Being the avid reader Eudora was, it was bound to happen sooner or later. But rather than sooner or later, it happened on a rainy Tuesday when Eudora and Louisa found themselves surrounded by thick books and old newspapers in the fusty attic of Louisa’s home. Now Louisa was quite frightened of the attic and avoided it whenever she could. It was creaky, crowded,
and inhabited by a ghost, or at least Eudora liked to think so. She informed Louisa of this whenever she had the opportunity, always adding on to the gruesome tale she had invented, scaring Louisa half out of her mind. And because of the irresistible powers of suggestion, Eudora soon had Louisa just as convinced that there was an unfortunate baker trapped in the attic as she was. Why Eudora had set her fancy on a baker Louisa never knew, but she thought it must have something to do with Eudora’s insatiable sweet tooth, or the way the smell of Marshall’s Bakery wound itself into the attic rafters from the corner down the street. Whatever the reason, they sat there that Tuesday deliciously scared.
“Dora, why don’t we just have our meetings in my room? It’s much more comfortable.” Louisa suggested with an air of complacency, as if sitting in the haunted attic didn’t bother her in the least.
Eudora leaned against a stack of ancient encyclopedias and folded the paper she was reading.
“Louisa, if we’re going to have a top secret meeting, it needs to be in a top secret place, one with atmosphere and depth and…”
“Dust?” Louisa suggested.
Eudora merely rolled her eyes. “Dust is good for the soul. It’s in all the greatest libraries, Lou. The places are just covered in it. You need to learn to appreciate it for its literary depth.”
Louisa made an attempt to appreciate dust for a moment while Eudora impatiently went back to reading her crumbling newspaper.
“Depth or no depth, I can’t breathe up here.” Louisa grumbled to herself.
It was then that it happened, that Eudora had a superb and quite ambitious idea. But then, Eudora was known for her superb and quite ambitious ideas.
“Lou, you know how we can have literary depth? We need to become great writers!"
“Writers? How?” Louisa answered, her curiosity piqued by Eudora’s excitement.
Eudora swept her hands around the silent, book-filled attic. “We’ll write here! What better place to conquer literature than your attic? To master poetry? To pen prose? Me and you, we’ll be better than those Dickens and Poe people!”
Louisa did not look very convinced. But then, if you had been friends with Eudora for as long as Louisa had, you might not look very convinced either.
“Oh really? Better than them?”
Eudora nodded quite vigorously. Almost a little too vigorously, if you don’t mind my saying so. People have been known to get cricks in their necks from nodding so vigorously. I know because I too have nodded quite vigorously and gotten a crick because of it. But I digress. Eudora was nodding vigorously.
“Sure! What did Poe and Dickens have that we don’t have?”
Louisa, who was never one to answer any question without a great deal of thought, took a moment to ponder this over. Finally she said:
“Well it would seem to me that they don’t have much that we don’t have ourselves. Except gravestones. Because sometimes being dead makes people think you’re smarter somehow, you know. . .”
A wise observation, don’t you think?
Eudora seemed to accept this with a reluctant nod and quietly murmured “Dead!” in a way Louisa really didn’t like much. To put this idea off from Eudora’s head, she added:
“And they probably had beards! Does that make a big difference you think? Having a beard to pull at when you’re writing? I wouldn’t think so, but maybe it does.”
Eudora nodded vigorously again. “We’ll ask my dad. He has a beard that he pulls whenever he’s looking at how much money my mom has spent. Go on, what else?”
“I guess that’s about all they had that we don’t, except I think they wrote with those neat looking feather pens.”
“Yes,” Eudora said, her eyes widening, “that’s bound to make ideas flow better or something, otherwise they would have just used computers or regular pencils and stuff. Maybe we should get a couple of feathers so our ideas will flow. If we did, I’ll bet we’d get famous real quick.”
“Yeah. Hey! I want a big fancy peacock feather!” Louisa exclaimed. She sighed happily at the thought of feathered calligraphy and charming flourishes in gold ink, but then slumped a little, frowning. She didn’t know it, but Poe would have been a bit jealous of her frown, so somber and depressing it was. Very Annabel Lee like, I don’t mind telling you.
“And I want a red feather! It’ll be at least three feet long and. . .” Eudora noticed Louisa’s slump and instantly became alarmed (I told you it was a very depressing frown).
“Goodness Louisa! Whatever in a green meadow is the matter? Perk up! We’re on our way to riches and fame and extravagant feather pens and all you can do is mope about? For shame!”
Louisa merely slumped again and managed (if it is even possible), to look even more morose. She sighed. “Oh it’s not that. I want to have a feather pen and be grand, I really do! But. . .”
“But! But what? Come, come Louisa, we could be writing great literature! Out with it!”
“Well...” Louisa said slowly, “To be quite truthful, I don’t really want to be a writer!”
“Hmmmm.” Eudora looked deeply into Louisa’s eyes (being the soulful writer she was) and began to pace the attic floor, its boards squeaking their protest under her socked feet.
“That does present a problem. No…” Eudora said, then proclaimed, “A dilemma! That’s what it presents. A most disturbing dilemma. My! I bet that word would look quaint written with a red feather pen.” She sighed. “But! Not a writer, Louisa? Us, not a team? Hmmm.” and began to pace again.
Finally, when Louisa had begun to think that their future best seller was lost forever, Eudora smiled in a triumphant manner and turned to beam at her friend.
“Louisa, this is better! Even better! You can be editor-in-chief of my works. Don’t you see? It’ll be wonderful. We’ll write day and night right here, with our glorious feather pens, and nothing but an old oil lamp and no heat. Our fingers will be cracked and peeling because we’ll have no way to keep warm. And no food, either! We’ll….we’ll be like…Bob Crachet in Scrooge’s office!”
Eudora began performing a sideways hobble across the room, hunched over in feigned agony, bemoaning a fatal case of writer’s block.
“You look more like the hunchback of Notre Dame.” Louisa said gently, trying not to squelch Eudora’s passionate frenzy. “And…” Louisa attempted to keep her voice below squeaking level, “what about the baker? Won’t he, uh…interrupt our work?”
“No! Don’t you see? It’s the whole point of having no food! We’ll smell sticky buns where there are no sticky buns, he’ll taunt us with cookies from beyond the grave…”
“Beyond the grave…” Louisa echoed. The girls stared at each other.
“So, you want to do it?” Eudora asked.
Two hours later, the author and the editor had set up a productive office in their haunted surroundings, with a thesaurus, six dictionaries, an abundance of yellow legal pads, and two Styrofoam cups drained of their lemonade. Having searched the entire house for fancy feather pens and finding none, Eudora suggested borrowing a few feathers from Mrs. Argyle’s chicken coop until they could find more suitable ones.
“No wonder Flannery O’Connor kept peacocks, that’s all I have to say!” Eudora declared, after Louisa had flatly refused for the fifth time to go feather hunting (or “greatness plucking” as Eudora had called it).
“That’s probably where she got her inspiration for all her stories. I’ll bet she had a whole room of peacock feather pens!”
But Louisa was not to be mollified by Eudora’s words. She told Eudora that if Miss Flannery wanted to chase around birds in order to get famous that was her business, and that she was very happy being a normal, non bird chaser, thank you very much.
Accepting that good ‘ol Lou was not to be budged, Eudora settled down instead to an old typewriter that belonged to Louisa’s father, and that had long been stored in the deep recesses of the family attic. She was putting the final artistic flourishes on her poem about orange creamsicles (her 17th poem of the day), when she heard a crunching noise. She looked up to see Louisa absent-mindedly chewing on a Styrofoam cup, the soft rim beyond recognition as she studied Eudora’s work. Louisa noticed Eudora’s stare and said haughtily:
“Every editor has a horrid and despicable vice. Chewing on Styrofoam cups is mine.”
“Well!” Eudora suggested, “Why don’t you take up smoking instead? I’ve seen loads of editors with pipes. Much more distinguished you know.”
Louisa thought seriously about the smoking matter, trying in vain to summon all the famous editors she knew with pipes. “Who?” she finally asked.
“Oh, you know Lou. Just positively loads of them, and that’s all. Scads! Too many to name…maybe even half a dozen. Well, I suppose your mother wouldn’t let you anyway.”
Louisa nodded, leaned gracefully over the trash can, and spit a wad of Styrofoam out that would have put any pipe smoker to shame. “It would probably make it unbearably stuffy up here, too” she pointed out to Eudora.
“Oh well!” Eudora said, slightly exasperated. “I guess Styrofoam chewing is good enough. But you gotta make sure you chew at least twenty cups a day, otherwise it’s only a habit, not a despicable vice.”
While Louisa ran to the kitchen to retrieve more Styrofoam objects, Eudora began her 18th poem of the day, an ode to Portugal, a country she knew nothing about.
“I may have a book out before my next birthday.” she thought, punching out the words of her next poem on the old typewriter.
When Louisa returned with her new vice, Eudora pushed the Portugal poem across the table and stretched with accomplishment. “Well Editor Lou, what dost thou thinkest?” (Eudora was feeling very much in a literary mood, and saying words like thinkest made her feel like Shakespeare’s apprentice ).
“Do you know anything about Portugal?”
Eudora sighed. “Louisa, rule number one. Only write about very exotic places. Portugal is just about the most exotic place on earth to write about. It’s an excellent poet’s paradise.”
“But do you know anything about Portugal?”
“My heart knows about Portugal.”
“Your heart is a severely misguided place.”
“Read it back to me then, Louisa. You’re taking all the fun out of this.”
Louisa began to read:
“Portugal: A Poem by Madame Eudora, I explored the Hills…”
“No, no Louisa. It’s all wrong. I explored the hills, not just merely searched them. Read it with emotion, like. . .like you almost lost your mind!”
Louisa made a second attempt:
“I explored the Hills of Portugal, with a pack of Pez in my hand. I watched the Eskimos dance…”
“Read Eskimos with sorrow.” Eudora interrupted. “Eskimos are the essence of Portugal. Their presence is important to the poem, and the Pez. They love Pez.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive! Now read!”
Louisa began to read a third time, but was interrupted again when she reached the line about spaghetti.
“Now Louisa. Read spaghetti like you’ve got a whole plate of it, and the noodles are coming out of your mouth and it’s deliciously covered with Parmesan.”
After Louisa practiced saying “spaghetti” the proper way seven times and had been coached on the proper theatrical motions of poetry, Eudora wanted her start all over again.
Louisa just crossed her arms.
“Am I the editor or aren’t I?”
“I just want you to realize how good it is!”
“I can’t if you keep interrupting!”
“Fine I won’t say anything, I promise. Just read it all the way through once more, please. But with feeling! And all the movements I wrote down for you.”
“I feel like Hiawatha. Is this poetry or interpretive dance?”
“Both, now read!”
Louisa gave Eudora her best “I’m fed up with this” face and read the poem, emphasizing all of Eudora’s ridiculous gestures and hand motions so she would never have to read it again:
Portugal
A poem by:
Madame Eudora
I explored the Hills of Portugal
With a pack of Pez in my hand. (here you should hold an imaginary Pez dispenser up in your hand. It will look very poetic.)
I watched the Eskimos (sobbing) dance,
Around penguins in a trance. (Walk like a penguin. And walk like you mean it, Lou!)
Exotic! Romantic! Brimming! (jumping up and down)
With crazy passionate lovers,
Eating spaghetti in the Portuguese way.
I walked across the mountains, (marching motions)
Dusted valleys with my feet,
Nearly killed an orphan, for a bite
Of porcupine meat.(sweeping arm across forehead)
I explored the Hills of Portugal,
With a pack of Pez in my hand,
Came back with 18 bruises, (Cringe)
A conqueror of that land. (Dance around in circles)
Louisa bowed deeply and looked up at Eudora, hoping her dramatic performance had satisfied her friend’s ridiculous whim. To her great surprise, Eudora’s eyes were misty with a pride only a new author could have.
“Bravo! It was beautiful!” Eudora exclaimed, launching herself on top of the table (and almost upsetting the typewriter).
Louisa smiled in relief.
“Let’s do the same thing with all of them!” Eudora shouted.
Louisa only sighed. “It’s easier to be an editor than a best friend.” she muttered.
