EVA
My room is so big, I am so so lucky. My window is so wide and I can see the clouds. Nuages. Nuages. Nuages nuages nuages! Do you know what that means? It means clouds. I learned it in French today and it is stuck in my dang head like a song gets stuck in other people’s heads. I repeat it over and over and over in my head. Nuages, nuages, nuages on repeat! What a beautiful word. SO romantic. SO full of color and romance.
I am going to tell mom how appreciative I am of this big room with big windows and she isn’t going to be mad anymore!
She stood atop the highest hill and looked down at the deepest valley below her. Her white dress blew in the wind and came out of the tall grass and her dress was like it was part of the landscape. Above her, nuages.
Oh wow, that’s good. I should be a writer, shouldn’t I?
Hello Jimmy Fallon, would you care to talk about me and discuss my novel? Thank you, Jimmy. I love your sense of humor. Hello, madame, you can call me Eva. I own this mansion and I love it. I am a writer, and I make a lot of money. Notice my diamond necklace! Oh how it sparkles, like the sun coming through the nuages. Are you familiar with my work? Oh, no? Well let me tell you about my forthcoming book.
Ooh, forthcoming. That’s good. Good word. I have such a fantastic vocabulary. Don’t dither, ersatz fiend! Come hither. Dither hither!
“Mooooom! Mom!”
Probably still mad. She really loves to stay mad at me. Nuages.
“Mooooooom!”
Hmm.
So I opened the door a little crack, she can’t be too mad about that.
So I walk out my room. So? So what? Really not something to be mad about, mother. You can’t ground me more!
“Mom!”
She stood atop the highest hill and looked down at the deepest valley below her. What is that called? I should know this as a writer, I should. Anagram? The highest hill is the top of the stairs and the valley is the foyer. It’s an anagram. I know, I am very talented. Mom isn’t in the deepest valley. The light of the chandelier is not shining upon her! Eek! Oh I love eek. Eek a mouse, eek a lobster! Oh geez, not a lobster… Oh what’s the other one? Not eek again… Ee. Ee-something…
“Egads! Egads, a mouse! {deep voice} Egads, a mouse.” So goofy. “Mom?” She wasn’t in the dark cave – anagram for the living room. She isn’t in the kitchen.
Is she so mad she went to the store without me? Egads, woman! That’s what I’ll say when she comes back from the store. She’ll think that’s funny.
“Hello?”
Oh, a note. Duh, of course she left a note.
Jason,
Please stay in the house. I will be back soon.
We will talk about it again when dad gets home.
❤️ Mom
She meant stay on the property though, not the house. She always lets me go outside. I have swings in the back yard. I don’t use them anymore because they are for babies and I am not a baby. Excuse me, Madame! I am not a baby! I am Eva, novelist extraordinary! Author of “The Deepest Valley,” the most books ever sold by an author, and so distinguished.
“Bye bye, baby swings. Je ne t'aime pas.”
Into the woods goes distinguished novelist, author, and beautiful legend, Eva. Into the woods – saw that at the high school theater last year. They made the trees out of papier-mâché and they were not real looking. Not at all. The boy who played the baker was awful, dreadful. I couldn’t watch.
“Ouch!”
Ow ow ow! I fell! I didn’t trip. Eva is not clumsy!
{Mouth agape. No words.}
The giant cat is brown and black and white and gray and ten feet tall and wants to say something to me.
“Hi, kitty! I know I ought to be scared of such a big cat, but I’m not. You don’t seem mean,” only a baby would be afraid of a big cat.
She purred at me and I’m sure she meant to say that she was not mean and that I was right. Good for me!
“Egads, you’re big!”
“Yes, I am large for a cat.”
A weird voice for a cat to have. I imagine cats having high mew-mew kitten voices when they talk to me. This one is distinguished!
“What’s your name, Kitty?”
“Call me Jimmy Fallon.”
“Okay, Jimmy Fallon. I am Eva, novelist extraordinary! What are you doing in my woods? Hunting large mice?”
“Yes.”
Kitty Jimmy sure didn’t laugh like person Jimmy. It’s true, Eva is not known for her humor, she is known for her deep and beautiful words and sentences and paragraphs and pages, but Jimmy always finds something funny on TV.
Following Kitty Jimmy through the woods is hard! She has such long legs and she’s nimble and her eyes work in the dark. Mine don’t work as well but I wish they did. I would love to have night vision and be a giant cat in the woods at night. I can see the moon through the trees and the nuages.
When Kitty Jimmy isn’t looking I hunch over and make my hands like claws with my elbows bent up and my wrists bent down and my fingers are claws and I tiptoe behind Kitty Jimmy and hunt big mice like her. I’ve seen boys at school do the claws-hands that I do but they’re doing dumb dinosaur claws and I’m doing beautiful large cat claws.
No, Corey, I am not a velociraptor! {Slap}
“Jimmy, do you have magic?”
“I do, but it is more interesting if I don’t show you my magic.”
“Why is that more interesting?”
“Because if you know that I have magic but you don’t see it yet, you will want to see it for longer. That is called building anticipation.”
“That is so good, Jimmy! I will use that in my novels!”
Nuages nuages. Tiptoe, make no sounds! Scurry across the forest floor and catch the mice!
“Why are you in the woods at night, Eva?”
“Because my mom is mad at me and no one is home and I was bored.”
“That makes a lot of sense. Why is your mom mad at you?”
“She wants me to be more like my brother.”
I know Jimmy wanted to hear more about it because she stopped walking. This one time I told my brother something important that was a secret when we were in downtown doing errands and he stopped walking and looked at me really serious.
“What does your brother do that is so special?”
“I don’t know. He’s nice and all and he gets good grades, but I’m nice and I get good grades.”
“Hmm. I think I understand, Eva.”
⁂
Mrs. Jackson stands in her back yard. She calls desperately for Jason. The lawn is wet and the swing set is perfectly still. There is no sound. The moon shines on the wet grass and tiny beads of water reflect its light. Mrs. Jackson screams for Jason. No sound. Two glowing circles appear in the pine trees. The eyes float toward Mrs. Jackson and the silhouette of a gigantic cat emerges from the forest.
“J'ai mangé ta fille. Tu devrais avoir des regrets.”
“I ate your daughter. You should feel regret now.”