Spotlight: Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times by Darlene Madott
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Who among us has not suffered the after-shocks? The sorrowing souls that inhabit these tales struggle at various stages of the grief cycle: from denial and paralysis to anger and desire for revenge; to bargaining and, ultimately, for some characters and for others incompletely, acceptance and reconciliation. Some of the stories handle the love quandary comedically—for example, the triptych of stories about Francesca and Concetta, who embrace a sisterly friendship born of betrayal. Others are more elegiac, such as the story of Thor and Lovise: unsanctioned lovers who get to orbit about each other, however briefly. “Appropriation” is a coming-of-age story where the longed-for first kiss is obtained, but not in the way the kiss was desired. What links these stories? Human yearning to move out of love away from an obsessive attachment, to a selfless state where genuine love becomes possible again.
Excerpt - “Parsing His Goodbyes”
My issue has been compounding for weeks and months
Francesca Malotti is working at her back patio table, her son’s Golden Retriever, Soria, at her feet. Marco, wise beyond his 30 years, had left Soria in his mother’s care in the immediate aftermath of her heartbreak. Francesca has an appointment to take Soria for her summer grooming later in the day. It is about 11:30 in the morning; she wasn’t expecting to see anyone.
Then, on the other side of her tall cedar hedges, there is a man walking. Oddly, Soria doesn’t bark, doesn’t even rouse. Francesca reaches down and begins to tug at the skin around the Golden Retriever’s old neck.
Scott steps out and around the edge of the hedge, his step light, jaunty. A word she hasn’t used in years. But Scott is all that, jaunty, as he rounds the corner of her hedge, deep in some happy thought, something to make a man smile. A weight lifted from his shoulders.
His smile falls from his face the moment he sees Francesca. Shock. That she is home in the middle of the day and not at the office. That she is Francesca, here, in the flesh, and hasn’t disappeared. Still here, where he hasn’t expected her to be. An inconvenient reality.
Scott is wearing grubby shorts, a T-shirt, and boots, with earmuffs around his thick neck. He has come to cut her grass.
Why?
Francesca points to the empty chair that is facing the back yard. Scott sits down. He sits, uncomfortably, with his profile to her, at a 90-degree angle from where she sits, out in the sun, not close to the table, not under the umbrella that shelters Francesca and Soria. Scott leans forward with his forearms above his bare knees and his hands folded between his spread legs, looking every bit the hockey player on a penalty bench.
“You are not cutting my grass.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not. No, that’s not what our relationship was all about.”
Soria pulls herself up and goes over to Scott to be patted. The Golden Retriever has aged. Every movement takes effort. Scott pats her the way he always has, but then his nose curls.
“She stinks.”
“Don’t pat her then. I’m taking her for her grooming this afternoon.”
Scott pushes Soria away as Francesca calls Soria to come, and the sweet Golden obeys while Scott rubs her stinky oils onto his grass-cutting shorts.
“Is it an affair?”
“No.”
“Is it a health issue?”
“No.”
“Are you having a late mid-life crisis?” Scott is 60. Francesca threw him the party he wanted with all his friends at his favourite restaurant only five months ago. Only last May, he was Master of Ceremonies at her son’s wedding.
“No.”
“Is it something I’ve done?”
“No.”
“Is it something I haven’t done?”
“No.”
“Is it family interference, something to do with our kids?”
He gazes straight ahead, at the lawn, then shakes his head from side to side, denying everything.
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About the Author
Darlene Madott is an award-winning author of 10 books. Winners and Losers (her 9th book) grew out of her legal practice of over 3 decades, and was named The Miramichi Readers Best of 2023. She has twice won the Bressani Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Vanderbilt-sponsored Carter V. Cooper EXILE editions award three times, and for the inaugural Nona Heaslip Best Canadian Short Stories Award. Widely anthologized, she has participated in international literary conferences, most recently as an invited plenary-panel speaker on Alice Munro for the International Conference of the Short Story, which took place in Killarney, Ireland, 2025. She has been translated into Italian and published by the prestigious Les Flâneurs Edizioni, Italy. Darlene’s 10th book, Closing Ceremonies, now includes Dying Times—a perfect pairing on love and grief.
