Field Notes on Love

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “I don’t suppose they grow on trees, do they?” he says, and when she looks up at him, he scratches his chin and adds, “Ideas, I mean.”

  “No, they definitely don’t grow on trees. But it was never a problem for me before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I got rejected from film school.” She says it fast, like she’s ripping off a bandage, but the next part—the next part comes out a whole lot softer. “For a film I was really proud of.”

  Hugo isn’t sure what to say to this. He fumbles around for a question or a word of encouragement, but the silence stretches between them. Finally, he says, “What was it about?” which turns out to be the exact wrong question. To his surprise, her face immediately clouds over, and she unzips the case, carefully tucking the camera back inside.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she says. “Clearly, it didn’t work.”

  “But do you have any idea why—”

  “It’s fine,” she says abruptly. “I still got into USC—just not the film program. So my plan is to put in for a transfer. That’s why I need to make another film.”

  “When do you need it by?”

  She twists her mouth up to one side. “Well, technically, you can’t apply till the end of sophomore year. But I figure it wouldn’t hurt to try before then, especially if I can make something good enough. Something too good for them to ignore.”

  “Something like…Ida describing each of their four hundred and eighty-two meals on a train?”

  This makes her smile. “Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unlikely sources.”

  “Maybe you should be interviewing Roy, then,” he jokes.

  Later, Ludovic arrives to make up their beds, and then they take turns standing in the hall so the other can change. Mae goes first, and when she returns to find Hugo in a gray T-shirt and pajama pants with rubber duckies on them, she can’t help smiling.

  But it’s his turn to laugh a few minutes later, when he sees that hers are so similar. “Are those clouds or cotton balls?”

  She looks indignant. “They’re sheep.”

  “Right,” he says as he climbs up to the top bunk, barely managing to wedge himself into the coffinlike space. “Is that so you can count them if you have trouble sleeping?”

  “Something like that,” she says, switching off the light.

  For a while, they both lie there quietly in the dark. Every now and then, there are noises in the hall as other passengers make their way to the tiny loo. But Hugo can see how you might get used to sleeping like this; there’s something oddly soothing about the gentle rocking of the train. He does his best to keep his eyes from fluttering shut, thinking of all the things Alfie has compared his snoring to over the years: a buzz saw, a trumpet, an elephant, even—ironically—a train. The idea is to wait for Mae to doze off first so he won’t embarrass himself, but he can still hear her shifting around below.

  He tries to turn on his side, but there’s not quite enough space. For some reason, he keeps thinking about the way Mae walked back over to Ida earlier, so full of purpose, and he’s surprised by how badly he wants to find out what will come of the interview.

  “Is that why you’re here?” he asks, the words loud in the dark. Beneath him, he hears Mae stir in her own makeshift bed. “To make a film?”

  “Maybe,” she says. “That’s part of it, anyway.”

  Hugo stays very still, waiting for her to say more, and when she doesn’t, he asks, “What’s the other part?”

  There’s a long pause, and then: “Do you ever feel like you need to shake things up? Or just step outside your life for a minute?”

  “Yes,” he says, his heart thudding with recognition.

  “I wanted it so badly: to get in to that film program. You have no idea. The worst part wasn’t even being rejected—it was the shock of it.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I thought I was a shoo-in.”

  “Did you?” Hugo asks, unable to imagine being so sure about anything.

  “Yup,” she says. “Want to know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m good. Maybe that’s a weird thing to say. But it’s just a fact. And I want the chance to get better.”

  “You will,” he says, though he has no idea really. He’s never loved anything the way Mae loves making films, and he wishes he knew what it feels like to have that kind of passion for something. For anything.

  Her voice rises up to him again. “What about you? Why are you here?”

  “Because my girlfriend broke up with me,” he says with a wan smile.

  “Right. But most people wouldn’t have come after something like that. Much less go through all the effort of finding a girl with the same name to take the ticket. I mean, what if I were a total psycho?”

  He laughs. “The jury’s still out.”

  “Really—why did you come?”

  Hugo hesitates. Even in the cramped bunk, there’s something so pleasant about the motion of the train and the sound of her voice, and he’s reluctant to spoil it with talk of his knotty feelings about his future and his family and everything else. But he can sense her waiting below him, the silence lengthening.

  “It’s a long story,” he says eventually, and he can almost feel her peering up at him through the dark.

  “The good ones usually are.”

  They talk late into the night. There’s something about the darkness that makes it easy, and when she checks the time and realizes it’s after two, it occurs to Mae that she’s already shared more with Hugo—whom she’s known for less than a day—than she ever did with Garrett.

  She can’t help feeling as if she’s stepped out of her life as quickly and thoughtlessly as you might a pair of jeans; it seems impossible that she could be sharing a room with a boy she met less than twelve hours ago.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go to uni at all,” he’s saying, and she hears a dull thump as he knocks a fist gently against the ceiling of the train. “I’m not a bloody idiot. And I quite like studying, actually. I just don’t particularly want to go to that one.”

  “So why are you going?”

  “Because I’ve got a scholarship,” he says in a voice so miserable that it sounds like he’s telling her he has some sort of disease.

  She can’t help laughing. “What am I missing here?”

  “I didn’t get it because I’m clever,” he says. “Even though I am.”

  “Okay,” Mae says, amused. “So, what? Was it a safety school or something?”

  “No.”

  “Sports scholarship?”

  He snorts. “Definitely not.”

  “Let me guess,” she says. “You have a hidden talent. You can play the piano with your toes. Or juggle knives. Or wait…are you in a marching band?”

  “We don’t really have those at home.”

  “Then, what?”

  “It’s because of my family,” he says. “I’m a sextuplet.”

  Mae lies perfectly still for a few seconds, not sure how to play this. Because she already knows, obviously. It’s basically the only thing that comes up when you google the name Hugo Wilkinson. And there’s no possible way he hasn’t guessed that she knows.

  “Wow,” she says, testing the waters.

  “Yeah,” he says, giving nothing away.

  “That’s…amazing. Do you guys look alike?”

  “A bit,” he says, which isn’t exactly true. Mae has seen dozens of photos online, and they look a lot alike. All six of the Wilkinson siblings are striking on their own—with their huge smiles and matching dimples—but as a group, there’s something almost dazzling about them. It’s easy to see why they’re minor celebrities in England.

  Mae searches for an appropriate follow-up question. “How many brothers and sisters?”

 
“Five,” Hugo says, like she’s asked him what color the sky is. “We’re sextuplets. That means six.”

  “I know. I meant how many of each.”

  He laughs. “Oh. Sorry. Three brothers and two sisters.”

  “Can you remember all their names?” she teases, and he laughs.

  “Let’s see. George, Oscar, Poppy, Alfie, and…um…uh…”

  This goes on for so long that Mae finally rolls her eyes. “Isla,” she says, and he leans down so his head is hanging over the side of the bed.

  “I knew it.”

  “Well, what do you expect? I had to make sure you were legit.”

  “Fair enough,” he says, returning to his bunk. “I looked you up too.”

  “Yeah, me and every other Margaret Campbell in the world.”

  “What I’m curious about,” he says, “is how you managed to get yourself arrested for trespassing last spring.”

  Mae’s mouth falls open. “You found that?”

  “Oh, I found it all right,” Hugo says cheerfully. “Well done, you.”

  “It was film related,” she says, and he laughs.

  “Sounds to me like it was cow related too.”

  She groans. “I swear that farmer is never around. And if the fence hadn’t broken, it would’ve been fine. But then we had to try to round them all up again, and the police showed up, and it was a whole thing.”

  “The lengths we go to for art,” he jokes, and even after they’ve both stopped laughing, Mae can’t seem to get rid of her smile.

  She’s not sure what it is, this electricity that’s buzzing through her right now. Maybe it’s Hugo, or maybe not. Maybe it’s leaving her parents, or being on her own, or the fact that she’s on her way to college—so many changes all at once. Or maybe it’s the train and the exhilaration that comes from being swept across the country like a tumbleweed. But here in the dark, talking so easily as they rumble through the night, the music of Hugo’s accent filling the tiny cabin, she’s struck by the unexpected joy of it all.

  After a few minutes, she clears her throat, not sure if he’s fallen asleep yet. “So that college…,” she says, and for a long time, there’s no answer.

  “Right,” he says eventually. “The University of Surrey.”

  “They gave all six of you a scholarship?”

  “Not exactly. It was some rich guy who went there.”

  “Seriously?” she says, surprised. “He just handed you a whole bunch of money?”

  “Well, he died a few years ago, so technically he handed it to the university. And we had to get the grades first. But otherwise, yeah. He thought it would be good publicity for them. Which it will. Basically, we get a free education and they get to parade us around campus.”

  “I’ve heard of worse deals,” Mae says.

  Hugo sighs. “I know. That’s just it. What kind of prat would have the nerve to be ungrateful for something like that?”

  “A prat who wants something different?”

  “Did I mention it’s also in my hometown?”

  “Oof,” she says. “Really?”

  “And I’m the only one who seems to mind it. I love my brothers and sisters. I do. They’re my best mates, and it’s strange to imagine being without them—like losing an arm. Or five.”

  “That’s a lot of arms.”

  “And it’s not as if I didn’t know this would be happening. It’s been the plan since we were born. Literally. I thought I was fine with it, but then I started hearing about classmates who are off to new places, and Margaret…” He trails off. “She’s going to Stanford. And she’ll be meeting all these new people and doing all these exciting things while I’m stuck at home, about a mile from our secondary school, surrounded by all my siblings, like nothing has changed at all.”

  “Have you ever thought about not going?”

  “And do what?” he asks. “We can’t afford anywhere else.”

  “What about loans?”

  “I can’t—” He pauses, frustrated. “I can’t just abandon them. That’s not how it works with us. We’re a unit.”

  “But it won’t be that way forever,” Mae says.

  He’s quiet for a moment. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No,” Mae says, shaking her head, though he can’t see her. “It’s just me.”

  “Then you can’t understand. It’s not that easy.”

  Maybe not, she thinks. But they’ve always been a unit too—she and Dad and Pop and Nana—and she’d left them behind because it was time to go. And because she has dreams that are too big to fit back home. She suspects Hugo’s problem isn’t that he can’t bear to leave. It’s that he hasn’t figured out where he wants to go.

  “Most things are easier than you think,” she says. “It’s deciding to do them that’s hard.”

  “I suppose,” he says with a sigh. “Though we can’t all be intrepid filmmakers who run headlong into a field of cows. Or whatever dreams we’re chasing after.”

  She smiles at this. “Well, why not?”

  “For starters, I don’t even know what my dreams are. All I know is that I feel…restless. And I’d love to do something different, you know? Something new.”

  A few seconds pass, and Mae looks up at the bottom of his bed. “Hugo?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who ever told you that doesn’t count as a dream?”

  Hugo wakes not from the motion of the train but from the absence of it. He blinks at the ceiling, which is alarmingly close to his face. Below, there’s the scratching of a pen on paper, and it takes him a moment to place himself.

  He nudges open the curtain beside the bed, wincing as the light comes streaming in the window. Outside there’s a sign that says Toledo. Beside it, the man from across the hall, bleary eyed beneath the brim of a cowboy hat, is smoking a cigarette. It’s early still, not quite six, and the sky is glowing and shimmery. Hugo flops onto his back again.

  “Mae?”

  “Morning.”

  He traces a finger over a squiggly line that someone has drawn on the ceiling, which doesn’t seem to lead anywhere in particular. Maybe it’s a map. Maybe it’s their route. Or maybe it’s just a line. “Where’s Toledo?”

  “Ohio,” she says.

  “What happened to Pennsylvania?”

  “It’s still there. We just slept through it.”

  There’s a pause, filled once again by the scrape of a pen, and he asks, “What are you writing?”

  “Just some notes,” she says.

  Hugo shimmies over to the edge of the bed. His legs get tangled in the harness as he tries to get down, and he nearly tumbles sideways but manages to right himself before dropping to the floor. Mae, who is sitting on the lower bunk with a notebook balanced on her knees, looks up at him. She’s already dressed in black jeans and a gray T-shirt with the Ghostbusters logo on it, her feet bare. He notices that her toes are painted the same color purple as her glasses.

  “I didn’t think anyone used pen and paper anymore,” he says, and she smiles as if he’s paid her a compliment. He leans an arm on the top bunk and takes a peek at the page. It’s a bit awkward, hovering over her like this, but there’s not really room to be anywhere else. “Wow. Your handwriting is truly terrible.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “You know those blue lines aren’t just suggestions, right? You’re supposed to write in between them.”

  She gives him a look of mock outrage, then tucks her legs in so that there’s room for him to sit on the other end of the bed. “I’m working up some questions for my interview with Ida.”

  “Want to practice on me? I do a mean American accent.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she says. “But you’re no Ida.”

  “Fair enough. What sorts of things are you going to ask?”
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  “Questions about her life. Her hopes. Her fears.”

  “Well,” he says, leaning back against the window, “we know Roy’s fear is that they’ll run out of apple pie.”

  Outside, there’s the muffled sound of Ludovic yelling “All aboard!” and then heavy footsteps as people climb back onto the train. The curtain is still drawn across their compartment’s doorway, but they can hear their neighbor return to his room, and the train jerks forward once, then twice, before starting to pull away from the station.

  Hugo nods at her notebook. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I think,” Mae says, looking up at him through her glasses, “I might be making a documentary.”

  “About Ida.”

  “Sort of. I mean, you saw the way she was with Roy last night. Think about how many other people are on this train right now, how many other love stories. That’s what I want the film to be about.”

  “Love and trains?”

  “Love and trains,” she agrees, and then she tips her head to one side, studying him. “Hey, if you had to describe love in one word, what would it be?”

  Hugo blinks at her, his heart quickening for no particular reason. “I have no idea.”

  “It could be anything. Like, say…pizza.”

  “Pizza?” he asks, surprised. “Why pizza?”

  “That’s…not important,” she says. “It could be something else too. Anything.”

  “Wait, do you think love is like a pizza?” he asks with a grin, and she looks at him impatiently.

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “How do you reckon love is like—”

  “Hugo.”

  “Okay, okay. I’d need to think about it more. Especially if I’m going to come up with something better than pizza.”

  “You have to say it quick. The first thing that pops into your head.”

  Hugo’s first thought, for some reason, is of their conversation last night, how easy it had been to talk to her in the darkness. But that’s not a word, and they’re not in love, so he turns his mind to Margaret instead, flipping through the pages of their years together, trying to find something that might sum it all up. But his mind goes entirely blank.