Wuthering Smites



Chrissy and Chip were both in the same English class Electra had been in at the start of the school year. Same teacher I had, but taught at a college prep level.

So they got to pick their books from the same lists.

I stayed late after one class and put Electra on Mrs. Burton’s desk so that my sylph could make a plea. She explained the deal Chrissy had outlined, along with the logistical problems of spending time with her readers/writers.

Mrs. Burton gave them permission for all three to review the same books, as long as there wasn’t any copying in the reports.

So, several nights a week, Chrissy took Electra home, where she or Chip read a book for all three of them.

They invited me to join them. The classic Chip read was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I read the book’s dust jacket and instantly assumed that Chip had either been outvoted or not consulted at all.

Something about the summary made me want to run and hide.

And I’d read Clan of the Cave Bear.

“It seems to be out of my weight class,” I said. The sad part was everyone agreed with me. But that worked to my advantage.

With the brain trust reading the novel, I had several nights a week to work on a new skill. I stared making dioramas.

On days and nights that Electra was in the house, I worked on making tiny scale models of castles.

Some real, some fantasy, some of my own design. Cliffs, courtyards, walls, gardens, roads, gates, drawbridges.

When she wasn’t there, I worked on sets. Sets at 1/12th scale. Something a sylph might find useful in creating a particular atmosphere for her interviews.

I consulted with Mark about the lighting and the colors, learned to measure scales and how to build things that I couldn’t find in the hobby store in Twin Falls.

Or, since I could hardly travel as far as Twin without taking my sylph, things I didn’t dare purchase while she was in my pocket.

The papier mache I was using to make the dioramas came in these big grey bricks. You broke off what you wanted to work with and mixed it with water and made a hellacious mess.

It also spread a layer of dust around that made me cough and made Electra sound like she was hacking up a lung.

So I got a big footlocker down from the attic and put the unused bricks in there. Along with all the other pieces and parts I was hiding from her, it was a good place to protect her from second-hand dust.

And I only played with that stuff on nights she was reading the novel or writing her review.

One night, at my dad’s suggestion, I took the three of them out for pizza. They ended up discussing the book almost all night long.

Each one of them made at least one special effort to swing the conversation around so I could be included, which was nice of them, but it wasn’t something they could sustain.

So I spent a lot of time thinking about the sort of diorama rooms I wanted to make Electra. Or pointing out that one waitress, not ours, looked rather a lot like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had our little group in careful stitches several times, imagining that movie character dealing with customers in a Springwater pizzeria.

When Chrissy took Electra to the ladies, Chip asked me if I had ever read a book to Electra.

“Yeah…”

“Man. They just go wild for that sort of thing, don’t they?” he said with a smile.

I mostly remember being embarrassed or being corrected on my pronunciation. Eh, I’d expected both. But she had seemed rather grateful at the end.

When we got home that night, she started telling me about her insights into Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship.

I have to admit, I didn’t really care about the book. So I was still thinking about the dioramas. I was wondering if it was possible to hide the camera, to design a room that was a full 360-degree experience.

Something that Electra and a guest could enter and be surrounded by things at their own scale, if only for a moment or two.

Of course, I also wanted to make a sort of ‘game’ room, with Candyland pieces and Risk pieces and a travel chess set of a size they could possibly play.

Which gave me an idea for another castle model, where chess pieces defended the castle while Risk armies laid siege.

And that’s when I noticed Electra standing on the table, tapping a foot, arms crossed.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“Okay,” she said. She took a deep breath.

I shook my head. “I could rephrase it, but I really wasn’t listening, and I really am sorry about that.”

“What were you thinking of?” she asked.

I didn’t want to spoil the surprise of the interview rooms, so I told her about the game castle. She nodded.

“Look, it’s just that I really, really can’t work up any interest in Wuthering Heights.”

“I thought maybe you could work up interest in me,” she said quietly.

“Well, yeah, I’m looking forward to reading your book report-“

“REVIEW!” she cried. “It’s a book REVIEW! MORONS can write book REPORTS!” She shifted to a mocking tone. “I found a book. I traced the words with my fingers and things happened to characters and I liked the movie better. The end.”

I guessed that I deserved that. “At least I didn’t write it in crayon,” I said.

“Well, don’t worry, I won’t force you to read my review,” she said. “It’ll probably be over your head.”

“Electra, that’s kind of a given. Everything you do is over my head. But I do enjoy when you explain things to me.”

“So what does that make me, your intellectual seeing-eye-dog?”

Conrad really should have shut up about then. But no, Conrad did not. “Hmmm. I’m not really blind, so a white cane wouldn’t be appropriate. I could wear sunglasses and carry a bone-white pencil.”

“FUCK YOU CONRAD!” she shouted, running off the end of the table and disappearing. She may have been crying. I don’t know for sure.



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Index

41. Dedications

43. Smitten By THe Kitten