D. Ellis Phelps

D. Ellis Phelps, poet-novelist and painter is the author of Making Room for George (Balboa Press, 2013). Her poetry, art, and essays appear widely online and in print, most recently in Sixfold; Best Ever You; Jesus, Jazz, Buddhism; The San Antonio Express-News; Metaphysical Expressions #3; Texas Poetry Calendar; The San Antonio Current; New Texas, Windhover, Aires and elsewhere. Her visual art is represented by Intermezzo Gallery in Boerne, Texas. To engage more of her work, visit her online at http://dellisphelps.com.

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Making Room for George

Women's Fiction

Bet finds a childhood journal and remembers herself as an eight-year-old who loves her best girlfriend, but who, even at eight, feels wrong for being a girl who loves another girl. She's tried to live a "normal" lifestyle married to Steve— a self-absorbed, arrogant, womanizer. They've raised a family, but now, her children are gone, and her marriage is disintegrating. Bet's life is unraveling.

Enter George, her father-in-law, a forgetful, miserly, charmer who's loaned his girlfriend thousands and invited her to live with him. Unfortunately, the "girlfriend" has a pimp who threatens George's life. The family knows something has to be done. George moves out of his house and into Bet's. Her life is consumed with care-giving as the parent-child roles reverse. Meanwhile, Steve grows increasingly distant and Bet thinks she will surely lose everything, including her mind. 

In making room for George, between hundreds of eggs she cooks for him because he cannot chew and finding him digging in the dumpster trying to rescue his rat-infested belongings, between holding on to her dependency on her husband and letting go to her new understanding of love, Bet leaves the person she has tried to be behind, becoming her true self.

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