[stylist] Workshopping: Lucy and Lithe Chapter 3

[Bonnie Mosen]

Hi Thea, I absolutely love this story and hope you keep writing it. It keeps my attention and makes me want to continue reading.

Bonnie 

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Cc: Miss Thea <thearamsay at rogers.com>; Writer's Division Mailing List <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [stylist] Workshopping: Lucy and Lithe Chapter 3

Chapter Three

The Letter



Lucy jumped up and down, twirled, and whooped. “Read it, Daddy> Read the letter.”

“Oh, Jim darling!” Lucy’s mother was in hysterics.

Her dad was speechless, unable to talk for shaking and streaming eyes. All he could say was a mindless “Oh my God, someone’ll take us. Oh my God.”

“Daddy!” Lucy’s shrill voice cut through. Dad shook himself, picked up the letter his nerveless fingers had dropped, and cleared his throat. He gave the stranger a wan smile. “Sorry about the … um … Well, what I mean is, if we hadn’t found a place …”

The old man nodded. 

Lucy watched her dad as he took a deep breath, somehow stopped shaking, cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith: The government of Andorpha is ecstatic …” He stopped. “Ecstatic? Hmm.” He continued. “ecstatic to open our hearts and homes to you, granting you refugee status for as long as you may need to be among us. 

“Upon reading your application, we have found a most compatible living situation. Your house is to be on the estate of the Earl and Lady Dearheart, who have a daughter just the age of your little one. It is our hope that the little Lady Lithe Dearheart will offer comfort and cheer to your child, who will certainly miss her world and the things she is used to.”

“Cool,” Lucy whispered. “What a pretty name. Lithe. Did they send her picture?”

“No, princess. The letter says, “we are sorry for one thing. Our planet is in perpetual winter, with temperatures averaging forty below zero year round. We hope this still makes our offer viable?”

“What’s that mean?” Lucy asked.

“They want to know if we’ll stil go.”

“Heck, yes!”

“So the letter gives us an address, and a date when they can begin to accommodate us, and so on.” Dad closed the letter.

“This calls for a celebration, winter or no,” Mom said. “Mr. Smith?”

“Yes?” Both Jim and the old man answered.

Everyone laughed.

As they sat around the table enjoying the shepherd’s pie they were too depressed and frightened to eat an hour ago, Lucy asked, “Mister, have you got a place?”

He nodded. “Heaven, my dear.”

“Dad, couldn’t he come with us? You’re both named Smith. You could say he’s my grandpa.” Lucy’s smile, all the more winsome for a lost front tooth, covered the old man. “I’d sure like you for my grandpa.”

“Thank you, no, sweetheart. I’ve lived my life. I’m very old, and sick most of the time. My darling wife Judy is in Heaven, waiting for me.”

“Glass of wine, sir?” Dad asked.

The man nodded with thanks. “Call me Henry. You’re Jim, aren’t you?”

“Yes, and this is my lovely wife, Donna, and our daughter, Lucinda Sue.”

Lucy’s smile engulfed her father. “Don’t you mean lovely daughter, Daddy?”

The adults laughed.

“How much did you get off the tooth fairy for that?” Henry pointed a gnarled finger at the gap.

“I hit her up for twenty bucks. Got five.”

Henry chuckled. “Guess you can’t get everything with that smile of yours.”

“Most things, though, right, Dad?”

Lucy swung her legs happily till she accidentally kicked their guest under the table. “Oops, sorry.” She quelled the habit with difficulty.

“Just for that, you’ll have to give me a picture. You and your whole family.”

“Oh, Lucy,” her mother sighed, “those legs.”

“I’m so excited, Mom.”

“Ever think of dancing, young lady?”

“I’d sure like to do ballet or something. Maybe like ice dancing, like you see on TV sometimes.”

After supper and wine and some talk, they gave the old man a picture to take home, thanking him again and again for finding the letter.

At bedtime, Lucy asked if she could hold the letter under her pillow.

Mom shook her head. “How about a brochure, sweetheart? We’ll need the letter to present to the resettlement officials, and probably at the airport., too.”

“When do we go? When can I talk to Live?”

Her dad chuckled. “Lithe, honey, not Live.” He pronounced the name, emphasizing the th sound.

“It’ll be fun, living with royalty. How should I talk to them, Your Highness or Your Majesty or what?”

“Well, we’ll have to see,” Mom said. “Here on Earth, an earl is nobility, though not royalty, like a king and queen.”

“Bet they’re rich.” Lucy rubbed vigorous hands together.

“Maybe,” Dad said, handing her a brochure. “Off you go.”

On her way to her room, Lucy said, “Dad, Lucy Week’s over, right?”

“Do you want it to be? I’ve been saving for this trip for years, and we can go as early as two weeks from now. We’ll have to buy as much warm clothes as we can to survive the climate. We’ll be busy packing. Why, what did you want?”

“I’d like to go back to school.”

He raised an eyebrow. “My goodness, it’s gonna snow in June.”

“It better not.” The command in Lucy’s voice made her parents chuckle.

Lucy looked at the brochure in bed. Snowscapes. There were people sliding down hills on home-made toboggans, or things very nearly like them, and people skiing on flat ground, instead of downhill. They all looked happy, and warm. Every single person she saw was covered from head to toe in fur.

“Boy, they are rich,” she whispered to the toy cat.

In the morning, she got ready for school, humming a tune. There was cereal instead of bacon, eggs and pancakes. Oh well. She liked cereal, too.

“Goodbye, fake mother. Goodbye, fake father,” she said, quoting the lines from Stewart Little.

“Goodbye, fake daughter.”

Lucy stage-whispered, “You mean, fake son,” and skipped out the door.

She ran up the few stairs on the schoolbus, and skipped to an empty seat. She took no notice of the gloomy, frightened faces around her.

As she approached her classroom, she heard Mrs. Talbott’s voice. 

“… parents want you children to know the truth. You see, some children aren’t lucky enough to find new worlds to live on, and their parents feel it’s much kinder to go to Heaven together than take their chances on a doomed world. That’s what Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Lucy …”

She could stand it no more. Rushing into the class, she said, “We didn’t do it, Mrs. Talbott. We found a place!”

Everyone stood up and cheered. Her best friend Kimmy rushed up to her, her face tear-stained, and burst into fresh tears. “Oh, Lucy! I’m so glad for you.”

They hugged till Mrs. Talbott bade them take their seats. 

All the kids babbled at once. Where was she going? Did she know anyone there? Did she have pictures?

She held up the brochure and was asked to speak to the class.

She told them everything she knew. 

Pandemonium reigned. Lucy felt like bullets were coming at her, as the questions shot from one excited kid to the next. What did Lithe look like? Didn’t they get hot, wearing all that fur? What did they look like under the fur? How old was Lithe? Were the Earl and Lady Dearheart rich? Had she a picture of them? Had she met them on SpaceNet yet?

Mrs. Talbott came to the rescue. “Children, please. Everybody take your seats, please. Remember that Lucy just found out.”

Lucy took her seat as well and tried to concentrate on English. Mrs. Talbott said, “Here’s a new word in honor of Lucy. Come and write on the blackboard for me, sweetie?
“Sure, Mrs. T.” Lucy said.

“The new word for today is l-i-t-h-e. It’s pronounced lithe, and it means graceful, supple, moving gracefully. Dancers are said to be lithe, as are cats, lionesses and so on. Now, who wants to be the first to use ‘lithe’ in a sentence? Ok, Lucy, let’s have it.”

“My new sister’s name is Lithe.”

“Sister?” Kim asked. “Since when?”

“Well, see, on Andorpha, I guess everyone is family. The government sent us a really strange letter. It wasn’t formal. It was like they were personally over the moon about us coming.”

At recess, Lucy sat on a swing between her two friends, Kimmy and Stevie, and drank in beautiful early summer. June favored them with thickly perfumed air, as apple blossoms sent out their candy fragrance. Lilacs colored the playground. The sun smiled on her shoulders, face, and arms, while a gentle breeze kept it from being too hot. Bees sipped out of flowers, then buzzed away. Cicadas buzzed too. Robins and cardinals made crystal music, while fluffy clouds sailed by. Someone had recently mown the grass. It even smelled green. 

This is it, she thought, opening her mind and all her senses to it. Crying was not allowed, not after what her parents had almost had to do 

"Luce?" She fixed in her memory the feel of the wooden swing and the sound of its squeaking as she moved as high as she could, the sound of Kim's and Stevie's voices going back and forth.

“Oh, Lucy, earth to Lucy.”

“Sorry, Kim. They don’t have summer there, you know. I was just … fixing everything in my head.

“What’s the name of the place you’re going to?”

“Andorpha.”

“What do you mean, they don’t have summer?” Stevie asked, his voice going back and forth. 

“Just what I said. The average temp is forty below.”

“Wow,” Kim said. “Bet you used a few blankety-blanks when you heard that. You love summer.”

“Normally, yeah, but if it hadn’t been for Andorpha, we’d be dead.”

Kim nodded. “Gee, I sure wish I was going.”

Lucy stopped the swing, and looked at her friend, who was wearing leotards again, instead of shorts. “The bastards did it to you again, didn’t they?” Lucy whispered. “I’ll kill ‘em! I’ll effin’ kill ‘em!”

“What’s going on, girls?” Stevie asked.

“Sorry, Steve, don’t mean to be rude, but … well, it’s girl stuff, okay?”

“If you mean Kim, and her dad, I know about that.”

“Yeah. Well I’m gonna do something about it.”

“Lucy, what can you do?” A tear rolled down Kim’s face. “I’m so hot in these damn things.” She kicked out at nothing.

“And they make you wear jeans on the beach, because those drunken sons of bitches can’t keep their hands to themselves. I get it, there’s a war on, and a lot of people are unhappy, but that’s no excuse. You didn’t start the effin’ war! Don’t you worry about it, Kimbo. I’m gonna do something about it.”

“What?”

“Well, Lithe’s parents are an earl and … queen or princess, or whatever an earl’s wife is called. Lithe at least has to be a princess. We’re going to live on a house on their estate, and you’re coming with us.”

“But the cold.”

“It’s better than getting’ hit.”

 “I agree,” Stevie said.

“You going someplace, Stevie?”

He shook his head. “Nah, not yet. When you leaving, Lucy?”

“Couple weeks.”

“Wish I was going,” Kim whispered.

Lucy almost glared at her. “You are going if I have to sneak you aboard that ship.”

The bell rang. They trudged back to class, Lucy taking in every flap of a bird’s wing, breathing in the perfumed air, the crystal music, and the sun. 

“Lucy, how you gonna get me aboard that ship?” Kim whispered. “What if Princess Lithe doesn’t like an extra person?”

“She’ll like it,” Lucy said, as if Lithe had better.

“Or else,” Stevie said. 

Lucy grinned. “That’s right. Kim can be my sister, and if these Andorphians are as loving as they seem, why should they mind? Hell, Kimbo, we’ll be the trio: you, me, and Lithe. Mom and Dad’ll be your new parents. You just watch.”

For three days and nights, Lucy lobbied endlessly for Kim. Her parents always said the same thing. 

“Lucy, we can’t take your friend. We know they beat her, and we wish we could. But we simply can’t.”

“Why not?” Lucy felt as close as she ever did to exploding.

“Well, for one thing,” her mother said, “when we put in the application, we said one child, not two.”

“Mom …”

“Sorry, hon. I really am.”

The shopping trip should have been a joyful event as Lucy and her mom bought expensive furs for a song from people who were either going offworld or going with what was commonly called ‘the choice’ or ‘the awful choice’. But Lucy and her parents argued over Kim.

Finally, her father said, “Dammit, Lucy, we’ll have the girl over the weekend we move. But she can’t come with us, and that’s final!”




Thea Ramsay
Wellness Coach
Herbalife Distributor
www.GoHerbalife.com/thea-ramsay/en-CA