein to sense two points not in my favor: she was upset and she was really upset. In summary, it was going to be a long, rotten day if I didn't guess her displeasure and pretend not to care. My spouse, or interested other that they are now referred to, considered me to be a jock without any sense of home repair at all. It was quite the ruin of many days when I failed to repair the toilet or a decking plank. But right in the middle of sucking down the last banana, I figured it out. The fighting sounds of shouting and screaming filtered up from the basement. I could tell the girls had given up arm wrestling and were working up to an out and out screaming hair pulling contest over Saturday morning cartoons, places on the couch, and Daddy's attention. Soon they would call me down to mediate. Whichever daughter yelled or cried the loudest was the one losing at that time. Then they both began yelling, 'Dad! Dad!' 'Boy,' I said, trying to sound. exasperated, 'I'd better see what the fuss is about.' I got up from the kitchen table with Lydia following closely behind. I put the bowl in the sink.
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About the Book
Jonathan Callahan, is an ordinary fellow by outside accounts,
but on the inside, he is a complex psychological organism, who barely keeps his
head above water. Living the supposed suburban good life, he feels beset by
life’s problems. He works for a boss who hates him, yelling at him all the time.
At home, the local Homeowners’ Association beseige’s him with threatening
requests that he repaint his door back to its original color. His wife
wants him to be a man and stand up to it all, and he just wants to be a
peacemaker. While dodging the inevitable arrows flung his way, Jonathan’s father
suddenly dies, and when his oldest sister convinces him that only he can handle
the funeral arrangements in New York City, his life goes from bad to right down
the toilet. Because, of course, Dad was not an ordinary fellow; he was a crazy World War
II Vet, who terrorized the entire family when Jonathan was a boy, that is, until
Dad got locked up on a psycho ward. Seventeen years have passed since Jonathan
has last seen him, and now, even in death, he’s back, and the family is
gathering to play out their learned roles. But all Jonathan wants to do is to
bury his father, get the hell out of New York City, and return to Northern
Virginia to settle his fight with the Nazi-styled Homeowners’ Association. Left
to his own devices, he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, but aided by a
humorous spirit guide, attended to by several wild and strange friends, and
pushed by his two little girls, Jonathan learns that he doesn’t need to battle
the forces of evil all by himself, all he has to do is stand up for himself and
his family. Pink Cotton Candy Is Sometimes Green is an experimental
novel, weaving psychological insights, humor, and new age
beliefs.
About the Author
The author, Mark Thomas McDonough, is a lawyer, who enjoys
writing in his spare time. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1951. He attended
the City College of New York (CCNY) and Cleveland-Marshall Law School. He has
worked at various times as a janitor in an old age home, in a lumbermill in
Alaska, as a cashier in a department store and as the assistant business manager
for three weekly newspapers in Manhattan. He twice served in the United States Army. The first time was
before college, when he was an enlisted soldier in the United States Army for
three years and served a one-year tour in Vietnam, where he was assigned to an
aviation unit. After law school, he was commissioned as a Captain in the Judge
Advocate General’s Corp, and tried over one hundred criminal trials in four
years. The author currently resides in Northern Virginia with his
family and an overgrown yellow lab named Jolie. When not working for the
federal government or following his girls around various soccer, field hockey
and lacrosse fields, he enjoys jogging, the martial arts and hiking and camping.
Despite a life-long fascination with ESP, the Egyptian Pyramids, reincarnation,
Atlantis, and past civilizations, he’s a down to earth person, who blames none
of his paranormal interests on being born left-handed.