The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

by Laura Creedle

  “So I’ve got to ask, Rosalind. How long have you been crafting this impression of me?”

  Rosalind blushed and looked away. “I can’t help it. It’s what I do. I needed inspiration for my character Alice because she’s fearless and impulsive, like you.”

  “Fearless? Hardly.” I took a bite out of the green apple. Sour. “So if Rosalind can’t talk to Richard, why doesn’t Alice talk to Richard?”

  “You mean talk to him in character? I can do that.” Rosalind brightened. “Do you think that will work?”

  “Why not?”

  “What happens when he finds out I’m Rosalind, not Alice? Will he even like me?”

  I looked at my friend—my best friend since kindergarten. She hates it when I call her this, but she’s adorable. There’s really no other word for her.

  “I’m sure he will.”

  Rosalind texted me at 4:37.

  “I talked to him!!!” she wrote. Plus smiley face, confusion, blushing emojis. She was still in rehearsal, so she couldn’t send more. But that was enough.

   Chapter 12

  Saturday morning. Mom sucked down coffee, eyes glazed over. I drank my tea and took my pill. Iris hunched over a textbook at the table, working.

  “I’m going to a friend’s house this afternoon,” I said quickly. Sometimes, when Mom is in preverbal coffee mode, she’ll simply nod and agree to anything I propose. No such luck today, however.

  “Rosalind?”

  Okay, I don’t have that many people I hang out with. But still, she could pretend I had other options.

  “No, Abelard,” I said nonchalantly, sipping my tea as though we were just having a random chat.

  “Lily has a date.” Iris looked up from her algebra textbook.

  “It’s not a date. I’m just going over to his house.”

  “Abelard Mitchell?” Mom asked. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Lily. You did hit him with a lunchbox, remember?”

  “When I was seven.” Mom always overestimates my destructive powers. “Anyway, he’s over six feet tall now. I don’t think I could break him if I tried.”

  Mom narrowed her eyes. “Will his parents be there?”

  “Yes,” I said, adding a little note of embarrassed exasperation at the end. I actually had no idea if this was true. His parents could have been in the south of France for all I knew.

  “Did you talk to Coach Neuwirth about your Populations in Peril project?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “So, you’ll go Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll drive you to Abelard’s house,” she said. “I know where it is.”

  The Mitchells lived in an old brick house off Enfield.

  Mrs. Mitchell met me at the door. She had shoulder-length snow-white hair held back with a black headband. She wore a necklace made of gigantic rough turquoise stones, a necklace that would be grotesque on any other person. Somehow it worked on Mrs. Mitchell, because she is super old. She has always been old.

  “Lily,” she said. “What a pleasure it is to see you again!”

  I was surprised that she recognized me. I recognized her because she looked the same as she did in third grade when she brought cupcakes for Abelard’s birthday. Schmancy bakery cupcakes, mind you, not the grocery store cupcakes with the frosting that tastes like Crisco and stale powdered sugar. Beautiful decorated cupcakes, although some of them didn’t have any icing because Abelard doesn’t like icing.

  “Nice to see you again,” I replied, craning my neck to see around her. “Is Abelard here?”

  “He’s in here somewhere. Come on in.”

  The entranceway opened into a huge room. An entire wall of bookshelves at the back of the room stretched to a vaulted ceiling and one of those ladders that runs along a bookshelf track. I was surprised. As long as I’d known Abelard, it had never occurred to me that he was rich, but clearly his family had a lot more money than mine.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “We don’t have many visitors.”

  She swept into the room and removed a newspaper and several books from a coffee table the size of a life raft, flanked by two massive black leather couches and burgundy leather club chairs. Suddenly, everything was perfect.

  “Let me go tell Abelard that you’re here,” she said. She wandered up the stairs and disappeared.

  I noticed a chess set at the corner of the table. The pieces were gray stone and squat. I picked one up.

  A man burst in through the front door. He was as tall as Abelard with salt and pepper hair, a bulbous nose, and Abelard’s dark blue eyes.

  I put the chess piece down, worried that he’d seen me.

  “Do you like that?” he said. “It’s a fairly good replica of the Lewis set from twelfth-century Scotland.” He dropped a gigantic leather satchel on a half-round high table by the front door, one of those weird pieces of furniture rich people have to put their keys on.

  I nodded, and he held out his hand.

  “Dr. Mitchell,” he said. “And you are?”

  “Lily Michaels-Ryan,” I replied. I shook his hand. “I’m here to see Abelard,” I added, in case he thought I’d just wandered in off the street.

  “Ah,” he said lifting an eyebrow. “Michaels-Ryan? I had a grad student about fifteen, twenty years ago named Alexander Michaels-Ryan. Very unusual. Alexander was a brilliant student and an engaging writer, but he could never seem to finish his work—”

  “Ted, you’ve returned.” Mrs. Mitchell descended the stairs. “This is Lily. She’s here to visit Abelard.”

  “So she told me,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Anyway, this Alexander Michaels-Ryan, he had some interesting ideas about—”

  “Ted,” Mrs. Mitchell said sharply. “We don’t want to bore Lily with stories about students from twenty years ago, do we?”

  “But I was just wondering if she was in any way related to—”

  “That would be my father,” I said. “Except he’s just Alexander Ryan now.” My parents hyphenated their names when they married, and unhyphenated when they divorced.

  I’d always known that Abelard’s father was a professor, but it never occurred to me that his father had been my father’s advisor.

  “How is your father?” Dr. Mitchell asked. “Please tell me he’s not off brewing Belgian ale or working as a stonemason somewhere. You know, so many of my students see the study of the Middle Ages as the first step to an apprenticeship in a craft. If you want to be a craftsman, go visit the Renaissance Faire—don’t bother with a real education, I always say. So how is your father?”

  “Good, I guess. He’s working at a goat farm in Oregon. But they do have a homeschool there, and I think he teaches English . . .” I trailed off because my father’s lifestyle was suddenly sounding quite pathetic to me.

  “Well, then,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Goat cheese.”

  The three of us stood awkwardly, in silence, Mrs. Mitchell looking at Dr. Mitchell like she wanted to hit him with a shoe.

  My father never finished his work. My father failed out of graduate school. These were things I’d known about him in an abstract way, little pieces of information I’d stored away, like how he’d lived in Paris for a year before he met my mother. But now it struck home. My father failed at stuff. Like I was going to fail at high school.

  “Ah, Abelard,” Dr. Mitchell exclaimed, “your friend is here.”

  I turned to see Abelard descending the stairs, and unpleasant thoughts about failure evaporated from my mind. There is something strangely compelling about seeing someone you only see in school in their home environment, like seeing an animal in the wild. Abelard seemed loose-limbed, his hair slightly damp and a little more tousled than normal, and he was barefoot. He looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower, and as he approached, I caught a waft of a scent, something earthy and clean with hints of sandalwood.

  “Hi, Abelard,” I said.

  I wanted to say about a billion things, to quote pieces of o
ur texts that referenced The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Something sly and sexy and personal—but all I could manage was “hi.” This was just as well, since his parents were standing around staring at us with an almost scientific interest, as though we were baby tortoises who had just hatched and were about to undertake the perilous trip to an unknown and yet instinctively familiar ocean.

  “Abelard, didn’t you invite Lily to play chess?” Mrs. Mitchell said gently.

  “Chess,” Abelard repeated. “Black or white?”

  “White, I guess,” I said, although neither side was really white or black; they were simply differing shades of gray.

  I sat in one of the club chairs nearest the lighter gray pieces, and Abelard sat on the couch.

  “White always moves first,” he said.

  I moved a pawn in front of one of my bishops out two spaces. Abelard studied this straightforward move with an intensity that led me to believe I was in trouble. Abelard moved a pawn, but it was just a move. I tried to read some end motivation out of it but couldn’t. Suddenly, it was super important to me that I be able to win at chess or at least not make an utter fool of myself in front of Abelard’s parents.

  “Lily, do you play chess?” Dr. Mitchell asked.

  “I used to play with my dad, but . . .” I shut up. I was about to say, But that was a long time ago, before my father left us for his pastoral idyll in the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t really want to talk to Dr. Mitchell about my dad, the hippie goatherd graduate-school dropout, anymore.

  “I’ve got to warn you, Abelard is pretty good. I used to be able to beat him, but not so much anymore. His mind’s ability to exclude other sensory input makes him ruthless—”

  “Honey, I’m making some lemonade, but I need you to come squeeze lemons for me.” Mrs. Mitchell nodded her head toward the kitchen.

  Dr. Mitchell pointed to his chest and mouthed the word Me? I had the feeling he’d probably never squeezed a lemon in his life.

  “Yes you. Now. In the kitchen,” she said.

  “Actually I have some work to do. I’m going to just go to my study.” He departed for a door in the wall of bookshelves at the back of the room. Mrs. Mitchell retreated to the kitchen.

  I moved a pawn.

  Abelard deliberated and moved a pawn.

  I moved my bishop out. Abelard frowned.

  “Interesting,” he said. “Not what I thought you had planned.”

  He draped his hand over his right rook, but didn’t move.

  His forearms, which I had never noticed before, were long, well-muscled, and slightly tanned. He wore a braided black leather bracelet with a silver tag on his wrist. I vaguely remembered that he’d worn a silver link bracelet all throughout grade school because he was deathly allergic to something—peanuts, wasps, who knew? A fresh wave of tender feeling and concern slapped me across the face. How unfair that a random moment could put him on a countdown toward death. I wanted to snatch all the offending wasps or strawberries from the world, whatever threatened Abelard with destruction.

  After all that deliberation, Abelard moved a pawn two spaces. Cautious.

  I wanted to put my hands somewhere, to run my fingers along the top of his forearm, to finger the strange, subtle med-alert bracelet. My hands itched for action.

  I moved my queen out instead.

  “Do you really want to move your queen like that?” Abelard asked.

  “Why not?”

  “If you move your queen like that, then I will be able to take it away in four moves. Because then you’ll want to move your rook, but you’ll waste time moving your pawns.”

  “Alas,” I said. “My queen is an impetuous and headstrong woman, given to charging forth on crusades only partially dressed. She will out—there is nothing for it.”

  I waited for Abelard to respond to my Eleanor of Aquitaine reference. Eleanor of Aquitaine was my favorite medieval figure, because she decided to gather up all her ladies in waiting and fight the Crusades rather than stay at home doing needlework. Okay—the Crusades were kind of stupid, but who wouldn’t rather charge forth with a sword than sit at home doing needlework?

  If we were texting each other, we’d probably be reciting whole lines of A Lion in Winter by now. But we weren’t alone. Mrs. Mitchell emerged from the kitchen with two gigantic glasses of lemonade, one with actual slices of lemons in the glass.

  “Here you go, Lily.” She handed me the glass with the lemon slices. “Abelard doesn’t like lemons in his drink, but I think they’re festive.”

  I took a sip, then was filled with panic at the idea that I would knock over the glass. Everything in the room seemed valuable, perhaps irreplaceable. Even the glass was pretty, hand-blown with specks of orange and blue and yellow.

  “Abelard, take it easy on Lily. She probably doesn’t play as much chess as you do.” Mrs. Mitchell handed Abelard a glass of lemonade.

  “Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Abelard said.

  “Eleanor of Aquitaine?” Mrs. Mitchell smiled apologetically at me and shrugged. “Now, where did that come from?”

  “We were just talking about Eleanor of Aquitaine,” I replied.

  Happiness—Abelard had caught my Eleanor of Aquitaine reference. It was just like texting. Only slower—for both of us.

  I moved a knight instead of my queen. Abelard didn’t say anything, so I guessed it was a decent move.

  Mrs. Mitchell nodded and wandered back through the door of the kitchen. Finally, we were alone.

  Abelard studied the chessboard, his head tilted at a beatific angle like a painting of a medieval saint, his eyes the darkest blue through thick lashes. I’d never really looked at him for this long or this close up. It almost surprised me that he was real, that his skin had texture and a paler, softer look where he had shaved. He had perfect straight teeth, expensive teeth, better than mine. He didn’t smile much, so I’d never noticed, but I did now.

  He moved a chess piece and glanced up. I felt embarrassed to be caught staring at him. I looked away, and when I looked back, he was staring at me with the same intensity. And then he looked away.

  “Your move,” he said.

  “Is it?” I replied. “You’ve made me nervous. I don’t even know which piece to move, or how to fend you off. I haven’t played in a long time.”

  Abelard beat me at chess. Three times in a row, but quicker the first time than the last. I was beginning to get the hang of the game. If I played chess with him every day for ten years, I would eventually beat him. Probably.

  Halfway through the third game of chess, Mrs. Mitchell returned with the pitcher of lemonade. I hadn’t touched mine. I was afraid of it, afraid of the destructive power of liquids and breakable glass. Things were going so well—too well. Anytime I got too happy, I could just assume something fragile and lovely was lying in wait, ready to shower my world in glass fragments and sticky lemon slices.

  “Abelard, do you think Lily is getting tired of losing?” she said. “You two could watch a movie.”

  “We’re going to my room,” Abelard said.

  He stood, and I followed him up the stairs. His mom followed us to the bottom of the stairs, hands fluttering.

  “Leave the door open,” she said.

  Abelard had a room to himself at the end of a long hall. A low blond-wood platform bed took up most of the room, and the only other furniture was a desk and chair. The wall over the bed held a built-in headboard and bookshelves filled with graphic novels, vintage sci-fi, backlit cubbies with figurines. A flat-screen TV covered most of one wall. His room looked like it had been set-designed for a TV show about genius nerds who devise superpowers in tricked-out labs while playing MMORPGs in their spare time. Must be nice to be rich.

  Abelard sat on the bed while I poked around his stuff.

  “Your room is amazing,” I said. “Why do you ever leave? I share a room with my younger sister, who is super annoying, and smug too. She goes to LAMEA, so all she does is lie in bed doing homework and watching K-pop video
s.”

  Babbling. Because—nervous. I willed myself to stop talking.

  “I applied to LAMEA,” he said.

  “Didn’t you get in?”

  “I got in,” he said. “But I wanted to go to a different school. The Isaac Institute. It’s an early college program for students with neurological differences. I’m on the waiting list.”

  “Are you disappointed you didn’t go to LAMEA?” I sat on the bed beside him. “Now that you’re stuck in norm school with us slackers and ne’er-do-wells?”

  Abelard stared out the window. Short answers, “yes” and “no,” came quickly for him. Other answers took longer. I waited, conscious of my breath and the distance between our hands on the bed.

  Abelard glanced at me and then away. I felt the heat in his glance. “If I’d gone to LAMEA, we never would have broken the wall between rooms. You wouldn’t have kissed me.”

  I leaned closer. Then it just sort of happened. As if Abelard and I had entered a gravitational field and contact had become inevitable and unstoppable without the exertion of external force. We drifted together, and I lifted my head, thinking that he might kiss me or I might kiss him. Anything seemed possible, but at the last moment, his left cheek drifted past me and grazed my lips. He wrapped his arm around me. He smelled of sandalwood and warmth. It felt right, but I wanted him to kiss me.

  There was a small, tentative knock at the open door, and I pulled away from Abelard.

  Mrs. Mitchell stuck her head inside the door.

  “Lily, your mother is here,” she said.

  Seven o’clock.

  “Lily?”

  “Abelard.”

  “I’m sorry for beating you at chess.”

  “Well, you should be,” I replied. “Next time I expect you to let me win. My ego demands it.”

  “Mom said girls don’t like to be beaten at games. She said I was being tedious.”

  Tedious. I didn’t think Abelard could ever be tedious.

  “I’m not like other girls. I don’t feel that my chess skills afford me the luxury to be easily offended.”