She Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
Page 14
Peter gave him the song and Paul studied it, humming slightly. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
Paul looked up, at me.
“Be nice to this boy,” he said. “Girls don’t get love songs written for them every day, you know.”
“Jane Asher does,” I reminded him.
Paul laughed. “That she does,” he said.
“Mr. McCartney?” Jessica said. “May I?”
To everyone’s surprise, she was holding up a pair of scissors. I laughed because Jessica was like Mary Poppins with that big bag of hers.
“Just a little, okay?” Paul said.
“Just enough to bring my brother home,” Jessica said.
Paul looked at her thoughtfully, then exchanged a glance with George.
“Luv,” George said—and if you haven’t heard someone from Liverpool say that word then you are missing something enormous in your life—“sometimes we pray for help in accepting what comes our way. That takes a bit of magic, too.”
I think I fell a little in love with George right then. My own talisman, the autographed picture for my father, suddenly took on new significance. Maybe it wouldn’t turn him into the father of my dreams, I thought. And maybe that’s what I had to figure out how to live with, just like I had to figure out who I was going to be when school started up again in three weeks.
Jessica snipped Paul’s hair, sweeping the locks into a small plastic bag and securing it with a twisty.
That same big black limousine that had brought them to and from the stage glided up.
“I heard the last bus left a long time ago,” Paul said.
And just like that we were shaking hands with Paul and George and climbing into the limo and calling goodbye and thank you.
The limo driver asked, “Where to?” and I gave him my address. By the time we got there it would be dawn. Hopefully I wouldn’t be in too much trouble. Hopefully my mother would hobble to the kitchen and make us pancakes.
We drove through the empty streets of Boston in silence, each of us going over our adventure. Each of us, I think, wondering if what had just happened was real, or just the wishful thinking of four friends who needed a bit of magic in their lives. I reached over and took Jessica’s hand, and she reached over and took Peter’s, and he reached over and took Nora’s. It felt good and right to be sitting there like that.
It was August 19, 1966, and the rest of our lives was about to begin.
About the Author
Ann Hood is the author of the best-selling novels The Book That Matters Most, The Obituary Writer, Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, The Red Thread, and The Knitting Circle, as well as the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice and chosen as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. She has won two Pushcart Prizes as well as a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, two Best American Food Writing Award, and a Best American Travel Writing award. A regular contributor to the New York Times, Hood's short stories and essays have appeared in many publications, including Ploughshares, Tin House, Traveler, Bon Appetit, O, More, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, and others. She is the editor of the anthologies Knitting Yarns: Writers Writing About Knitting, Knitting Pearls: More Writers Writing About Knitting, and Providence Noir. Hood is also the author of books for children, including the middle-grade novel, How I Saved My Father (And Ruined Everything Else), and the ten-book Treasure Chest series for young readers. Her new memoir, Morningstar: Growing Up with Books, will be published in August. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and New York City, and is married to the writer Michael Ruhlman.
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