<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head><title>Studio Scordatura &#8226; A. R. Nyfors &#8226; Transformation Bound</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=unicode"> <meta name="description" content="Consortium of Close-Knit Pacific NW Artists, Writers &amp; Musicians."> <meta name="keywords" content="Art, Fiction, Fine, Literature, Modern, Music, Non-Fiction, Photography, Post-Modern"> <meta name="author" content="Scott Aaron Stine"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16825"> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript"></script> <body bgcolor="#000000" link="midnightblue"> <style> body {background-image: url("http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/nyforsbackdrop.jpg"); background-position: 50% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: scrolled;} </style> <p> <!--SPACER--> <table width="600" height="160" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> </td> </tr> </table> <p> <!--TABS--> <table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <a href="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/nyforscatalog.html"><img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/tabcatalogwhite.jpg" name="tabcatalogwhite.jpg" width="150" height="50" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/nyforshistory.html"><img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/tabhistoryblack.jpg" name="tabhistoryblack.jpg" width="150" height="50" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/nyforsupdates.html"><img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/tabupdatesblack.jpg" name="tabupdatesblack.jpg" width="150" height="50" border="0"></a><a href="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/nyforscontact.html"><img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/tabcontactblack.jpg" name="tabcontactblack.jpg" width="150" height="50" border="0"></a> </td> </tr> </table> <!--SUBTITLE--> <table width="600" height="50" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/subheader.jpg" name="subheader.jpg" width="600" height="50" border="0"><p> </td> </tr> </table> <!--PAGE TITLE--> <p> <!--BODY DESCRIPTION--> <table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <font face="georgia" color="maroon" size="-1"> <div style=height:600px;width:600px;overflow:scroll;"> <center><font color="maroon"><b>Excerpt from</b></font> <font face="georgia" color="black"><b>Transformation Bound</b> (2008)</font></center><br> &#160;<p> <b> Vidalia Eustace had arrived blameless and untouched at the age of 35 in the year 1996. She kept her health, her weight, and her figure. She had not yet acquired a pet, nor did she haunt churches with a determined solemnity of a Sunday. Instead, she slept in, and attended (briefly and sporadically) a later service.<p> Her hair remained her best feature, although she had stopped fussing with it years before. Most of the time it was clasped in an untidy heap to the back of her head with one of the assorted barrettes, rubber bands, pencils, and assorted do-whats-its she kept piled on her dresser for the purpose.<p> She still slept in the room she had grown up in. Although it had been three years since the car accident that had taken her parents, she had never quite managed to do anything with the master bedroom. All of the public rooms had changed  she'd sold the old furniture and brought new things, had taken down her mother's taste and put up her own. She changed the perennials in the border by the fence, and she had planted a tree in the back yard. She'd painted the kitchen too, but only because it needed to be painted. The original yellow was fine with her, and she didn't change it.<p> She missed her parents, but was done grieving them.<p> It was getting on towards spring again now, and getting hot during the day, although it was still dropping down into the 20's and 30's at night. She looked out at the lawn and knew she really had to start mowing this week. She felt bored. A few years ago, she would have been thinking over a wild Saturday night and trying to decide if she should call the guy who gave her his number. In those days, it had always boiled down to whether he looked even remotely like husband material.<p> Vail and her parents had been united in their desire to see her married. None of them had ever understood why it hadn't happened for her. She was cute, nothing spectacular, but not a dog. She had green eyes, light brown hair and an okay chest. She'd always had her share of dates and boyfriends in high school, and had lost her virginity on prom night like the rest of the nice girls.<p> She'd had one boyfriend per year in college, hooking up with someone about a month into classes and then breaking up in the spring.<p> She'd never been in love though, until she'd had an affair with a married guy. He was older than she was, and using her, and she'd been as dumb as any 25-year-old could be about it. She'd wasted four and a half years on that affair, and still couldn't think about it without getting angry at herself.<p> Irritably, she clunked her coffee cup down next to the coffeemaker and poured herself another cup. Thinking about work also made her irritable. What was it about developers that made them such jerks? Sure, just because they were raping the land and bending laws and lining the pockets of the city fathers  some of whom were on her church board, allowing Vail evil fantasies of public confession  but why did they have to be such pigs?<p> Most of them didn't even have degrees. They looked down on the engineers and architects they hired, because as developers, they made more money and didn't have to actually do anything. They looked down on the contractors because they never had to get dirty. Vail, with her degree in art history, wasn't even human to them.<p> 'I will not pick up Greg's dry cleaning,' she thought to herself. 'It's the slippery slope. I won't, I won't, I won't!' She was an office manager, not a secretary, and certainly not a wife or girlfriend. After ten years it annoyed her to have to keep fighting the same battles.<p> 'I should have gotten that degree in accounting,' she chastised herself. 'Then I could have my own business and I could make the money guys sweat; at least once a year.' Unfortunately, accounting had bored her silly. Her parents, insulated from her class choices by distance and dormitory telephone calls, had been quite surprised with the degree. So had she, but in a different way. She and a counselor had figured out the only possible thing she could complete the requirements for and get a degree at the beginning of her senior year. She'd actually had to take an extra class one quarter so that her degree would not be in the dreaded General Studies category with the pot-heads and slackers.<p> The girls in her group from high school thought art history was a great thing to have a degree in. It was the sort of thing that all of them had degrees in as well, albeit from exclusive women's colleges out of town, not from the local state college. Still, they'd all (except Vail) pledged sororities in college, and now they all had their own country-club memberships with their husbands, who were the money men Vail worked for.<p> Vail saw their husbands every day and didn't much like them. When she saw her old high-school buddies, she didn't much like them either. She couldn't figure out why her parents had been part of that set. They'd never had any kind of money.<p> Suddenly, drinking her coffee, she remembered a conversation she'd had with her father about it before the accident.<p>  Dad, why are we Methodist? she'd asked.  We aren't like the country-club people. We should be over with the Lutherans on Elm street. <p> He'd laughed.  Well, it's your mom. I guess some things are hard to give up. <p>  Like what? Envying Mrs. Courtroy's hat? They'd both laughed. Her mom's face had been positively pickle-like about that hat.  She's not religious. She can't be loyal to her church. <p>  Nah, honey, it goes deeper than that. Your mom once was one of the country-club people. I mean, the highfalutin-est of country-club people. She's not loyal to the church, she's loyal to her class. <p>  Oh, mom's not like them! <p>  No, she's a lady. Which is a lot more than you can say about Mrs. Courtroy, hat or no hat. <p>  So what happened? How come we're not rich? No offense, dad. <p>  None taken. She gave it all up for me. Married me and her family disowned her. One of your aunts sends cards now and then, to let us know how her parents are doing, and one of them sent you that pen set when you graduated, but other than that, her people cut her off completely. <p>  What was the matter with you? she'd asked. They were at the table in the kitchen, and they'd been sharing the paper, she remembered the rattling of the sheets as he turned the page.<p>  I was not from money. I was just an ordinary kid with a small-town Jaycee scholarship to a good school. She liked the way I danced, and I liked her giggle, but that wasn't supposed to mean anything. After all, this was clear back in those wicked old 1950's.  So they thought you were a fortune hunter, huh? <p>  That's about the size of it. Then the old man was so stubborn that even after you were born, or when I got sent to Korea, he wouldn't admit he'd been wrong. He just couldn't do. <p>  So my gramps is a stubborn idiot? What a legacy. <p>  He's a stubborn filthy rich idiot. <p>  Who cares? she'd shrugged.<p>  Like mother, like daughter, he'd said and, getting up from the table, had kissed her on the head.<p> Suddenly she was tearing up again about her father, for the first time in months. Definitely not the right mood for church. On the spur of the moment, she put away the dress she had out and got into a t-shirt, cutoffs and sneakers. It was time to mow the lawn.<p> continued...<p> </b></div> </font> </td> </tr> </table> <p> <!--ANNOUNCEMENT--> <table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <font face="arial" size="-1"><b>Complete texts for most of these works are available to editors and publishers upon request.</b></font><br> &#8194;<p> </td> </tr> </table> <!--BACK--> <table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="left" valign="top"> <a href="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/index.htm"><img src="http://www.thetrashcollector.com/studioscordatura/images/sscompasslink.jpg" name="sscompasslink.jpg" width="300" height="100" border="0"></a><br> &#8194;</b><p> </td> </tr> </table> <!--COPYRIGHT--> <table width="600" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <font face="arial" size="1"> <hr width="600"> <b> This website &copy; 2010 by Studio Scordatura.<br> All text and art reproductions &copy; 2010 by the respective artists.<br> Please do not reproduce anything from this website without prior permission. 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