The Living Parents Literary Support Group

At the Living Parents Literary Support Group, Rebecca regretted every dad that died. With each, she lost a member.

“Roll call,” she announced. “Is everyone’s parents still alive?”

“Yes,” the man sitting on her left declared.

“Both Alive,” the next member said..

 “Yep.”

 “Yessirree.” 

One by one, the dozen attendees of the 23rd annual LPLSG Christmas Dinner acknowledged the sad fact that their parents were alive and well.

“Hmm…” Nicole Johnson mumbled, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Nicole?” Rebecca probed.

“My mother passed two weeks ago,. Nicole said, her cheeks flushing.

“Then why are you here?” 

“I will stay quiet. I’m here to support the other writers struggling with—”

“You shouldn’t have come,” Rebecca stated firmly. “I need to ask you to leave.”

As the chairperson of the LPLSG, Rebecca had no qualms about enforcing the group’s rules. If Nicole cared about the other members’ feelings, she wouldn’t have come. 

Everyone knew Jennette McCurdy’s literary career took off on with her debut novel about mom last year. And back in the year 2000, Dave Eggers, with his book about losing both parents, skyrocketed to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Prizes at literary competitions were also usually won by purple prose eulogies.

Nicole shuffled out, obviously feeling ashamed of herself.

Nicole faced the group. “Let’s get back to why we’re here. Does anyone have anything they would like to share?”

Angela raised her hand. “After reading a review of my novel Vegetable Gardening With Dad on Goodreads, that said it was ‘boring’, sometimes, I wish my Dad had died of lung cancer after a lifetime of working in a West Virginia coal mines.”

A man cleared his throat. “Are you from West Virginia?”

“I’m from San Luis Obispo, California. But no one wants to read about San Luis Obispo.”

“Thank you, Angela.” Rebecca then nodded to the next person holding his palm up, a nervous looking young man.

“Sometimes, I wish my dad had died so suddenly...that I didn’t have time to prepare for the impact it would have on my life…” He held his hands up to his face, his eyes welling up with tears. Between sobs, he cried out, “because that would make a great literary memoir. Eighty percent of Booker prize winners include a dead parent.”

"Thank you for sharing that," Rebecca said.

The person attending that evening that she was most concerned about was Mateo. Within the trickle of struggling authors who wanted to join the LPLSG, Sergeant Mateo Delgado appeared at her office two weeks ago. Delgado’s military memoir had been panned by the New York Times book review.

“Instead of the horrors of war, Delgado introduces us to the monotony of artillery logistics. The only person this book would be of interest to is an actuary wondering how many people might have died of boredom in this war.”

Yet, his prose was stellar. The best she’s seen in a decade of meeting with new writers.

Artillery gunner Mateo had come to her office after an appointment with a literary psychiatrist, who prescribed Wellbutrin and a membership at the LPLSG.

Mateo looked at the members in disgust. “Are you people insane?!” he shouted out. “How can you sit here and wish for your parents to die, just so you could write better literary fiction?”

“I think he's in a bad mood because his short story was rejected by McSweeneys,” someone mumbled.

“I heard that!” he said, his face turning red. “This is bullshit! You people wishing your parents dead. Your parents don’t need to die to write literary fiction about parent’s dying.”

Rebecca knew this might be coming.

“Yes, of course, it’s possible to write fictional family drama without a parent's death,” Rebecca said. “But everyone with living parents who’s tried, their novels have fallen flat, duds. Something doesn’t ring true. Only a lived experience can breath life into a tale of fiction.”

After a long silence, Mateo concurred, “I can see that. What you said about lived experiences.”

“And then there’s the jinx,” Rebecca said in a hushed tone

The people in the room gasped and held their breath.

“The first recorded case was Frank Richardson in 1923. He wrote a fictional short story about his father having a heart attack. And then…” Rebecca drew her hand across her throat, in the universal gesture for a sudden demise.

Mateo asked, “He had a heart attack?”

Rebecca nodded, and added, “And there were others.”

"Really?"

Rebecca gave Mateo a sympathetic smile. “So tell us, why are you here today, Mateo Delgado?”

“Because Carter, who I met on my first tour, wrote Captive in Kabul, which sold a million copies. Because Aaron, in special forces, had a hit with Finding The Heart Of Baghdad despite his writing being awful.” 

“I think you could write a great memoir,” Rebecca said. “I see soul in your wriitng."

His prose was magic. The best she’s seen in decades. She could see herself entering his name into the Alumni subsection of the LPLSG’s Wikipedia page in a few years.

So before dinner, she poured the scopolamine into Mateo’s mashed potatoes. Why do people choose to put the poison into drinks in fiction? Drinks are so easy to spill, or switch with someone else. No one ever exchanges mashed potatoes.

When Mateo began to feel faint, Rebecca offered to drive him home. She was the chairperson after all, so nobody questioned her decision.

**

Rebecca was with Mateo when he woke up.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re at my home.”

“What?”

“You drank too much last night,” she said. “You were really upset about your parents’ death. The car accident last year.”

“That was traumatic, for me.” Mateo said. He looked disheartened, thinking of it. The false memories she implanted in him under the effects of scopolamine appeared to be holding.

“You should write about them. Fiction is healing,” she said. “And you should avoid the other members of the group for a little while. They might pull you down. And you embarrassed yourself quiet a lot last night.”

“No?!” Mateo groaned.

“It’s ok. Just write. Writing is healing.”

Mateo did what he was told, he holed up in his one bedroom in Yonkers. New York and started writing.

Three months later, Mateo finished “Military Orphan - Losing My Best Friend in War, And Then My Parents in Peacetime" and quicly found a publisher.

A clunky title, she thought, but it climbed into the top 100 in Military Biography.

If Mateo had been an established author, the publisher might have fact-checked whether his parents had indeed died in a car accident, but publishers were on a tight budget these days.

Their mistake she thought. The Hillbilly Elegy scandal still dogged HarperCollins. A decade earlier, Random House had lost millions giving refunds to purchasers of A Million Little Pieces when Oprah Winfrey exposed its author James Frey as a fraud.

Mateo's posts on social media also began to attract readers. At first, he posted a few angry tweets on X about being harassed by strangers. But when he wrote a full-length piece for Medium about the lengths two strangers were going to in order to disrupt his life, it caught the nation’s attention:

The Childless Couple Pretending To Be My Parents -

The bizarre lengths a middle age couple have gone to, including fake documents, bribing my relatives, obtaining pictures of me as a child, all in their quest to pretend to be my parents….

His article's reply section filled with comments from people supporting Mateo, asking why the courts haven’t provided a restraining order on the insane stalkers.

Under the anonymity of a fake social media account, Rebecca watched the chaos unfold.

When Mr. and Mrs. Delgado Senior received help from government offices in New Jersey to prove their claim, online netizens jumped in. Mateo had served in Syria. ‘The Deep State’ was trying to harass him for exposing government secrets. Being an Artillery Officer for the US Army, was obviously a metaphor for the other more classified work for the Pentagon.

The attention pushed Mateo’s memoir up to the Top 10 in Military Biography. There was talk of a Netflix miniseries.

Despite the controversy, Rebecca was happy for his newfound literary success.

She invented excuses to regularly call him.

“Mateo. I met the most amazing graphic designer. Let me send you some of his new cover art. Maybe there’s one you could consider for one of your international editions. And, how are you doing these days?”

“Thanks, I’ll have a look,” he said. There was a pause on the line before Mateo began speaking again. “I think there’s something I need you to know. I’d rather you hear it from me directly.”

“Yes?” Rebecca asked.

“I’m dating Nicole from the LPLSG. We connected, as we both lost our parents.”

“You did? That’s interesting to hear.” In her office, Rebecca began furiously tapping her fingers on her mahogany desk.

“I’m relieved to have gotten that off my chest,” Mateo said.

“Mateo. I’m happy for you, I have another call on the line, I will talk to you soon. Bye!”

**

“But I can’t attend!” Mateo protested. “I don’t have parents.”

“You’ve received a special award.”

“What sort of award?”

“Come to the city early, and I’ll tell you about it, and buy you dinner the night before.”

At the night before dinner, she slipped the scopolamine into his pasta carbonara sauce, and he was soon passed out. Under its hypnotic influence, she reversed the effects of last year’s suggestions. This had all gone too far.

Rebecca was at his bedside 8 hours later.

Mateo opened his eyes, looked at Rebecca, his eyes showing his mind churning with all the new information. “Why?! Why did you do it?!” he screamed.

It took Rebecca a moment to understand if he meant what she did this year, or the year before.