Sharon Creech - Absolutely Normal Chaos

But then I started wondering why Alex and I hadn’t given each other nicknames, and then I started wondering if maybe he didn’t like me as much as Carl Ray likes Beth Ann, and then I started wondering why Alex hadn’t sent me roses.

Anyway. Beth Ann still has not heard from “the jerk.” If you ask me, she’s too busy drooling over Carl Ray to care very much anymore. She sure forgot Derek-the-Divine quickly.

Oh, and Beth Ann, my devoted best friend, has definitely decided to go to the GGP pajama party on Saturday night when I am off in West Virginia suffering through a week of Carl Ray. Some friend.

So now Alex. Ah, Alex. Tonight I met him halfway between his house and my house, and then we walked back to his house. The Big Moment: I was going to meet his parents. All the way there, he told me about them. He said his dad would be very quiet and serious and that his mother would be a little weird. When I asked him what he meant by weird, he said she changes moods quickly and dresses strangely sometimes and never sits still, but that she was real nice anyway.

Mrs. Cheevey was standing in the driveway aiming a bow and arrow at the garage when we walked up. She was wearing a black cocktail dress, pearls, and a pair of tennis shoes. On her head was a baseball cap. She shot a bow and arrow at the garage door. It landed right between two of the windows. “Bull’s-eye!” she shouted.

Then she heard us coming and turned around. “Oh hi, hi, hi,” she said, walking up to us. She was real pretty, with curly blond hair and a sweet round face.

She put her hand out to me. “Mary Lou, Mary Lou, Mary Lou!” she said. “That’s right, isn’t it?” She was smiling all over the place. She held out the bow and arrow. “Just practicing,” she said. “Want to try?”

I said, “Maybe later,” but I smiled a lot too.

“Well, come in, come in, come in,” she said. So we followed her inside. Alex lives in this enormous house on Lindale Street. The living room is about as big as our whole downstairs, and it looks, at first, as if it should be a picture in a magazine. But then, if you look more closely, you notice some strange things. Each set of windows has a different color of curtains, for example: red, gold, purple, black, peach, blue. On one side of the room, the furniture is all antique-looking: a huge ornate couch in green velvety material, a gigantic wooden cupboard, four of those dainty little chairs that you would expect little princesses to be sitting on, and lots of those little round tables with curved legs. Then on the other side of the room, everything is modern: a long white couch, two leather-and-metal chairs that each look like an enormous S, and a long black coffee table with metal legs and a wavy top that looks like a great big noodle.

Then the walls. On the antique side is this orange-and-green-patterned wallpaper, and on the modern side the walls are shiny yellow. One side of the room (guess which side!) has six huge portraits of very stern-looking grandmothers and grandfathers (I guess).

The other side had all kinds of interesting things on it: one of those paintings that looks like someone just stood back and flicked paint off a spoon; a stuffed pig’s head; a white plaster sculpture of an arm and hand coming right straight out of a piece of tin; a pair of red cloth lips, about two feet in diameter, with a stick of gum emerging from the center; and a long shelf (maybe six feet long) with hundreds and hundreds of little pebbles on it.

Mrs. Cheevey said, “Sit down, sit down, sit down,” and she motioned us to the antique side of the room. We sat down. “Oh,” she said, “I just love it, love it, love it, when Alex brings someone home!” Then she started calling for her husband, “Oh, Ralph, Ralph, Ralph.”

Pretty soon Ralph came in. Wow! He is about seven feet tall, about as tall and skinny as anyone I have ever met. First I saw his feet coming down the stairs, and they were e-nor-mous. He wore gigantic leather sandals. Then I saw his legs coming down the stairs. He wore blue jeans, and his legs just kept coming and coming. I didn’t think there was a body attached. Then I saw hands and arms hanging down; these long, swinging things in a red plaid shirt. Pretty soon a long neck and then, surprisingly, a rather small head. I was glad that it was a small head, because I was beginning to think a giant was coming down the steps. His face is pale and freckled and he has brown hair.

He stepped into the room. “Oh, Ralph, Ralph, Ralph,” Mrs. Cheevey said, “this is Mary Lou!!” He nodded, but before he moved any farther, he motioned to the other side of the room with his hand. Alex and Mrs. Cheevey automatically got up, so I did too, and then we all went and sat on the other side of the room.

But as soon as we sat down, Mrs. Cheevey jumped back up and left the room. Mr. Cheevey said, “Son,” (I liked that, the way he said “son,” so formal and all), “do you and Mary Lou have plans for this evening?”

Alex said, “Yuh.”

Then Mrs. Cheevey came rushing back in the room with a plate of oysters! Ugh. I’d never eaten oysters, and I didn’t really feel like starting today, but it didn’t look like I had any choice. She balanced the plate of oysters on two of the waves of the noodlelike table and went rushing out again. Then she came back in with some purple napkins (cloth) and handed us each one and sat down. Then she got back up and passed the plate of oysters around.

We had each swallowed one oyster when Mrs. Cheevey jumped up again and said, “Oh! Ralph, Ralph, Ralph! The time. It’s so late, late, late.” She was already up and halfway out of the room.

Alex said, “Well, I’m glad you got to meet—”

Mr. Cheevey stood up. “Mary Lou Finney,” he said, and put out his hand, and I quickly wiped off the oyster juice on my purple napkin and put my hand out and he gently crushed all my fingers in his enormous hand.

Already Mrs. Cheevey was back, carrying a green parka, which she put over her shoulders. She was still wearing the black cocktail dress, pearls, baseball hat, and tennis shoes. Mr. Cheevey was still wearing his jeans and plaid shirt and sandals. They left. Dressed like that, they left.

Alex said, “They’re really nice, honest, once you get to know them.”

“Wow,” I said.

Alex and I were alone in his house. I started examining all the things on the walls—the pig’s head and the shelf with all the pebbles on it and the big pair of red lips with the gum sticking out the center. Can you imagine practicing kissing on those huge lips?!! I think Alex was more nervous than I was, because he was shuffling all around. We did try sitting on the long, white couch, but we felt pretty silly sitting there on that huge couch in the middle of that enormous room, so finally Alex suggested we go to the Tast-ee Freeze. It was a relief, to tell you the truth. And then, just to show you that it must be true about the quiet, romantic places not being all that they are cracked up to be, wouldn’t you know it, when we got out on the street and were passing Artie’s Automotive, that’s when he put his arm on my shoulder again!

Here is something for my manual: When the guy puts his arm around the girl while walking along, the girl might find it more comfortable to also put her arm around him at this time. She can put it sort of across his back. It is a little difficult to walk this way, and you won’t want to walk very far like this, but it’s a neat thing to do. The girl will find it difficult to think of things to say during this time, but the boy will carry on about something or other (basketball, for example), and the girl can get by with saying, “Mmm” or “Ah” or “Oh?” This way she can concentrate primarily on not tripping.

When other people do these things, it looks so easy . Don’t let that fool you.