“Pomegranate, apple, or bunch of grapes?” Mom asked, just asking out of sheer politeness, as she knew what the answer would be. “Pomegranate, please,” her three daughters said in unison. Mrs. Loft sliced the brilliant red fruit in quarters, passed each girl a quarter and took the remainder of the sphere for herself. The two younger girls picked the seeds from the white, inedible and bitter “meat” of the fruit, but Elsabeth, the eldest of Mrs. Loft’s three children at thirteen, looked down at her slice with distaste and surprised her mother on a sudden whim. “Mom, do you have any leftovers of last night’s blueberry pie, or did Lucille and I finish it this morning?” Mrs. Loft blinked, surprised by her daughter’s sudden inquiry. Shaking her head and regaining her usual calm senses she looked intently about the interior of the hamper. “No,” she said to Elsabeth, “I’m afraid there is none left.” It was then that Mr. Loft turned his head slightly from his driving. “I’ll have Elsa’s quarter of pomegranate if she does not care to eat it,” Pa spoke in a bittersweet, chocolaty voice, which made Mom turn her head the opposite way to hide the scowl that had shattered her usually composed features. She detested her husband’s voice, because in her opinion, it was too fictional. No voice was like that in real life. But she had made up for her disapproval by being known to say that, other than his voice, Mr. Loft had no other visible faults. Elsabeth swore a silent oath that blue would, until her death, be her favorite color Road signs protruded from the cold snow every few feet on either side of the vehicle. The wintry white scenery was like a giant blanket spread over a vast expanse of flat terrain, or an electric blue tarp keeping the plants safe from a harsh frost, the heavy wrinkles forming what makes the continental crust of our Earth land: hills and valleys, mountains and even minute anthills. The Confederation Bridge loomed into sight as Dad plucked a scarlet pomegranate seed shiny in luster and held it up to the light before popping it into his mouth. Elsabeth, slightly paranoid for her thirteen years, looked up in alarm. “Pa, I would watch closer at where I was going, if I were you,” she said irritably, before adding hastily, “I don’t know much about driving of course, as I have only just reached my teens.” Mr. Loft was very particular about what others had to say about his maneuvering abilities. However, he heeded his daughter’s warning, and placed the remaining pomegranate into the cup holder next to him. He grasped the steering wheel tightly, and screwed up his eyes in mock concentration. Eve laughed at her father’s false expression of serious deliberation. A claret red car passed the Lofts’ vehicle, its bright hue reflecting off the colorless, almost transparent shade of mystic silver of the automobile’s exterior. Its speed was impregnable, and the crimson car wobbled back and forth on the smoky gray road, every now and then passing a boundary of brilliant yellow, the line that separated the two obscure lanes. “Well I’ll be!” Mr. Loft said after the clumsy-looking sports car had passed, throwing his hands up momentarily in surprise and causing his knuckles, which were deathly white from clutching the steering wheel, to resume their normal color of rouge. He continued his speech, winking at Elsabeth. “If I hadn’t been watching the roads, I assume that there would have been a horrible accident on this Confederation Bridge.” Something about the tone in her father’s words made Elsabeth think about what would have happened if she hadn’t told her father to watch the roads. Would her corpse be lying upon the frozen icy pavement right now, beside a demolished car lacking in hue, marks of red scattered upon the glistening metal of the vehicle’s surface? Elsabeth shook herself as if to relieve her head of such a burdensome thought. Such a troublesome predicament was almost impossible to fathom, not to mention quite unpleasant. At that moment a car the color of the azure sky slowly lumbered past. Blue, it seemed to whisper to the young Miss Loft. Blue. Elsabeth had always liked that color; there were so many names for its numerous shades. For green there was just lush, viridian, and kelly With red there was claret, scarlet, and crimson. As far as black was concerned there was only the elegant phrasing of the adjective, ebony Brown was perhaps of a wider range of choices, with burnt sienna, chestnut, sepia, etc. Yellow had hardly any names of much consequence. Orange possessed the sole vermilion, unless you intended on pairing it with the crayon color name of marigold. Pink could be known as salmon, rouge, and mauve. But with blue—Ah! There was cerulean, phthalo, and indigo. Azure, cornflower, and periwinkle. There was midnight and sky. Oh, there were so many different shades of blue, and at that very moment Elsabeth swore a silent oath that blue would, until her death, be her favorite color. * * * Elsabeth lived in Sacramento, California, with her parents, Richard and Cladissa Loft, and her two sisters, ten-year-old Lucille and four-year-old Eve. Elsabeth was no straight-A student when it came to academics, but she was somewhat of a genius when it came to computers and could even outsmart her high school technology professor. This remarkable gift had been accompanied by a strong desire in her early years to save the rainforests, and to become an environmental lawyer. Elsabeth swept her bushy, rather tangled locks of short auburn hair out of her placid face. Prince Edward Island in the winter seasons looked like a jewel-encrusted pendant, all covered in quartz crystal and zircon. Elsabeth was no favorer of diamonds. Their abrupt transparence made them seem like they were not in existence at all. They seemed like sheets of glass scrubbed clean; so clean that one could
By Margaret Bryan, By Margaret Bryan
