My Future Ex-Girlfriend by Jake Gerhardt

Author:Jake Gerhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-04-19T09:39:28+00:00

DUKE

The French auteurs21 are among my favorites artists. They know how to make a film. They know how to move a camera, how to tell a story, how to meld music perfectly with a scene. One of my favorites is Les Parapluies de Cherbourg,22 so when I read a review comparing Jean des Garrenes’s debut film, La Saison des Jonquilles, to Jacques Demy’s classic, I looked immediately for when it was premiering in Penn Valley, if it was to play here at all.

So you can imagine how I felt when I read in the Sunday paper that it would indeed be playing in my hometown. I immediately resolved to take Sharon to the film this weekend. I doubt it will be playing past that, for the brain-dead denizens of Penn Valley are not known to support the arts.

Over Sunday dinner, as Neal and Cassandra droned on about troubles in the Middle East, I thought of the weekend to come. It struck me over dessert that it might be fun to build a little suspense before I asked her. So after dinner I devised a plan that would be both intriguing and mysterious. Sharon would have a blast trying to figure out what was to be.

After our tea I sat and began to work on how to make the night special. La Saison des Jonquilles translates to The Season of the Daffodils. So of course I should start off with a note quoting a famous poem about daffodils. And where better to begin than with William Wordsworth.

Sharon,

“For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils.”

William Wordsworth

Looking forward to the weekend!!

DVS

After I wrote the above, I felt satisfied. And though I didn’t know exactly what was next, I was confident I would come up with something. After all, I spent most of the time deciding on how many exclamation points to use. Wordsworth just popped into my head.

But the best laid plans often go awry, and Sharon, who would come across the note in the morning, was rather confused by the missive. We spoke about it after school.

“I don’t understand the note,” she said.

“It’s the final stanza of William Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,’” I informed her.

“Yes, I can see that. But I don’t understand what it has to do with the weekend,” she said.

I panicked. I thought maybe she might have plans for the weekend. And no doubt that snake in the grass Ralph Waldo was up to no good. So I scrapped my plans for a pseudo courtship for the movie and came right out and asked her.

“The note was just my way of asking you to see La Saison des Jonquilles with me this weekend.”

“What is La Saison whatever-it’s-called?”

I fought off the urge to cringe. “La Saison des Jonquilles is a debut film from a promising French director. It won accolades at the Toronto Film Festival.

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