by H. M. Mann
Gloria didn’t shout. “I was eight. I thought flour was flour. Geez.”
“Um, half teaspoon baking powder,” Johnny said quickly.
“Half tablespoon,” Marion said.
Gloria wasn’t making a cake, Johnny thought. She was making an edible bomb! “Um, one pinch salt?”
“She counted out fifteen grains of salt,” Marion said. “She said that was a pinch.”
“It is a pinch,” Gloria said.
“A pinch is when you use your thumb and two other fingers, Gloria,” Marion said. “No one counts the grains.”
But she was a business management major, Johnny thought. It makes perfect sense to me. Johnny waited for more fireworks, heard none, and continued. “One cup milk and coconut, lemon, rum, butter, and vanilla extract.”
“I didn’t let her get that far,” Marion said. “Milk and extracts are too expensive to waste. I did let her try to mix that mess together, and she almost burned the motor out of my favorite mixer.” She pointed to the blue flowery border over her cabinets. “I had to put up that border to cover up the oil spots from the flying butter. And you know what?”
I have no idea, Johnny thought. I was never allowed in the kitchen until dinnertime.
“She looked at this lumpy, gooey, unmixed mess,” Marion said, “and she told me it was ready to bake and would I grease the pan for her.”
The butter would have melted in the oven, right? Gloria thought. “Why did you let me fail so miserably, Mama?”
“So you could learn from your mistakes,” Marion said. “You never cooked another bad cake after that one, did you?” Marion smiled. “Her double fudge brownies are to die for. You should ask her to make you some.”
“So she can hog them all,” Gloria said.
“I do not hog anything, Gloria,” Marion said.
“Yes, you do,” Gloria said. “You’re hogging this conversation, aren’t you?”
Johnny stood and stretched. “I’ll, um, I’ll just go see how Angel is doing.”
Gloria stood. “While I make lunch.”
Johnny grimaced at Marion.
“It’s okay, Johnny,” Marion said. “She’s a great cook now. Her soups are legendary. Go on. When you hear the smoke alarm shrieking, you’ll know lunch is ready.”
“Mama!”
Johnny left the kitchen, and instead of hovering near Angel while she worked on the castle, he went to the front window and stared at his car. Will somebody please steal it? It might actually be worth something if someone steals it. Wait. I have a $500 deductible. I’d lose money if anyone stole it. Will somebody please run into it? I’m sure it’s worth at least $200 in scrap metal.
“What are you doing?” Angel asked.
Oh, just trying to set a trap for my smart little mouse. Johnny didn’t turn around. “Just looking at all the leaves that need to be raked.” All three of them. That oak tree in Marion’s yard is anemic. Can trees get anemia? Maybe the wind blew them all away.
“I’m almost halfway through,” Angel said.
Yes, little mouse. Keep trying to engage the disinterested man at the window. “Hmm.”
“It’s not that hard,” Angel said with a sigh.
“Hmm.” Was that a frustrated sigh? I think it was. Every genius throughout history has had to have an audience of some kind. It’s no fun being brilliant all by your lonesome.
“I can do thousand-piece puzzles, too.”
What can I say to exasperate her? Oh yeah, what Mrs. Holiday often said to me. “That’s nice, dear.”
“Well, don’t you want to see how far I am?” Angel asked, this time with a little whine.
Johnny looked at his reflection in the window. “I’m sure you’re doing fine, Angel.” He heard another sigh and the slapping of approaching feet.
“Look,” Angel said.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Johnny said. “Not too hot, not too cold. A good day to go for a walk, or to rake up a bunch of leaves and jump into the piles.” We’d need knee pads and body armor, though. Where did all the leaves go? I don’t see any under any trees around here. Probably global warming. Maybe the pollen—
“No,” Angel said. “Don’t look outside. Look at my puzzle.”
Johnny turned his head. My God! She’s almost done! Incredible! That would have taken me an entire weekend! “That looks nice, dear,” he said calmly, and he turned back to the window. “Oh look. A squirrel gathering acorns. I could watch squirrels frolicking all day long.”
Angel moved in front of Johnny and looked up at him with dark brown eyes magnified by her glasses. “Nice? I’m practically finished.”
Time for a little playful repartee. “I thought you said you were halfway done.”
“I am.”
“So that’s not practically finished, is it?”
Angel started to speak and stopped.
“Well begun is half done, huh?” Johnny asked. “Ben Franklin said that. Good old Ben.”
“I’m more than half done.” Angel strolled away. “See for yourself.”
She’s not exactly the playful repartee type. Johnny tried to disguise his admiration for Angel’s puzzle-building skills by keeping his lips in a flat line. She had made numerous piles arranged according to size, shape, and color. She would analyze a wall or a turret, move to a pile, spy the correct piece, examine it, and put it exactly where it had to go without any trial and error. Frightening.
“Quite a feat of engineering, huh?” Johnny sat on the loveseat.
“It’s okay,” Angel said, her fingers working their magic. “Not as good as the pyramids.”
“I’ve always wondered how they built the pyramids,” Johnny said.
Angel dropped a piece. “I have a book.” She tore up the stairs, tore down the stairs, and opened a book to a diagram of Egyptian building techniques. “That’s how they did it.”
Maybe we’ll try intellectual repartee this time. “That’s how we think they did it.”
Angel hesitated before placing the next piece. “But it’s in the book.”
“True, true,” Johnny said, “but I think the Egyptians were smarter than that. I think they built them differently and more efficiently without all this manpower and animal power.”
“So how do you think they did it?” Angel asked.
I love her curious mind! I could do without the attitude, though. “Well … I will need some paper and a pencil.”
Angel ran off and returned with a notebook and a pencil. She stood behind the loveseat and looked over his shoulder.
Gloria and Marion sneaked into the hallway and sat on the stairs.
Johnny drew a pyramid in the center of the page. “Not very good, I know.”
“It’s okay.”
My first compliment! He drew a line slanting up and to the right of the top of the pyramid. “Most of the pyramids are in or near the desert, right?”
Angel nodded.
“The desert is no place for people to be for very long. It’s hot, no shade, a real furnace. And it would be no picnic to feed them all and provide them with adequate water.”
Angel shook her head.
“I think the Egyptians used gravity and an incline or ramp instead of thousands of workers.” He drew a block on the incline. “It would be so much easier to slide this block of stone down the ramp and have a few men and animals put it into position, kind of like you’re doing with the puzzle pieces. The higher the initial incline or hillside, the higher the pyramid. And as the pyramid grew, the incline got shorter and shorter.” He flipped through the book and found The Valley of the Kings. “Look at the hillsides, Angel. All the pyramids are located close by.”
“I don’t know …”
“Neither does anyone else with any absolute certainty.” He turned to a blank page in the notebook. “Another way they may have done it was to build it one level at a time … and sink it.” He drew one level of a pyramid in perspective. “Let’s say this is the first level. You’ve slid it into positi
on. You could have men and beasts dragging up the blocks for the next level, or you could sink these to ground level …”
“And slide the next blocks on top,” Angel said. “They’d have to do a lot of digging.”
“But it would be easy digging, right?” Johnny asked.
“Because of all the sand,” Angel whispered.
He pointed again at the picture of The Valley of the Kings. “It’s possible that this was all one flat plain at one time, and that they literally dug out this valley and left what we see here today.”
“I don’t know …”
“It’s something to consider.”
Angel sighed. “So my book is wrong?”
Johnny tapped the book. “Most people believe this is the way the Egyptians did it, so that’s why these diagrams are in this book. They built them over five thousand years ago, and though we have lots of records, we’ll never know exactly how they did it. If I were to build a pyramid today, I think I’d use the gravity method.”
Angel rested her chin on the back of the loveseat. “Are you a teacher, too?”
Another compliment? “No, but I studied engineering.”
“Then why aren’t you an engineer now?”
I’ll let Gloria explain that to her. “I wanted to be a writer.”
“But you deliver pizzas.”
Johnny nodded. “And when I get home, I do my writing while you’re asleep.”
“What kinds of stories do you write?”
Ridiculous ones. Horrific romances. “Stories about people.” He smiled at Angel. And this gives me an idea for the special person next to me. “I have written a story I think you might like.”
Gloria gripped Marion’s hand. “No, Johnny,” she whispered.
“It’s about a little girl,” Johnny said.
Gloria released Marion’s hand. “Whew.”
“That bad?” Marion mouthed.
“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Gloria whispered.
“I haven’t named my main character yet,” Johnny said. “Do you mind if I name her after you?”
Angel shook her head.
“Would you like to hear some of my story?” Johnny asked.
Angel shrugged.
I had better have a gripping grabber then. “In the city of Roanoke lived a gorgeous little girl named Angel.”
Angel’s eyes popped.
Very cool. “Angel was the smartest girl in Roanoke, but she didn’t know everything.”
“Where’s he going with this?” Marion whispered.
“Shh,” Gloria whispered, “I like this wrinkle in the plot.”
“Angel read thick books all the time,” Johnny said, “and she read till her eyes were as dry as the Sahara Desert. Even her glasses got tired of all that reading and often fell asleep. But Angel was never satisfied. ‘I want to know more,’ she said. She gathered all the smartest people in Roanoke to teach her everything, but even the smartest people in Roanoke couldn’t satisfy Angel’s thirst for knowledge. Computers were too slow and often broke down because of faulty operating systems no one wanted to use.”
“Huh?’ Marion whispered.
“He’s famous for tangents,” Gloria whispered.
“Angel wondered all the time,” Johnny said, “‘How can I know everything if everyone around me is so stupid?’”
Angel didn’t seem to be breathing.
I think I have struck a nerve. This town will never be smart enough for our Angel. “So Angel took a fantastic journey to find out everything there was to know, and she packed very light. She only took a few sharp pencils, a notebook, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a bottle of water. She didn’t want anyone or anything to slow her down. ‘I will know everything,’ Angel said, ‘if it’s the last thing I do.’” This is an excellent place to stop, mainly because I don’t know where to go next. Johnny closed the book on ancient Egypt and laid it on the couch.
“Johnny?” Angel asked.
She started a question with my name! “Yes?”
“What happens next?” Angel asked.
Johnny sniffed the air. “Mmm-mm. That soup smells wonderful. I’ll bet it’s almost ready.”
“But the soup won’t be ready for half an hour,” Marion whispered.
“He can’t think of anything else,” Gloria whispered. “We have to do something.”
“I don’t smell anything,” Angel said.
Neither do I! Lunch should always be ready when I can’t think of the next chapter. “I have a very keen sense of smell, my dear. I work at a pizzeria.”
“Well … tell me the rest of my, I mean, tell me the rest of your story,” Angel said.
“It’s a long story,” Johnny said. “It might take me a bunch of visits to finish it. I’ll tell you chapter one tomorrow.”
“That wasn’t the first chapter?” Angel asked.
“Oh no,” Johnny said. “That was the foreword. It was just to get the reader’s attention, to whet the reader’s appetite.” And you certainly look hungry. And so am I! Where’s lunch?
“Why don’t you write it all down so I can read it?” Angel asked.
Johnny tapped his temple. “It’s all up here. I haven’t written any of it down. I have it memorized.”
“You do?” Angel asked.
It’s easy to memorize nothing! “I do. I have to tell a story all the way through in my head before I write any of it down.”
Now that’s a lie, Gloria thought. She tugged Marion’s arm, and they returned to the kitchen.
“You must not write many books,” Angel said.
“You’re right,” Johnny said. “But I believe in quality over quantity.”
“Whatever you say,” Angel said, and she returned with gusto to the puzzle.
Johnny escaped to the kitchen where lunch wasn’t waiting. How long does it take to warm up soup?
“You had me hooked, too,” Gloria said, stirring the pot. “I wish you hadn’t stopped. What’s going to happen next?”
They were listening, too? Johnny thought. This house is far too small.
Marion flipped a sandwich on the griddle. “You could write children’s books, Johnny.”
Johnny flopped into a seat. “Nah. I can’t draw anything but straight lines. I suppose I could write a book about building a city.”
Gloria brought a spoonful of soup to Johnny. “Careful. It’s hot.”
“I should blow on it, huh?” Johnny asked.
“Not in my kitchen,” Marion said. “I have enough spatters on the wall as it is.”
Johnny breathed in the vapors, blew gently, and let the savory red broth wet his tongue. “Tomato-ey. Is it ready?”
“No,” Gloria said. “Another twenty minutes.”
But it’s just tomato soup with a little extra basil! Johnny thought. I don’t want you to burn it!
“Johnny,” Marion said, “I’m interested in knowing where you plan to take Angel on her journey.”
“I have no idea,” Johnny whispered. “I do know that I hope I never finish the story.”
Yes, Gloria thought. This man is my boyfriend.
During lunch, the ladies carefully sipped their soup and daintily ate their grilled cheese sandwiches, their crumbs falling gracefully to their plates, their spoons never too full, their lips never smacking. Johnny watched in awe as they almost synchronized each movement. They reminded him those drinking birds that bobbed their heads up and down with military precision.
This is creepy, Johnny thought. And absolutely no fun.
Johnny decided to be neither careful nor dainty. He ripped his sandwich into four parts, cheese oozing out all sides, his crumbs scattering onto the table. Then he dipped his sandwich into the soup, let it soak for a count of ten, and put his face an inch from his bowl before he slurped his sandwich.
“This is good,” Johnny said, his mouth full, dribbles of soup leaking from his lips to his chin. “Just the right amount of basil, Gloria.”
Gloria smiled, dropped her spoon,
and dipped the remainder of her sandwich into her soup, gulping half of it in a bite. Marion shrugged and joined in, smacking her lips loudly.
Angel looked up briefly, shook her head, and continued to eat daintily and carefully, nary a drop spilling from her spoon.
Johnny looked at the red puddles around his bowl. “Either I’m bleeding or the table is bleeding. One of us is bleeding. Someone call nine-one-one.”
Angel sighed. “You’re making a mess, Johnny.”
“I am kind of greasy.” Johnny finally had an idea for chapter one. “Speaking of grease, Greece is the first place Angel visits in my story.”
“Right,” Angel said.
“No, really,” Johnny said. Should I take her to the Parthenon or the Acropolis? Should I try to explain the Peloponnesian Wars? Can anyone explain those wars? Do I have her witness the first Olympics? No, the men were all naked. I could just have her meet Socrates or Hippocrates … or Aristotle. Yeah. “Angel wanted to meet Aristotle, one of the smartest men who ever lived.”
“Isn’t Aristotle dead?” Gloria asked.
Oh yeah. I can’t use time-travel. It has to be real. “Yes, of course he’s dead, Gloria,” Johnny said, smiling. “Angel had always wanted to meet Aristotle so they could be brilliant together, but she settled for one of Aristotle’s incredibly interesting and informative books instead.”
“What was his book about?” Angel asked.
Johnny shifted toward Angel. “This is pretty deep information, Angel. Are you sure you’re ready for it?” And will I remember enough of what Aristotle wrote? I only had one philosophy course, and that was over ten years ago!
Angel patted her lips dry with her napkin. “Ready.”
“Well, Aristotle …” The man wrote a lot of stuff. I’ll stick to the famous bits. “Aristotle said that people wanted to be happy, but in order to be happy, people had to have a reason to be here, um, like a job.” Okay, so it’s not exact, but it’ll do.
“So people who don’t have a job aren’t happy?” Angel asked.
“I’m sure many of them are,” Johnny said.
Gloria stared hard at Marion.
Marion smiled and stared back.
“But maybe,” Johnny said, “it’s their job not to have a job.”
“That makes no sense,” Angel said.