Pears? Honestly? I don’t even know if I like pears; I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted one in my life. I suspect I may have consumed them in pureed form as an infant, but my memory does not go back that far. And I was firmly convinced there wasn’t a shadow of a pear in any of my stories. If it had been onions, now—onions are a versatile vegetable, with many inherent dramatic properties. But pears?
Still, necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. If one must write about pears, one writes about pears. Somewhere a very small wheel started turning in my mind, and eventually kicked the others into gear. So here’s the result. Since Rachel, to my mind, decidedly bent the rules by assigning us a topic she’d already written about, I feel entitled to bend them a little further and write something in the first-person again.
I am not going to tell you what this is from—or more accurately, what this could end up being a part of one day—because I’ve refused to let myself write it until I’ve finished about three other things. It ought properly to be a deep dark secret between me and the notebook and the private Pinterest board. I still don’t know how I got hoodwinked into Chatterboxing it.
Dear Leo,
Please excuse the horrible handwriting in the latest installment of this thrilling serial. My pen is still leaking, and I’m too exhausted to write legibly tonight. The smudges could serve a purpose, I suppose; if you’ve got any fingerprint experts on board they can compare the prints with my last letter (similarly smudged) and confirm that it’s not a forgery and really from me.Please excuse incoherence as well. I am writing this sitting at my desk with my aching feet up on the arm of an armchair. If you’ve a reasonably clear mind at present, which I don’t, perhaps you can help me solve a conundrum: how does one dispose of three crates of nearly-overripe pears? If the answer may be construed in any way as helping the war effort, so much the better.I should explain. I spent most of today helping to set up a hall for a Red Cross charity supper which is, hopefully, taking place at this minute. I’d spent several hours running back and forth answering frantic calls for chairs, silverware, string, scissors, and someone to tame a wild tablecloth, when I was summoned to a back door to confront a totally original problem. It seems that a Leading Citizen whose name I never did find out (and it’s lucky for him I didn’t) had decided to do his part by donating three large crates of pears.“Well, that’s nice,” I said, “but what are we going to do with them?”Nobody knew. They weren’t exactly on the menu for dinner, and there didn’t seem to be any gap in the program that could suitably be filled by three crates of pears. My fellow-laborer, a short and ingenuous person named Mandy, suggested that we make pear preserves and send them to the troops.“I wouldn’t wish that on the troops,” I said. “Anyway, it’s got to be something more immediate than that, because judging by their fragrance, these have about reached the peak of their usefulness. Well, let’s put them in the kitchen.”Mandy and I took a heavy crate and shuffled into the kitchen with it, but were thundered at by a volunteer cook that there wasn’t an inch of space left anywhere. We shuffled back out into the hall, set down the crate, and looked around. “There’s just too many,” said Mandy despairingly. “Even if we put one at every place we’ll have tons left over. Should we put them around in baskets?”“We are not putting a pear at every place,” I said firmly. “Not everyone likes pears. If they find the place lined wall to wall with them they might never contribute to the Red Cross again. We’ve got to be more unobtrusive. How do you hide a thousand pears in plain sight?”I was looking at a table, and had my great inspiration. The flowers hadn’t come yet, and there was an empty space in the middle of the table. “I know what I’ll do,” I said, seizing a pear in either hand. “A fruit centerpiece always looks elegant—and it’ll look as though it were planned. The flowers can go somewhere else.”I was never trained in fruit-arranging, but I think I did all right. In ten minutes I’d built a pyramid about a foot high. I was very carefully balancing the best-looking pear I could find on top, when Mandy came by again and looked at it admiringly. “That really does look nice,” she said.At that moment the entire pyramid collapsed, sending a chinook-flow of pears onto the floor and annihilating a couple of place-settings (I’m afraid the china was loaned for the occasion). Mandy was too horrified even to speak. I sat down matter-of-factly in the wreckage and thought about staying there, supper or no supper.“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do with them,” I said. And we did.We loaded all the pears back in the crates and lugged the crates up to the front of the platform where the band and speakers were to sit. We swathed them in red-white-and-blue bunting, and plopped a large pot of flowers (also highly fragrant) on top of each. The result, we thought, was quite artistic, but it’s going to be very aromatic in the region of the platform when the room gets warm tonight. I hope the musicians are not too sensitive to smells; it would be rather awful to have horn players punctuating the national anthem with sneezes.I don’t intend to be on hand when the pears are discovered tomorrow, and I hope Mandy isn’t, because I suspect she’s the kind who squeals. In that case, if you receive a suspiciously squashy and sweet-smelling parcel at next mail call, you have my full permission to toss it over the starboard rail (or the larboard; whichever’s closest). The Japanese are welcome to them.
Your exhausted and affectionate cousin,
Jody
Read previous Chatterboxes here.
Bound and Freed says
I LIKED this. I love the flow and the humor and the bit of everyday life that transported me far away through time and space into your story so effortlessly. I'd read a book that was written like this.
Rachel Heffington says
I am glad I extracted something secret because if it is This Sort of secret thing, it is worth bringing to light. I am amused! Yisssss.
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Bound and Freed – I'm so glad you liked it! I've discovered I really like writing in this style too, so hopefully there will be a whole book at some point…
Rachel – Ah, yes, but now you're going to have to wait to hear more, instead of going on in blissful ignorance. 🙂 But the time will come.
Hamlette says
Um… you've never eaten a pear? They're my favorite fruit!