Here's a quick scene from Everything Old. I thought this would be easy to write. I wanted these two characters to have a little banter over the different shapes for the cookies, and I happen to have a cookie press. I spread all the plates in front of me for inspiration. Unfortunately, I thought all the plates were very clear. Everything was either a squiggle or not. I didn't see room for debate. It took some imagination to find any that I thought could be interpreted differently.
From the book:
They moved away from the table and the homework to find some cookie ingredients. Gabriel’s mom was part of a Monday morning bible study, and it was her turn to bring a snack. Gabriel volunteered to make some cookies for her. She’d made a big deal about how generous his offer was even though he knew that she knew it was an excuse to use his cookie press. And she probably knew he was going to enjoy getting Ruth to help him, too. His offer was about as generous as giving someone a ride in a new sports car.
“This one?” Ruth had taken a bowl out of his cabinet.
“Yeah. And a…” He was pointing, about to ask her to grab a spoon as well, but she’d already opened the right drawer. He smiled to think that she knew where he kept things.
They had the dough mixed up in a matter of minutes. Then he showed her how to get the dough into the press.
“I think they make these battery-powered now,” Ruth said.
“This is better.”
“Because it was first?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, the trigger version is the older model, but that’s not why I like it in this case. I just prefer not to have to change batteries.”
“Oh. The practical side wins out.” Ruth smiled as she said it but didn’t look at him. She was spreading the metal plates on the counter like she was dealing cards. “A Christmas tree!”
“It’s barely October,” he said. “We’re not making Christmas trees.”
“I didn’t say we should.” She slid it to the side and pointed to another. “This one’s interesting.”
“I call that the anvil.”
“It’s not…” She squinted at it as though trying to see what he saw. “It’s too… symmetrical to be an anvil. I think most of these are just designs and not supposed to be anything in particular. Like these wavy lines.”
“That one is bananas.”
“Bananas?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. It’s just… lines, curvy lines –”
“That look like a bunch of bananas,” Gabriel finished.
“Other than the Christmas tree, these two flowers are the only ones that are real shapes.”
“Only this one’s a flower. That one’s an X.”
“They’re both flowers,” she insisted. “Just different kinds of flowers.”
“Have you ever seen a flower with only four petals?”
Her face said she had not but wasn’t going to admit it. “It’s still a flower. Xs are not so fat and rounded.”
“Depends on the font.”
“This is clearly –” She was suddenly laughing too hard to finish the sentence.
“What’s so funny?”
She waved her hand between them as the laugh subsided. “Us. We’re totally arguing over the shapes of cookies we haven’t made like it matters. It struck me as ridiculous.”
“We’re not arguing,” Gabriel said. Arguing was negative. He was having a great time. “We’re just discussing it.”
The plate they were discussing clicked against the counter as she put it back down. Her amusement disappeared as quickly as it had come. “I wonder if… there’s something we should be discussing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment