by Louise Hawes
Persuasion seemed a little too subtle for a cat that size.
“We needed to get iodine and Band-Aids, you see.”
“Band-Aids?!”
“I think it was the hand gestures he used while he read.” Rufus shook his head. But he looked only a little sorry. “The scratches were mostly superficial.”
“Don’t mind us.” Mom and Aunt J. arrived, with delicate, bell-shaped coffee cups arranged on a tray. Mom handed around the demitasses. “Go right on chatting.”
But of course, we didn’t. Our guest took one of the cups she handed him, inhaling as if he were sniffing a rose. And me? I had no intention of telling my mother and my aunt that I was considering setting an alarm to go write alongside the most famous poet in the world.
* * * *
“Would you believe a Poet Laureate did our dishes?!” Mom sounded like a dizzy sixth grader with a new crush. The minute Rufus left, my player in tow, she wanted to talk about him. She had me describe every minute of every class, the same classes she hadn’t even wanted mentioned a few days before. She kept me talking and talking, until Joceyln yawned and went to bed. Until I’d told her every detail, including our visit to the record store.
But that didn’t satisfy her. She wanted to keep going, right into the future. She wondered if Our Famous New Friend wouldn’t like to come see the magazine. Did I think she could ask him to write something for them? A few more bracelets and a peasant skirt, and Mom might as well have been Julie Kinney on one of her Rufus Baylor highs.
The difference between Mom and Miss Kinney, though, was that I was pretty sure Julie Kinney had read every poem our poet had ever written. And Mom? It was more like she was thrilled with her brush with fame, not with Rufus or his work. “Do you realize that man could boost the magazine’s circulation with one little quote? A line or two!” She took my hand, something she hadn’t done in a long time—something that felt good even though she was hardly in the same room with me anymore.
“Why, all this awful court business might even turn out for the best. Just imagine what a letter of recommendation from Rufus Baylor would do for your med school application!”
“Mom!”
“Oh, I know he hasn’t got a science background, honey.” She was in monologue mode now; she dropped my hand and paced beside the coffee table with its artfully arranged rows of magazines. “But anyone who read at the president’s inauguration is someone people pay attention to.” She picked up a copy of Her, waved it like a flag. “This man could change both our lives, Sarah.”
“He’s already changed mine,” I told her. “Remember the poem he said he liked? I’ve got it upstairs.” I knew I was taking a chance. I knew my poem might hurt her pride, but it was about the two of us, after all. “Want to hear it?” It was about love.
“I can’t wait to get a look at it, really I can’t.” My mother dropped to the couch, rolled up the magazine, and propped it under her chin. “But right now we’re talking about your future, Sarah. Let’s get serious.”
Get serious. Isn’t that what Fry had just asked me to do?
The tears started up, I felt them fill the bottoms of my eyes, willed them to stay there. What had I expected? Wasn’t Shepherd taking me for ice cream amazing enough? How many miracles in one family could Rufus Baylor work?
“After all”—she was wearing the focused, calculating expression that meant she wasn’t interested in frivolous small talk—“Rufus is an exception. Poetry is no way to make a living, young lady.”
“I’m pretty tired, Mom.” I was, too. Suddenly, I felt as if I’d hiked halfway up a very steep hill and couldn’t make it to the top. “I really need to go to bed.”
Mom looked up from her dream, stared at me. I guess she figured my future was something she didn’t really need my help to plan, because she smiled, walked with me to the foot of the stairs. “Okay, honey,” she told me. “But I think I’d better do a little homework of my own tonight.” A peck on my cheek.
“Before you go to bed, could you recommend a few of Rufus’s poems for me to read?” She stood there, as if she were waiting for me to drop the books in her hands. “You know, some of the important ones?”
* * * *
I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t. Not with so much hurt and anger swimming around inside me. It felt like dark shark noses circling, bumping into everything. If Mom had walked into the room then and apologized, even offered to look at my poem, I would probably have told her what she’d told me about Florinda Dear’s dress: “Too late to be sorry now.”
Maybe it was because I needed backup. Or because swimming behind those shark noses was some good news that I wanted to share. Whatever the reason, I did something I hadn’t done in months and months: I called one of my friends. One of my old, BF friends.
Wanda’s number was still stored on my cell, but guess what? I knew it, anyway. And talking to her was as easy as dialing her. She didn’t make me feel guilty or apologetic for phoning; she sounded as though I called every day, as if I’d never snubbed her in the hall, pretended she was invisible, and generally been the worst kind of ex-friend imaginable.
Best of all, she didn’t mention the bash. We talked about everything else. About the other Untouchables. About school. About the months of gossip and jokes and movies I’d missed. And finally, because she made it all seem so natural, I told her the rest. About the trial. About the poetry classes. How H was writing awful poems and Fry was writing great ones. How Rufus and I had gone music shopping, how he liked my poem, how he’d turned my father almost human, and how my mother had just nominated herself regional president of the Whale Point Rufus Baylor Fan Club.
“No, no, no, a thousand nos!” Wanda had never tried out for the Players, but she was very dramatic. I pictured her pale face, the red arcs of her brows raised like a poppy-eyed emoticons. “I refuse to believe you sat at the very same, actual table as Rufus Baylor! Ate out of the same plate!”
“I didn’t,” I told her.
“Didn’t what?”
“Eat out of the same plate. He had his own.”
“Oh, Sarah, you know what I mean.” Her voice was practically singing. “Imagine! Washing the actual fork he used, the actual glass, the—”
“Wan,” I told her. “He’s a person, like anyone else. Only smarter.” I paused, realized that wasn’t the extent of it. “And funnier,” I added.
“And the world’s most brilliant, celebrated, and truly inspired poet!” I already mentioned that Wanda loved poetry, right? “Sarah, I’m so jealous of you and happy for you at the same time. Do you know what I’d do to spend an evening with Rufus Baylor?”
“Set fire to his house?”
There was silence now, because both of us knew she wouldn’t. Not ever. But I was glad I’d said it. Glad I could talk to her, even about that.
“Come to dinner next Thursday,” I said. “My mother’s invited him back.”
“Do you mean it?” She sounded so surprised and hopeful it made me sad. Made me remember how awful I’d been to her. I thought about the way Wanda’s and George’s waves had gotten smaller, more dispirited each time I passed them in the hall. Smaller and smaller. And yet they’d never stopped.
“Of course,” I told her. “Right after Bad Kids School lets out.”
I felt looser after that call. Everything seemed easier, and tomorrow looked different, fresh. But I couldn’t sleep yet. Not until I got a poem off my chest and out of my heart. This one wasn’t meant for my notebook, though; I reached for my cell, instead, then curled like a fetus around the phone while I texted Fry:
You look like a devil, but kiss like an angel.
You skip out on class, but write deep as a well.
It’s confusing to date you, and so hard to tell,
When we’re together, if it’s heaven or hell.
I hoped he’d understand. And I hoped I could find the courage to tell him in person how confused I was. How one minute, it felt as though we understood each other, not with words,
but with our eyes, our bodies, with the sort of connection that makes two people laugh at the same things, reach for each other’s hands at the same time. But how the next minute, I’d feel things I knew I couldn’t share with him—proud of how Rufus treated me like a serious poet; happy I’d get to have dinner with him next week; glad I’d see Wanda again; and guilty I hadn’t even thought of asking Fry.
Why hadn’t I? Inviting Wanda to dinner had been instinctive, natural. Easy as breathing. But it was so much harder to picture Fry sitting at that table. Was it because he had called Rufus Baylor, the Rufus Baylor, a dirty old man? Or was it because he wrote the kind of poetry that visited you in a flash of inspiration . . . without a teacher, without talking or thinking about it? Or was it—and this was the question that gnawed and niggled at the back of my heart—was it because I was afraid?
What happens when you mix oil and water? When the prince gets off his horse and meets your friends and family? If he’s still wearing his armor, if all he can talk about is jousting and all he can do is fight, you might lose the man of your dreams. You might end up, instead, with a guy who protects himself by pushing everyone away. Who tracks dirt on the carpet and smells like a stable.
Lying there, alone with a new moon at the window, I decided I had to take a chance on the person who’d made me feel like a princess. And who knew? Maybe our poet would be interested in jousting. Maybe Wanda and my mother and Aunt J. would get to know the boy I did, the one who hid his sensitive heart under cool. Best of all, maybe Fry himself would understand how very much I needed him to be a part of my life. All of it.
That’s when I made a pact with the strip of moonlight that spilled across my lap: I would invite Fry to dinner on Thursday. It would be a battle to persuade my mother to add to her guest list, especially if the addition was of the boy variety. But wasn’t love worth fighting for?
I got out of bed and padded over to my desk. I loved being the only one up in summer, when the floor stayed warm under my bare feet, creaking and whispering as if it had stored up gossip all day. When the monster action figures on my window seat looked like misshapen fairies huddled together for a midnight ritual. (King Kong was clearly their leader, his oversize arms raised in the moonlight, while Godzilla and the Hulk did their lurking, crouching thing beside him.) I put my cell on silent, plugged it into the charger, and was on my way back to bed when the moon found something I’d forgotten all about. Light from the window caught the white corner of a piece of paper I’d tucked under my laptop, and when I pulled it out, I found the photograph of Nella, creased but still smiling.
I needed that smile more than ever now. It persisted in the face of everything—the bash, H’s bad poetry, the way shame and love were all mixed up in how I felt about Fry. None of it mattered to this girl, who insisted on liking me, and on smiling at me to prove it.
Because the moonlight was so lovely and because Nella’s photo was such a sweet and sudden comfort, I opened the desk drawer and brought my notebook back to bed. I turned on the light, and in the same sort of white heat I imagined Fry wrote, I finished a poem about the girl who smiled through a fire. I wasn’t sure how good it was, but I knew how good it felt. And I knew, too, that Nella belonged to Rufus, not to me. I would give him back the photo when I showed him the poem. The first was a little worn, and the second was brand new, but I was pretty sure our poet would love them both.
Your eyes are only shadows, your smile
as thin as the page in my hands.
But this ghost, your second best,
is all I know, all I need to see me through.
I have made you into something more
substantial, more abiding than a human girl:
Older guide and faithful friend,
a moonlight sage and ally, too.
Sometimes I wonder who you were
before the camera shutter clicked
(in those days that’s how it worked).
Did you ever dream I’d need your help?
That I would fold your fairy face
inside my jeans to keep it from the fire?
That saving you would save
me
from
myself?
How to Live a Nearly Perfect Week
I wouldn’t say I thought of myself as a poet in training, not exactly. All I knew was that I didn’t want to wait an entire, endless week to get back to banging those pots and pans around. So I was up early the next day. Aunt J. was collecting unemployment, but she was also helping out at a friend’s boutique. (Not that her paycheck ever made it home; every day now, she brought back a pair of chunky shoes or a beach cover-up she told Mom she “just couldn’t resist.”) So right after my aunt and my mother left for work? I did, too.
I stashed Nella’s photo and lots of paper and pencils in my backpack and walked to the Hendricks’ house. Carmen and Rufus greeted me at the door. “She’s better than a watchdog,” our poet explained. “She ran to the door and scratched the paint off till I opened it.”
I took a deep breath and smiled down at the furry monster twined around Rufus’s legs. She did not smile back.
It didn’t matter. Not after I watched Rufus pull a small table alongside that modern desk he’d been using. His new desk had no drawers, and just as the last time I’d seen it, it was buried in a snow of paper. He reached into that mess and came out with a lined tablet, which he put, along with one of the tin pencil cups, on top of the table. My heart did a funny roll-over trick in my chest when I saw how that made a tagalong writing desk, a work space right beside his.
After he’d poured a cup of coffee for me (black, no cream, on account of the dairy), I opened my backpack and showed him Nella’s picture. The expression on his face, when he looked at that creased photo, was one I’d never seen him wear before. It was as if he were staring at an old-fashioned valentine, something sad and beautiful at once. And when he spoke, his voice sounded different, too. It was trembling and so tired it scared me.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
That was when I told him everything: the way I’d walked past his family’s old summer place, week after week; how I’d made up names for all the photos, the perfect boys and girls, perfect college graduates, and perfect babies—on walls, end tables, bookshelves, and on the old-fashioned desk where Nella had held court. And of course, I told him about Nella: that I knew she was his daughter; that I’d saved her smile from the fire without even remembering what I’d done; and that I was uselessly, terribly sorry about the crease through the middle of it.
“Her name wasn’t Nella.” Rufus looked up from her face to mine. “It was Jesse.”
I waited.
“This photograph was taken before you were born,” he told me. “If she were still alive, this lovely girl would be old enough to be your grandmother.”
“She’s dead?” I’d always thought of Nella as my sister, kept her frozen at the same age she was when her picture was taken.
“No doctor would agree, of course.” Rufus wasn’t looking at me or at the girl in the picture now. He was staring straight ahead, at something I couldn’t see. “But I sometimes think her heart attack was no accident. It was her way of bowing out gracefully, of leaving her famous husband to his misadventures.”
“Husband?” Nella wasn’t at all who I’d thought she was. My brain was waiting for my heart to catch up. Nella. The family, the marshmallows, everything I thought I knew about her was unraveling. “You two were married?”
“Yes.” Rufus looked at me and then at the photo in his hands. “Jesse had the questionable honor of being not my daughter, but my wedded wife, my life partner. She was also a long-suffering bit player whenever one of my endless tours took center stage.
“There were no curtain calls, no lines she could practice. And certainly, there was no applause.” As if it were a magnet, the photograph drew him back. “But Jesse was a tragic heroine all the same.
“Oh, she tried to tell me what it was like, how it fel
t to be left behind year after year, all the seasons of our lives. But each time I promised I’d help raise our family, that we’d make a real, normal home together, I took off for one more trip.” He was adding it up, counting those years as if they were a math problem. “After a while, I guess, she just stopped hoping.”
The Great One—had he been the Thoughtless One, too?
“She died without me, Sarah.”
Apparently, it was easier to tell the photo than to say it to me. “I was with someone else when Jesse’s heart gave out and up. Someone whose name I can’t even remember.”
In the silence that followed, I tried to imagine Rufus less than loving, less than kind. It was too hard to do, like picturing Fry without his electric smile. His take-charge style.
“That was a long time ago,” I told him, not caring what was right or wrong in all of this. I needed to bring him back to here and now, to the time and place where he’d done nothing but good, been nothing but kind.
“Or it was only yesterday,” he said. “If missing’s any measure.”
“Things change. People change.” I looked for the words, a way to tell him that I knew Nella, even if I hadn’t ever met Jesse. And I knew that lovely girl was past pain now. Past blame or guilt.
Rufus must have seen my confusion. Or else he saw the time. “Look how late it’s gotten,” he told me now. “If we don’t get started, we’ll have nothing to show for ourselves.” He stood up, started clearing away the coffee cups. “I didn’t mean to burden you with my past,” he said. “It’s just that seeing that photo was a bit of a shock. Like Scrooge meeting Christmas Past.” He paused, shook his head. “I wasn’t good to her, Sarah. Not nearly as good as she deserved.”
I traced the photo’s crease with my finger, then raised my face to his. “Last week, you forgave a whole roomful of kids for making a big, dangerous mistake.”
Rufus nodded.
“And you forgave me just the other day, when I didn’t see how anyone could.” I remembered looking in the mirror. I remembered trying so hard to love what I saw.