Only this year: uh, no, everything was wonky in the extreme all of the sudden. The heat positivelycrusheda gal all through October (Halloween being a big sweatfest because one had chosen to be, duh, a bear) and then more of the same in November, until finally you had to, sadly, bail on the four new sweaters Mom had bought you at Target (sorry, guys, maybe next year) and then came a freaky snow so heavy or even copious it cracked a beam in the roof, or so said Dad, who ought to know, since he spent half his life up there. Which snow was, at least, you know,seasonal.Like, festive and all? But then, for two solid days (in December!) Augustreturned,and one morning the yard was this total suddenlakefrom all the melting snow, and the swing set tipped all the way over on its own for no reason whatsoever just because something underground had fritzed out or whatnot from all the melting (!).
Then, a week later, as you were helping Mom get the Christmas tree in (because that’s the kind of super-thoughtful kid you were, ha ha, but seriously), both of you justpouring offsweat, because it was likeeightyor something, you started back for the new tree stand in the trunk only to find hundreds of hailstoneszipping down like littlelunch boxesor whatnot, and you and Mom had to wait on the porch for the utter madness out there to abate (meaning “stop”) or else get good and brained, which, meanwhile, smaller hailstones kept plunking down and bouncing back up out of the trunk as if the trunk were not a trunk at all but a gosh-darned trampoline, didn’t it seem that way? Mom said.
And she had to admit, yes, exactly, spot-on observation, Mom.
—
The Frenchman stepped abruptly out of me.
And I was suddenly no longer that girl.
How I missed her, missed being her, missed knowing I was lovely, missed looking forward to high school, where, I felt sure, I would do great and make just a ton of new friends.
The Frenchman looked at me with alarm.
That? he said. That is what you take away? From thisexpérience extraordinaire? That I have provided you? That she is lovely? That she will have friends?Mon Dieu!
Well, also, I said (trying to somewhat redeem myself in his eyes), something’s off with the weather.
Voilà,he said, and cut his eyes down at my charge. Through his words and deeds, he must bear an outsized responsibility.
For the weather? I said.
However, honesty compels me to admit, he said. It was also of my doing. I had a hand in the invention of the beast.
So you’ve said, I said.
Quelle horreur!he cried.
So you’ve said, I said.
Do not mock me, he said. My shame is well-founded. See for yourself.
He skim-popped me lightly across the head with the palm of his hand.
And just like that, I was him, briefly, the Frenchman, in a mechanic’s jumper, crouching before some sort of metal contraption in a squalid barn smelling of cow dung and gasoline. With a bang the thing went off. From one end protruded a metal claw, which suddenly started turning. Oily smoke from the contraption poured forth from the barn, drifting over a nearby meadow lush with wildflowers, where I would sometimes go to sit against a boulder while working through a particularly difficult engineering problem.
I had done it.
Triomphe,I had done it!
Wait, I said. You invented theengine?
To my shame, yes, he said.
Well, I beg to differ, I said.
For me? Former me? Jill “Doll” Blaine? My auto, my car? My “lime-green” Chevelle? In those bygone days? In “Stanley, Indiana”? Had been a source of such happiness. To get in it, when it was new, a gift from “Dad,” and drive around town, and have the other kids notice, and wave? At me? Former big nobody? To cruise, on a Friday night, down Pope Street, in that wonderful new-car smell, and join the long line of other gleaming cars, all filled with kids from school, and park at the Aurora for Cokes, then slowly cruise back out, to wave at and flirt with boys who, at school, in real life, I would never even have dreamed of speaking to?
And he, the Frenchman, had played a part in that?
In making thousands, maybe millions, of young teens happy?
Not to mention: family vacations, ambulances, trucks delivering all sorts of wonderful things to people all over town who needed them?
You don’t understand, he said.
I’m afraid I don’t, I said.
