Vocabularily Adventurous
from the mixed-up files of E. G. Morgan
A Chip of Glass | Prose
Mid-July, 2008--inspired by Ian McEwan's Atonement
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If the temperature had been three degrees cooler, Meg determined that
today would have been the most beautiful Sunday afternoon in July since
last week. Every Sunday afternoon before that, too, had been arguably
perfect, weather-wise, as well as every afternoon of the Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday varieties. Wednesdays she
volunteered most of the afternoon at a high-end retirement home, but
the trips across the parking lot had always seemed pleasant enough. Meg
could have easily generalized that the weather this summer had been
beautiful, if not for the fact that such a generalization would point
to the conclusion that summer was more than half over, and that eight
of her twelve weeks of freedom were gone. Somehow she knew that the
weather of Rhode Island could never be as wonderful as the weather of
home.
The words on the open pages in her lap had begun to blur and twist together a good twenty minutes ago, but she held up the pretense of reading to avoid her parents (they respected her goal to read ten books before the end of summer, but they had no idea that this goal was only about twelve percent complete). They didn't nag, fuss, or yell, for which she was thankful, but both had a tendency to relate tidbits of church gossip, celebrity news, or Walgreen's sales. In short, they were tedious people, at least from the viewpoint of their college-bound daughter, who preferred the sound of the windchimes outside the screen porch being manipulated by a lazy summer breeze.
Meg let her eyes wander, slightly unfocused, landing first on the wicker furniture, each piece upholstered in the same bold flowers-and-stripes pattern that Better Homes and Gardens had adored six years ago. Her gaze settled on the sad little plant on the wicker coffee table, the slightly healthier one on the wicker end table, and the far too robust ones hanging above the wicker love seat, their tangled vines aspiring toward the ground, suffocating the fake birds artfully perched on each rim of the deliberately mismatched plastic planters. There were more feather-and-styrofoam birds on the shelf from which the planters hung, hiding obviously amid sprays of faded silk roses, sitting contentedly on carefully-positioned woven baskets, or slumping silently in antique wooden birdcages. Meg absently wondered where one found such brightly-colored, unrealistic creatures and, more importantly, why.
The breeze slowed, then stopped. The leaves of every tree, bush, and plant in the richly-floraed backyard ceased to stir. In the sudden silence, the tick-tocks of the clock above the door, painted in country blue and white as if it had been stolen from a 1930s farmhouse, became deafening. She stared at it, watched as it ticked from the five to the six, from the six to the seven. Taking each commanding click as an invitation, she began to count along--thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight. It shifted by degrees, from the eight to the nine. Her vision became foggy, and though she couldn't see the second hand, she continued to count--forty-two, -three, -four. Her eyelids drooped and her limps relaxed. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. The ticks faded away, and in her mind the fifty-sixth sheep jumped over the fence. Then number fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine...
A loud buzz, plastic against wood, startled her awake. Junebug? No, cellphone. Haloed by a friendly blueish glow, the caller ID screen warned that "alex" was several miles away, holding a phone to his ear, having just dialed her number and pressed "send."
Meg glanced up at the clock that had until recently monopolized her attention. Twenty-five seconds had passed, she noted, then realized it had actually been forty minute and twenty-five seconds. A late afternoon sun was glazing the leaves outside in a fairy-gold shimmer, and in the sun room, long shadows had begun to attach themselves to tables, chairs, a single clot of dirt someone had accidentally kicked off his shoe on the fourth of July.
As if perturbed by her hesitation, the little black phone began to whine in an almost melodic fashion, suggesting Beethoven being played on a toy xylophone. And it was still buzzing, threatening to hop off the table and plummet to its melodramatic near-death on the thin blue carpet.
On a subconscious exhale, Meg reached for the phone and finally, if only to save the frustrated chip inside, gave the green button a gentle jab.
"Hello?" she asked, as if her caller ID had somehow failed her.
"Hey, it's me," the voice said, masculine and hiding nervousness well. Only two of her acquaintances were confident enough to refer to themselves simply as "me," and Alex was the less obvious one. But, as the more obvious one had once said,
"He's crazy about you, Meg. Always has been."
I know," she had replied. Not blaming, not condescending, not pitying. But there was a sort of sorrowful apology in her words, as if she wanted to add, "And it's a shame I never felt the same."
"But guess who won."
She had smiled, and he had kissed her.
"Are you home?" Alex continued, and the rising of his voice at the arrival of the question mark was full of hope.
"Yeah," she responded, then kicked herself. "Yeah, I'm home."
She could almost hear his Adam's apple bob over the scratchy line. "You wanted to see that horror movie, right? Deepness?"
Meg called to mind images of deep sea divers being devoured by ocean zombies while delivering lines written by the director's three-year-old daughter, and smiled. "Um, not really. Any movie that can't properly make the adjective 'deep' into a noun (which, of course, is 'depth') is probably not he first on my list."
Alex put on an audible pout. "C'mon, Em."
"He calls you Em?"
"You know, like, the letter 'M.' It's short for Meg apparently."
He stared in amused judgment. "He abbreviated your abbreviated name?"
"Who else is going?" she wondered innocently, letting Alex know it would never have been considered a date.
Without hesitation, Alex replied, "My friend Ryan. Ryan Gilbert? I was going to introduce you, but he says you've already met. That you worked together or something." A moment's pause, while a deeper voice muttered something incoherent. Alex added, "Apparently you still work together."
Meg smiled, suddenly remembering last night's phone conversation:
"Alex wants to go see that new horror flick. The one you hated after seeing th preview. So that will take up most of tomorrow afternoon. Unless you want to come with?"
"Wouldn't it be a little conspicuous if we showed up together? Isn't it too soon?"
"Three months? Meg, we've got to tell him some time. He's a big boy, he can take it."
"You two have fun. I've got some reading to catch up on."
"If you're sure..."
"Call me when you get home?"
"Sure thing, baby."
"I almost forogt you and Ryan knew each other." Meg swallowed and glanced up at the clock again, to give her eyes something to hold onto while she thought--quickly. "I know you two don't hang out much, so I'd hate to encroach on your boy time..."
...to be continued?
The words on the open pages in her lap had begun to blur and twist together a good twenty minutes ago, but she held up the pretense of reading to avoid her parents (they respected her goal to read ten books before the end of summer, but they had no idea that this goal was only about twelve percent complete). They didn't nag, fuss, or yell, for which she was thankful, but both had a tendency to relate tidbits of church gossip, celebrity news, or Walgreen's sales. In short, they were tedious people, at least from the viewpoint of their college-bound daughter, who preferred the sound of the windchimes outside the screen porch being manipulated by a lazy summer breeze.
Meg let her eyes wander, slightly unfocused, landing first on the wicker furniture, each piece upholstered in the same bold flowers-and-stripes pattern that Better Homes and Gardens had adored six years ago. Her gaze settled on the sad little plant on the wicker coffee table, the slightly healthier one on the wicker end table, and the far too robust ones hanging above the wicker love seat, their tangled vines aspiring toward the ground, suffocating the fake birds artfully perched on each rim of the deliberately mismatched plastic planters. There were more feather-and-styrofoam birds on the shelf from which the planters hung, hiding obviously amid sprays of faded silk roses, sitting contentedly on carefully-positioned woven baskets, or slumping silently in antique wooden birdcages. Meg absently wondered where one found such brightly-colored, unrealistic creatures and, more importantly, why.
The breeze slowed, then stopped. The leaves of every tree, bush, and plant in the richly-floraed backyard ceased to stir. In the sudden silence, the tick-tocks of the clock above the door, painted in country blue and white as if it had been stolen from a 1930s farmhouse, became deafening. She stared at it, watched as it ticked from the five to the six, from the six to the seven. Taking each commanding click as an invitation, she began to count along--thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight. It shifted by degrees, from the eight to the nine. Her vision became foggy, and though she couldn't see the second hand, she continued to count--forty-two, -three, -four. Her eyelids drooped and her limps relaxed. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. The ticks faded away, and in her mind the fifty-sixth sheep jumped over the fence. Then number fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine...
A loud buzz, plastic against wood, startled her awake. Junebug? No, cellphone. Haloed by a friendly blueish glow, the caller ID screen warned that "alex" was several miles away, holding a phone to his ear, having just dialed her number and pressed "send."
Meg glanced up at the clock that had until recently monopolized her attention. Twenty-five seconds had passed, she noted, then realized it had actually been forty minute and twenty-five seconds. A late afternoon sun was glazing the leaves outside in a fairy-gold shimmer, and in the sun room, long shadows had begun to attach themselves to tables, chairs, a single clot of dirt someone had accidentally kicked off his shoe on the fourth of July.
As if perturbed by her hesitation, the little black phone began to whine in an almost melodic fashion, suggesting Beethoven being played on a toy xylophone. And it was still buzzing, threatening to hop off the table and plummet to its melodramatic near-death on the thin blue carpet.
On a subconscious exhale, Meg reached for the phone and finally, if only to save the frustrated chip inside, gave the green button a gentle jab.
"Hello?" she asked, as if her caller ID had somehow failed her.
"Hey, it's me," the voice said, masculine and hiding nervousness well. Only two of her acquaintances were confident enough to refer to themselves simply as "me," and Alex was the less obvious one. But, as the more obvious one had once said,
"He's crazy about you, Meg. Always has been."
I know," she had replied. Not blaming, not condescending, not pitying. But there was a sort of sorrowful apology in her words, as if she wanted to add, "And it's a shame I never felt the same."
"But guess who won."
She had smiled, and he had kissed her.
"Are you home?" Alex continued, and the rising of his voice at the arrival of the question mark was full of hope.
"Yeah," she responded, then kicked herself. "Yeah, I'm home."
She could almost hear his Adam's apple bob over the scratchy line. "You wanted to see that horror movie, right? Deepness?"
Meg called to mind images of deep sea divers being devoured by ocean zombies while delivering lines written by the director's three-year-old daughter, and smiled. "Um, not really. Any movie that can't properly make the adjective 'deep' into a noun (which, of course, is 'depth') is probably not he first on my list."
Alex put on an audible pout. "C'mon, Em."
"He calls you Em?"
"You know, like, the letter 'M.' It's short for Meg apparently."
He stared in amused judgment. "He abbreviated your abbreviated name?"
"Who else is going?" she wondered innocently, letting Alex know it would never have been considered a date.
Without hesitation, Alex replied, "My friend Ryan. Ryan Gilbert? I was going to introduce you, but he says you've already met. That you worked together or something." A moment's pause, while a deeper voice muttered something incoherent. Alex added, "Apparently you still work together."
Meg smiled, suddenly remembering last night's phone conversation:
"Alex wants to go see that new horror flick. The one you hated after seeing th preview. So that will take up most of tomorrow afternoon. Unless you want to come with?"
"Wouldn't it be a little conspicuous if we showed up together? Isn't it too soon?"
"Three months? Meg, we've got to tell him some time. He's a big boy, he can take it."
"You two have fun. I've got some reading to catch up on."
"If you're sure..."
"Call me when you get home?"
"Sure thing, baby."
"I almost forogt you and Ryan knew each other." Meg swallowed and glanced up at the clock again, to give her eyes something to hold onto while she thought--quickly. "I know you two don't hang out much, so I'd hate to encroach on your boy time..."
...to be continued?
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