Alone with Elvis

“Until that moment, Beth had felt sure she’d escaped her mothers manless, poverty tightrope existence.”

Andy Warhol’s Triple Elvis inspired my story, Alone with Elvis. In Susan Hankla’s class, we crossed the street to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and used art as our writing prompt. I share a birthday with Elvis Presley and have always been a fan.

Many stories I write involve an unintended pregnancy. In my early twenties, I worked at Planned Parenthood in Richmond. A substantial part of my work day was spent talking with women about birth control. Less time, though as memorable, was spent with the young, stone-faced mothers and the teenagers they brought to us for a pregnancy test. Their ruined hope for something different for their daughters lined their faces and spilled into our windowless counseling room. At twenty-three years old, I sat in the chair behind the desk. I had no idea how much I didn’t know.

I wrote Alone with Elvis years before it was published by SORTES in April 2023. When I read it now, if I could, I would make changes. I’d tone down Elvis’s colloquial speech. I’d make his parents less stereotypical. But I’d keep the ending.

An early version I wrote ended with Beth getting out of Elvis’s truck, closing the door, and standing on the sidewalk. I like ambiguity, but that felt like I’d left her hanging. By having her meet Elvis’s mother and Elvis Senior, Beth could see an accurate picture of how her life with this family might be.

Some who’ve read this story have said that its ending is too ambiguous. How much to show or tell a reader continually eludes me, especially with the novel I’m writing now.

For me, there is no “reader,” rather so many readers. They bring their own life-experience into every word they read. Which is a great thing as a reader. As a writer, I struggle to find the place between beating readers over the head with what I’m trying to say and leaving them confused. Some may like that middle place. Many won’t. You can’t have everyone or everything.

I don’t know much, but I know that. (Blatantly stolen from Ben Affleck’s character, Chuckie, in Good Will Hunting.)

Thanks for coming along,

Heather