Ballerini Book Press is delighted to announce the signing of Elizabeth Lamont.
Elizabeth Lamont is a retired professor of literature who lives in the American south. Beginning in 2008, she watched in horror as far-right thought began to spread among her students and colleagues. After retiring in 2014 to escape what she saw coming, she lives in seclusion and writes on Substack @appalledamerican.
A SELECTION FROM ‘APPALLED AMERICAN’
THE MANTIS
The first real sign of trouble arrived in the form of a newly-minted psychiatrist in the neighborhood whose 4-year-old boy I played with. I was three. After awhile my mother told me that I wouldn’t be playing with him anymore. When I asked why, she curled her nose and whispered, “His father’s a weirdo.”
A few days later, the psychiatrist showed up. BEARDED, and asking my mother why I’d stopped coming around because he thought I was a wonderful influence on his son. “Your daughter has an extraordinary imagination,” he said. “I’ve never seen such creativity in a child.”
I later learned that my parents spent the night talking and heartbroken, the way others might when their child receives a terminal diagnosis. I’d inherited the accursed gene floating about like a turd in Daddy’s pool. There was the cousin who lived in a tree in Africa, an uncle who translated works from already bizarre languages into Scots Gaelic, and an aunt who was a socialist, feminist playwright. Each generation had at least one of these infuriating people, and, apparently, in my generation, I was It.
My mother went to work on me. “Do you know the difference between make-believe and real life?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because make-believe is lies. And liars get caught. Nobody will ever believe a thing you say if you get caught telling a make-believe.”
“They won’t?”
“And so what we’re going to do is put away the make-believe books. We’re going to read stories based on real life now.”
“Oh.”
The INCINERATOR
The boy couldn’t read her thoughts and wasn’t aware of her breath at all. He only knew that she was the only girl he’d ever loved, and now he’d blown it because she was right. Right that he didn’t know how to defend himself against a woman he loved but felt hurt by, right that he had no idea why he brought up marriage, right that being a father required more of a man than his own father had ever offered him.
He thought of the birds, the ones called “the pirates of the air,” with their inflated red gular sacs, waiting to be chosen by the females that circled above them.
Why had he thought that he’d do the choosing? He’d done what he could to attract her with physical prowess and humor and photographs and all the rituals of courtship characteristic of his era and class, never realizing that she might refuse to be chosen precisely because it was her job to do the choosing.
He tried taking her hands. When she pulled them away, he nodded. Finally, he said, “It’s ok. We don’t have to tear each other apart. We just don’t. I have free will. I won’t mistreat you again. I promise you, Perry.”
Looking down at her feet, she half-expected to see cloven hooves because her skin and sinew and muscles felt twitchy as a fawn’s. She wanted to run. What could he know about her and the female instinct that told her to get away, flee for her life. I’m Perry, she thought. His name is Paul. He has free will. He’ll love and respect me.
But she wasn’t sure of that at all.
What had he meant when he called her a cunt? What was the word she could call him now to hurt him half as much?
She wiped at her eyes.
“Perry,” he said, reaching for her.
“No. We’re done.”
“Okay. Look,” he said, pointing to the chute. “Right now we have one last goal we can commit to. We can get that ring. Later today, we’ll return it to the store. That sound like a plan to you?”
She nodded.
“Okay, then,” he said, gently.
Tying one end of the rope around two metal ballusters, Paul tugged.
“Wrap it around my waist, too,” Perry said.
“It’ll be fine like this,” he told her.
“Nothing in this building is fine,” she said. “We can’t trust that railing.”
“I can’t do this poncho thing,” he said, pulling the slicker off, then the gloves.
Looping and knotting the rope around her waist, he secured the distance between them, making sure he had enough slack. Lifting himself into the chute backwards, he pushed off with his legs, letting the rope slide through his fingers in a controlled manner. Perry leaned back toward the ballusters, accepting his weight, holding the rope at her waist with both hands. His descent felt fluid and effortless to her. Counting the seconds, she waited until she felt him slowing, stop. His words ascended from the bottom of the shaft with an eerie distortion: “The Eagle Has Landed.”
Leaning into the chute, she saw him looking up at her with the flashlight shining under his chin. He looked ten-years-old and two feet tall.
“There must be a hundred bags down here. God damn,” he said. “The stink.”
“You don’t see any rats, do you?”
“What am I looking for, Perry? What am I looking for?”
“Three green bags. The ones with yellow ties.”
He waved the flashlight around. “That’s nearly all of them!”
“Feel around for ones that might have large pizza boxes inside.”
“There’s more pizza boxes in this incinerator than all of Italy. Ah, Jesus, who crapped his pants in this building?”
She slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing too loud.
“Throw down those gloves,” he called.
He caught them. “What else besides pizza boxes?”
“Salad makings and Jiffy Pop and the beer bottles, and an empty bottle of Breck shampoo, oh, and Haagen Dazs.”
A minute later he said, “Coke cans?”
“Yes!”
“I’m sending up one.”
What were the odds? The very first bag, there it was, wrapped in a wet paper towel.
After Paul showered, he went to the encyclopedia and looked up the frigate bird. They didn’t mate for life, but only one season. The males, though, were devoted fathers. the Next morning, Paul moved out.
Forthcoming Titles
To be announced 2026
DARK TIME CITY: A Series of Stories from 1970 ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ New York
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