Of Goings and Comings
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
The cat had been taken to the animal shelter. And Shepherd would indeed take the cat, even if Malaya, his girlfriend, decided she needed a different companion for her deaf kitten. And so one problem was nearly solved, nearly.
Meanwhile, Tuesday had been a day for errands before programming class. Mom and Carrie had come by to help drop off the cat and then Mom took a hair trim while Collette read Mistress Pat.
And Carrie devised a list of questions to ask her latest spy culprit, Wally Hobcoggin, to weed out concerning Ernest. For she had plenty of blackmail to hold against Wally if he didn’t attend to her requests, however jokingly she threatened. Then there was a stop for milk, eggs, and tuna. And finally, before returning to the house for lunch and choir, they picked up a carton of unhatched chicks and chick mash – a yearly project.
At the house, Collette was informed early on from Linnea that she had asked the D.J. at Idlewild’s wedding:
“Can you play ‘I Walk a Lonely Road’?”
She was answered (no doubt with stifled smiles):
“Well, you can’t really dance to that song.”
And she left him, disappointed. What a scream she was, having the bridesmaids in stitches throughout the evening.
And then there was a trip downtown to Clayton, past McKnight, and all the other wealth-ridden clans of St. Louis. There, at Lakeforest Confections, amongst all the hand-rolled sweets and chocolates, were eleven free tickets to see “Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag” at the Omnimax theater that Thursday night, courtesy of KFUO (the classical radio station).
Then they dropped by World Market (Mom, herself, Francis, and Linnea) for some sweets themselves. Collette chose a small wrapper of German marzipans, although they ended up being more potent than before. They were delightfully shaped and colored into little fruits and there were larger versions shaped as bananas and piglets and other shapes. But she decided that the mint-flavored marzipan was much better, even the almond. Her batch had more the consistency of bitter orange.
And while there was a viewing of ”Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Creeping Terror”, Carrie skimmed through her mail.
“Collette,” she sighed, “look at that.”
She handed her a colorful brochure of South Pacific cruises – bright photos of green-cliffed coves by the sea, a polished Sydney Opera House, fleecy white lamb flocks on green hills, clusters of orange reef anemones, and a stately line of stone mystery on the legendary Easter Island.
“Thirty-five days in Australia, Oceania, South America, and New Zealand. Oh… how lovely. If only I can save my dough.”
“You can. Look – it’s five thousand,” Collette showed her. “You should wait until you get your masters and then hopefully a little while after that, you’ll be twenty-one. And it could be a reward for finishing.”
Carrie seemed to like the idea. It did hold promises.
There was a pizza party that night over class, and once again, Rose was intent on doodling her ideas, rather than noting them as ordinary people might. This time, she had oodles of American stick men and little fat bulgy Frenchmen with buttons popping off their bellies and tiny hats on their heads. What it exactly had to do with the lesson, Collette could not quite tell.
Several times Dad would have to say:
“Rose, pay attention.”
Or:
“Rose, what did I just say?”
Or:
“Rose, take that ridiculous hat off your head.”
But Rose continued laughing at her silly stick figures while Dad instructed, and amazingly, despite her comical appearance, wearing Carrie’s red Moroccan hat with silver embroidery perched jauntily on her head, she manged to pay attention. And Carrie scribbled notes with her bobbing pink pen with a fuzzy pink boa and bouncy pink bauble on the end.
It was truly a pleasant day.
And that morning, OLeif was to meet another co-worker for coffee, but he first had other things to attend to.
“Collette, look what I have here.”
He called to her in the kitchen where she was preparing chicken with dried dill weed.
She came over and looked at his creation on the computer screen. It was a cache of brilliant space glimmers, azure galaxies, and diamond sprites, creamy cosmos and mounding puddings of constellations. It was a mountain of color and stars.
“Whoa, you just did that?”
“Yeah, it’s just a bunch of different brushes on photo shop. You should see what some of these guys can do on this thing – they create entire galaxies that look just like the real thing.”
The morning was already almost over and there was much left to do. However, she did manage to clean her wedding ring of the Caribbean salt, which she had forgotten to take care of six months earlier. And then there were waffles for brunch. She followed the wise advice of the Diamonds, a friendly older couple from OLeif’s old church:
“If there’s nothing left to eat, make waffles.”
And they had supplied a heavy little rectangular black waffle iron to go along with the sage advice. Collette would have made a trip for groceries earlier had not the little bundle of calico snuggles graced her stairs those two cold days earlier.
And then it was finished – the painting, after two months. Collette was happy with it. There was the mountain of dark brown off in the distance to where the less-menacing emerald wave hung poised to crash. The sand-strewn beach of yellow goldenness nearer the front, the sky of juicy beet red, and the wave itself – suspended in time. Before the catastrophe – gray and blue and swirling angrily. All in all, she was pleased at its finish and tucked it back under the media cabinet to dry for another week. She would hang it on the wall the following Wednesday, she decided, after a good dusting with a fine brush.