Book Excerpt
Book excerpt of “Imaginary Things”
by Andrea Lochen
It would’ve been easier to think of our
stay with my grandparents as a fresh
start if their home in Salsburg hadn’t
been the place I’d been shipped to
whenever I needed to recover from my
other failures in life. My mom had first
sent me to stay with them the
summers I was seven and eight, after
serious “behavior problems,” as she
called them. Then after some
spectacular mischief my sophomore
year of high school I was exiled to
Salsburg again for the entire duration
of the school year. Most recently,
when I was eighteen, they took me
in for part of my pregnancy.
So the symbolic significance of the
fact that I was going there now, after
I’d lost my job as a receptionist at
Lakeview Dermatology, was not lost
on me. Or them, I was sure. But they
had always been good about taking me
in, dusting me off, and attempting to
set me back to rights again. Winston
and Duffy Jennings were not stern,
preachy types nor were they
permissive, indulgent push-overs.
Since my mom had made them
grandparents before they were even
forty, much too young to be dubbed
Granny and Pops, Duffy had insisted
I call them by their first names
instead. She owned a small beauty
salon and over the years had learned
to talk auctioneer-fast, pausing rarely
to catch her breath, lest someone
interrupt her. She called it like she
saw it; sometimes she called me a
dumb-ass and sometimes she called
me a snickerdoodle, and whichever
it was, usually rightfully s