Twenty-One
Twenty-One
Ellie is upstairs in bed alone and staring at the ceiling. It’s late, too late for her to still be awake, but she can’t sleep. How can she? The life she knows, the one she took for granted—her marriage, the day-to-day workings of her home, her parents’ life and happiness—it’s all broken because Ellie decided to break it.
I want a divorce, Ellie had said to herself so many times in recent months.
I wish we’d never been married. She’d had that thought more than once, too.
In her head, she hears Maggie’s question.
Are you going to date or something?
Apparently, yes.
Ellie was the one who’d said it, who’d wished for all of it. Jonah had agreed, yes. But her mouth, not his, was the one the word—“divorce”—had fallen out of first.
And why? Were things between them really so bad? Bad enough for Ellie to believe that throwing it all away would somehow be better? Or was it just that Ellie was sad. Sad that the best chapter of her life was ending. The three of them living together in the house. Ellie always so busy, and yet always having some defined purpose. Even if it was for a million small somethings—tasks other people might have overlooked—for many years, Ellie had felt so needed. All the invisible work she filled her days with—all the invisible work every mother fills her days with—it was important. It kept the ship running. It kept everyone safe. Healthy. Happy. Forward moving. It made Ellie feel like what she was doing mattered. That her choices mattered. That her life mattered and made a difference.
But then, as abruptly as a car crash, it all stopped.
Ellie’s job—the one she’d chosen all those years earlier—was over. Maggie was gone. The house felt empty. Her days lacked the same impetus. Every part of her life began to fall flat.
Ellie pulls the comforter farther up her chest and continues to gaze at the ceiling, as if it is a movie screen. A thousand memories replay in her head. Her and Jonah on the living room floor in their starter home, encouraging a months-old Maggie to roll over, her little body propped up on one of those silly U-shaped pillows. Watching toddler Maggie blow away the cottony wisps of the wish flowers in their backyard. The two of them pretending not to cry (allergies—always such terrible allergies) as they watched Maggie up onstage for her first theater performance, or sprinting across the turf on those two long, gorgeous, healthy legs at her first soccer tournament. The three of them playing board games in the living room. Ellie creaking open Maggie’s bedroom door every night and stealing a few quiet, private minutes to watch her daughter—her most precious blessing—peacefully sleep.
Watching Maggie grow up was a privilege. Ellie knows this. Still, it hurt. Over the years, Ellie was constantly forced to watch pieces of her only child’s younger self die, like being a guest at a thousand funerals. The first time Maggie left the house without a kiss. The moment she released Ellie’s hand, desperate to walk ahead of her. The afternoon Maggie decided she no longer needed a push on the swing. The last time she played with her favorite tea set. Her first doll. The bicycle with the rainbow streamers. Not once in those useless parenting books Ellie had bought when Maggie was a baby had any “expert” brought this part of child-rearing to her attention: the fact that “motherhood” is a synonym for “grief.”
Knock, knock, knock.
At first, the sound is so low Ellie believes she’s imagining it. It’s like someone tapping on cotton. A noise, sure, but soft. Beside her, the window is open a crack. The quiet song of insects seeps through the screen. The generator, that temporary source that still powers this house, hums.
Knock, knock, knock.
Ellie looks away from the ceiling, pushes down the bed linens. Someone is here, on her porch, yet again. She’s not sure she has the mental capacity after these last two days to discover who it is that waits.
She swings her feet off the mattress, slides on her slippers, and pulls a sweatshirt over her head. The hallway is dark when Ellie opens her bedroom door and slowly tiptoes down the staircase. Before she steps into the entryway, she peers into the living room, hoping maybe her father, whom neither she nor Bunny have seen since their encounter this afternoon, has come back. The sofa is vacant, Ellie’s sheets still lining the cushions from the night before. Beside it, Bunny softly snores in her reading chair, which Frank had someone cart over prior to their church episode earlier in the day.
Knock, knock, knock.
Another few steps and Ellie is at the door, her hand wrapped around the metal knob. She takes a breath and then another, preparing herself for whatever unplanned destiny waits for her on the other side.
“Here,” he says as soon as she opens it.
Jonah.
Her husband. Who is no longer her husband. Because they’ve split up. Or because they’ve never been together. Or because he is days away from marrying someone else.
“You forgot this earlier,” he announces as he extends his hand.
It all happens so fast. The words exist in her head— How are you here? How did you know where to find me? What has happened to our life? —though it takes too long for them to arrive at her lips. She never asks. Instead, with her eyes locked on his, Ellie extends her hand and accepts the folded sheet of paper he passes to her.
“I have to go,” Jonah announces, already turning to walk away. “I can’t stay.”
“Wait,” she says, and nervously crinkles the paper in her hand. She’s furious, and yet longs for him. “W-will you come back? Will I see you again?”
“I—I don’t know, Ellie.” Jonah steps down the porch stairs, two at a time. “I’m not sure what I know anymore,” he tells her and then quickly disappears down the block.
Ellie moves back inside, shuts the door, feeling like she’s seen a ghost.
“Who on earth was at the door at this hour?” Bunny whispers from her reading chair, a thick blanket pulled up to her chin. She glances at the empty sofa beside her, then pats her head in search of her reading glasses, perhaps to confirm that she’s seeing the empty cushions clearly.
“It was just a friend,” Ellie explains, her breath feeling short. “He—he had to drop something off to me.”
Bunny coughs, makes a disapproving grunting sound. It’s unclear which situation the noise is directed at. “Well, make sure you remembered to lock the door.”
Back upstairs, Ellie peers through the window to see if maybe he’s still there, or what other surprises might wait for her outside. Her street looks normal. Patches of manicured grass. Sleepy houses. The only things that look even remotely out of place are the damaged power lines at the end of her driveway and the sawed-through pieces of her family’s favorite tree set in a neat pile on the lawn.
The room is illuminated by silver moonlight as Ellie gets back into bed. Slowly, as if it is glass and may somehow shatter in her hands, she unfolds the paper, one crease at a time. She flattens it against the comforter, smoothing out the wrinkles, just to be sure she hasn’t missed anything.
Here, on the page, a most familiar drawing. The bold circle. The triangle rays. And there, in a different-colored ink, the silly cartoonish sunglasses, the ones Ellie herself did not have time this afternoon to finish drawing in, the ones her daughter always liked to sketch out, once upon a time. Ellie looks at the finished picture, the one Jonah—despite time and timelines—knew how to complete.
“Maggie,” Ellie whispers to herself into the night.
He knows.