Rantings of an Arranged Mind

“Tell me a story.”

How many lives have changed because of that simple sentence? How many worlds created and destroyed? It seems so innocent, so ordinary. But those words have power.

Our daughter changed everything with that sentence. This is how it all started:

“Tell me a story,” she said, looking up at her father. He was tucking her into her pink blankets, sitting on the edge of her bed. Her dark hair, the same colour as his, was spilled out over her pillow like ink on paper.

“Which one do you want? ‘Mortimer’ again? Or maybe ‘The Paper-bag Princess?’”

“No, Daddy, tell me a story,” she giggled. He looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

“I think she means she wants you to make one up,” I said, smiling at them both from the doorway.

“Oh.” He blinked. He turned back to her. “Not tonight, Rhia. It’s late. I haven’t had time to think of any. Maybe another day. Do you want ‘Mortimer?’”

She smiled. “Yes, please.”

He took the Munsch book from the shelf and started to read. “On the night that Mortimer’s mother took him upstairs to bed…”

I retreated quietly, smiling softly. They would laugh their way through the “clang clang, rattle bing bang” of Mortimer’s song, and then she would settle down to sleep. I slipped down to the kitchen, making some microwave popcorn and pouring glasses of juice.

My husband appeared a few moments later.

“Movie night?”

I smiled, chewing popcorn. I fed him a few buttery bites. He kissed the salt from my fingers, and then carried the bowl and one of the glasses, while I brought the other. We settled down in the darkened den and I pressed “Play” on the DVD I had chosen. He put his arm around me like in high school, and I snuggled into his shoulder.

“You’re a great daddy, Ethan.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Rhia’s a great kid. She makes it easy. Naturally lovable, like her mom.”

I scoffed and poked his ribs. The movie started, and we cuddled closer.

“Juno?” He asked. “That’s the one about the pregnant teenager, right?”

“Shhhh. I want to see it.”

“I’m just asking!”

“Shhhhh. Yes. You do this every time,” I giggled. “Can’t you ask before I press ‘play?’ You always interrupt.”

He grinned. “Only because I know it bugs you.”

Ethan sat in happy silence, except when he laughed. I laughed too. It was sweet and funny. At the end of it, he turned and asked me a question.

“Do you want another baby?”

“The movie isn’t a code, Ethan. I just wanted to see it.” He was so cute. “Not everything means something.”

He smiled. “Maybe I’m the one who wants another baby.”

“Oh really? Maybe you’re the one who wants to try to have another baby.” I put my arms around him, nuzzling his neck.

“Well, there’s no harm in trying, is there?” He smiled, tilting his head down to kiss me.

“No harm at all…” I sighed happily.

A long and pleasurable time followed. I rolled over in the middle of the night in our big bed, wrapping an arm over his fuzzy chest.

“What was that about earlier?” I mumbled.

“Hmmm?” He murmured, not quite asleep.

“Rhia asked for a story. You didn’t want to make one up.”

“I couldn’t think of anything. It’s not a big deal.” He rolled over, drifting off to sleep.

Something about it bothered me. Somehow, it was a big deal. I watched my lovely husband sleeping, and couldn’t help but smile.

I’d bug him about it tomorrow, I decided. And settled down to sleep myself.

Two:

I fell in love at first sight. I hate that I did. It sounds so silly. But it’s true.

My father was a big city doctor, and my mother was a small-town girl. She tried to adjust to city life, and just couldn’t do it. So we moved back to her parents’ hometown right before I started high school. Some kids would hate to be separated from their friends, but I didn’t really mind. I had spent a lot of time visiting my grandparents each summer for years, and had a few friends in their town. And the high school I would have gone to in the city was huge; I would have been lost in the crowd. Knowing everyone, instead of not knowing anybody, had a certain appeal.

Because everyone knew everyone in that town. It was friendly and safe, everything the big city wasn’t. So, my father took a job at their smaller hospital, where he could be in charge instead of working for someone else. And my mother got to own a lovely house with a flower garden. She learned to grow her own vegetables, instead of living in a condo.

And my mother and father picked a great house. It was ancient, built at the turn of the century. So when I was in ninth grade, it was pretty close to a hundred years old. It had a sprawling porch and ivy growing on one side. The yard was massive, to a girl who’s “yard” had been a small balcony. I loved it. It had character.

Our house was on the edge of town. The other houses in our neighbourhood were just as old and classy, with big trees and old woodsheds. I felt like we’d travelled back in time. I went out jogging or riding my bike, exploring. About a block up from our house was an old cemetery, filled with tombstones going back to the eighteen hundreds.

To get to the high school, you had to go past the cemetery. The road curved past it and headed into town. It must have been a twenty-minute walk. I decided to bike it, until the weather got colder. So there I was, biking to school on my first day, and I saw him.

The boy I would fall in love with.

He was strolling down the side of the road, carrying his backpack over one shoulder, his nose in a book. He had rumpled brown hair and wore a simple black shirt and a dark pair of jeans over scuffed sneakers. I hadn’t seen any other kids since moving in, so I slowed down, curious.

“Hey!” I shouted a cheerful greeting at him. “Are you going to Gardner High?”

He kept walking, still reading. I pulled up closer, almost beside him, biking with no hands.

“Hey, cutie!”

He glanced up, obviously unaware that I had been shouting at him earlier. I couldn’t tell if he had been too engrossed in the book, or just hadn’t expected anyone to be greeting him. When he looked up, it hit me. “Cutie” didn’t begin to describe this boy. His eyes were icy blue, and I felt a spark like electricity run through me when our eyes met.

“I’m sorry, were you speaking to me?” His voice was quiet, his tone polite. He seemed delightfully shy.

“Hi,” I blushed a little. “I asked if you were going to Gardner?”

“Me? No. I turn off right before, and go to Davidson Elementary.”

I looked at him again. He seemed about my age. A little shorter, maybe, the height boys get right before they have those big growth spurts in high school.

“Grade Eight?”

“That’s right.”

I stopped my pedalling, and he stopped walking.

“I’m Mara.” I put out my hand, balancing my bike between my thighs, my feet planted solidly on the asphalt road. I was wearing flip-flops, and had painted my toenails with flowers. I was suddenly aware of scab on my left knee, from a biking mishap earlier in the week. I felt an insane urge to smooth out my curly red hair.

He shook my hand. His grip was firm, and his hands were warm. His pale skin stood out against my freckles.

“Nice to meet you. I am Ethan Keaton Pitney.”

He said it formally, as if he had been coached on how to introduce himself. I giggled at the thought of this young boy in a business boardroom, wearing a suit and shaking hands.

Ethan just stood there, staring at me.

“May I walk with you?” I asked, “Until the turnoff for your school, anyway.”

“Certainly. Thank you for offering,” he said, again very formal. I smiled, and got off my bike. I pushed it along, holding the handlebars, as I walked beside him.

“We’re new in town. My parents and me,” I told him, answering the questions he wasn’t asking. “We live there.” I turned and pointed back towards my house.

“The Sterns’ House. I wondered if anyone would buy it.”

“Why? Is it haunted?” I smiled, hoping to hear some small town rumours.

“No. Just they moved out three months ago, and I wondered when someone would move in.”

I had been looking for a mystery, a ghost story. Obviously, I read a lot of books as a girl. But this boy was very matter-of-fact. He was funny.

“Where do you live?”

He pointed. “If you go past your house, and follow the road up, there’s a dirt road on the left. It leads to my family’s farm.”

“You grew up on a farm?” I almost cooed, hoping maybe he had stories about horses being born, or a pet pig.

“No. I grew up in town. We moved there three years ago, after my grandfather died. He left it to my dad.”

“Do you have horses? Or pigs?”

“No. It’s a cow farm. We have some chickens.” He was so serious. I liked it.

Most boys I knew were either cocky or shy. Cocky because they were showing off to impress me, or shy because they didn’t think they could. This boy was neither. He seemed quiet, but he wasn’t too nervous to speak to me.

“My dad’s a doctor.”

He nodded. “Is he taking over at the hospital?”

“Yes, that’s right. How’d you know?”

“Dr. Sterns retired and moved out. Someone had to take his job.” He shrugged, as if it were self-evident.

“Well, that solves that mystery, doesn’t it Holmes?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Sorry. I was just being flip. You seem very logical, like Sherlock.”

“You know Sherlock Holmes?” He asked. It was the first time he’d seemed excited during the conversation. He said it with some surprise.

“Sure, who doesn’t?” I shrugged. “I spend every summer in the library.”

He grinned. “So do I. But no one else around here ever reads what I read.”

I had fallen in love with his eyes. But his smile took second place pretty quickly.

We walked along discussing our favourite books until he had to turn for his school. I waved good-bye and went the other way, walking the last five minutes to Gardner High by myself.

I didn’t see him again for months, but I was already planning the house we’d buy after we got married. Rooms full of bookshelves and paintings on the walls, ivy on the porch trellis, and little blue-eyed babies running around…

I was always prone to daydreams and fantasies as a girl. But, if you ask me, it was worth it. Every one of them has come true.

Every one.