Field Notes on Love

by Jennifer E. Smith

  Nana: Is he dreamy?

  Mae: Nana!

  Nana: Just tell me.

  Mae: It would not be inaccurate to say that he’s dreamy.

  Nana: Listen…

  Mae: ?

  Nana: Sometimes it’s good for you.

  Mae: What?

  Nana: To be spectacularly stupid.

  Mae sets her phone down when Hugo slides back into his seat. “Hey,” she says. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” he says as he pours more syrup over his waffles.

  Now that she’s started this, she’s not entirely sure how to proceed. “Was Margaret…,” she says, and he snaps his head up, looking startled. “Were you two…?”

  “What?”

  “You were in love, right?”

  “Yeah,” he says, lowering his fork. “We were.”

  “So what happened?”

  He looks uncomfortable. “We just grew apart, I suppose. We’d been together a long time, and something had gotten a bit lost, and…Why do you want to talk about Margaret?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “I’d rather talk about you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I’m curious whether there have been many…”

  She frowns at him. “What?”

  “Waffles,” he says, then lets out a slightly nervous laugh. “What do you think? Blokes.”

  “I wouldn’t call it many,” she says. “But there have been a few.”

  “No boyfriend, though?”

  “Not currently.”

  He raises his eyebrows, waiting for more.

  “I was seeing this guy over the summer,” she admits, realizing she’s hardly thought about Garrett at all since she left. “But it’s over. Really over.”

  “Really over, huh?” he says with a grin.

  “Do you think I would’ve kissed you like that if I had a boyfriend?”

  “No,” he says quickly. “Of course not.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” she says, eager for this to be understood. “That was…”

  “What?” he asks with a smile.

  “Not like me.”

  “Me either,” he says, and when she gives him a skeptical look, he holds up his hands. “Honestly. I’m not some kind of player who meets random girls on trains and then snogs them in hotel rooms. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Really.”

  He’s so good-looking that she finds this hard to believe, and he must see it in her face, because he leans forward across the table.

  “Okay,” he says, “you want to know the truth?”

  Mae nods.

  “The truth is that Margaret was the first and only girl I’ve ever kissed.”

  “Seriously?” she asks, surprised by this.

  “Seriously. We met when we were fourteen and basically were together ever since.”

  “Wow.”

  He looks down at his plate, scraping at the syrup with his fork. “Yeah.”

  “Was it really different, then?” Mae asks. “With me?”

  “What?” he says, letting out a laugh. “I can’t answer that.”

  “I’m just curious. From a purely scientific perspective.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re mad.”

  Mae shrugs. “If it helps, it was really different for me.”

  “It was?” he asks, looking pleased. But then he furrows his brow. “In a good way?”

  She nods. “In a very good way.”

  He grins, and then they both return to their food. But they can’t help casting glances at each other every now and then, both of them smiling. Under the table, his knees bump against hers, and she feels the ripple of it travel straight up into her chest, where it bobs around like something lovely and weightless and bright.

  After a little while, he nods. “It was different for me too.”

  After brunch, they walk down Michigan Avenue. They’ve left their bags at the hotel, but Mae still has her trusty camera with her, and whenever they pass something noteworthy—the greenish river or the ornate building made of limestone or a little boy in a pirate’s hat—Hugo waits while she pauses to capture some footage.

  “B-roll,” she says.

  He gives her a mystified look. “What’s that?”

  “Just extra footage to intersperse with the interviews.”

  He can’t help smiling. “I like it when you talk film. You sound very impressive.”

  “Well, it’s not my first rodeo.”

  “Is that another movie thing?”

  “No,” she says, laughing. “It just means I’ve done this before.”

  “Right. So tell me: How does the B-roll fit into the rodeo?”

  Mae shakes her head at him, but he can see that it lights her up, talking about this film.

  “Well, I don’t want the interviews to feel stagnant,” she says. “Part of the story is the train itself: where it’s going, where it’s come from. So I’m trying get some shots along the way to weave in: people passing by, birds flying overhead, the light changing over the city. Plus, any major landmarks and cool sights and stuff like that.”

  Hugo steps in front of the camera with a grin. “Do I count?”

  “As a landmark?” she says, pointing it away from him. “No.”

  “How about as a cool sight?” He leans closer to her as people stream around them on the sidewalk. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m very, very cool.”

  When she laughs, it feels to Hugo like he’s won some sort of prize.

  “That might be true,” she says, “but you still don’t make the cut.”

  “Why not?” he asks as they start to walk again, weaving past some people taking selfies in front of the river. “I’m part of the trip too.”

  “Yeah, but the film is about the interviews. Not us.”

  He smiles at the word us. “But you’re the one doing the traveling. It’s your journey.”

  “It’s not,” she says, looking over at him sharply. “It’s theirs. That’s the whole point.”

  “But surely there must be documentaries that include the filmmaker?”

  She frowns at the sidewalk. “Maybe,” she says after a moment. “But this isn’t one of them.”

  “Why couldn’t it be?”

  This time she’s the one to stop. Her eyes are shiny, and her hair is tangled from the wind. She seems to be deep in thought, and while he waits, Hugo counts the freckles on her nose.

  “Because,” she says eventually, and there’s an intensity to the words, “I don’t know how to be on both sides of the camera.”

  Hugo almost makes a joke about the simple logistics of this—You just take two steps to the left!—but he can see how pained she looks, so he stays quiet. There’s more he’d like to know, but he can almost see the window closing, something in her face shifting, and then she turns and begins to walk again. He follows her, both of them silent, until they pass a huge grayish building, where Hugo notices a rock embedded in the side, and he nearly trips over her as he hurries to take a closer look.

  “Whoa,” he says as she joins him. He points to a dark stone with words carved beneath it. “That’s from the Great Wall of China.”

  Her eyes widen. “Wow.”

  “And look,” Hugo says, getting even more excited. He shuffles to the left, where there’s another stone, this one white and uneven. “The Colosseum.” His eyes dart up and around to all the many other rocks embedded in the building. “And the Alamo! Saint Peter’s! Bloody hell…that’s from the Berlin Wall.”

  Mae is trailing after him as he skirts the building, his head tipped back to take it all in. He’s aware that he sounds like a lunatic, but he can’t bring himself to care. All these places, all these tiny pieces
of the world assembled right here in front of him. His mouth has fallen open as he scans through them: bits of the Arc de Triomphe and Westminster Abbey and the Taj Mahal, rocks from Antarctica and Yellowstone and even the moon. The moon!

  “This is incredible,” he says quietly, peering at a stone taken from the Parthenon. He turns to Mae. “How did I not know about this? How is it not the first thing people tell you to do in Chicago?”

  She laughs at his enthusiasm. “I don’t know. I never heard of it either. But it’s pretty cool.”

  “No, Mae,” he says in a stern voice. “The pizza last night was pretty cool. So were the waffles this morning. But this? This is something else entirely.”

  Their train is only a few hours away, and there’s so much more of the city to see, but Hugo insists on staying until he’s had a chance to look at each and every stone, pacing the perimeter of the building in a daze. When they finally leave, his mind is still busy with it, the idea of all those different places gathered like that, the way the whole world could be contained in a single building.

  He feels a little giddy as they make their way farther along Michigan Avenue. It’s a beautiful day, the sky shot through with silver, the heat just starting to lift. As Mae darts into a shop, Hugo’s mobile begins to buzz in his hand. He waits outside to read his siblings’ texts as they arrive one after another:

  Alfie: Hey, Hugo. I bet George will bake you fresh scones every morning if you agree to live with him….

  George: Sod off, Alfie.

  Alfie: Just trying to help you out, mate.

  Isla: You were the last one to share a room with him, Alf.

  Alfie: So?

  Oscar: So now he’s gone off us.

  Alfie: So?

  Poppy: Good lord. Connect the dots, man.

  Alfie: Hey! I’m a delight.

  Isla: Not the first word that comes to mind.

  Alfie: Is that because the first word is genius?

  Isla: Do you really want me to answer that?

  Hugo’s stomach twists, the guilt settling over him. He wants to tell them it’s not about George. It’s not about any of them. But he knows that’s not entirely true. How is it possible to miss someone—to miss five someones—and still be so outrageously happy to be away from them?

  A new message appears, this one separate from the group:

  Poppy: Don’t worry about George. Really. He’ll be fine either way.

  Hugo: You think?

  Poppy: I realise this isn’t always easy, but you should just do what you want.

  What I want, Hugo thinks, looking up at the clouds.

  He stares at the phone for a second before writing: I don’t want to go back.

  Then he erases the letters one at a time, his heart beating very fast. He didn’t even realize he was thinking that, but the words feel solid and heavy in his mind.

  I don’t know what I want, he types instead, but his face is burning because he’s not so sure that’s true.

  Poppy: Well, don’t wait too long to work it out.

  Hugo: Thanks, P. You’re the best.

  Poppy: I don’t know about that, but I’m at least better than Alfie, right?

  Hugo: Top three, for sure.

  When Mae comes out of the shop, he gives her a smile and starts to follow her up the street, but his mind is still turning over the words in his head: I don’t want to go back. He tries his best to stuff the thought down again, but now that it’s out there, sunlit and exposed, it’s difficult to tuck away.

  At the end of Michigan Avenue, past the old stone water tower, there’s a thumbnail of beach. Sitting in the shadow of the towering Hancock building, right at the end of one of the busiest shopping streets in the world, it’s a strange sort of oasis. They cross the street and walk out onto the sand, which is soft and glittering—full of people, and crowded with towels—then pick their way to the edge of the green-blue lake. It’s rough today, a reminder of last night’s storm, and Hugo holds his trainers in one hand as he inches closer to the water. When it rushes over his feet, he shivers.

  “It’s freezing,” he says, delighted, and Mae steps in too. She takes out her camera, turning in a circle to capture the water below and the sky above and then the sun glinting off the buildings behind them. She laughs as a wave splashes her legs, licking at the edges of her dress, and the sound of it makes Hugo feel light. Glancing down, he spots a piece of sea glass half-buried in the wet sand and stoops to pick it up, thinking of the stones on the building, each marking a spot on the globe. He tucks it into his pocket, happy to have captured a sliver of this day, this city, this moment.

  After a few minutes, Mae heads back up the beach, and Hugo follows her. They lie on their backs, arms thrown over their eyes, mouths filled with the gritty taste of sand. It’s itchy and hot and wonderful, and Hugo thinks he could stay here forever.

  “We can’t both fall asleep, okay?” he says. “Otherwise we might miss our train.”

  Mae turns her head to look at him, and he can see the freckles across the bridge of her nose. “We’ve been up for, like, two hours. You already need a nap?”

  “It’s sunny,” he says. “And I’m still jet lagged.”

  “You can sleep on the train. Now you have to talk to me.”

  “Couldn’t it also be argued that we could sleep now, talk later?” he asks, stifling a yawn, but she just crinkles her nose in a way he finds irresistible.

  “How did you decide to take a train?” she asks. “And why here?”

  “Well, I don’t have a license, and Margaret hates to drive, so that ruled out a road trip.”

  “You don’t have a license?”

  “There’s one car and eight people in my house. Makes it a bit hard to practice. Plus, I’ve always thought trains were romantic,” he says, then immediately feels his face start to burn. “Not like that. I just mean…they’re sort of nostalgic. You know?”

  Mae smiles. “My grandmother says she once left her heart on a train.”

  “With a boy?” Hugo asks. “Or with her luggage?”

  “A boy.”

  “That’s good. Hopefully, mine wasn’t in my wallet.”

  She reaches over and puts a hand on his chest, and he can feel his heartbeat quicken beneath it. “Nope,” she says, her face very close to his. “Still there.”

  “It was her idea,” he says after Mae takes her hand away. “Margaret booked the whole thing. At the time, I thought it was because she wanted to spend more time together, and for me to be there when she got to Stanford. But now I’m not so sure. I think maybe she felt guilty.”

  “For what?”

  “Leaving me behind.”

  They’re both quiet, watching a bird circle above. Then Mae turns her head in his direction. “Well,” she says, “you’re here now.”

  Hugo reaches into his pocket for the piece of sea glass, pale green and startlingly smooth. He turns it over, watching it glint in the sun, then closes his hand around it.

  “I’m here now,” he says.

  It feels like it’s been years since they were last at Union Station, though it’s only been about twenty-four hours. While they wait on the glossy wooden benches, a video call from Nana pops up on Mae’s phone. She’s already starting to walk away as she answers, intending to find some quieter spot, but when Nana’s face appears, the first thing she says is wait.

  Mae stops in the middle of an aisle, confused. “What?” she asks, looking down at the phone. Nana is sitting on the window seat at her apartment, the black cherry tree behind her already starting to turn yellow, and it’s been so long since Mae has seen her there, in her natural habitat, that she can’t help feeling a little emotional.

  “Go back to wherever you were,” Nana says sternly, her face a little too close to the phone. “I want to clap eyes on this fellow of yours.�
��

  “No way,” Mae says, glancing back at Hugo, who is sitting on the bench where she left him, reading his book of facts about the United States. “I’m not doing that.”

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks.”

  “Nana.”

  “Fifty.”

  “No!”

  “I’ll let you pick the movies at Thanksgiving.”

  Mae laughs. “Fine.”

  When she walks back over, Hugo looks up from his book. “Did you know that Chicago isn’t called the Windy City because it’s windy?”

  “Yes,” Mae says, then turns the phone around. “Nana, this is Hugo.”

  Hugo blinks at the screen, momentarily startled. Then he gives a little wave. “Hello!”

  “Well, aren’t you handsome,” Nana says, getting so close to the screen that her nose disappears, and there’s nothing but a pair of watery blue eyes and a wrinkled forehead. “Mae told me as much, but I had to see for myself.”

  “I did not—” Mae starts to say, then turns to Hugo. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  Hugo laughs. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard such lovely things about you from your granddaughter.”

  “Listen, I’ve known Mae a long time, so I thought you could use a few tips,” Nana says. “First of all, she’s always got one eye behind that camera of hers, so sometimes you have to take it away so she doesn’t trip.”

  “One time,” Mae says. “That happened one time.”

  “And she’s afraid of heights, so don’t go joyriding on top of the train or anything.”

  “Noted,” Hugo says, nodding very seriously.

  “She hates spiders—”

  “Covered that one already.”

  “And talks a lot.”

  “You guys know I’m still here, right?” Mae says, her eyes traveling up to the board, where the track number for their train has just been posted. “Hey, we gotta go.”

  “Last thing,” Nana says, shifting her gaze to Hugo. “She’s one of the best people I know. And she’s a real catch. So be good to her, okay?”

  Mae closes her eyes for a second, mortified. “Thanks, Nana,” she says as she brings the phone up to her face again. “I love you, and I’ll call you when we get to Denver.”