CHAPTER
forty-three

The agreement was that Hugo would spend the day with Nick and Dick while I visited Clara. What was meant to be a few hours of play had turned into a sleepover—another of Marvel’s spontaneous notions. When I asked if she needed me to stay over too, she’d practically pushed me out the door.

“Go have a nice evening,” she’d said.

“But what am I supposed to do?” I’d asked, planting my feet on the threshold.

“That’s not my problem.” She’d winked. “Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it.”

On the short drive home, I realized what I wanted to do more than anything else. I wanted to write. With all the stories I’d been telling Hugo, I’d had very little time to write any of them down.

At the stop sign just down the road from my house, I decided that I’d make those stories a gift for Hugo, something for him to remember me by when life went back to normal.

Traffic cleared, yet I didn’t go. Not until the car behind me honked twice.

I pressed on the gas pedal, rolling through the intersection and nearer to home.

I wasn’t sure life would ever go back to normal.

The realization settled like a pit in my stomach.

I took a shower, put my hair in curlers, and brewed a good strong pot of coffee. Drinking a cup of joe that late in the afternoon was a little dangerous for a woman my age—I’d either never fall asleep or be up all night going to the restroom.

Either way, it was a risk I was willing to take.

I put on a Frank Sinatra album, the big band one he’d released the year before. Humming along to “Goody, Goody,” I swayed my hips, watching the record go round and round.

Norman had never been a fan of Old Blue Eyes. He’d thought he was arrogant, which may very well have been true. But with a voice like that—strong and brassy—he had a right to be a little stuck on himself.

I turned the music down so I could just hear it in the background and sat at my writing desk. Curling my fingers around the sides of it, I thought about the day Norman had brought it home for me just months after we moved to the house on Deerfield.

He’d been so pleased with himself.

My Norm may not have had a voice like Sinatra or the wealth either. He wasn’t smooth and wasn’t altogether interested in charming the ladies—other than me, at least. But he’d been kind, thoughtful, sweet.

With a heart like that, he had a right to be proud. He never was, though. Not once.

Sitting at my desk and smoothing the blank page then picking up the pen, I couldn’t bring myself to make so much as a stroke of ink on the paper. Fear of doing poorly paralyzed me.

Dropping the pen, I stretched fingers that hadn’t even had the chance to cramp up or grow sore from too much writing. I blew air out of my mouth and got up from my seat to look out the window.

From where I stood, I turned back to the white page with its blue lines. I decided that the music was all wrong and changed the record to something slower with no singing that could distract me.

“That’s better,” I muttered, hearing the orchestral music, slow and sonorous, flooding through the speakers. “Just write something. Anything.”

I sat back down, once again taking up the pen.

“It’s only a story. How hard could it be?” I asked myself.

As it turned out, it could be quite hard.

“Just write,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

I put the tip of the pen on the paper and wrote, “Jimmy and the Yellow Castle.”

Then I popped back up out of my seat to check on the coffee. A cup poured and steaming, I went back to the desk only to remember that I needed cream and sugar. That done, I decided I should have something to nibble as I wrote.

Before I knew it, I’d wasted an entire hour by avoiding the work I wanted more than anything to do.

The spirit was willing, but the flesh was one nervous Nelly.

“Do not even think of getting up from this chair until you have written a full sentence,” I said, grabbing the pen and letting it wiggle up and down between my thumb and finger.

Flannery lay in Norman’s chair, grooming herself. Every once in a while she regarded me and blinked at me slowly. She took that opportunity to go into the kitchen. Even from where I sat in the living room, I could hear her jump up on the counter. A light clinking of dishes made me think she’d found the butter dish.

“Get down from there,” I called, trying to shoo her with my arms while staying in the seat a whole room away. “Oh, never mind. Enjoy the butter, naughty kitten.”

Puffing out my cheeks with air, I shut my eyes and decided that it did not matter if what I wrote was good or garbage. No one would ever have to see it.

I wrote the first part of the story and then the next, surprised by how the ideas came from my head and somehow moved my pen across the page.

When I made a mistake or misspelled a word, I found the little bottle of Liquid Paper I kept in the junk drawer to be quite helpful.

By the time I’d finished writing that first story, it was just after six o’clock. I had a thought of making something to eat, but that was fleeting. I didn’t want to disturb my momentum.

“Which one next?” I whispered, turning the page. “The turtle.”

I drank through the whole pot of coffee, feeling the jitters race through my arms and legs and into my fingers. I filled so many pages on the pad of paper, not with perfect stories, but with ones that were good enough.

By the end of the evening I’d managed to write three stories. It wasn’t as much as I’d originally expected, but I was pleased with myself nonetheless.

When I fell into bed at midnight, body spinning from too much caffeine, I knew Norman would have been proud.

The few hours I was able to sleep were deep and easy.

My dreams were in full color.