smackenzie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smackenzie) wrote2011-11-10 09:08 pm
smackenzie) wrote2011-11-10 09:08 pm
Entry tags:
this is like the longest fictional day ever
It seems mean to find such a thing amusing, but James does. He feels a bit sorry for Con, in fact - he would not want to spend a day trying on clothes and hats and boots and gloves, even if it did mean he could spend the day alone with his kind, beautiful momma.
He lets Julia tell him everything she and Mrs Godwin did that day, as well as what they ate for lunch, where they ate it, and the fact that the waiter looked like the father of one of her friend Caroline Watterson from school. But of course it was not him - Julia's friend's father is a banker who works downtown, and if he were a waiter, he could not afford to send his daughter to Julia's school.
"Perhaps he has a long-lost brother," James suggests, "who is working in a restaurant not knowing that his brother is a banker in the very same city."
Julia seems to consider this. "Perhaps. A long-lost twin, separated at birth by a greedy midwife who could not have children of her own, and who did not tell their mother that she was carrying twins. Each of them always wanted a brother as he was growing up. And little do they know that they each have a brother, and moreover grew up in the same city. Perhaps the waiter lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children, one of whom is a daughter Caroline's age."
"Does Caroline want a long-lost cousin?"
"We shall say for the sake of her father's long-lost twin that she does."
They continue on in this vein for another ten minutes, until Luisa appears to collect James and herd him upstairs, so that when his parents finally return home, the house is soothing and quiet for them.
"But I must ask Momma if Liam and Sean can visit next Saturday," he tells her. "I must know when she comes home."
"You will know," Luisa reassures him. "She will come into the nursery to say hello."
But she does not, in fact, come into the nursery to say hello, or at least she does not when James is there too. When he realizes his parents are both home and no doubt dressing for their dinner party, he runs down the stairs to their bedroom suite. It is normally off-limits to all the Godwin children, but this may be his only chance. And besides, he can hear his father singing somewhere inside, which must mean he is in a good mood, and if Mr Godwin is in a good mood, Mrs Godwin is likely to be in a good mood as well.
James finds her sitting at her dressing table brushing out her hair. She is already dressed and there are necklaces and bracelets piled on the table in front of her. She sees him in the mirror over the table and smiles at him, and he crosses the room to stand next to her chair.
"Hello, Master James," she says, pleased. "Have you come to keep me company while I finish getting ready?"
"Can Sean and Liam come over next Saturday?" he blurts out. Her expression does not change and she continues brushing her hair, but he cannot tell if this is good or bad.
"Mrs O'Donnell told me you were sliding around on the ballroom floor in your sock feet. You know you are not allowed in the ballroom when it is empty."
"I am sorry." And he is, for no other reason than it means Mrs O'Donnell (and most likey Luisa) will be keeping a close eye on him to make sure he does not do it again.
"But she also told me that her sons were having a very pleasant time with you. She is a good housekeeper, a very hard worker, and I would not want to lose her. If her sons are happy, she will be happy. And her sons seem to like you." She sets down her brush and ruffles his hair. "But do not think I have forgotten your adventure last weekend. This is a gift for Mrs O'Donnell too."
"So can they come back?"
"May they come back. And yes, they may. I will tell Mrs O'Donnell on Monday."
"Thank you!" James throws his arms around his mother's neck and she laughs. She smells like flowers.
"You are my favorite little boy, James Christopher," she says. "But behave, please."
"I will, Momma." He does not tell her about Sean jumping on Julia's bed, or how Liam had thirds at lunch and kept talking with his mouth full. He may have to learn how to be a good influence if he is going to be spending Saturdays with the O'Donnells, for someone will have to teach them better manners.
"Would you like to help me choose my jewelry for the evening? What do you think of this necklace?" She extracts a chain from the pile and holds it up to her neck. Hanging from it is a green jewel ringed with silver filigree. It is very pretty. "Or perhaps this one." The next necklace looks like a collar and is made of gold, with little blue stones and pears. The one after that is all jet beads, round ones and teardrop-shaped ones and ones like tiny tubes. James does not know which one he likes best.
Mr Godwin comes out of the dressing room straightening his cuffs and whistling. "Well, hello, James," he says cheerfully. "I hear you had an interesting kind of day today."
"Yes, sir," James says. He is intimidated by his father, even on the most casual of occasions, because Mr Godwin works many hours, and when he is not in his office he is in someone else's office or at the club or socializing with his partners and other captains of industry, and James does not see him much except for supper during the week, if there are no other engagements, and in the afternoons on Sunday.
There are easily twenty or twenty-five years between James' parents, and the weight and experience of those years gives Mr Godwin a gravitas that sometimes makes it hard for James to think of him as a father. But James knows he is a good and caring man - did he not adopt three of his workers' sons, when their mothers passed away and left them without family? - and thinks of him as a good father, and perhaps all small boys are intimidated by their fathers as well.
"Bryant," Mrs Godwin says, half turning in her chair, "do you think the jet is too gloomy for tonight?" She holds up the black-bead necklace.
"The jet is beautiful," he tells her, "as are you. You will be appropriately-dressed and stunning in whatever you choose to wear."
James wonders if this would be considered flirting, and if married people generally flirt with each other. He will have to ask Julia, who is his authority on such matters. He does not trust Con to give him a correct answer.
(Con had finally come home shortly before Mr Godwin, covered in grass and dirt and looking pleased with himself. When James asked where he had been all day, he said "Football", as if James should have known that.)
Mr Godwin looks at his watch, and says "I believe it is time for your supper" to James. "I would have guessed Julia or Luisa would have come looking for you."
"Are you not hungry?" Mrs Godwin asks, looking at James from her mirror again. She has put down the jet necklace and is wrapping the blue and pearl collar around her neck instead. "Go eat. We will say goodbye before we leave."
"Come." Mr Godwin holds out his hand for James, and walks with him down the stairs and to the smaller dining room, where Luisa is pouring milk for William and Aimee, and Con is already picking at the olives and dressed lettuce on his plate. Mrs Godwin believes in salad first, contrary to French tradition which would have them eating their salads last.
Con ignores his father, but Aimee and William both say hello, as does Luisa, and after a short chat, Mr Godwin goes back upstairs. Luisa pours James some milk. Julia wanders in, sits, and asks James if his friends will be back next week.
"Your friends are silly," Aimee announces.
"You are silly," James counters, and it is on the tip of his tongue to call her a cow, but he realizes in time that it would be rude and so does not say it.
"Children," Luisa says calmly. "Do not argue at the table."
Mr and Mrs Godwin come downstairs as Mrs Malcolm is setting out some fruit.
"Why is there no cake?" William asks.
"Because some small hooligans finished it under my nose this afternoon," she says, squinting her eye at James. He tries to look innocent. William glares at him. "I will make you another one on Monday."
"You will have cake tomorrow," Mr Godwin says from the doorway. "It will be from a bakery, but one must not look a gift cake in the mouth."
Both Mrs Godwin and Julia giggle.
"Goodnight, all my beautiful children," Mrs Godwin says. "Behave for Luisa." She blows them all kisses before she and Mr Godwin sweep out of the dining room and then out of the house, where the car is waiting for them.
James tries and fails to interest Aimee and William and Con in pretending to be pirates, but Luisa teaches him a card game that he can play with his friends at school, or with Sean and Liam when they come back next weekend, and he is satisfied. She stays long enough to make sure James and William and Aimee are in their nightclothes and have brushed their teeth and washed their faces, and then she tucks them into their beds and goes home to her own family.
James lies in bed and listens to the rain pouring down outside, hoping that Luisa does not get too wet on her walk to the subway station. She has told him about riding the subway and how it is faster than the streetcar, especially when the weather is bad or there is a lot of traffic. It is just a train in a tunnel, and he has been on a train, but he would still like to ride it with her one day, back to her neighborhood.
The storm outside is getting worse - he can now hear thunder and see the lightning beyond his curtains. He wishes Julia were in the room with him. She would make up stories about subway riders and conductors and what it would be like to get on a subway train near their house, and not get off until you were in Queens or Brooklyn, or on the beach.
He slides out of bed and tiptoes down the hall to Julia's room. Her door is closed most of the way but not pulled shut, and there is a light shining through the crack. James pushes the door open, making just enough noise for Julia to look up.
"Is the storm keeping you up?" she asks. She is sitting in bed, under the covers, reading a book. "It it very loud, isn't it." She pats the mattress next to her. "I can read to you, if you like."
James runs across the floor, climbs on the bed, and sticks his feet under the blanket. He looks over her shoulder at her book. There are no pictures, but he thinks he can easily read the type. "What are you reading?" he asks.
"It is called The Arabian Nights. It is about a Persian princess called Sheherazade. She marries a king who kills all his wives the day after they are married, so to save herself she tells him a story every night, falling asleep before she can finish, so that the king must keep her alive to know how the story ends. She tell him stories for a thousand and one nights, and then he lets her live."
"There are a thousand stories in this book?" James asks, impressed. It is not an especially large book. Perhaps they are very short stories.
"Oh, no, not all of them are in here. I do not know why. Let me find one to read you. Some of them are a bit naughty."
"Did you get it from Con?"
Julia laughs. "I bought it today. Momma told me I could have something for being so patient, and that is what I chose." She flips pages, looking for something to read to him. "Here, this is a short one - 'The Fisherman and the Djinn'."
"Read me a long one," James says. "What is a djinn?"
"He is a magical creature. Now hush and listen to the story."
James snuggles up against her as she starts to read. A djinn, as it turns out, is a man who lives in a bottle and can turn into smoke in order to escape. James listens to Julia read him the story of the fisherman who finds a djinn in a bottle and then tricks the djinn into helping him. The fisherman tells the djinn another story in the middle of his own story, but Julia skips that one in the interests of brevity.
"Read me another," James says when she is finished. "Please?" It is very cozy in here with the lamp on Julia's nightstand providing the only light, and her blankets now tucked protectively around his legs, and the comforting sound of her voice just over his head. It is still storming outside but he is no longer afraid of it.
Julia turns the pages some more, finally settling on a story called "The Ebony Horse", because it is about a mechanical horse that can fly into space. "All the way to the sun," she explains.
James thinks this story is more interesting than the first one, although he was intrigued by a man who could fit into a bottle and live there for hundreds of years, but he has had a long and full day, and even though the story is exciting, his eyelids get heavier and heavier until he falls asleep.
words: 2332
total words: 16,310
quickie research: the ny stock exchange, gilded age bedrooms, one thousand and one nights (god bless wikipedia, seriously)
He lets Julia tell him everything she and Mrs Godwin did that day, as well as what they ate for lunch, where they ate it, and the fact that the waiter looked like the father of one of her friend Caroline Watterson from school. But of course it was not him - Julia's friend's father is a banker who works downtown, and if he were a waiter, he could not afford to send his daughter to Julia's school.
"Perhaps he has a long-lost brother," James suggests, "who is working in a restaurant not knowing that his brother is a banker in the very same city."
Julia seems to consider this. "Perhaps. A long-lost twin, separated at birth by a greedy midwife who could not have children of her own, and who did not tell their mother that she was carrying twins. Each of them always wanted a brother as he was growing up. And little do they know that they each have a brother, and moreover grew up in the same city. Perhaps the waiter lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children, one of whom is a daughter Caroline's age."
"Does Caroline want a long-lost cousin?"
"We shall say for the sake of her father's long-lost twin that she does."
They continue on in this vein for another ten minutes, until Luisa appears to collect James and herd him upstairs, so that when his parents finally return home, the house is soothing and quiet for them.
"But I must ask Momma if Liam and Sean can visit next Saturday," he tells her. "I must know when she comes home."
"You will know," Luisa reassures him. "She will come into the nursery to say hello."
But she does not, in fact, come into the nursery to say hello, or at least she does not when James is there too. When he realizes his parents are both home and no doubt dressing for their dinner party, he runs down the stairs to their bedroom suite. It is normally off-limits to all the Godwin children, but this may be his only chance. And besides, he can hear his father singing somewhere inside, which must mean he is in a good mood, and if Mr Godwin is in a good mood, Mrs Godwin is likely to be in a good mood as well.
James finds her sitting at her dressing table brushing out her hair. She is already dressed and there are necklaces and bracelets piled on the table in front of her. She sees him in the mirror over the table and smiles at him, and he crosses the room to stand next to her chair.
"Hello, Master James," she says, pleased. "Have you come to keep me company while I finish getting ready?"
"Can Sean and Liam come over next Saturday?" he blurts out. Her expression does not change and she continues brushing her hair, but he cannot tell if this is good or bad.
"Mrs O'Donnell told me you were sliding around on the ballroom floor in your sock feet. You know you are not allowed in the ballroom when it is empty."
"I am sorry." And he is, for no other reason than it means Mrs O'Donnell (and most likey Luisa) will be keeping a close eye on him to make sure he does not do it again.
"But she also told me that her sons were having a very pleasant time with you. She is a good housekeeper, a very hard worker, and I would not want to lose her. If her sons are happy, she will be happy. And her sons seem to like you." She sets down her brush and ruffles his hair. "But do not think I have forgotten your adventure last weekend. This is a gift for Mrs O'Donnell too."
"So can they come back?"
"May they come back. And yes, they may. I will tell Mrs O'Donnell on Monday."
"Thank you!" James throws his arms around his mother's neck and she laughs. She smells like flowers.
"You are my favorite little boy, James Christopher," she says. "But behave, please."
"I will, Momma." He does not tell her about Sean jumping on Julia's bed, or how Liam had thirds at lunch and kept talking with his mouth full. He may have to learn how to be a good influence if he is going to be spending Saturdays with the O'Donnells, for someone will have to teach them better manners.
"Would you like to help me choose my jewelry for the evening? What do you think of this necklace?" She extracts a chain from the pile and holds it up to her neck. Hanging from it is a green jewel ringed with silver filigree. It is very pretty. "Or perhaps this one." The next necklace looks like a collar and is made of gold, with little blue stones and pears. The one after that is all jet beads, round ones and teardrop-shaped ones and ones like tiny tubes. James does not know which one he likes best.
Mr Godwin comes out of the dressing room straightening his cuffs and whistling. "Well, hello, James," he says cheerfully. "I hear you had an interesting kind of day today."
"Yes, sir," James says. He is intimidated by his father, even on the most casual of occasions, because Mr Godwin works many hours, and when he is not in his office he is in someone else's office or at the club or socializing with his partners and other captains of industry, and James does not see him much except for supper during the week, if there are no other engagements, and in the afternoons on Sunday.
There are easily twenty or twenty-five years between James' parents, and the weight and experience of those years gives Mr Godwin a gravitas that sometimes makes it hard for James to think of him as a father. But James knows he is a good and caring man - did he not adopt three of his workers' sons, when their mothers passed away and left them without family? - and thinks of him as a good father, and perhaps all small boys are intimidated by their fathers as well.
"Bryant," Mrs Godwin says, half turning in her chair, "do you think the jet is too gloomy for tonight?" She holds up the black-bead necklace.
"The jet is beautiful," he tells her, "as are you. You will be appropriately-dressed and stunning in whatever you choose to wear."
James wonders if this would be considered flirting, and if married people generally flirt with each other. He will have to ask Julia, who is his authority on such matters. He does not trust Con to give him a correct answer.
(Con had finally come home shortly before Mr Godwin, covered in grass and dirt and looking pleased with himself. When James asked where he had been all day, he said "Football", as if James should have known that.)
Mr Godwin looks at his watch, and says "I believe it is time for your supper" to James. "I would have guessed Julia or Luisa would have come looking for you."
"Are you not hungry?" Mrs Godwin asks, looking at James from her mirror again. She has put down the jet necklace and is wrapping the blue and pearl collar around her neck instead. "Go eat. We will say goodbye before we leave."
"Come." Mr Godwin holds out his hand for James, and walks with him down the stairs and to the smaller dining room, where Luisa is pouring milk for William and Aimee, and Con is already picking at the olives and dressed lettuce on his plate. Mrs Godwin believes in salad first, contrary to French tradition which would have them eating their salads last.
Con ignores his father, but Aimee and William both say hello, as does Luisa, and after a short chat, Mr Godwin goes back upstairs. Luisa pours James some milk. Julia wanders in, sits, and asks James if his friends will be back next week.
"Your friends are silly," Aimee announces.
"You are silly," James counters, and it is on the tip of his tongue to call her a cow, but he realizes in time that it would be rude and so does not say it.
"Children," Luisa says calmly. "Do not argue at the table."
Mr and Mrs Godwin come downstairs as Mrs Malcolm is setting out some fruit.
"Why is there no cake?" William asks.
"Because some small hooligans finished it under my nose this afternoon," she says, squinting her eye at James. He tries to look innocent. William glares at him. "I will make you another one on Monday."
"You will have cake tomorrow," Mr Godwin says from the doorway. "It will be from a bakery, but one must not look a gift cake in the mouth."
Both Mrs Godwin and Julia giggle.
"Goodnight, all my beautiful children," Mrs Godwin says. "Behave for Luisa." She blows them all kisses before she and Mr Godwin sweep out of the dining room and then out of the house, where the car is waiting for them.
James tries and fails to interest Aimee and William and Con in pretending to be pirates, but Luisa teaches him a card game that he can play with his friends at school, or with Sean and Liam when they come back next weekend, and he is satisfied. She stays long enough to make sure James and William and Aimee are in their nightclothes and have brushed their teeth and washed their faces, and then she tucks them into their beds and goes home to her own family.
James lies in bed and listens to the rain pouring down outside, hoping that Luisa does not get too wet on her walk to the subway station. She has told him about riding the subway and how it is faster than the streetcar, especially when the weather is bad or there is a lot of traffic. It is just a train in a tunnel, and he has been on a train, but he would still like to ride it with her one day, back to her neighborhood.
The storm outside is getting worse - he can now hear thunder and see the lightning beyond his curtains. He wishes Julia were in the room with him. She would make up stories about subway riders and conductors and what it would be like to get on a subway train near their house, and not get off until you were in Queens or Brooklyn, or on the beach.
He slides out of bed and tiptoes down the hall to Julia's room. Her door is closed most of the way but not pulled shut, and there is a light shining through the crack. James pushes the door open, making just enough noise for Julia to look up.
"Is the storm keeping you up?" she asks. She is sitting in bed, under the covers, reading a book. "It it very loud, isn't it." She pats the mattress next to her. "I can read to you, if you like."
James runs across the floor, climbs on the bed, and sticks his feet under the blanket. He looks over her shoulder at her book. There are no pictures, but he thinks he can easily read the type. "What are you reading?" he asks.
"It is called The Arabian Nights. It is about a Persian princess called Sheherazade. She marries a king who kills all his wives the day after they are married, so to save herself she tells him a story every night, falling asleep before she can finish, so that the king must keep her alive to know how the story ends. She tell him stories for a thousand and one nights, and then he lets her live."
"There are a thousand stories in this book?" James asks, impressed. It is not an especially large book. Perhaps they are very short stories.
"Oh, no, not all of them are in here. I do not know why. Let me find one to read you. Some of them are a bit naughty."
"Did you get it from Con?"
Julia laughs. "I bought it today. Momma told me I could have something for being so patient, and that is what I chose." She flips pages, looking for something to read to him. "Here, this is a short one - 'The Fisherman and the Djinn'."
"Read me a long one," James says. "What is a djinn?"
"He is a magical creature. Now hush and listen to the story."
James snuggles up against her as she starts to read. A djinn, as it turns out, is a man who lives in a bottle and can turn into smoke in order to escape. James listens to Julia read him the story of the fisherman who finds a djinn in a bottle and then tricks the djinn into helping him. The fisherman tells the djinn another story in the middle of his own story, but Julia skips that one in the interests of brevity.
"Read me another," James says when she is finished. "Please?" It is very cozy in here with the lamp on Julia's nightstand providing the only light, and her blankets now tucked protectively around his legs, and the comforting sound of her voice just over his head. It is still storming outside but he is no longer afraid of it.
Julia turns the pages some more, finally settling on a story called "The Ebony Horse", because it is about a mechanical horse that can fly into space. "All the way to the sun," she explains.
James thinks this story is more interesting than the first one, although he was intrigued by a man who could fit into a bottle and live there for hundreds of years, but he has had a long and full day, and even though the story is exciting, his eyelids get heavier and heavier until he falls asleep.
words: 2332
total words: 16,310
quickie research: the ny stock exchange, gilded age bedrooms, one thousand and one nights (god bless wikipedia, seriously)