The Book of Story Beginnings

by Kladstrup, Kristin

  “Who said anything about coincidence?” Oscar looked puzzled. Then a look of astonishment washed over his face. “You don’t know, do you? You said you’d read it, so I never dreamed you didn’t know.”

  “What is it?” said Lucy, terrified because she thought that at last she did know.

  “Lucy, the things you write in that book come true. They turn into stories, and the stories come to life!”

  “I wrote a story beginning in the book!” said Lucy. She was feeling sick.

  “You did!” said Oscar. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “I — well, why did you do it?”

  “I was a fool, that’s what I was. I read the warning at the beginning of the book and I just plain ignored it,” said Oscar.

  “I didn’t pay any attention at all to the warning. I was thinking about something else,” said Lucy. She had been thinking about her parents’ argument. Had it been only this morning?

  “What exactly did you write?” asked Oscar.

  “I just said that once there was a girl whose father was a magician. That’s all.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it was my father. And the book knew that! And when I came home last night he was a magician, and he changed himself into a bird, and then . . .”

  “I chased him out the window, didn’t I?” Oscar concluded. He let out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t mean it,” he added. Then he asked, “Why that story in particular?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you write about your father being a magician?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I looked around the attic a bit. There were a lot of queer-looking books and papers and other things up there. Did all that come out of your story beginning?”

  “No. Most of that stuff belonged to Aunt Lavonne.”

  “Lavonne! My sister?” Oscar raised his eyebrows.

  “My father said she was convinced something magical had happened to you,” Lucy explained. “So she spent her entire life learning about magic.”

  “What do you mean, learning about magic?”

  “Well, she studied alchemy, spells, incantations, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “What’s so ridiculous about it? You just told me a story that nobody is going to believe!” said Lucy. By nobody, she meant her mother. “Besides, Aunt Lavonne was right. I don’t know what you call what’s happened, but I call it magic.”

  Oscar was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I suppose you’re right. It’s just that it’s hard to picture my sister that way. Just thinking of her as an old lady, that’s one shock —”

  Just then, the screen door behind them squeaked on its hinges. When Lucy looked around, she saw her mother standing in the doorway in her nightgown.

  “Lucy? What are you doing? Who is this?” said her mother.

  Oscar came to the rescue. He rose to his feet and extended his hand. “My name’s Earl Norby, ma’am,” he said. “I live near town. I saw Lucy out on the porch, and we got to talking.”

  Lucy’s mother ignored the offered hand. “Lucy, it’s after midnight!”

  “Mom —”

  “And you, young man! I’ve half a mind to call your parents. I would call them if I wasn’t afraid of waking them up! Do they know you’re out at this hour?”

  “I reckon so, ma’am. We go to bed kind of late at our house.”

  “Earl,” said Lucy’s mother, “I’m going to assume that if you got yourself here safely, you can get yourself home safely, even if it is twelve thirty in the morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Oscar looked contrite. “I’ll be fine. I hope you’ll let me visit Lucy again, ma’am,” he added.

  “Visiting hours are from eight A.M. to eight P.M.,” said Lucy’s mother, smiling slightly. Lucy wondered if she had ever heard so many ma’ams in her life. “Good night, Earl.”

  “’Night, Lucy,” said Oscar as her mother drew her in the door. When Lucy glanced back, he was heading across the front lawn, roughly in the direction of town, which lay less than half a mile down the hill. She wondered what Oscar would think when he saw the carpet of electric lights that Martin had become since 1914.

  “What were you thinking, Lucy?” said her mother as they went upstairs. “It’s not enough that your father has to stay up until the wee hours — heaven knows what he’s doing up there in the attic — but now you turn into a night owl as well!”

  She waited while Lucy put her nightgown back on and climbed into bed. “And boys! Whenever did you get interested in boys?”

  In spite of all that had happened, in spite of the panic that kept rising in her, Lucy felt embarrassed. “Mom! This has nothing to do with boys!”

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” said her mother, closing the door.

  Lucy lay in the dark, wide awake and exhausted at the same time. Her mind could not stop thinking. She had found Oscar, and he was just as she had imagined from reading his journals. She could talk to him. Lucy had never been any good at talking to people. But she could talk to Oscar as if he were her older brother.

  But I’ve lost my father, Lucy thought. Where is he?

  A sudden noise — a sharp spatter like the rattle of hailstones — startled her into alertness. She waited, holding her breath until she heard it again. There! She recognized the sound this time, even though she had never heard it before. She had read about it in a book. Someone was throwing pebbles at her window.

  Oscar’s hand, poised to toss more gravel, dropped when he saw Lucy’s face press against the window screen. “I thought this must be your room. Are you all right, Lucy?”

  Though she had never felt less all right in her life, she nodded.

  “Listen, Lucy. There’s got to be something we can do. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “All right.” Lucy tried not to think about never seeing her father again.

  “Go to bed and get some sleep,” Oscar advised.

  And strangely, as if he had thrown magic sleeping powder up at the screen instead of pebbles, Lucy felt suddenly as if she could sleep after all. “What will you do? Where will you sleep?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’ll be all right. I’ll find some place to lay up. Besides, I’m not that tired.” He waved, and Lucy watched him disappear around the house, into the backyard. Then she got back into bed.

  Lucy was dreaming that Aunt Helen was showing her father how to cook. “Just check the recipe, Shel,” she was saying. “It says to add eggs.” Lucy’s father started paging through a book that Lucy could see wasn’t a cookbook; it was The Book of Story Beginnings.

  “How long does it say to cook the eggs?” said Aunt Helen.

  “Until the bell rings,” said her father.

  Then Lucy woke up. It was morning. She could hear the telephone ringing in her parents’ room.

  On any other day, it would have been one of those funny dreams she laughed about at breakfast with her father. Today the dream fled out of her mind as she listened to her mother pick up the phone.

  “Hello,” said her mother. “Oh, Helen . . . Yes, of course we’re up. Well, I’m up, anyway. I don’t know where Shel is. He always stays up so late. I’m not sure he even went to bed last night.”

  Lucy rolled out of bed and tiptoed into the hall to listen.

  “The café? No, we haven’t been yet.” Lucy’s mother turned around. “Oh, here’s Lucy. Can you wait a minute, Helen?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

  “Lucy — you haven’t seen your father this morning, have you?”

  “I just got up,” Lucy stammered.

  “What’s that, Helen?” said her mother, listening to the phone again. She turned to Lucy. “Did your father say he was going anywhere this morning?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Sorry, Helen, he seems to have gone missing,” said her mother, laughing. “But I’d like to go for at least a cup of coffee. You don’t mind if we make it a short trip? I’ve got to work
today. . . . Yes, I’ll see if Lucy wants to come. . . . Yes, of course. Come on up. Goodbye.”

  “Aunt Helen wants to take us to breakfast at the café in town,” said Lucy’s mother, putting the phone down. “Can you hurry up and get dressed?”

  “Mom, about last night,” Lucy began.

  “That boy? I must admit I was surprised. How long were you out there? You can’t stay up that late; you should know that.”

  “I do know that.” Lucy followed her mother out into the hall.

  “It certainly is a new world out here,” said her mother, pausing at the top of the stairs. “I can’t believe Earl’s parents let him run around after midnight! What do his parents do? Have they got a farm?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, wondering how she could ever tell her mother the truth. Last night Dad changed himself into a bird and flew away, Mom. And Earl is actually our cat. Only his name’s not Earl. It’s Oscar.

  Her mother was already hurrying down the stairs. “Please get dressed, Lucy,” she called over her shoulder. “Aunt Helen will be here any minute.”

  But Lucy didn’t get dressed. She waited at the top of the stairs until she heard the sound of Aunt Helen’s car pulling into the driveway. “Lucy! Are you ready?” called her mother.

  “Not exactly!” Lucy called back.

  Her mother appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re not ready at all.”

  “Can I stay here?”

  Her mother hesitated. When they had lived in the city, her parents had never considered Lucy old enough to stay home by herself.

  “Dad must be around somewhere,” said Lucy. It was such a lie that she felt ashamed. But she didn’t want to go to the café. She couldn’t go to the café.

  “Well, I guess it’s all right,” said her mother. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Lucy found Oscar right away, curled up on the floor of the smokehouse. He sat up and blinked as she threw open the door. He stood up and stretched, twisting his back this way and that. “Not such a great place to sleep as I remembered. I didn’t mind it when I was a cat,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Did your father come back?”

  “No. And I’ve got to find him,” said Lucy. “Last night you said we could talk today. You said there had to be something we could do.”

  “Well, sure,” said Oscar.

  “I hope you have something in mind.” Lucy was surprised at how angry her own voice sounded.

  “I — I don’t exactly,” Oscar stammered.

  Lucy could feel her anger transforming into tears.

  “But I’ll try to think of something,” Oscar added hastily. “Lucy, I’m really sorry. But I’m not exactly sure when I last had anything to drink. The pump that used to be out back of the house is gone.”

  Lucy felt almost grateful to him for giving her a reason to turn away. She hated crying in front of people. “Come on,” she said.

  In the kitchen, she poured him a glass of water. “Do you want some breakfast?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Lucy put bread in the toaster and poured two bowls of corn flakes and milk. Oscar studied the cereal box and ran his finger down the plastic milk jug. He and Lucy both seemed to notice that his hands were dirty at the same time. “There’s some soap at the sink,” she told him.

  “We had a sink when I lived here,” said Oscar as he washed his hands. “In case you were wondering.” He washed his face, too. “We also had an outhouse, but I didn’t see one outside.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lucy was moving leftovers around in the refrigerator, looking for the orange juice.

  “I expect you’ve got a water closet in the house. . . .” Oscar suggested delicately.

  “A water closet?” said Lucy, puzzled, and then she said, “Oh!” and showed him the downstairs bathroom.

  Oscar ate hungrily, stopping only once to tell Lucy politely that her mother’s strawberry jam was every bit as good as his mother’s. Lucy didn’t tell him that it came from the supermarket.

  When he was done eating, he wiped his mouth with his napkin. “That was wonderful,” he said, sighing with pleasure.

  As if he’d never had cereal and toast before, thought Lucy. Then she remembered what he had been eating. Cat food — and mice!

  “Where’s The Book of Story Beginnings?” asked Oscar.

  “It’s up in my room. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to look at it, I guess. Maybe it will give us some ideas about how to get your father back.”

  “I don’t see how,” Lucy complained. But a second later, she did see how. An idea had jumped into her mind. “Oscar, we could write something in the book!”

  “What do you mean, write something in the book?”

  “We could write that my father comes back home.”

  “It’s a book of story beginnings,” said Oscar. “That sounds like an end to the story beginning you already wrote.”

  “It could be the beginning of a new story,” Lucy argued. “Once upon a time, a man changed himself into a bird and flew out the window. The next day he came home from his journey. . . .”

  “You can’t just go and write anything you like in that book,” said Oscar. “It’s dangerous. You’ve got to be careful.”

  Lucy opened her mouth to protest, to say that of course she knew they had to be careful. But Oscar held up his hand to stop her. “Just listen for a moment. The story beginnings we’ve written so far have already had disastrous effects.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’ll tell you what I think has happened,” he said. “I think we’re in the middle of a story. A terrible middle. And I’m afraid anything else we write in that book will only make it worse.”

  “How could it be worse?” said Lucy. “My father’s gone. And you — well, you’ve come back in the future and . . .” Her voice fell off because what she had been about to say — that Oscar’s family was dead — sounded so terrible and final.

  “I’m not sure there’s much we can do about me,” said Oscar. “I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about it. This kind of thing happens all the time in stories. Take ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ for example. That poor fellow stays a beast for hundreds of years. When the enchantment is lifted, he hasn’t changed a bit. He’s the same age as he was before. What happens to his family? We never find out.”

  As he continued, Oscar’s voice became more resolute: “What I mean to say is, maybe my family isn’t important to this story — I mean the one you started when you wrote your story beginning. As awful as it sounds, that’s how it feels to me. I can’t get back what’s gone. But I feel as though there must be some way we can help your father. If he’s disappeared — well, maybe he’ll come back. But if he doesn’t, maybe there’s some way we can find him. If we really are in the middle of a story, maybe there’s some way we can give it a good ending.”

  It struck Lucy that Oscar sounded like a hero. She admired him and felt sorry for him all at the same time. For some reason, the combination of emotions made her feel embarrassed, and she changed the topic. “Where did the book come from?” she asked.

  “I found it in the attic.” Oscar looked unhappy. “It was in Ma’s trunk. I never told her I took it.”

  “Where did she get the book? It looks really old.”

  “I think she must have brought it with her when she ran away with my father.”

  “She ran away with your father?”

  “Ma was only seventeen, and my grandfather forbade her to see my pa. She told him she knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was to marry Pa, and believe you me, when Ma decides she wants something, nothing stands in her way. I think she might have taken the book from my grandfather’s library. Ma talked about him having a library.”

  “So the book was your grandfather’s,” said Lucy. “Do you think he knew it was magic?”

  “I’m not sure. Ma didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  “There was another story beginning in the book,” said Lucy. “It was in a foreign langu
age.”

  “Norwegian,” said Oscar. “That’s another thing that made me think the book might belong to my grandfather. He came from Norway, like Ma.”

  “Can you read that story beginning?” asked Lucy.

  Oscar nodded. “I know a little Norwegian from Ma. Why?”

  “Maybe it’ll tell us something important — how to use the book. How not to mess everything up when we do. Wait here and I’ll get it.”

  Lucy hurried upstairs and found the book. But as her hand closed around it, she heard a noise — a car pulling into the driveway. She looked out the window. It was her mother and Aunt Helen.

  Oscar! thought Lucy. She ran down the hall and down the stairs, through the parlor, through the dining room, and into the kitchen just as her mother and Aunt Helen pushed open the kitchen door.

  “Earl?” said her mother. “What are you doing here?”

  Oscar stood up from the table. “Good morning, ma’am,” he said.

  “Earl stopped by while you were out,” Lucy explained.

  “It’s good to see you in the light of day, Earl,” said her mother with a little smile. “This is Lucy’s aunt Helen. Helen, do you know Earl? I’m sorry, Earl, I’ve forgotten your last name.”

  “It’s Norby, ma’am.”

  “Earl Norby!” Aunt Helen exclaimed. “You’re not related to old Earl Norby, are you?”

  Lucy saw Oscar give a start.

  “Who’s old Earl Norby?” asked her mother.

  “Why, he’s the town’s oldest citizen! The church had a big party last August on his birthday. Wonderful man — lives over at the nursing home in Onawa now, but he comes up to visit his daughter every so often. Come to think of it, Denise mentioned just last week that he was coming today. Her son Ted and his family are here from Des Moines. You must be one of Ted’s children, Earl —” Aunt Helen’s voice broke off. She sounded puzzled.

  “I don’t suppose I’m related, ma’am,” said Oscar, looking uncomfortable.

  “Where do you live, Earl?” Aunt Helen’s eyes traveled up from Oscar’s bare feet to his pants, which buttoned just below his knee, and then up to his dirty white shirt with its sleeves turned up at the elbows.