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A Choice of Words

by Carol Ann Savage

340 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0455; ISBN 1-55369-053-2; US$28.00, C$31.50, EUR23.00, £16.00

After hearing the words of an anonymous author in a writing class, a young woman embarks on a lighthearted and sometimes bumpy journey on the trail of romance.

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about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book     Ellie alexander has a new motto: Better single, celibate and sane. She's sworn off the impulsiveness that characterized her past and settled into a life of routine filled with long hours at the office, lunch with the girls, friendly visits with a twelve-year-old neighbor, and Thursday evenings alone, with only a bowl of popcorn and a video. That is, until an impulse sends her into a writing class where the teacher reads the words of an anonymous male classmate, words that will haunt her in the weeks to come and push her to find the courage to be herself again.     Who is this unnamed writer? The class hold only four possibilities: the shy engineer who sits next to her, the blue-eyed gentleman at the end of the table who sketches in the margins of his papers; the accountant eyed by the women in the class, and the attourney who electrifies the room with his booming voice.     Ellie is certain of one thing. The more she hears, the closer she feels to the writer. "Is it possible to fall in love with somone without even knowing his name?" she askes her friends.     "The Beatles were wrong. Love isn't all we need," declares the writer. "We need guts." And that's just what Ellie will need if she is ever to make peace with herself and find the answer to her question.

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About the Author     Carol Ann Savage was born in Lousiana and grew up in Houston, Texas. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children.

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Excerpt

    She couldn't remember why she did it. Why, without a second thought, she'd filled in the blanks of the short application and then her bank check. Why, with no misgivings, she'd mailed them both to the university, thus committing her Thursday nights. Not just any night, mind you, but Thursday night, her favorite night to stay home, isolated from the outside world with a video - preferably one of those silly romantic comedies - and a bowl of warm popcorn sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. And now, tired in body and mind, or maybe just tired of people, Ellie Alexander was searching through her bookshelves for an old spiral notebook and swearing at her most recent display of impulsiveness.
    She stood on her tiptoes, stretching her five-foot-nine-inch frame to peer at the top shelf. There wasn't a notebook to be found, so she swore again and settled instead for a yellow legal pad with pages that curled permanently upward at the bottom. She rifled through a crowded desk drawer and grabbed an unchewed pencil with most of its eraser intact, then traded it for a blue fountain pen.
    Why am I doing this? she asked herself. Hadn't she sworn off impulsive behavior? In front of three witnesses, not to mention God himself (and she knew, with her luck, He'd been listening in), she'd vowed to never again act without thinking, never again step beyond the safe borders of reason, and never again commit to anything without one-hundred percent conviction. And she'd meant it. She'd intended to apply this No Impulsiveness rule to all areas of her life, not just the romance department. And not just because of the wretched particulars of one particularly wretched relationship. Yes, Ellie was the new poster girl for the Look Before You Leap campaign.
    "Better single and celibate!" her friend, Lisa, had vowed as margarita glasses clicked together.
    "Better single, celibate and sane!" Ellie had added emphatically.
    Though celibacy wasn't exactly an issue in her life, she thought it was a pretty nifty alliteration, this new motto of hers.
    Deciding her jeans and tennis shoes were acceptable, Ellie threw on a red wool blazer and grabbed her purse and keys. She picked up the pen and pad, put the pen down in favor of the pencil, and was almost out the front door when she was rudely stopped by her reflection in the mirror in the front hall. Her hazel eyes squinted. She was a mess. She put everything down on the small table under the mirror, rummaged through her purse for a brush and ran it through her blond hair. That'll have to do, she thought, gathering her belongings.
    Ellie glanced back at the room. It was a lively room by day and cozy at night, thanks to its bright cranberry-colored walls. Papers and magazines were scattered across the coffee table and floor; a cotton throw was wadded up on the soft leather sofa; navy pumps, one next to and the other halfway under an overstuffed chair, stared cross-eyed at her; and a glass sat on the weathered oak table, still holding a few drops of last night's Diet Coke. Yellow tulips drooped over a rose-colored vase, studying their fallen petals resting on the counter and hardwood floor below.
    Living alone suited her. Free of polite obligations to arrange her messes, if not her life, around another person, Ellie found comfort in a cluttered decor. She loved returning to a room that looked as though she had just stepped away for a second, as though time stood still for her, waiting patiently in the den while she strayed elsewhere. She never shared with anyone this peculiar notion that disarray could actually defy time, and if asked she'd surely deny it, but in her heart she would never question such an enchanting possibility.
    Remembering it would be dark when she returned, Ellie turned on a lamp, then went out, dropping the bolt behind her. She debated driving to class or walking, but a glimpse of her watch settled the matter. There wasn't time to search for a parking space. Besides, the campus was only five blocks away and the weather - one of the benefits of living in Danby, Texas - was perfect for a brisk walk.
    Better single, celibate, and sane, she thought. What did that have to do with anything? She wasn't violating that new motto now, was she? After all, she wasn't marching off to meet someone. She'd still be single and celibate in the morning. But she was questioning the sanity in rushing home from an excruciatingly long day only to rush out to some lark of a class on her favorite home-alone night, and all for some reason that she couldn't even remember.
    When she opened the classroom door, Ellie was only five minutes late by her watch, but eight minutes late by the large clock on the wall. The teacher, a heavy-set middle-aged woman, was already speaking. Ellie felt the redness of her flushed cheeks spread down her neck as the woman paused and every eye in the room focused on the new arrival.
    "Excuse me," Ellie murmured, looking around for the closest available chair. She found one positioned against the wall, apart from the large oval table where the other students sat, and quickly slipped into it. The teacher resumed her roll call and Ellie quietly took a deep breath, silently praying no one was still watching her. She pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and adjusted her watch.
    For as long as she could remember, Ellie had been shy in front of groups of people. Her elementary school classmates couldn't wait for "Show 'N Tell" days; Ellie brought many things to show, but rarely found the courage to tell. While her friends bragged about the latest Barbie, Ellie looked at her shoes, sometimes leaning down to tie imaginary laces, so the teacher wouldn't call on her. In junior high, she'd break out in embarrassing red blotches before presenting a report in front of the room. In high school, the cool class, much better than P.E. where sweat ruined makeup, was Speech. Everyone had a great time in Speech. If a girl didn't have a date lined up for the weekend by Wednesday afternoon's class, she probably wasn't going out. Ellie never did have a lot of dates. And she never took Speech.
    Now, at the ripe age of thirty-four, Ellie was above such nonsense. She was an adult - an adult who refused to place herself before a large audience. Ever.
    The teacher called the last name and looked with raised eyebrows at Ellie.
    "Eleanor Alexander?" she asked. Ellie nodded and the teacher added a check at the top of the roster.
    "Why don't you take this seat over here and join the group?" she asked, pointing to the vacant chair next to her, the only vacant chair at the table, the one left empty by a roomful of adults, the one universally avoided by all students over the age of eleven.
    Ellie smiled weakly and stood up. Her purse, precariously slung over the back of the chair, caught her elbow and with great fanfare its contents spilled to the floor. As gracefully as possible, she bent down to retrieve them.
    The teacher began speaking. "Welcome, class. I'm Katherine Meade. Please call me Katherine."
    Ellie quietly began refilling her purse. She was picking up her pencil when she spied a tube of lipstick - her favorite shade, naturally - under a chair occupied by a man who had his back to her.
    "This is one of my favorite writing classes," Katherine was saying. "Non-credit courses tend to attract students who genuinely want to learn and, for a teacher, nothing can be more gratifying. And for you students, well, as you know, students get out of a class what they put into to it. In these classes that's usually quite a bit."
    The lipstick was just beyond Ellie's reach.
    "More than likely, most of you have written before, or are writing now, and are here searching for techniques to inspire your work."
    A few of the class members nodded their heads thoughtfully. Ellie was looking longingly at the lipstick one last time before leaving it for the cleaning crew, when the man shifted his feet and the heel of a black wing-tip shoe tapped the tube, rolling it backward. She grabbed it and stuffed it into the pocket of her jacket.
    In her new seat, Ellie turned her undivided attention to Katherine. Light brown hair sprinkled with coarse gray strands gave the instructor streaks of dignified authority. She wore little makeup, other than a smudge of rose lipstick and a touch of mascara that had settled under her lower lashes sometime during the day. Age had deepened her smile, but otherwise her skin was smooth. Good genes, Ellie thought. And Katherine wasn't heavy at all. A long, loose-fitting sweater swallowed her figure, creating a heavy-set illusion that whispered, Who cares? Her voice was confident, full and warm. A motherly voice, Ellie thought.
    Katherine stopped talking and picked up a stubby piece of white chalk from the tray of the board behind her. "Clustering is an excellent way to stimulate your mind," she said. "It has helped me many times when I've had trouble writing. I want you all to be well acquainted with the process and use it often.
    "Give me a word, any word that comes to mind."
    "Dinner!" exclaimed a male voice. Within seconds the room warmed as students around the table shared the thought and smiled. The ice was beginning to thaw.
    At that moment, Ellie knew it was going to be all right.
    "Cats," said a woman.
    "Stars," added a little voice.
    "I like that one," Katherine said, and she wrote stars on the blackboard with the chalk, then circled it.
    "Now, each of you write a word - any word that comes to mind - in the center of your paper."
    Everyone in the class, except Ellie, was ready for action with paper and pens in hand. She flipped back the discolored top sheet of her legal pad, picked up her pencil and wrote the word music.
    "Ready? Then let yourselves go. Use the word you've written as a springboard and around it jot any other words that come to mind, connecting each word with a short line to the one that inspired it." As her pupils began to scribble, Katherine turned around and attacked the board. Ellie watched her write night and romance and then, off to another side, celebrity. The board was rapidly becoming a tangled web of words, circles and lines.
    Ellie looked at her paper. She added Lyle Lovett, lyrics, and then in bold uppercase letters, ORGAN. Before long, her page was filled with words that brought to mind a variety of fully developed thoughts that appeared to be random, but actually were related.
    "Now find a connecting thought in your cluster that appeals to you and write about it. Just a page or so," Katherine said. "When you're finished we'll take a short break and then talk about our exercise. I'd like to know what you thought of it. And if there's time, we'll read some samples of your work."
    The room filled with overwhelming apprehension. Two or three people began writing. The rest looked up at the ceiling or directly at Katherine, who had to sense the trepidation, most of which came from the new person next to her. Ellie thought her heart had stopped beating.
    "Oh, I almost forgot," Katherine said with an understanding smile and amused eyes. "Some of my budding authors and poets prefer anonymity when their work is read. Shall we take a quick vote?"
    A wave of vertical nods surrounded Katherine and melted Ellie's fears.
    "Okay, it's settled. Pass your papers down the table to me when you're finished and I'll read them. Put your names on them, though, so I can return them to you personally - I'd like to get to know each of you by name. But don't worry, your secrets and your identities are safe with me."
    Ellie lowered her head, pushed her hair behind her ears and started scribbling. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed when she began hearing the sounds of people finishing around her and quietly leaving the room. Finally, she wrote her last word and reluctantly turned in her work. Then she dug deep into her purse until she found three quarters, and ventured out in search of a soft-drink machine and her nightly fix.
    The building's basement was eerily still. The can of Diet Coke thundered through the vending machine, shattering the spell. Ellie looked over her shoulder as she reached for it. When she pulled the can's tab, it gasped obscenely, further insulting the silence. She bounded up the basement stairs as quickly as her dignity would allow and took her seat moments before the others began to straggle in.
    There were twelve people in the class; only four were men. Typical, she thought. She didn't know many men who enjoyed writing. For that matter, she didn't know many men who read anything besides the business and sports sections of the paper or novels by John Grisham, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy. Maybe that's why she was never a Date Queen, why she was still single when most of her friends had been married at least once. So it wasn't her shyness after all. She laughed to herself. Yeah, right. She could rationalize almost anything, from a second helping of double-chocolate-chip ice cream to her lack of a social life with the opposite sex. The only problem - if it really was a problem - was that she knew she was rationalizing. Sometimes, she believed, ignorance truly is bliss. After all, what good is rationalizing if you know you're doing it?
    A young woman with what could only be out-of-a-bottle red hair and equally colorful eye makeup came in with an open bag of ruffled potato chips and stood next to her seat at the opposite end of the table. Ellie could smell the salt across the room. She felt her stomach rumble and remembered the leftover pizza in the refrigerator at home. When did I get that? she wondered. Was it Monday or last Friday?
    Ellie watched as the redhead ate the last chip and crushed the bag into a ball. Her brown leggings were skintight, but she still had room for unlimited quantities of junk food. And even if she did expand a little, she could hide in her bulky wool sweater - the appetizing color of guacamole-flavored tostados- and uncinch the heavy, low-slung leather belt that loosely embraced her waist. Ellie decided to run after class.
    A young girl took a seat a few chairs away from Ellie. From the back of her Rangers baseball cap a thick sable-colored ponytail flowed to her waist. She couldn't be older than twenty-three, Ellie decided. She wore baggy jeans with one ripped knee and an oversized sweatshirt with "Oxford" printed across the front. On the floor next to her chair was a beat-up purple backpack. She must have felt eyes on her, because she suddenly looked directly at Ellie and smiled hesitantly before opening her notebook to a fresh sheet of paper.
    The rest of the class slowly wandered in, one after the other. A short man in a wrinkled business suit sat down on Ellie's right. His stomach hung over his belt and he gave a muted grunt as he leaned forward, scooting his chair up to the table. The college ring on his left hand revealed he was an Aggie from Texas A & M. Probably an engineer, she thought.
    "How ya doin'?" he asked her. His brown hair was straight, thin and, at least on the top of his head, close to extinction. He looked at her for a split second, then his eyes danced around her, as if afraid of a direct encounter.
    "Great," she said, "but a little hungry. How about you?"
    "Fine," he answered, and the conversation ended.
    The oldest member of the class, a well-dressed woman with perfect posture, sat a few seats to Ellie's left, on the other side of Katherine. Her white hair was swept into a sophisticated Grace Kelly twist and a strand of pearls draped across her beige silk blouse. A gold Cross pen rocked smoothly in her right hand between her index and middle fingers.
    Ellie wasn't sure when or why she'd developed her penchant for people watching. Was it because she was shy, she sometimes wondered, or did she become shy because she preferred to watch people? She couldn't say. She'd always been fascinated by what she saw: the flesh draperies that gently swayed on the arms of the ancient Mrs. Mortimer, Ellie's first baby-sitter; the unfathomable nose of Drew Davidson, a childhood neighbor, that could engulf the entire length of his index finger; the whiplashing flip of the hair that nine-tenths of the girls in her high school mastered in the unspoken art of flirting; the in-your-face stance of the pit-bull attorneys in the office where she worked.
    Long ago, she'd noticed that people either enjoy being watched or they enjoy watching. Some enjoy both, she'd admit, but everyone leans one way or the other. And then there was the category of The Nosy. She was simply an observer; The Nosy pry. Ellie detested the latter and was always careful not to step into their territory.
    Then why did she jump - an imperceptible jump, she hoped, perhaps just a start - when her eyes met those of a man at the opposite end of the table? He was sitting next to the redhead, calmly watching Ellie watch the others. She felt her face blush and flashed an embarrassed, you-caught-me smile. He grinned back with merry, blue eyes framed by short, deep lines, eyes that saw and knew exactly what she was doing, and fully appreciated the humor of the moment. Embarrassed, Ellie tried not to stare back, though she wanted nothing more than to pull this man aside, blue eyes and all, and compare notes in a conspiratorial whisper. Would they speak the same language, she wondered, a shorthand of seasoned observers?
    Katherine picked up the short stack of papers and tapped it on the table in front of her. "These are good," she said. "If they're any indication of what's to come, I'd say we're going to have a good time in this class - writing and reading." Her students laughed, just a little, as if unsure of the correct response or, like Ellie, fearful of hearing their own words read out loud.
    "In fact, I think I'll skip over mine, and just read some of yours. Before we get started, though, I'd like each of you to introduce yourself and tell us a little about your life. Tell us what you do and why you're here. Why don't we start with you," she said, turning to her right.
    Ellie barely had time to think. She sat up straight and managed a quick, shallow breath. "I'm Eleanor Alexander," she said. "Actually, my friends call me Ellie." Mortified, she thought her voice had a higher pitch than normal, the type of pitch induced by helium balloons, but she couldn't do anything about it. Having a last name that topped the alphabet, she should be used to making the first self-introduction, but she wasn't.
    "I work for a law firm downtown," she said, her words running together. Slow down, she told herself. "I love to read, but I'm not sure why I'm here. I guess I just have the urge to write something worthwhile."
    "Good," said Katherine. "I hope this class helps." She nodded at the man next to Ellie.
    "My name is Victor Shaw. I'm an engineer with Texas Instruments." He cleared his throat. "I'm just, uh, looking for a change. You know, words instead of numbers and equations."
    The young girl with ripped jeans spoke next. Ellie recognized the classic symptoms of shyness right away. "Um, I'm Megan Taylor. I just graduated this summer and I'm looking for a job. I have a degree in history," she said sweetly, her voice muffled and her eyes looking at no one. "A friend told me this was a great class, so I signed up to keep busy until I find a job."
    There was an English teacher who said that after fifteen years of teaching, she was looking for new ideas to help her high school students. Her tone, however, implied she already knew everything.
    A tax attorney spoke so softly that Ellie had to lean forward over the table to hear her. She was wearing a camel-colored jacket that Ellie thought she recognized from the J. Crew catalog.
    Brock Perry, a dark-skinned African-American, announced his name with the bold elocution of a stage actor, though he was actually a lawyer with the district attorney's office. John Grisham made him come, he said and laughed heartily. His accent was clipped, his vowels round and Ellie couldn't help but see James Earl Jones when he spoke. He was fascinating and intimidating at the same time, an enormous presence in the small classroom.
    The redhead spoke with a delicious Southern accent. "I'm Lacy Bryan," she said, gazing easily into the faces around her as she stretched each word into its own melody of syllables. "I'm an artist. I paint T-shirts for some local boutiques, and I also love to write poetry." She spread her fingers across the table, displaying long, well-manicured nails painted a bright shade of coral.
    Old Blue Eyes was Alan Barlow. "I work in computers," he said offhandedly. "I read a lot and I enjoy writing sketches about characters I meet in everyday life that fascinate me.Someday I'd like to put them all together in a story. But then," he added with a lopsided grin, "it'd probably end up like a second-rate rip-off of Alice in Wonderland."
    A second-rate rip-off of Alice in Wonderland? He's either got a great imagination or he's on drugs, Ellie thought.
    Alan turned to the dark-haired woman next to him, a child of the '60s, Ellie guessed, who'd apparently burned her bra thirty years ago and never bought another, though she certainly needed one now. In a deep, husky voice, the sort that comes from many years of heavy smoking, she said she worked in Goodwin's Book Store, an arty store in the mall that displayed too many high-priced coffee-table books for Ellie's shopping taste.
    Next was Marshall. A fair-haired, muscular accountant with lively green eyes, Marshall Morgan spoke with unassuming confidence and Ellie suspected that every woman in the room, except maybe Katherine, memorized each word that fell from his lips. She half expected him to say he was a model, at least part time, with those perfect boy-next-door features. Little white diamonds circled the face of his gold watch and Ellie guessed he wore a gold chain under his starched shirt and silk tie.
    A mother of three, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, said apologetically that her children were her job, and writing about them in the carpool line was her favorite pastime.
    The white-haired woman introduced herself as Joan Killingsworth. "I've recently retired from your job," she said with a touch of defiance, looking at the younger mother next to her. "My last child got married five weeks ago and I feel like a free woman for the first time in thirty-one years. And now I'm doing what I want to do. That's why I'm here."
    Katherine smiled approvingly. "I think we're off to a good start." She pointed to the papers in front of her, shifting the focus of the room to the business at hand. "You seem to have the right idea about clustering. Your papers reflect free thinking. They flow with, rather than dwell on, ideas. I like that. Most readers like that, and you, the writers, probably find the writing process satisfying. But tell me what you thought." She waited for a response.
    Finally, Victor, the Aggie, cleared his throat. Or did he grunt? Ellie wasn't sure.
    "Uh. It definitely loosened my thoughts," he said clumsily.
    "You were right," Joan told Katherine with a gracious smile. "It was very helpful."
    Lacy spoke up, the hint of a whine in her voice. "But my paper didn't really make any sense." Her large gold earrings brushed the side of her face as she shook her head.     "Did you enjoy writing it?" Katherine asked. "Was it easy to write? Did you feel any sense of direction at all?"
    "Well, yeah. I guess."

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Catalogue Information

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