This is my brain in love

The woman who confronts me on her front step is about as old and brittle as they come. Her eyes are dull, a pasty blue. Her face practically disappears beneath layer after layer of wrinkles, and her pale skin looks as though it hasn’t seen the sun in years.

We stare at each other for a moment before I speak. “Um, hello ma’am.” I say, feeling myself shrink under her harsh gaze. “Does a Matthew Roberts live here?”

Her eyebrows furrow. “Gah!” she says. “What do you want?” She prods me with her cane, and I jump away. 

“I think I found something of his,” I stammer. “A book - or a diary. A journal. It has his name in the cover.”

Her gaze softens a bit. “Oh,” she says. “No, no Matthew Roberts lives here any longer.” She points her cane to nowhere in particular. “He’s off somewhere else now, I suppose.”

Before I can think of anything to say, she nods to the foyer. “Would you like to come in? You sound like an honest man, I’d guess you haven’t read that book.” She stumbles into the house, and I slip in after just before she uses the hook of her cane to slam the door shut. “Why don’t we have a look at it together. I haven’t seen that thing in over a dozen years, I think.”

She turns into the kitchen, and I follow her, for reasons I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I hear faint music coming from the living room. I begin to wonder why I’m here.

“Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden was burned to make way for a train, for a train…”

“I’m his wife, If you’re wondering,” the old woman says to me. Her voice is strong and projects throughout the whole home. “Eleanor Gramms Roberts. ‘Bout the most American name there is, I’d say.”

I nod lamely. Eleanor leads me into the living room, feels her way around until she finds the couch, then sits. An old record player sings softly behind us. I can tell this is a different song than the one I heard before.

“If this was the cold war we could keep each other warm…”

Eleanor gestures to the empty chair across from her. “Sit down.” I do. “You have that book?”

“Yes,” I say. I rummage through my bag before pulling out a worn, beaten journal. It has a red leather cover. On the inside, a name is neatly printed in pen:

Matthew Brandon Roberts

“Give it to me,” Eleanor demands. She’s holding out a tiny, rough hand. There is a small moment of silence between us. “Please,” she adds finally. I lean over and place it in her palm. 

All I hear is the smooth voice of the man on the record player as she fumbles with the diary. 

“You could hold me here forever, like you’re holding me tonight…”

Eleanor is staring right ahead. Her eyes seem to have cleared, like they’re coming alive again. She runs her hand over the book again and again. Two more songs pass before she hands it back to me and says simply “read.”

I open the diary. Again, I wonder why I’m here. The first page has nothing but a drawing. It’s of an orange, half peeled. It’s not very well done, and I take a moment to figure it out before I describe it to Eleanor. “It’s an orange,” I say. “Sitting on a table. It’s half eaten, I think.”

I turn the page. Here, there is the same neat print that Matthew’s name is written in. There is no date. I begin to read.

“I believe I met my future wife today.” I hold back a laugh. Confident first sentence, I’d say. “I believe I might still be in shock, because I bought this book and drew the first orange of my life and now I’m writing in it, as well.”

I look up. Eleanor has a small smile on her face, like she’s remembering, more than she is listening. I look back down at the book.

“The reason I drew the orange is because I could never draw anything like the woman I saw today without disgracing her and myself. So I drew the thing that will forever remind me of her. The thing in my hand when I saw her.

I might have disgraced the orange, of course.”

Eleanor chuckles. I smile to myself.

“But I don’t think even the greatest artist of any kind could have captured that wonderful girl. With that hair… those eyes… that smile…

Describing her, even, is like trying to describe everything all at once. Everything, everything, everything.”

I stop, because the newest song has caught my attention. The guitar has changed to a simple piano pattern, and the singer’s voice is heavy and sad, swinging with the melody.

“He opens his eyes, falls in love at first with the girl in the doorway…”

“I’m sorry, but who is that?” I ask. 

“Who?” says Eleanor. 

“The singer,” I say. “On the record.”

“Ah,” She leans heavily on her cane. “That’s old Josh. Matthew liked him a good bit, and I’m rather fond of him myself. Especially now that…” She trails off. “Josh Ritter, that is. Matthew and I are older than him by a few years, I’d say. But the years with Josh’s first albums in them were the best of our marriage. Matthew and I agree on that.”

“Oh,” I say. 

“Well, anyway, keep reading. We don’t have all day.”

“My beautiful wife-to-be. If I can ever learn her name, that is. Right now, all she is to me is the woman who is like a beam of light in a gray world who asked me where the library was and if it had any real books in it.

I think I pointed her the wrong direction. I think I will regret that for the rest of eternity.

Right now, though, I’ll focus on getting a name. Finding her, getting her name.

Simple enough, isn’t it?”

I turn the page. It is another drawing, this one of a collage of a hundred tine question marks, surrounding one word: NAME. I would have thought this was a book belonging to a mad man if I didn’t have the context. Then I notice underneath, at the very bottom of the page. “This is my brain in love.”

I smile, then describe it to Eleanor. 

“I think I remember him showing me that drawing, actually. It was a long time ago.” She pauses. “I told him it was the most foolishly romantic thing he had ever done. I asked him why he had never shown it to me before.” She pauses again “Well, keep reading”. 

I oblige.

“I found out her name! 

The name of my perfect wife-to-be is Eleanor. Eleanor Gramms. Eleanor Gramms Roberts, maybe?

I am a foolish, foolish man. How could someone as perfect as Eleanor Gramms love a foolish man such as Matthew Roberts? I cannot tell you, no, I cannot. But I will keep after her until she is my own.

I am no poet, but I’ll say one thing: I’d follow you, Eleanor Gramms, unto the ends of the earth and back. I’d follow you to wherever it may be you go. I’d walk over every mile of this earth if it meant I’d get to have my eyes on you for the rest of my life.”

Eleanor shakes her head. “He was dead wrong about one thing. I didn’t deserve him one bit. He was too good for a prideful little girl like me.”

I turn the page. Here, there is more writing, accompanied by a simple drawing of a stick-person with heart-shaped eyes who is stomping its foot. “She evades me still! She smiles at me, and I practically trip over my own feet! But then! But then! I gather the courage to talk to her, I walk up to her, and she twirls her long braid in my face and walks away. There I stand, dumbstruck, awestruck, fooled and everything else that may come in between!” I laugh a bit, staring at the old bones-and-skin woman in front of me, trying to imagine her as the cocky, angel-like creature Matthew Roberts describes her as. 

I’ve figured out by now that Eleanor is practically blind, but it’s as if she can feel my gaze, because she waves it away, “Silly and vain, that’s what I was. How a sensible boy like Matthew could fall for me as hard as he says… it’s a mystery.”

“Have you read this before?” I ask.

“Bits and pieces. He showed me some things, and hid away the parts he called ‘embarrassing.’ I believe it ends with our marriage.”

I flip to the end. Sure enough, The last ‘chapter’ begins with the words “I have done it at last! The beautiful Eleanor is my wife!” I can almost feel the man’s ecstasy through his words.

“Did you ever have children?” I say. 

Eleanor shakes her head. “No. Just my sweet Matthew and me. That’s the way things are sometimes, I suppose. I liked it like that, though. I had Matthew all to myself.” She winks at me. “I told you I wasn’t quite as nice as he made me out to be.”

I grin at her. “Do you want me to keep reading?”

“Oh, why not. You might as well hear the rest. There’s not a whole lot before the marriage bit.”

“Finally, I have spoken to her. I looked her in the eyes and said “Hello, my name is Matthew. May I have this dance?” For, yes, we were at a dance. We are both seniors in College, and I asked her to dance with me. Some other boy had taken her, which panicked me for a moment. But they are just friends- he has his own girl, someone named Kathleen. He and Kathleen got in a fight, I think, and she went with someone else just to spite him. They do say that redheads have some tempers, and I think I believe it now.

But I am now infinitely grateful to Kathleen, because she makes me sure that Eleanor Gramms can still be mine, if I only have enough courage to make her mine.

She was wearing a magnificent dress- Sapphire blue, with a skirt that flowed out and cut off at her knees. I will remember that dress forever and ever. It is burned into my mind in the best possible way.”

“I remember that dress,” says Eleanor. “I wore that dress again for my friend's wedding- Kathleen and Bob’s, actually. Bob being the friend who took me to the dance. Interesting how these things come full circle, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I say.

“Anyway, it’s getting late. We’re almost to Henrietta, Indiana. You better skip to the engagement bit, it’s the best one.”

Henrietta, Indiana? I think, confused, before I realize it’s another Josh Ritter song. I hear it playing. It’s fast paced, the words spilling out of Josh Ritter’s mouth while the drum pounds away and the guitar strums softly. 

I keep listening as I skim through at least twenty pages. Matthew talks about the first time Eleanor called him her Beau, and he thought his heart was going to pound out of his chest. He writes about introducing her to his father, and how afterwards, his dad said she reminded him of Matthew’s mother, who died ten years earlier. “You couldn’t have found yourself a better woman, son. Strong willed and beautiful inside and out.”

Finally, I find the engagement part. I’m surprised he hadn’t mentioned anything about his plans to ask her to marry him beforehand. There is another drawing, taking up a whole page. It’s better than the ones at the beginning of the journal, and it’s partially colored. It depicts a ring with a fat band and a round orange-brownish gemstone at the center. I describe it to Eleanor. “Oh!” she says, and gets up as fast as is possible for her. “One moment, I’ll be right back.”

She disappears for at least ten minutes, while I continue to inspect the drawing. I find a footnote: “To remind you of our first encounter, Love.” 

I suddenly understand that the stone is meant to look at the orange from the first page. And that this is the engagement ring he gave to her. 

Eleanor returns a few seconds after. “This is it,” she whispers happily, and gently presses a ring that exactly matches the one in the drawing into my hand. I peer at it curiously. The band is slightly bent around the middle, and the gemstone is dull and dusty. “This is your engagement ring?” I say. Eleanor nods.

 “It doesn’t fit me any longer, with these creaky old knuckles of mine,” she says, holding up her hands. Sure enough, her fingers look almost swollen, and are slightly crooked. “But I like to think that Matthew wouldn’t mind.”

“He wouldn’t,” I say, surprising myself. “I don’t think he’d mind you doing anything.”

Eleanor chuckles. “That’s the truth of our marriage, that is.”

My gaze trails to the next page, where Matthew’s handwriting is messier than usual, excited. 

“A week ago, I left a bouquet of tulips and forget-me-nots on Eleanor’s desk. She told me once they were her favorite flowers, and I haven’t forgotten. I don’t think I will ever forget that, just like I will never forget the orange or the dress or the words my father spoke to me when he met my Eleanor.

There was a note in the flowers that I left for her. I wrote, ‘Meet at the dance hall, the place where I first gathered the courage to speak to you.’ I had plans to propose to her there.

She had been discreetly telling me for the past month that it was about time I asked her the one big question. I’m going to do it tonight, I told myself. I will gather my bravery and ask her tonight.

We met at the dance hall. I had the janitor let us in. We danced.

My bravery disappeared. I did not ask her.”

“It’s true. He didn’t,” says Eleanor, interrupting me. When he drove me home and dropped me off that night, I realized he still hadn’t done it. I turned around, expecting to see him down on one knee- instead, I saw a car screeching away in the night like a criminal!” She smirked. “Matthew was one interesting man, the best I ever knew.”

My lips twitch with amusement. I keep reading. 

“I tried two more times after that, once at the lake in the evening with a romantic picnic, the other time at a restaurant I had to take out a loan to afford. I slipped the ring into her wine, then realized it was, firstly, unoriginal, and, secondly, she might choke. I fished it out with my salad fork while she wasn’t looking, and spent half the night cleaning it off afterwards.

I can tell she is getting impatient with me. She thinks I am playing with her head. I am sorry, dearest Eleanor! I do not know what to do with myself!

I needed something perfect. As perfect and creative and beautiful as Eleanor is. Something special for the most special woman on earth.

Then, one day, it struck me.

The orange. The library. I am no poet…

But I will be for you, Eleanor, Love.”

I feel as though I’m reading a love story. I feel like I’m invading on something sweet and personal, too good to be true, almost. I pause before I keep reading. I look at Eleanor, for permission to read the rest.

She wipes her eyes, and I realize she’s crying, only a little. Josh Ritter is singing a cheerful tune. I can practically hear a smile in his voice.

“I know a pretty girl, the prettiest there’s ever been, wild as a weed, sweeter than a mandolin…” 

“Go on,” she says. “This is the best part.”

“On Friday, I went to the library, found a nice looking romance novel, and flipped through it until I found the words I needed. I brought out my pen and circled them, then wrote at the bottom of the page, ‘I told you this library had some good books, Eleanor.’ I folded the corner of the page, which I know she hates, put the ring in the crease in the middle, and closed it. I then gave the book to the librarian, a woman I had known for years, and told her to give it to Eleanor when she came in. She gasped a bit and beamed at me when she saw what was inside it. She didn’t even scold me for writing in it.

I left another bouquet of flowers on her desk, telling her to come to the library. Then I went back there and waited. I promised you, Eleanor, that I wouldn’t back out this time. I promised you.

You got there, the librarian gave you the book, you opened it. You began to cry. I came out, and I said, “Will you marry me?” I didn’t even wait for you to say yes before I put the ring on your finger. Forgive me.

I love you so much, Eleanor Gramms Roberts. Too much to wait any longer.”

That’s all that’s left. I shut the book and hand it to Eleanor. She takes it, stands, and leads me to the door. “You come visit me again, you hear?” She says. “I’ll tell you the story from how I saw it, alright?”

I smile at her. “I’d like that.”