Better late than never! This month, 3 of the Tuesday Tales authors are on vacation. So I'm filling in. I'll be posting unedited snippets from my newest novel, "Someone Like You" every week for the month of August.
Saddled with the nickname “Charlie” by
her father at a young age, Charlotte always preferred pants to dresses,
climbing trees to playing with dolls, and woodworking to reading.
When Emily Anderson passed on she left two children,
Corey and his younger sister, Charlotte. While 10-year-old Charlotte picked up
her mother’s duties, keeping house and cooking, Tom tried to train his son to follow
in his footsteps. Corey had neither interest nor aptitude nor patience for
carpentry. Instead, the young man could be found with his nose in a book.
Tom turned to his daughter, Charlotte. Surprised to
find she had inherited her father’s flair for carpentry, woodworking, painting,
and fixing things, Tom treated her like a son and taught her everything he knew.
Painted with the label of “tomboy”, which stuck
through high school, she never had the attention of boys, not romantic
attention. No date for the prom or the Christmas dance, or any dance or co-ed
party. Her brother tried to help.
“Charlie, ditch the overalls. Wear dresses,” Corey had
said.
“But I can’t paint a wall wearing a dress. And I need
pockets for my tools,” she’d replied.
Corey threw in the towel. “If you’re not going to go
to the dance, you might read this. It’s one of my favorites,” he’d said,
tossing a copy of “Treasure Island” on the rocking chair his father had
fashioned for his mother.
On those cold, lonely nights, Charlotte took the throw
hand-crocheted by her mother and curled up in the rocker with the book. Thus
started her adventure with reading. No longer alone on the nights of the
dances, Charlotte curled up with Jane Austen’s young women, and Sinclair Lewis’
midwestern folks – books recommended by her English teacher and her brother. She
received the top grade in both English class and shop, out scoring all the boys
on the final shop project.
Though her brother went on to attend college, after Charlotte
graduated high school, she shadowed her father, handyman at Kensington State
University in Willow Falls, New York. She grew into his assistant and soaked up
everything.
Arriving in her baggy overalls with her chestnut hair
stuffed under an oversized painter’s hat, Charlotte presented herself as
Charlie, there to paint his office. The handsome older man ignored her and went
about his business while she scraped, sanded, and painted.
Her father had insisted she dress like that when she
worked a job.
“Don’t be flauntin’ your goods around men, Sister.
You’ll be working alone there without me or your brother to protect you. And
men get ideas. Besides, these men expect a man to be doing carpentry and
painting walls, not some delicate flower.”
“I’m no delicate flower, Pa,” Charlotte had responded,
pulling herself up to her full five foot seven inches.
“Well, your mother, God rest her soul, thought so.”
Her mother had died before she could see the fruit of
her womb turn into a tomboy. Her father tried to teach his son his trade, but
the boy ignored his father and spent his days under a tree reading literature
while his sister finished each project, which Corey presented as his own.
After three years of letting her brother pass off her
work as his, Charlotte spoke up. There was a terrible row. Corey stormed out of
the house, then her father followed. When his son went off to college to study
literature, Tom Anderson settled himself on hiring his daughter.
Tom did carpentry for the university in exchange for
free tuition for his son. There wasn’t money to send his daughter, too.
Besides, she maintained that she preferred woodworking. He needed her to keep
his business going to put food on the table. He was getting too old to do
everything himself and that was just fine with Charlie.
As she became more adept with tools,
her reading faded away, giving in to creating beautiful objects. Never one to
pass time reading when she could be working with wood, Charlotte’s jaw dropped
when she saw the floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowing with books in Professor
Garrett’s office. She questioned her abandonment of reading. There must be
something about reading she’d missed if this attractive man held books in such
high regard.
Wearing one of her few dresses, Charlotte Anderson
stood next to her father in the fifth row, at the garden where the doctorate
degrees were to be presented. English professor Dr. Mark Garrett walked right
past them. Of course he wouldn’t recognize her.
Ever since she did the renovation of his office, Charlotte
had developed a huge crush on Dr. Garrett. He didn’t recognize her because she
always tucked her long dark hair under a painter’s hat and wore worker’s
overalls. And she answered to the nickname of “Charlie”. Her gaze followed his
attractive form to the front row.
That's all for this week. I hope you come back next week. Please leave a comment - your feedback is so valuable! Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment