by Hazel Yeats
“They call them young adults now.”
“So? You don’t qualify, no matter what they’re called.”
“The story appeals to all ages. I’m simply a fan.”
“Jennifer Lawrence, huh?”
“What can I say? She is on fire.”
“Cradle robber.”
Cara laughed. “It’s not just that, I really am a fan, although I do agree that the whole concept of children being forced to fight to the death is a little questionable, to say the least.”
“Did you hold hands?”
“With Jude? No, we actually watched the movie. We didn’t hold hands until afterward.”
“You sound happy,” Inge said approvingly on the other end of the line.
“It’s pretty awesome, you know, going out with her.” Cara got up, walked barefoot to the kitchen, opened the fridge and scanned the contents. She picked up a can of soda and walked back to the couch. She sat down, folding her legs beneath her in what Inge called ‘that timeless way of hot blondes.’
The soda fizzled and liquid bubbled over, running down the side of the can and over her fingers. She brought her mouth to her hand and licked it off.
“What’s that sound?” Inge asked suspiciously. “Is she there with you now?”
“No.” Cara sighed. “Could you get your mind out of the gutter for one second?”
“Sorry. But go on. You were saying how great she is.”
“And how great I am too,” Cara said. “I’m so funny. And erudite. I draw from a secret source of knowledge and wit I never knew was there. I don’t recognize myself when I’m with her. It’s like…whoa; who is this wildly interesting person sitting across from Jude, with her playful banter and her titillating, but never vulgar, observations? Could it be moi? I swear to God, even my complexion has improved.”
“Erudite?” Inge said, baffled.
“I was wondering about your writer’s block. Your acute writer’s block.”
Jude stretched her long legs, ran a hand through her hair and sighed. “Again? Can’t we talk about something else?”
“Why?” Cara eyed her innocently. She’d been treading carefully whenever any aspect of Jude’s work came up, strangely intimidated to be so close to the actual creative process. She didn’t want to take on the role of anybody ‘in the business,’ be it an agent, an interviewer, or even simply a fan. But she’d come to realize that she got it wrong. Being close to the creative process entitled her to ask questions an agent or interviewer might not. Except that now, there seemed to be no creative process to speak of.
Jude shrugged and closed the book she’d been reading. “What can I say? It’s not exactly my favorite subject.”
“But I want to know,” Cara insisted. “Is it like some sudden, mysterious inability to express your inner thoughts, or is it more like…when a baker has baker’s block?”
Jude shook her head and got up from her chair. The subject obviously made her too nervous to sit and answer difficult questions. She began to walk aimlessly across her living room, picking things up and putting them down again, rearranging pillows, collecting empty glasses and taking them to the kitchen.
“Baker’s block?” she said when she walked back into the room. She sat down at the dinner table, wiping her hand across the top to remove invisible crumbs. She oozed unease whenever the subject of her not being able to write came up. “There’s no such thing as baker’s block. As far as I’m aware.”
“Exactly,” Cara said. “Nor is there plumber’s block. Or trauma surgeon’s block.”
“Thank God for that,” said Jude.
“Seems like you guys are the only ones affected by this strange affliction.”
“What’s your point?”
“Maybe,” Cara said, bracing for impact, “you should simply sit down and get the job done.”
Jude flashed her an angry frown. “Are you suggesting I’m pretending that I can’t write right now? Do you think I like feeling like a dried up well?”
“Ugh,” Cara said. “What a horrible image. You so don’t resemble a dried up well.” She smiled mischievously. “All your juices are running freely.”
“Ew,” said Jude.
“Why can’t your creative juices run freely too?”
“It’s not that simple,” Jude said. “All professions have a certain degree of routine to them, no matter how complicated they are. All except the arts. An artist has to reinvent the world time after time.”
“And there you go with a title,” Cara said smugly. “Bunny reinvents the world time after time.”
Jude shook her head. “I appreciate your attempt at humor, and I understand that the pressure I’m under is nothing compared to yours or anyone else’s in the hamburger flipping or pizza delivering business, but this is no laughing matter to me.”
“Ouch,” Cara said. “What brought this on?”
Jude muttered a vague apology.
“I want to help, you know?” Cara said finally. “Maybe we could try together.”
“Really?”
Cara nodded.
“I have the feeling you’re not taking this seriously. That you think anybody could do it,” Jude said.
“I don’t—”
“Maybe you believe, like so many, that children’s book writers are people who started out writing for adults but couldn’t cut it.”
“I don’t know,” Cara said. “I never really thought about that.”
“Children’s literature is in a league of its own,” Jude said, raising her voice. “It has its own challenges and demands, especially for us, who write for the very young.”
Cara nodded hesitantly.
“I really don’t care for your condescending nod! Don’t you believe me?”
“I’m sorry,” Cara said. “I really know very little about this.” She took a second to find the right words. “In all honesty, I’d be inclined to say that it’s easier to write Bunny Has a Boo-Boo than to write Mrs. Dalloway.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, Woolf had a bit of a boo-boo of her own. If you’re trying to convey roughly the same emotions she did; I’m sure that doing so for an audience with a twenty-word vocabulary is no easy feat.” She cocked her head and looked at Jude pleadingly. “Let’s not fight about this, okay? You know I love your work. And your commitment to your readers. Let me be a part of this. Show me what you have.”
Jude reached into her purse and pulled out a black leather notebook. “Just a couple of lines so far,” she said, leafing through the pages. ‘Bunny was a little sad. A tear was rolling down her cheek.’” She hung her head. “Yes, it’s embarrassing, I know.”
Cara couldn’t read the line from where she was sitting, but she did see that most of the page was filled with doodles, in red ink, making it look like someone had been bleeding on it.
“So what’s troubling her?” Cara said. “I mean Bunny. Why is she sad?”
“You know about the last volume, right? Bunny Finds a Friend?”
Cara nodded. She had, by now, read the entire series.
“Well, this time, she loses one.”
“To what?” Cara pulled a face, hoping this wouldn’t be the volume that introduced the toddler fans to the horrors of divorce or death.
“A move,” Jude said.
“Not a move to…heaven?”
“No, no. Oregon.”
Cara chuckled. “I see. Hell.”
Jude eyed her with an amused expression on her face. “Bad experience in Oregon?”
“Not at all,” Cara said, “I’ve never even been there. In my mind it’s a cold and empty place.”
“The focus is on introducing the concept of loss, and how to deal with that.”
“I see.” Cara smiled. “It’s not about Oregon at all.”
Jude got up and walked across the room to Cara’s chair. She sat down o
n her lap, resting her head in the hollow of Cara’s neck. Cara put her arm around her and kissed the top of her head. A confused sensation, something that was halfway between sadness and bliss crept up on her out of nowhere.
They sat like that for a while; neither of them spoke.
“Sometimes,” Jude said finally, “I know, in my heart, that I can do this really great thing, you know? That I can rise above myself. And then I’m almost afraid to start writing, because I know that as soon as I touch it, it might break.”
She lifted her head and locked eyes with Cara. She opened the top buttons of Cara’s shirt with one hand, parted the lapels with an impatient tug, and moved her hand there.
“Have you ever felt that way about anything, Ms. Jong?”
Cara sucked in a deep breath. “No,” she whispered. “I can’t say that I have.”
CHAPTER 8
“Are you the sort of person who tends to wonder where things are going?”
“Things? What things?”
“I mean, in relationships.”
“Oh, that.” Cara shrugged as if the subject was of no particular interest to her, but she couldn’t help but stiffen slightly. She knew, without even looking at her, that Jude was holding her breath, waiting for the answer with well concealed anxiety. In the silence that followed, it was as if Cara could hear both their hearts beat. “Not particularly.”
She brought Jude’s hand to her face and kissed the inside of the wrist, pressing her lips to the delicate network of bluish veins. Her mind went back to Tanja, one of the first girls she had ever slept with, who would pride her on finding erogenous zones that nobody had found before. Cara smiled as she recalled that she, in turn, would tell Tanja that people should know better than to always look in the obvious places.
“Why?” Jude said.
Cara hesitated. “Let’s just say that I’ve learned to take things one day at a time, and to shy away from making promises I can’t keep.”
She hated herself as soon as she’d said the words. She let go of Jude’s hand. How could she be the sort of person who kisses someone’s wrist, while at the same time warning her that she shouldn’t read too much into it. The words made her feel unworthy of Jude’s time, let alone of her love. She sighed, blowing a strand of hair from her forehead. Couldn’t this, for once in her life, be easy?
She trailed behind, picking up a soda can and throwing it in a recycling bin. She wanted to watch Jude as she walked ahead—her slender body in the black chiffon blouse, her long legs in a pair of high-waisted grey pants. Jude had taken off her jacket and was holding it in her right hand, where it dangled by her side, almost, but not quite, touching the ground.
Jude was always a study in contradiction. There was something languid and yet determined about the way she moved. She was a person who knew where she was going, but who was willing to take her time getting there. She oozed strength and confidence in such a natural way, that the touch of vulnerability that was also there seemed to enhance rather than contradict it. There was something pure about her that Cara had initially mistaken for the opposite—a public person’s studied coyness. She had soon realized that it was genuine, and probably part of what made Jude successful. In a sense, she was the most laid-back person Cara had ever known. Which was another contradiction, at least to Cara. How was Jude able to combine that attitude with a life where she had so many obligations to fulfill, people to placate, deadlines to make?
Jude’s head was surrounded by a shimmering aureole where the light caught her hair. She had rolled her shirt sleeves up to the elbows, revealing the smooth, olive skin of her forearms; a large, white watch dangling loosely on her right wrist, and a crochet beaded bracelet—a Mother’s Day present from Zoe—on the left. Cara realized, observing her, that Jude was the sort of person she might have walked up to if she had happened to meet her in the street somewhere, like in a movie, where someone sees their own destiny reflected in a stranger’s eyes. She reminded herself that she didn’t believe in destiny, and she reminded herself also of that strange contradiction, that the more spiritual one’s feelings seem, the more mundane they are.
Jude turned around to see what was keeping her, standing still until Cara caught up with her.
“How did you learn that?”
“What?” Cara asked absentmindedly.
“To take things one day at a time and to avoid making promises?”
“It sounds like a cliché,” Cara said, “and I guess it is, but I’ve realized that the way I feel about someone tends to change over time. Time is like a storm—it sweeps over the land and mows the prettiest flowers down.” She looked at Jude apologetically. “No offense.”
“None taken,” said Jude.
Cara breathed a sigh of relief. It was wonderful, and unprecedented, how openly and respectfully they were able to talk about subjects as sensitive as this one.
“But why do you ask?” she said. “Should we talk about where our thing is going? Because contrary to popular belief, this is not necessarily a conversation I’m unwilling to have.”
She looked around, enjoying the hustle and bustle at one of her favorite spots in the city, Vondelpark. She loved the place in every season, because even though it was always crowded, nobody ever got in her way. There was plenty of room for everyone to enjoy it. Taking a stroll down the paths in the hilly grassland with its abundance of trees and meandering streams, followed by having a cup of coffee on the upper terrace of the café, would always have a wonderfully relaxing effect on her.
Vondelpark was a two-kilometer-long park in Amsterdam-Zuid, but it stretched all the way to Amsterdam-West. It was designed according to the English landscape style—full of winding paths and rose gardens. It had a teahouse, it had restaurants and bars—it even had an open air theatre where performances were held during the summer months.
There were a lot of dogs today, taking out their owners. And a lot of teenagers, walking hand in hand. A middle-aged couple was having a picnic on the grass; sitting close together on a quilt, they fed each other sandwiches and fruit. Some kids were playing soccer on one of the fields. There were scores of joggers and skaters. The sun warmed her face, and Cara felt a rush of happiness. She was about to talk about the state of her relationship, and she stood firmly, confidently.
“I don’t know.” Jude looked around. She spread her arms as if she were trying to hug the day, the park. “It seems like a typical afternoon to talk about plans, somehow. Maybe it’s the spring. Maybe it’s a nesting thing.”
It was a cool but sunny day with a fresh breeze blowing in. It was the first time they were out in public in the daytime. Jude smiled. “It’s such a peaceful, let’s-throw-caution-to-the-wind-and-buy-rings day.” She pressed a hand to her mouth, shocked. “Does this freak you out?”
Cara laughed. “No,” she said, “it doesn’t. We’re both honest, and that’s the most important thing. In fact, I threw a soda can in a recycling bin that had a perfectly good ring on it not two minutes ago. That could have been yours. If only I’d known.” She threw her arm around Jude possessively and kissed her, causing a young boy on a bicycle, who was passing them, to take an unexpected detour and land in the grass next to his bike. He got up quickly, rubbed his knees, stuck out his tongue to them, and sped off.
“We’d definitely be buying rings if this were a movie.” Jude stared off into space, a dreamy expression on her face. “This could be the opening shot. Without the young homophobe, of course.” She pointed to the sky. “Picture a bright, clear, breezy day. Picture two people, making plans, totally oblivious to the fact that plans tend to get derailed.”
“Okay,” Cara said. “What exactly does the script prescribe we do?”
“That would depend on the genre.”
“Let’s say we’re in a romantic comedy.”
Jude took Cara’s hand and led her to a bench where she sat down. “Well,” she said,
“in a romantic comedy, I would tell you that nobody has ever made me feel the way you do, and then I would give you a chaste kiss and present you with a key to my apartment.” She shrugged. “To emphasize my commitment to you, I would probably have had a keychain made, depicting something you were passionate about.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Basset hounds. Kites. Captain Janeway in her spandex Starfleet uniform.”
Cara sat down next to her and looked up at the puffy clouds in the clear blue sky, wondering what magical things might happen if Jude used her impressive powers of imagination to write adult literature. The thought almost made her dizzy. Or maybe it was the vastness of the sky that did that.
“So I suppose,” Cara said, “that the key to your apartment would be symbolizing the key to your heart.” She rested her hand on Jude’s back. The warmth of her skin radiated through the thin fabric of her shirt and it made Cara feel oddly possessive.
Jude nodded. “Of course, there would have to be some kind of conflict, or problem, otherwise there’s no story. Maybe you could get hit by a car and spend a year in a coma.”
“And then I’d wake up unable to move anything but my left eyebrow,” Cara said with drama in her voice, “forced to watch you make out with some hot writer chick while you sit at my bedside, pretending to care, until you decide to have mercy on me and pull the plug.”
Jude eyed her critically. “You don’t really understand the romantic comedy, do you?”
Cara smiled. “What if it were a costume drama?”
“I don’t know,” Jude said, “I don’t watch costume dramas. I guess it would be the same, only the key would be to a castle, and we’d be sitting here with our servants, sweating in twenty layers of velvet and wool and rusty chastity belts.”
“That we probably wouldn’t have the key to,” said Cara. “Ugh. So what if it were a thriller?”
Jude sat up and straightened her back. Cara thought she saw a glimmer of irritation zipping across her face, but she wasn’t sure.
“If it were a thriller we’d find a dead body floating in the pond, and it were sci-fi we’d be abducted by aliens, and if it were a horror movie there’d be a guy with a chainsaw waiting for us in the bushes.”
