Slim Novel 15 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage
24. Eddie Goes A-Maying
Eddie is lying abed at home 6 AM, his left-corner of room partly lit from the two windows on the far wall to his left - a southeast room exposure with windows facing the entrance court of his building
He is thinking Neen as he familiarly calls her and his head turns right on the pillow and he notes on the big wall calendar. Today is 1 May 1960, a Sunday.
Let's Neen and I go a-Maying!
He sits up, turns and speaks into a small microphone on side table, pressing the on-button to transmit to Nina's bedside miles away in the room she rents, a step-down apartment of an attached family home.
"What's up, doc?"
"Let's go a-Maying, Nina!"
"Oh, you mean like Corinna's?"
"Yeah."
"I can't see outside; is the weather right?"
"Sunny through my courtyard window."
"OK, anything you say, boss."
"Meet you at 8am, Woodlawn Station."
Eddie stands at the foot of the El station's stairs watching Nina descend, thinking So neat. In plain blue cloth dress with a button front green wool sweater she must have knitted herself, bare legs showing down to low-strap black shoes for walking, and her ash blonde hair as usual nestled on shoulders. She carries a basket of food and drink. It is warm for 1 May and blue sky with sun rising low over Woodlawn Cemetery where the bare Jerome Avenue begins with the cemetery iron picket fence on the east, or one's right as one walks north, and Van Cortlandt Forest on one's left.
"Hello, Eddie bo." Nina mimics his friends' "bo."
"Hi, Neen, welcome to our first outing."
"Yes, I've never been outside the library with you."
"C'mon. I'll show you the forest primeval."
"Just like Evangeline." And Nina recites "Here is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks --"
Eddie interrupts, "Longfellow actually wrote "This is the forest primeval."
"I know, but I am adapting him to the moment; and since you are demonstrating the forest, Here, is better. You really are an idiot savant, Eddie. You remember everything you ever read word for word. How do you do it?"
"It's in Physician's Notebooks, Neen. Professor Edwardes allows me his copy. The memory chapter."
They walk north on the west sidewalk of Jerome Avenue, the forest just off pavement to their left.
Eddie leads Nina onto a forest path and soon they are surrounded by pines but no hemlocks, he thinks, jocularly, because this is the Bronx and not Nova Scotia. Spring has been breaking out all over now for more than a month and green is everywhere, with violets sprinkling the scene and crab-apple blossoms filling tree tops."Look, a hare!" he points the leaping brown wild rabbit. "And see all the robins. With luck we might even run into a coyote down from Bear Mountain."
She grasps his left hand with her right and they walk for a while in silence.
"Here we are at Morlock Rock but you are Nina not Weena."
"Oh, Eddie, always your allusions, you idiot savant, you!"
They sit on a park bench. "Nina, you know I shall graduate next month. I'll have my M.D. And you know what?"
"I know."
"What?"
"You'll be leaving Einstein. And the library."
Eddie says, "But I want you for all my life, my beautiful butterfly. All my life I been waiting for you. Now I never want to lose you."
She is silent. For Eddie the forest around them is shining. He touches her shoulder.
"Neen? Would you? Could you? Marry me?"
She grabs his left hand with her right, leans toward him, and gives a Yes kiss.
For next, click 15.25 Individual Reactions to Eddie's Marriage
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