by A. E. Cannon
SUBJECT: Intruding…
To J.
And still I miss you.
I try not to. Instead I try to think of other things I love—burnt red hills, the dark-haired and brown-skinned baby next door, Gran’s garden full of lilacs and blue iris in the spring and star jasmine and honeysuckle in the summer, the lyrics to La Wally, which I am learning now.
I try to memorize the lyrics when I feel the memory of you walking toward me. I try to hear in my
head how I’ll shape the sounds.
But still you intrude.
You intrude.
Ellie Fenn
Scout’s Take
He was counting. Counting, if you please. With a stupid grin on his face. Pretending that he was doing something very sophisticated, very romantic—such as reciting poetry.
Not just poetry. Love-with-a-capital-L poetry.
So here’s my question. Will any boy ever be remotely tempted to recite love poetry to me? Or will I always be treated just like “one of the guys”?
A girl like Ellie, on the other hand, with her blond hair and velvety skin, inspires love poetry even when it isn’t actually love poetry. Even when it’s just ordinal numbers in Portuguese recited over the checkout desk at a movie rental store.
Things are always different for girls like Ellie. Girls like Ellie never sit in their rooms late at night reading romances on the sly. They get to live romances.
I want to hate Ellie. Really and truly I do. With all my heart. In fact, I want to make hating Ellie my latest hobby. That way whenever I have to list my hobbies on a resume, I can put “creative writing, playing soccer, watching screwball comedies, and hating Ellie” in the space provided below. I can raise hating Ellie to the level of high art. I can be the founder and president of the Ellie Un-Fan Club populated by average-looking girls like me. We can get together on a monthly basis and think of mean things to do to Ellie’s shining, perfect hair when she’s asleep.
Only I don’t hate Ellie. Not at all.
How could I? I’m on her radar screen even though she’s gorgeous and I’m not. She walks into Reel Life and immediately acknowledges me even before she says hello to Ed/Sergio. The truth is she’s nice.
Besides, I don’t think it’s in my nature to hate people, even when they deserve to be hated. I can even give you a specific example.
Last year my grandfather, who is a very prominent bone doctor and former church leader here in Salt Lake City, got his twenty-three-year-old nurse pregnant.
Oh! Oops!
Being an honorable man, he thought it only right to divorce his wife of forty years (my grandmother) and marry the nurse (my stepgrandmother—she’s the one with dollar signs in her eyes) so that the poor baby (my half aunt) would have a first name (Samantha) and a last name (Arrington).
Of course everybody in the entire extended family has stopped speaking to him. Hating Grandpa has become a family obligation. We’ve begun having family reunions just so we can all get together and play horseshoes and volleyball while hating our grandfather the Adulterer.
And I do hate what he did. I hate it with all my heart. How can a supposedly smart person give up so much for sex, and then pretend to himself and everyone else afterward that it wasn’t really about the sex?
Only as it turns out I don’t hate him.
I can’t forget how he took me fishing on the Provo River when I was a little girl and how he taught me stupid songs about burping. I can’t forget how he played card games with me when all the other grown-ups were too busy talking and how HE was the one who could always get splinters out of my bare feet and gum out of my hair without hurting me.
And I won’t forget how he still comes to my soccer games, even though he has to sit in different bleachers from the rest of my family.
Love.
Who needs it?
ED’S TURN
Birds like stars.
I’m just lying here in bed, thinking about how amazing it is that I actually said something like that to a beautiful girl without sounding pathetic. But then I guess Ed didn’t really say those words. Sergio did.
Man, I just love being Sergio.
I look out the window by my bed one more time before rolling over to go to sleep. Birds like stars. Even the moon reminds me of a bird tonight. A fat white swan, paddling slowly across a murky lake of sky, silent and full of secrets.
FROM THE LAB BOOK OF QUENTIN ANDREWS O’ROURKE
When I am being honest with myself I can, of course, account for my enduring fascination with the moon.
My mother used to read Goodnight Moon to me when I was little. I used to love to hear her low voice as I stared out my bedroom window.
In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of—
The cow jumping over the moon…
It’s such a comforting book. Just a bunny and his mother in a roomful of familiar things. No surprises. Just things the way the bunny expects them to be. Just things the way they’re supposed to be.
It wasn’t long before I started looking for the moon in the night sky myself. Of course, I noticed right away that the moon doesn’t stay the same—not like the pictures in my book.
“Look,” I said to my mother one night when the moon was in an early phase. I was probably three or four years old, and I was truly alarmed. “Something happened to the moon. It’s broken!”
My mother laughed. “What a funny little boy you are!” Then she took my hand. “You remind me of myself, Quentin. Full of imagination. Full of mystery. Unknowable. Just like the moon.”
Only I learned that the moon, in fact, is not full of mystery.
The moon is as predictable as it is knowable….
Or so I thought.
I met Ed’s friend Scout again. I’ve met her before, of course, but I wasn’t paying attention. Today, however, I looked straight into her eyes and saw that they are dark brown and shot with gold.
She makes me want to get online and Google “screwball comedies.”
She makes me want to take a chance.
Which is why I, Quentin Andrews O’Rourke, have decided to surrender. I hereby surrender myself to the MYSTERIES of the moon.
JUNE 14
ED’S TURN
Tonight I am working with Ali (who makes me nervous) and T. Monroe (who makes me crazy). Scout has the evening off, and I really miss her. In fact, I want to call her up on the telephone and say, “Scout! Come to work RIGHT NOW so that life will be good again!”
T. Monroe is rewinding one of the few videos we still carry, and I decide to make the time go a little faster by engaging in some friendly employee small talk.
“So what are you wearing to Ali’s party, T. Monroe?”
I am pretty worried about this entire issue, actually. I can just see me and my lovely date, Quark, two boring dorks in totally uninspired costumes surrounded by fascinating guests wearing wild and exotic creations made from the feathers of parrots.
Or something along those lines.
Without looking up from his stack of videos, T. Monroe starts quoting scripture at me. “‘And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’”
“Thank you very much, T. Monroe,” I say. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
I turn my back on him and make a mental note to myself to line up a Worf costume by next Thursday. Also, I’ve gone online a few times to find a few choice Klingon curses. Stuff like “Your mother has a smooth face,” which apparently is the ultimate Klingon dis.
Then I think of Ellie’s smooth face and wonder whether or not she’ll come by tonight.
I hope she does because, hoo-boy, did I ever do my homework THIS TIME.
Here’s what I did. When I took Maggie shopping at Trolley Square earlier today, I checked out the Brazi
lian restaurant there called the Rodizio Grill. I immediately trotted inside and asked the hostess (dressed up like a girl gaucho) if I could look at a menu. Then (because I learned how to be prepared that one time I went to Boy Scouts) I pulled a pencil and a crumpled-up overdue parking ticket out of my back pocket and jotted down the names of a few authentic dishes.
If Ellie comes into Reel Life tonight, I plan to tell her about the rich and varied dishes served in my beloved homeland.
Ellie walks through the door like Cinderella just before the clock strikes midnight.
Actually, it was only about ten, but you know how I am—unable to resist the dramatic touch.
“Hi, Sergio,” she says with a shimmering smile.
“Alô, Ellie,” I say, full of Brazilian swagger.
“How are things?”
“Things are going very well now that you are here.” I look at her with eyes full of meaning, and she laughs agreeably because I am so charming. I am charming Sergio.
A little silence grows between us. If I were still Ed, I would start to worry perhaps. I would think that we had run out of things to say. I would start to sweat, and probably not a manly sweat, either.
But now that I am Sergio, I know there is plenty left to be said. And unsaid. Because I am Sergio, I also realize Ellie is flirting with me by the way she is playing with her beautiful hair. Ed would not have understood this.
She smiles at me again, and then puts her elbows on the counter and rests her heart-shaped face in her hands. “Tell me some more about Brazil, Sergio. Please.”
I lean toward her. “Let me tell you about the wonderful food my grandmother used to fix for us.”
Elli’s face brightens even more. “I’d love to hear all about it.”
“Well,” I say, “let me start you off with a few verbal appetizers.”
And I tell her about pãozinho and pão de queijo, polenta, and banana frita.
“Banana frita?” says Ellie. “What’s that?”
“Glazed banana,” I say slickly, even though it could be an unglazed banana for all I know. “With lots of cinnamon.” The lies just come pouring out of me.
“Cinnamon?” Ellie darts a tiny pink tongue over her lips, tasting the imaginary cinnamon there.
And I practically stop breathing.
The Letter Ellie Wrote
Dear Mom and Grandma,
How would you like me to cook Brazilian for you when I come home? I’m going to have Rick teach me how! Here’s the amazing thing. It turns out Rick was on a mission to Brazil the same time grumpy Mr. Hurst’s grandson (the one who dyed his hair green when we were in high school) was there. Mormondom is such an amazingly small world! Six degrees of separation and all that!
Anyway, I think it will be fun to have Senhor Rick give me cooking lessons. He’s so wonderful. I think Mary has finally found someone who’s good enough for her.
Hugs!
Ellie
THE EMAIL ELLIE WANTED TO SEND
SUBJECT: Chanceless
To J.
How did I love thee? Let me count the ways. First, I loved how smart you are.
Second, I loved all the things you know about books and paintings and especially music, and I loved how you shared those things with me.
Third, I loved the way you told me about the places you’ve been because I want to see the world—all of it—for myself, although I worry that I will always be just Ellie from Santa Clara who never has that chance.
Fourth, and oh yes, I loved the way you look.
But not until I loved the inside of you first.
I never shared this list with you because I would have felt silly.
And now I’ll never have the chance.
Chanceless in Salt Lake City,
Ellie Fenn
JUNE 15
Scout’s Take
The phone rings and I pick it up. “Hello?”
“Scout! Thank goodness you’re home!” It’s my mom, calling from work and sounding desperate. “I forgot to pick up Benny’s new contacts at the eye doctor on my lunch break. Can you get them for me, then FedEx a package off to Brazil this afternoon?”
I groan a little. I hate it when I have to run errands for Mom.
“Please, Scout? Benny’s sick of bumping into banana trees because he can’t see.”
I laugh in spite of myself.
“The doctor’s office is by the Foothill Branch Library, Scout,” Mom wheedles. “You know where that is, don’t you?”
Of course I do. It’s not far from Ed’s house.
Mom still wheedles. “You might find something new there you’d like to read”—she lowers her voice here—“…if you know what I mean.”
I know EXACTLY what she means.
“Fine,” I huff, totally hating myself for being addicted to love of the Regency romance variety. “I’ll take care of it.”
Mom laughs and says good-bye.
I hang up (hard) and stare at the phone, thinking how much I hate it when mothers exploit the weaknesses of their children to accomplish their own ends. In fact, I think it’s completely evil.
Don’t you?
ED’S TURN
“Jeez, Quark! You scared the snot out of that poor old lady standing on the corner there!”
I look in the rearview mirror of Quark’s car, just in time to catch sight of the aforementioned elderly person jumping up and down the sidewalk, giving us the finger.
It always gives me a start when senior citizens flip me off.
Quark takes another corner, this time (I swear) on two wheels. It’s like we’re in that old Disney flick The Love Bug.
Cut to a scene of an insane Herbie the Love Bug racing out of control through the tree-lined streets of Salt Lake City’s east bench. Inside the car, Ed and Quark (both of them wearing special racing gear) hang on for dear life as they wonder what has gotten into their old reliable friend, Herbie.
QUARK:
Exactly how many little old ladies has Herbie taken out this afternoon, Ed?
ED:
I’m not sure, Quark, but watch out because here comes another one now!
LITTLE OLD LADY:
(tossing her sack of groceries into the air as Herbie comes barreling down on her) AAARGH!
“Dude! Quark!” I gargle. “I want to arrive alive!”
He totally ignores me as he continues to blast down Foothill Boulevard. Roger Ramjet (otherwise known as my buddy Quark) makes one last terrifying turn, and then comes to a screeching halt in front of the Foothill Branch Library. Rubber-legged, I crawl out of the car like an astronaut who’s just been taken for a little joyride in Apollo 13.
“Remind me to take the bus next time, okay?” I shout after Quark, who is already loping toward the library’s entrance like a giraffe traveling at high speed across the grasslands of Africa.
My sarcasm, in case you’re interested, is completely lost on him.
I know. I’m being a jerk, especially since Quark has been nice enough to bring me here so I can check out some guide books on my homeland, Brazil.
“Hello, Quark. Hey there, Ed.” Our good friend Dody the librarian greets us as I trail Quark inside.
Quark doesn’t respond but heads straight for the stacks, his good-looking face screwed up in thought.
“What’s up with him?” Dody asks, glancing back over her shoulder at Quark. “Is it just my imagination, or is our lovable genius even more preoccupied than usual?”
I shrug and remember the way he nearly walked through plate-glass windows at Reel Life the other night. “He’s been acting pretty strange lately. Stranger than usual that is,” I add for clarification purposes.
Dody observes Quark’s movements through her bifocals. “What’s he doing in the poetry section?”
I gape. “Poetry? Quark hates poetry! Quark thinks poetry sucks.”
Dody keeps watching Quark as he accidentally knocks one book after another off the shelves.
“Have you ever read the book The Man Who Mis
took His Wife for a Hat?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “Nobody told me I was supposed to.”
Dody ignores my wisecrack. “It’s about what happens to people who get brain disorders.” She pauses. “Has Quark had a head injury lately?”
“I don’t know,” I say slowly, wondering if this could account for Quark’s recent behavior. “He did walk into a window the other day.”
Quark apparently discovers what he’s been looking for, because he snatches a thick book from the stacks and sits down at a nearby table. I say good-bye to Dody and join him.
“Don’t you think she has beautiful eyes?” Quark asks.
“Dody?” It’s very true that our friend Dody is one fine-looking librarian. But still. She’s like about sixty years old. I’m surprised Quark would notice her eyes. Or anybody else’s eyes.
Quark stares at me, then blinks in pure surprise. “I’m not referring to Dody, Ed. I’m talking about Scout.”
“Scout?” I squeak.
“Scout Arrington,” Quark repeats, looking at me in disgust because I am so very dense. “Your coworker.”
I reach across the table and slap Quark upside the head. “I know who Scout is!”
Quark blinks, then carries on. “I’ve been trying to compare her eyes to something that sparkles, which is why I thought of comparing them to geodes, as in ‘her eyes sparkle like geodes.’”
Geodes? The last time I thought of geodes was in the third grade during our rocks and minerals unit.
“I’m not sure the image works, however. The only word I can find that rhymes with ‘geode’ is ‘freeload.’” Quark shakes his head. “I’m looking for a new direction.”
He flips open the fat book, an anthology entitled Great Love Poems of the Western World. Meanwhile, I cannot speak. All I can manage is a weak gurgle.