She invites me to stay at her cabin, as she always does, a week and a half before her first drafts are due. I make the drive down to Denver early in the morning, so I will arrive around the time she wakes up. She does not greet me at the door, only sitting on the couch and typing furiously. If there is such a thing as comfortable silence, I have never encountered it. I bustle around, fluffing her pillows and adjusting her endless potpourri in the fastidious way that used to irritate her. She stares with the dark eyes of a panther, the quiet of impending death. She never stops typing.
Once I have overturned the whole house in solemn silence, wondering furiously to myself every time why she bothered to invite me or why I bothered to visit, she will speak. She speaks slowly, harshly, and never interrupts. In fact, she will listen in silence for as much breath as there is in my lungs. Sometimes when she goes especially quiet as I speak, my tongue will catch, and I feel myself bracing for vivisection. We have known each other long enough to discover we disagree on most fronts but the most fundamental for two people to engage in civil discourse. She has a patented disdain for most things, crystalized and utterly self-assured. Nothing can pierce it, though I have been trying since undergrad. Our disagreements reach a fever pitch, and I wonder to myself how someone like her writes the way that she does.
On the Sunday morning before her deadline, she will ask me to bring her something from the IHOP in town. Every time I refuse, because it is a 40 minute drive, though that has never really been the reason.
Every time, I will find myself driving to that IHOP, feeling everything and nothing. Every time, I find myself drawn to the windows of the largest book store in town, and I will look at her name emblazoned across all her myriad works lining those shelves. They are remarkable, every one of them. Each a small breath of utter joy and happiness, love and fulfilment through all the tasks life has to offer. They are all a little journey, a glimpse of life. They are beloved. As is she, for writing them.
Every time, I am brought to a standstill staring at the picture of Eleanor Mills painted by her works. I wonder to myself how someone like her writes the way that she does, though I know the answer.
I go to IHOP. I return home with her prize, and she will grin at me like she has won. Indeed, she has. She will grin at me as I set out the waffles, as if in that single gesture she has found something worth writing about. And indeed, she has.
She meets her deadline in the end, sardonic and dull and without an ounce of joy in her heart, but laughing. I leave for Santa Fe, knowing there is not a single person in the world with a real picture of Eleanor Mills. She will grin at me as she waves me away, knowing I will be back.
