The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton Page B
Authors: Leslye Walton
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the sun would suddenly become the moon. Its reflection would beam up at him, not from the crashing waves of the ocean, but from the still water of the reservoir. Then he’d look up and there she’d be, Laura Lovelorn, smiling her perfect smile and twirling her hair around the engagement ring on her finger. He’d think,
Oh
, and life would go on.
Jack Griffith and Laura Lovelorn met at a Whitman football game in their freshman year. Not just any football game. The Whitman Missionaries were facing off against the Willamette Bearcats, the team to beat for almost nine years running. That game would turn out to be the last game for three seasons, with the war causing a league-wide cancellation of the football program. Jack had been writing a letter to Viviane — a letter that would remain forever unfinished in his top desk drawer — when he left for the stadium with his dorm-mates. They were all donning blue-and-gold sweaters and belting out the school’s fight song.
Whitman, here’s to you . . .
In the stands Jack noticed a flash of copper-colored hair three rows below him. As the miserable game continued, with the Missionaries on their way to defeat, Jack watched the girl with the copper hair cheer after each Missionary score, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold.
Jack learned that Laura Lovelorn was a member of the Delta Gamma Society — noted by the tiny white shield she wore pinned to her sweater — and of the freshman Pep Club. She sold war stamps with the Minute Maids every Friday afternoon and was an accomplished ornamental swimmer — her routines could put famed synchronized swimmer Esther Williams herself to shame. Laura was also the daughter of a 1920 graduate whose donations to the college always surpassed even the most distinguished of other alumni. The Lovelorns lived in a large English Tudor – style mansion just outside of Spokane, where Laura’s father smoked cigars with his business associates in the library while his wife entertained their wives in the tearoom. They had a herd of award-winning Arabians and a vacation house on the coast. Most important, Jack noted, none of the Lovelorns were strange or unusual. No one could ever dare to call any of them a witch.
Not even Jack’s father.
When Jack walked into the drugstore that hot August day, he sat down on one of the metal stools in front of the soda fountain and ordered a cream soda. Viviane watched him sip the syrupy drink through a straw. Then Jack looked up at her and said, “I’ll never forget you.”
My poor mother ducked her head behind the counter and vomited.
SPRING — ALONG WITH THE ANTS , tulips, and hay fever — arrived early that next year. It was only late February, but the sun was warm on Viviane’s back. She sat on the front porch eating from the bowl of cherries resting on her lap. Handfuls of cherry pits and stems covered the floor.
Viviane was waiting. It was hardly a rational thing to do, but it was the only option she had. For seven long months her body became something she didn’t recognize anymore, and hope moved further and further away. She could barely see it anymore; as the months wore on, it had become a minuscule dot in the distance. But still she waited. Waited for Jack to come back for her.
The cherry tree along the side of the house had bloomed a season earlier than any other on the block. Throughout January, Viviane had watched the pink blooms scatter across the snow-covered lawn. Now the tree was bursting with cherries so red they were purple, and so large and ripe their skins were cracked, the juice leaking down the tree’s branches and soaking into the ground. All the jars of cherry jam Emilienne made, all the cherry pie they sold at the bakery, barely made a dent in the amount of fruit falling from the tree. Fortunately, cherries were the only food Viviane could manage to keep down, although the doctor — a man who only a few years before had been her pediatrician — claimed that she should no
Oh
, and life would go on.
Jack Griffith and Laura Lovelorn met at a Whitman football game in their freshman year. Not just any football game. The Whitman Missionaries were facing off against the Willamette Bearcats, the team to beat for almost nine years running. That game would turn out to be the last game for three seasons, with the war causing a league-wide cancellation of the football program. Jack had been writing a letter to Viviane — a letter that would remain forever unfinished in his top desk drawer — when he left for the stadium with his dorm-mates. They were all donning blue-and-gold sweaters and belting out the school’s fight song.
Whitman, here’s to you . . .
In the stands Jack noticed a flash of copper-colored hair three rows below him. As the miserable game continued, with the Missionaries on their way to defeat, Jack watched the girl with the copper hair cheer after each Missionary score, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold.
Jack learned that Laura Lovelorn was a member of the Delta Gamma Society — noted by the tiny white shield she wore pinned to her sweater — and of the freshman Pep Club. She sold war stamps with the Minute Maids every Friday afternoon and was an accomplished ornamental swimmer — her routines could put famed synchronized swimmer Esther Williams herself to shame. Laura was also the daughter of a 1920 graduate whose donations to the college always surpassed even the most distinguished of other alumni. The Lovelorns lived in a large English Tudor – style mansion just outside of Spokane, where Laura’s father smoked cigars with his business associates in the library while his wife entertained their wives in the tearoom. They had a herd of award-winning Arabians and a vacation house on the coast. Most important, Jack noted, none of the Lovelorns were strange or unusual. No one could ever dare to call any of them a witch.
Not even Jack’s father.
When Jack walked into the drugstore that hot August day, he sat down on one of the metal stools in front of the soda fountain and ordered a cream soda. Viviane watched him sip the syrupy drink through a straw. Then Jack looked up at her and said, “I’ll never forget you.”
My poor mother ducked her head behind the counter and vomited.
SPRING — ALONG WITH THE ANTS , tulips, and hay fever — arrived early that next year. It was only late February, but the sun was warm on Viviane’s back. She sat on the front porch eating from the bowl of cherries resting on her lap. Handfuls of cherry pits and stems covered the floor.
Viviane was waiting. It was hardly a rational thing to do, but it was the only option she had. For seven long months her body became something she didn’t recognize anymore, and hope moved further and further away. She could barely see it anymore; as the months wore on, it had become a minuscule dot in the distance. But still she waited. Waited for Jack to come back for her.
The cherry tree along the side of the house had bloomed a season earlier than any other on the block. Throughout January, Viviane had watched the pink blooms scatter across the snow-covered lawn. Now the tree was bursting with cherries so red they were purple, and so large and ripe their skins were cracked, the juice leaking down the tree’s branches and soaking into the ground. All the jars of cherry jam Emilienne made, all the cherry pie they sold at the bakery, barely made a dent in the amount of fruit falling from the tree. Fortunately, cherries were the only food Viviane could manage to keep down, although the doctor — a man who only a few years before had been her pediatrician — claimed that she should no
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