Opening for a book I recently completed writing. Where the .... .... is, there is a chunk removed to trim it down. Would appreciate any feedback...


Describing Jeremy Banner as quiet or shy would be like referring to the Grand Canyon a small gash in the desert, Mt. Everest a tiny hill, Death Valley a warm locale for a pleasant summer vacation with the kids, Seattle a dry city. His lifelong stoic silence was renowned worldwide in medical journals, a documented case of unexplainable muteness, genuine yet with no accepted assignable cause.

Diagnoses throughout the years changed as regularly as spring fashions in Paris or Milan. When pastels were the popular color scheme, post-traumatic infant stress syndrome explained his unique condition. Hemlines receded scandalously high, he was now considered to be autistic; shoulders became bared, he was thought to have suffered from embryonic neurological damage; when pilgrim buckled shoes suddenly became all the rage, non-functioning cerebral linguistic processing emerged as the definable cause of his eternal silence. The list goes on and on: trace level heavy metal poisoning as an infant, undetectable micro-tumor buried deep in his brain, a genetic birth defect, an unreported traumatic brain injury. Like Dickens’s Marley being dead, Jeremy Banner was mute, and that more than anything must now be accepted.

Perhaps he spoke in a past life, but Jeremy certainly did not speak in this one. Healthy at birth, he goo goo’d and ga ga’d like any normal newbie should. Right on schedule he reached out, crawled, and performed every milestone to his parents’ joy and relief. Somewhere between taking his first step and chomping his first crispy biscotti, something went horribly wrong for Jeremy Banner and was still so very, very wrong nearly three decades later.

Of no coincidence, generally believed by many who studied his case, was his mother walking out on the family, never to return, two months before his first birthday. Julie Beach was only 22 when she gave birth to the boy, barely half the age of the father of her child. Her whirlwind erotic romance with the famous Seattle area mystery writer began to shake and rattle at her first missed menstrual cycle, bits of plaster chipped and fell from its ceiling as the former rock and roll groupie’s belly distended, and the whole house of cards caved in mercilessly as Jeremy shot out of her dilated birth canal into a cold, harsh world.

The baby’s father, Brian Banner, had been minding his own business, cranking out best selling mystery novels and cruising through his early 40’s when his path crossed Julie’s. Fate tracked him down like a bounty hunter from Hell with a siotcase full of day of the week panties that all were Monday. For at least half a decade, the star struck youngster Julie Beach had been in love with Dirk Tremain, the Seattle cop turned private investigator who lived and breathed in the thousands of pages of Brian’s work. As many readers had mistakenly assumed, Julie was certain that Dirk and Brian were one and the same. If she was in love with Dirk Tremain, then she was in love with Brian Banner.......

....... Cracks in the perfection of their relationship appeared ever so slowly and subtly, as is usually the case. Julie would get into a foul mood, snap out of it quickly and then over compensate to make up for her bitchiness. She became insanely jealous anytime Brian went to meet his agent, a female, and then would later apologize profusely for her inexcusable behavior. Tantrums began to become a regular event. Once when Brian commented that he didn’t wish to go to the opera during their trip together to San Francisco to promote his latest book, Julie stormed off in the BMW and did not return for several days, telling him she had stayed with a girlfriend. She refused to even acknowledge the fresh dents and scraps along the passenger side of the vehicle, which had been in pristine shape when she had sped off in it. He took the car in to be repaired and didn’t even raise the issue for discussion.

Their first six months together had been a continuous string of passionate and intimate times together. The next six months, were similar save for an occasional day here and there with a tantrum on her part over something incredibly trivial. As time passed, the mix slowly changed to where the good times together became rare. It happened so slowly that Brian didn’t even notice what was going on. He had once heard that if you threw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it would jump out to safety as soon as it hit the surface of the water, but if you placed that same frog into cool water and slowly heated it up to boiling point, it would make not even the slightest effort to escape its fate. Brian was a frog in a pot of water on the stove. Julie had cranked the burner to high and he didn’t even notice how close is ass was to boiling.

Brian drew heavily upon his court ordered anger management classes which he had been required to complete after roughing up his previous girlfriend and immersed himself in his writing. This only worsened things with Julie; she did not like being ignored. Brian began to secretly wish that she’d leave him; Julie began to realize that Brian and Dirk were not one and the same. After reading a newspaper article in the Sunday Seattle Times on numerology, she ran the numbers. Brian adds up to 45; Dirk 42. Close but no cigar. Summing the digits gave her the interesting result that Brian was 9, Dirk 6. She had mistaken one upside down loser for her true soul mate. What a fool she had been.

There were occasional times where they’d draw back upon the emotions they felt those first days together, and all the resentment and anger would melt away, allowing the enjoyment of a brief moment together. Alcohol and Julie’s occasional intense need for self satisfaction and control were usually the driving forces behind these moments. It was during one of these nights together that Julie became pregnant.

When she broke the news to him, it was made disappointingly clear to Brian that she was going to have the baby and there would be no discussion of an abortion. Much to his surprise, she spoke of how she wanted to work out their differences and create a life together for the sake of the child. It was an appealing thought to him. His success provided them with limitless financial support and they did have some great times together in the beginning; he had the ridiculous idea that it could all be rekindled. It certainly seemed clear that they should give it a shot. More importantly, it was clear he had little choice in the matter.

As her belly grew, Julie’s mood swung through intense peaks and valleys, one moment she would be the greatest partner he had ever had in his life, the next his worst nightmare, sometimes over the smallest things and with a rapidity that made Brian’s head spin. They hung in and made it through the pregnancy together. Jeremy Banner was born on December 8, 1980 moments after a deranged fan emptied a .38 revolver into John Lennon’s back in New York City, silencing him forever. The bespeckled ex-Beatle’s final words: “I’ve been shot.”

Motherhood was not a kind companion to Julie’s mental illness. It became apparent to Brian that he had partnered up with a certifiable lunatic. Jeremy, their son, was caught in the middle. Both parents loved the boy very much, and he was the glue with held them ever so tenuously together but the situation worsened as each day passed. Brian’s writing suffered and he was forced to abandon and re-start a manuscript that had turned so dark and somber that it had become unreadable. Julie’s resentment was targeted on him like a sniper rifle’s laser beam. The once star struck girl was in love with Dirk Tremain, not Brian Banner. She had long forgotten the hero worship that had delivered her to him and the pleasure they once enjoyed; Julie began to make vague threats about making him pay for all of her unhappiness which she felt he had heaped mercilessly upon her.

Her tantrums reached mercurial unpredictability during those first few months after the birth. During a characteristically dramatic moment one rainy Saturday morning, full of fury Julie stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her so violently that a recently hung professionally shot portrait of father, mother, and newborn baby fell to the floor with a dull thud accompanied by the clink of cracking plate glass. After the sound of Brian’s BMW faded off into the distance, he carefully picked up the portrait to return it to the wall. A large crack ran diagonally across the family picture separated Julie alone on one side, Brian and Jeremy together on the other. He stared at the image and muttered angrily to himself.

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