“HOW OLD would Mrs. Jerrold be now?” asked Louise.
I glanced at Albertine before answering. She smiled; neither of us winked. “Well,” I said, “she was about seventeen years older than I am, and I am now thirty days away from fifty, so she would be sixty-seven — around there — sixty-seven or sixty-eight.”
“Did you ever think of looking for her — you know like maybe you could find her and go, like, ‘I’m Peter Leroy, do you remember me?’” asked Miranda.
“There are two things that keep me from doing that,” I said. “First, there is the possibility that I would find out that she is dead. So many of the people who enlivened my past once upon a time are dead now.”
“Yeah,” said Miranda as if she knew.
“For me, so long as I’m ignorant of the truth, there is the possibility that she is still alive, and I’d rather not have that possibility that she is alive collapse into a certainty that she is dead.”
“I can understand that,” said Miranda.
“And the second thing?” asked Louise.
“The second thing,” I said with an impish grin, “is that Mrs. Jerrold — Well, you see, Mrs. Jerrold — ”
Maybe it was my wry grin that made Miranda say, “You mean you made her up? But I thought these were your memoirs.”
“They are,” I said, “and everything that I include in my memoirs has happened to me.”
“I’m getting confused.”
“My memoirs are an account of the things that have happened in here” — I pointed to my head — “and in here” — I clasped my hands over my heart — “and out here” — I threw my arms wide to indicate the room, the hotel, the island, the world. “Mrs. Jerrold came from all those places. Did I make her up? Let’s say that I made her, the way you might make a loaf of bread.”
“A loaf of bread?”
“The flour, the water, the yeast, the salt, and so on came straight from my past, but I made dough from them, kneaded, it, made it rise, and baked the loaf.”
“Oh, I love it when that happens,” said Louise, “that, like, transformation? Making bread? It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah,” said Miranda. “That’s good. That’s cool. I can understand that. That’s really, like, honest.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Now I have a question for you.”
“Yeah?” said Louise.
“Excuse me for asking, but how old are you? And shouldn’t you be in school? Are you on vacation or something?”
Giggles. (I could imagine them, years after this evening, reminiscing: “Remember how we used to laugh at the crazy things he would say, that funny old guy who helped run the hotel when he wasn’t making up his ‘memoirs’?”)
“We’re not in school,” said Miranda.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were — aren’t you — like — high-school age?”
Squeals. (That Mr. Leroy! What a wacko!)
“We’re out of college — since the spring — and we just, like, spent the summer figuring out what to do next?” said Miranda.
“And my granddad was, like, ‘Come with us to this hotel, ’cause my buddy Hamlet says they need help in the kitchen,’ so we did, and it was really a lucky break.”
“Like fate,” said Miranda.
They nodded at each other, and Louise said, “’Cause we’ve been helping Suki in the kitchen, and now we know we want to learn the restaurant business.”
“It’s like we found ourselves here,” said Miranda.
“In one day?” I asked.
“Yes!” said Louise.
“And now we have everything, like, planned out? We’re going to learn everything from Suki, and then Uncle Lou is going to get us some jobs at other restaurants, so we can, like, compare the way they do things, and then in the spring we’re going to get married and open our own place.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s cool. I can understand that.”
[to be continued]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, and At Home with the Glynns.
You can buy hardcover and paperback editions of all the books at Lulu.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.
Share this post