February 2, 2000
I am sitting in a used bookshop on a chair that looks like the chair Mommy used to sit in when she paid the bills. I want a muffin but the woman selling them disturbs me. She's nice and all, but she's so intense that she makes my ears ring or my hands shake or... I think she's completely unaware that there are two kinds of people in this world: turtles and hares. She's a big colorful hare, and I'm a simple, unassuming turtle. I just want to be left alone. I should have gone straight home from work like I always do. What am I doing here?
Rebecca paused, her pencil hovering over the creamy page, and let her jade eyes glaze over as she stared down at the dingy carpet. She recalled how the image of the book cart outside had drawn her to this place. At the sight of the lonely cart, a gush of emotions had poured into her blood, and Rebecca tasted the honey on her lips. The temptation to finger every creaking spine, to inhale the musk of yellowed pages, to sink into the arms of old, forgotten lovers, flooded her. Her heart thumped heavier as she remembered being torn between her desire to be enveloped by the whirlwind of whispers and her fear of bumping into living, breathing, unpredictable people. She exhaled, relaxing her eyelids so that her eyes rolled forward in her head again. She imagined her eyelashes were marionette strings, slowly lifting her eyelids and returning her to action. “What am I doing here?” she reread the last sentence of her entry.
She started to get up, but as she grabbed her purse off the floor, she heard footsteps coming up the staircase. The stairs groaned and the steps were labored, as though the feet were carrying the load of a bison, but the tread was gentle, as though lifted by the wings of a swan.
Rebecca wasn’t sure how to prepare for this arrival, she could only hope her seat in the shadowy corner might shroud her with some semblance of invisibility. She prayed this person was coming up for a snack, and that when he or she passed, Rebecca would be able to slip down the stairs and out the door unseen. The last thing she needed was another chirpy squirrel offering unsolicited assistance, or worse, a noisy sow dishing up disgusting gossip. What she wanted most was a hot bath and a date with the new novel she knew would be in the parcel box at her apartment. If I can just get home, she thought.
Alert as a German shepherd, she watched for the intruder. She knew that if she made eye contact, her plan would be foiled, so she kept her gaze trained on the floor. As she saw a man’s honey-brown dress shoes round the corner, she did not dare flinch. Even her imaginary friends, the gnomes—manning the lashes that curled over tiny pulleys to heave her eyelids—froze. The shoes showed no sign of sniffing her out, as they paddled along the worn turf toward the back. A few more seconds, just a few more… almost there… she thought, biting her bottom lip.
She saw the heels pass and heard the thud of them stopping near the snack table, followed by the murmur of chit-chat. She promptly stood up, intending to trot the needlepoint chair back to what she thought of as its herd, when she winced at the faint tip-tap of her pencil hitting the floor, joined by the plunk and flutter of her journal landing in front of a vent. Her chest flopped over her knees as she scooped the book into her purse, deserting the pencil stump to what she was now certain was “the enemy”. She thought she felt the rubber band clinging for dear life to her wrist as she threw her arm over the back of the chair and grabbed a cross piece.
Heaving it up under her arm, she flew to return it into its original position; but in her rush, the chair escaped from her damp fingertips and a leg came down hard on the top of her foot—a move she took as mutinous. A small yelp escaped her lips as she involuntarily hopped in place, and now the eyes of “the enemy” fell upon her: She couldn’t help but feel like an innocent doe trapped in the hunter's headlights. Her knees quivered as she considered if it would attract further attention to run out of the shop under the bright-eyed woman's watchful gaze. Might she be accused her of stealing? Having hesitated, now she was trapped.
The honey shoes moved one in front of another, strolling toward her. Automatically, she started tearing at her fingernails. Her left eye suddenly developed a tic. She imagined the gnomes holding onto their ropes like sailors grappling with lines during a storm. The floor seemed like an automated airport walkway, carrying the man toward her; he was covering the distance in half the time she would need to prepare herself for his arrival. Now he was standing in front of her with a soft grin on his face. She focused on his mouth so that she would not make eye contact; else, her plan would be foiled. The mouth was too sensuous; she dropped her eyes to the tip of his chin, which sloped gracefully like an egg. He bent forward slightly, trying to align himself with the direction of her gaze. His bushy eyebrows rose, cinching up his brow. A dimple winked on his cheek as he tried to evoke her smile with a casual grin.
"Addy told me you seemed like a hot chocolate kind of girl. She said I should make sure you had some," his mouth said. Another dimple tucked itself into the opposite cheek at the formation of the last word.
The smell of the beverage filled her nostrils and calmed her nerves for a split second—just long enough for a fat tear to tumble down her cheek. Her face chose that moment, without permission from her brain, to meet his gaze. Keenly aware of her exposure, she made a disgusting sniffle and smashed her eyebrows together as her spindly fingers waved “the enemy’s accomplice” away in an attempted flippancy. "Actually I was just leaving," she managed.
"Oh no, don't do that. The best is yet to come. You're just a little early, that's all."
His words did not make sense. In fact, they sounded vaguely like something she would expect to hear in a different kind of dimly lit room—from a fat, gold-bracelet-festooned, handkerchiefed woman who was pressing a long fuchsia acrylic nail into her palm. Great, some guy who thinks he's a psychic. This place gets creepier every minute, she thought.
Quietly setting his own drink on the little coffee table, he retrieved her free hand at its wrist, asking softly, "Why don't you take this?" He deftly curled her long porcelain fingers around the warm cup with his palm. "The reading will start in about 15 minutes."
Her brain became a gumball machine then, with private thoughts bouncing out her open mouth. "What's in it?" she asked, and blushed at having accused him of trying to drug her.
He recovered with a chuckle as he bent to pick up the chair, which was still lying on the floor where it had fainted.
"Well, just warm milk and cocoa mix, I assume. I don't think she intended me to see when she sprinkled it with nutmeg... should we call the cops, or just the Better Business Bureau?"
Her chameleon skin morphed from a blush to a deep crimson. Rather than camouflage, she felt it had betrayed her, making her even more conspicuous. "I... I'm sorry," she stammered. "I just, I don't... who? — are you?" As she recovered a more conversational tone, her stone exterior crumbled and her heart sputtered to life again, returning some feeling to her toes. Looking down at the cup that she now held, she realized the back of her hand was nearly as warm as its palm. He had touched her. Someone had touched her. She had been touched. Caught up in the whirlwind of this revelation, she was unaware that she was being directed to the tapestry sofa. Her feet still tingled against the floor as she plodded across the circle of chairs.
“John Maisfield, but, Doctor John is what most people call me—especially my patients.” He removed his twill blazer, folded it in half, and draped it over the back of the chair. He then bent to sit down in a club chair next to the sofa, but paused in mid-stoop to reach into his hip pocket. Removing a small book of poetry, he tossed it onto the table and dropped back into the chair. At the mention of patients, his brow had softened; now a slow grin spread across his face.
Rebecca leaned forward and picked up the small book—a friend!—and then turned to him as she held it open to a random place in the middle. “Doctor John? Why do your patients call you by your first name?” She thought, Perhaps he is in oncology. She remembered how her mother had become so intimate with nurses and doctors as her body eroded away in those brief last months, years ago.
“Well, 'Maisefield' is a bit of a mouthful for some of them, and I think 'John' is just more comfortable. So while I'm pressing a cold stethoscope to their chest, or explaining a procedure or a drug their parents, they can think of me more as a family friend or an uncle, instead of this scary guy using big words.”
“So you treat children, then?” She wanted to hear his specialty, hoping that it did not involve small, innocent cherubs going through what her mother had endured.
“Yes, I'm in pediatrics. I love my kids; they bring me big drawings signed with backwards letters.” He glanced down at his hands and his face cracked into a broad smile momentarily.
“Ah, you just do the check-ups,” Rebecca decided. She thought more specialized doctors, who worked in hospitals, did not have a place to keep patients’ doodles.
“Just?” he asked, turning his head up toward her.
Rebecca explained how she was concerned he might have been in pediatric oncology, and then asked him what the drawings were like. He simply smiled and replied that she couldn’t imagine how perfect they were, which she thought was a silly idea, since she could probably describe in minute detail what her gnomes looked like: Her imagination was boundless. She knew better than to tell him about the wide variety of (imaginary) friends she had, and simply practiced her polite nod. She enjoyed listening to him tell stories about his “kids”.
They talked for several minutes, and while the hairs on the back of her neck raised as other people trickled in, dropped off various treats on the table, returned to the group and sat down, John’s voice soothed her. She was finally able to meet his eyes at one point, and was surprised at how relieved she felt at the thought of getting scooped up, like Dorothy, into those grey-green tornados. He also introduced her to a couple of the regulars, and explained to her that Friday nights were when the local book club met at the Quarter Price Kaleidoscope, but on the first Friday of every other month, they would have an author or poet come in to give a reading.
Just as the noise of the chit-chat seemed at its loudest, which caused Rebecca to have to lean in closer to John to hear him, his beeper went off. He pulled it off his belt and squinted at the tiny characters on the screen, then his eyes widened and he jumped to his feet.
“I’m sorry, it’s Danny… His surgery. I have to be there; something’s wrong,” he said at the group, patting his pockets and glancing around for his book.
“Surgery? I thought you said you were the check-up guy,” Rebecca said, standing to hand him the paperback.
“I said I was in pediatrics; I just left out the cardiology part. I do hearts— Thanks,” he said, snatching the book and turning to jog out of the store. Rebecca wanted to ask him if he would be back the next Friday, or if he was only there for the reading. She wanted to ask him if Danny was his son, if he had a wife. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, and then she saw it:
Over the back of the club chair lay the grey blazer, neatly folded with the shoulder seams kissing. Without another second to spare, Rebecca grabbed the blazer and threw it over her forearm. Her purse was still hooked in the crook of her elbow, so she hopped out of the circle of chairs and ran. She ran like she did at the last track meet her mother had attended—the last track meet Rebecca had attended, as well.
She raised her arm so that the purse would slide up to her shoulder, and then she hung onto the railing of the staircase as she sped down. The tight twist of the spiral kept her from going as fast as she wanted to, and she cursed it under her breath. When she reached the bottom, she pumped her legs like never before. When she reached the middle of the parking lot, though, she stopped.
“John, don’t forget--” she called, waving the jacket high over her head. She whipped around, frantically searching for movement, but saw none. Then she realized it was raining, and there was one open parking spot that had fewer freckles in it from the drops than the others: she had just missed him. As her arm dropped by her side, she meant to finish the sentence with “your blazer,” but what slipped softly between her lips was, “your ‘Becca.” She hung her head, and let the rain slip its icy fingers through her walnut hair. She folded the warm twill over her arm, and cradled it to herself. A raindrop slid down her nose, and she watched it fall onto John’s blazer; it dawned on her the rain might damage it. So she folded her other arm across her stomach—pressing the fabric into her, trying to shield it – and trudged to her car. She didn’t look back to see if anyone had chased her out of the store; and she didn’t look around for a police car coming to investigate a possible theft: she was oblivious to observation at the moment.
When Rebecca got to her apartment complex, she had to park quite far from her unit because she had gotten home after most of her neighbors. The rain soaked into her as she hurried back up the sidewalk, and she could feel the tip of her nose numbing as she ran up the stairs to her door. She remained hunched over the blazer, still trying to protect its fabric, as she fumbled for her keys. Pushing the door open, she stumbled into her living room, dropped her keys and purse on the entry table, and looked around for an empty chair back over which she could drape the coat.
John had so quickly and wholly consumed her thoughts, that she had not even remembered to check the parcel box for her new novel. Normally, after such an awkward evening, she would have been itching like an addict to slip into the ball gown of the latest heroine awaiting her friendship.
I am sitting in a used bookshop on a chair that looks like the chair Mommy used to sit in when she paid the bills. I want a muffin but the woman selling them disturbs me. She's nice and all, but she's so intense that she makes my ears ring or my hands shake or... I think she's completely unaware that there are two kinds of people in this world: turtles and hares. She's a big colorful hare, and I'm a simple, unassuming turtle. I just want to be left alone. I should have gone straight home from work like I always do. What am I doing here?
Rebecca paused, her pencil hovering over the creamy page, and let her jade eyes glaze over as she stared down at the dingy carpet. She recalled how the image of the book cart outside had drawn her to this place. At the sight of the lonely cart, a gush of emotions had poured into her blood, and Rebecca tasted the honey on her lips. The temptation to finger every creaking spine, to inhale the musk of yellowed pages, to sink into the arms of old, forgotten lovers, flooded her. Her heart thumped heavier as she remembered being torn between her desire to be enveloped by the whirlwind of whispers and her fear of bumping into living, breathing, unpredictable people. She exhaled, relaxing her eyelids so that her eyes rolled forward in her head again. She imagined her eyelashes were marionette strings, slowly lifting her eyelids and returning her to action. “What am I doing here?” she reread the last sentence of her entry.
She started to get up, but as she grabbed her purse off the floor, she heard footsteps coming up the staircase. The stairs groaned and the steps were labored, as though the feet were carrying the load of a bison, but the tread was gentle, as though lifted by the wings of a swan.
Rebecca wasn’t sure how to prepare for this arrival, she could only hope her seat in the shadowy corner might shroud her with some semblance of invisibility. She prayed this person was coming up for a snack, and that when he or she passed, Rebecca would be able to slip down the stairs and out the door unseen. The last thing she needed was another chirpy squirrel offering unsolicited assistance, or worse, a noisy sow dishing up disgusting gossip. What she wanted most was a hot bath and a date with the new novel she knew would be in the parcel box at her apartment. If I can just get home, she thought.
Alert as a German shepherd, she watched for the intruder. She knew that if she made eye contact, her plan would be foiled, so she kept her gaze trained on the floor. As she saw a man’s honey-brown dress shoes round the corner, she did not dare flinch. Even her imaginary friends, the gnomes—manning the lashes that curled over tiny pulleys to heave her eyelids—froze. The shoes showed no sign of sniffing her out, as they paddled along the worn turf toward the back. A few more seconds, just a few more… almost there… she thought, biting her bottom lip.
She saw the heels pass and heard the thud of them stopping near the snack table, followed by the murmur of chit-chat. She promptly stood up, intending to trot the needlepoint chair back to what she thought of as its herd, when she winced at the faint tip-tap of her pencil hitting the floor, joined by the plunk and flutter of her journal landing in front of a vent. Her chest flopped over her knees as she scooped the book into her purse, deserting the pencil stump to what she was now certain was “the enemy”. She thought she felt the rubber band clinging for dear life to her wrist as she threw her arm over the back of the chair and grabbed a cross piece.
Heaving it up under her arm, she flew to return it into its original position; but in her rush, the chair escaped from her damp fingertips and a leg came down hard on the top of her foot—a move she took as mutinous. A small yelp escaped her lips as she involuntarily hopped in place, and now the eyes of “the enemy” fell upon her: She couldn’t help but feel like an innocent doe trapped in the hunter's headlights. Her knees quivered as she considered if it would attract further attention to run out of the shop under the bright-eyed woman's watchful gaze. Might she be accused her of stealing? Having hesitated, now she was trapped.
The honey shoes moved one in front of another, strolling toward her. Automatically, she started tearing at her fingernails. Her left eye suddenly developed a tic. She imagined the gnomes holding onto their ropes like sailors grappling with lines during a storm. The floor seemed like an automated airport walkway, carrying the man toward her; he was covering the distance in half the time she would need to prepare herself for his arrival. Now he was standing in front of her with a soft grin on his face. She focused on his mouth so that she would not make eye contact; else, her plan would be foiled. The mouth was too sensuous; she dropped her eyes to the tip of his chin, which sloped gracefully like an egg. He bent forward slightly, trying to align himself with the direction of her gaze. His bushy eyebrows rose, cinching up his brow. A dimple winked on his cheek as he tried to evoke her smile with a casual grin.
"Addy told me you seemed like a hot chocolate kind of girl. She said I should make sure you had some," his mouth said. Another dimple tucked itself into the opposite cheek at the formation of the last word.
The smell of the beverage filled her nostrils and calmed her nerves for a split second—just long enough for a fat tear to tumble down her cheek. Her face chose that moment, without permission from her brain, to meet his gaze. Keenly aware of her exposure, she made a disgusting sniffle and smashed her eyebrows together as her spindly fingers waved “the enemy’s accomplice” away in an attempted flippancy. "Actually I was just leaving," she managed.
"Oh no, don't do that. The best is yet to come. You're just a little early, that's all."
His words did not make sense. In fact, they sounded vaguely like something she would expect to hear in a different kind of dimly lit room—from a fat, gold-bracelet-festooned, handkerchiefed woman who was pressing a long fuchsia acrylic nail into her palm. Great, some guy who thinks he's a psychic. This place gets creepier every minute, she thought.
Quietly setting his own drink on the little coffee table, he retrieved her free hand at its wrist, asking softly, "Why don't you take this?" He deftly curled her long porcelain fingers around the warm cup with his palm. "The reading will start in about 15 minutes."
Her brain became a gumball machine then, with private thoughts bouncing out her open mouth. "What's in it?" she asked, and blushed at having accused him of trying to drug her.
He recovered with a chuckle as he bent to pick up the chair, which was still lying on the floor where it had fainted.
"Well, just warm milk and cocoa mix, I assume. I don't think she intended me to see when she sprinkled it with nutmeg... should we call the cops, or just the Better Business Bureau?"
Her chameleon skin morphed from a blush to a deep crimson. Rather than camouflage, she felt it had betrayed her, making her even more conspicuous. "I... I'm sorry," she stammered. "I just, I don't... who? — are you?" As she recovered a more conversational tone, her stone exterior crumbled and her heart sputtered to life again, returning some feeling to her toes. Looking down at the cup that she now held, she realized the back of her hand was nearly as warm as its palm. He had touched her. Someone had touched her. She had been touched. Caught up in the whirlwind of this revelation, she was unaware that she was being directed to the tapestry sofa. Her feet still tingled against the floor as she plodded across the circle of chairs.
“John Maisfield, but, Doctor John is what most people call me—especially my patients.” He removed his twill blazer, folded it in half, and draped it over the back of the chair. He then bent to sit down in a club chair next to the sofa, but paused in mid-stoop to reach into his hip pocket. Removing a small book of poetry, he tossed it onto the table and dropped back into the chair. At the mention of patients, his brow had softened; now a slow grin spread across his face.
Rebecca leaned forward and picked up the small book—a friend!—and then turned to him as she held it open to a random place in the middle. “Doctor John? Why do your patients call you by your first name?” She thought, Perhaps he is in oncology. She remembered how her mother had become so intimate with nurses and doctors as her body eroded away in those brief last months, years ago.
“Well, 'Maisefield' is a bit of a mouthful for some of them, and I think 'John' is just more comfortable. So while I'm pressing a cold stethoscope to their chest, or explaining a procedure or a drug their parents, they can think of me more as a family friend or an uncle, instead of this scary guy using big words.”
“So you treat children, then?” She wanted to hear his specialty, hoping that it did not involve small, innocent cherubs going through what her mother had endured.
“Yes, I'm in pediatrics. I love my kids; they bring me big drawings signed with backwards letters.” He glanced down at his hands and his face cracked into a broad smile momentarily.
“Ah, you just do the check-ups,” Rebecca decided. She thought more specialized doctors, who worked in hospitals, did not have a place to keep patients’ doodles.
“Just?” he asked, turning his head up toward her.
Rebecca explained how she was concerned he might have been in pediatric oncology, and then asked him what the drawings were like. He simply smiled and replied that she couldn’t imagine how perfect they were, which she thought was a silly idea, since she could probably describe in minute detail what her gnomes looked like: Her imagination was boundless. She knew better than to tell him about the wide variety of (imaginary) friends she had, and simply practiced her polite nod. She enjoyed listening to him tell stories about his “kids”.
They talked for several minutes, and while the hairs on the back of her neck raised as other people trickled in, dropped off various treats on the table, returned to the group and sat down, John’s voice soothed her. She was finally able to meet his eyes at one point, and was surprised at how relieved she felt at the thought of getting scooped up, like Dorothy, into those grey-green tornados. He also introduced her to a couple of the regulars, and explained to her that Friday nights were when the local book club met at the Quarter Price Kaleidoscope, but on the first Friday of every other month, they would have an author or poet come in to give a reading.
Just as the noise of the chit-chat seemed at its loudest, which caused Rebecca to have to lean in closer to John to hear him, his beeper went off. He pulled it off his belt and squinted at the tiny characters on the screen, then his eyes widened and he jumped to his feet.
“I’m sorry, it’s Danny… His surgery. I have to be there; something’s wrong,” he said at the group, patting his pockets and glancing around for his book.
“Surgery? I thought you said you were the check-up guy,” Rebecca said, standing to hand him the paperback.
“I said I was in pediatrics; I just left out the cardiology part. I do hearts— Thanks,” he said, snatching the book and turning to jog out of the store. Rebecca wanted to ask him if he would be back the next Friday, or if he was only there for the reading. She wanted to ask him if Danny was his son, if he had a wife. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, and then she saw it:
Over the back of the club chair lay the grey blazer, neatly folded with the shoulder seams kissing. Without another second to spare, Rebecca grabbed the blazer and threw it over her forearm. Her purse was still hooked in the crook of her elbow, so she hopped out of the circle of chairs and ran. She ran like she did at the last track meet her mother had attended—the last track meet Rebecca had attended, as well.
She raised her arm so that the purse would slide up to her shoulder, and then she hung onto the railing of the staircase as she sped down. The tight twist of the spiral kept her from going as fast as she wanted to, and she cursed it under her breath. When she reached the bottom, she pumped her legs like never before. When she reached the middle of the parking lot, though, she stopped.
“John, don’t forget--” she called, waving the jacket high over her head. She whipped around, frantically searching for movement, but saw none. Then she realized it was raining, and there was one open parking spot that had fewer freckles in it from the drops than the others: she had just missed him. As her arm dropped by her side, she meant to finish the sentence with “your blazer,” but what slipped softly between her lips was, “your ‘Becca.” She hung her head, and let the rain slip its icy fingers through her walnut hair. She folded the warm twill over her arm, and cradled it to herself. A raindrop slid down her nose, and she watched it fall onto John’s blazer; it dawned on her the rain might damage it. So she folded her other arm across her stomach—pressing the fabric into her, trying to shield it – and trudged to her car. She didn’t look back to see if anyone had chased her out of the store; and she didn’t look around for a police car coming to investigate a possible theft: she was oblivious to observation at the moment.
When Rebecca got to her apartment complex, she had to park quite far from her unit because she had gotten home after most of her neighbors. The rain soaked into her as she hurried back up the sidewalk, and she could feel the tip of her nose numbing as she ran up the stairs to her door. She remained hunched over the blazer, still trying to protect its fabric, as she fumbled for her keys. Pushing the door open, she stumbled into her living room, dropped her keys and purse on the entry table, and looked around for an empty chair back over which she could drape the coat.
John had so quickly and wholly consumed her thoughts, that she had not even remembered to check the parcel box for her new novel. Normally, after such an awkward evening, she would have been itching like an addict to slip into the ball gown of the latest heroine awaiting her friendship.
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