Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Ellie wants to show him. Everything that she’s built. Everything that she’s become.
The bells ring as she swings open the glass door. Jonah follows her. Inside, the atmosphere is just as Ellie left it yesterday. Warm. Inviting. Calm. She waves to Gabby, who’s perched on a stool behind the long, rounded white counter, her neck predictably weighed down by wooden beads as she sifts through a stack of papers. The two young, college-aged women who were here yesterday are back again and tastefully arranging a summer reading display in the window. Around the shop, a handful of customers browse the neatly arranged shelves in search of the feeling that best suits them today, what mood they’re willing to buy into for a several-hour span.
Jonah pauses on the penny tile entryway and takes it all in. He breathes deeply, the fabric of his clean button-down shirt rising and falling in an even rhythm. “You made this,” he says. His words are a statement, not a question.
Ellie steps deeper into the space. “I did.”
He nods. “I see you everywhere in here.”
Why hasn’t she done this for herself in her real life? Created a place like this—something away from her home and her family, something that exists only for her, something to fall back on later when she isn’t needed in the same ways anymore. Then again, motherhood sometimes feels like a study in guilt. If you leave your child when she’s young to pursue something for yourself, you feel the guilt of it early. If you don’t and then realize later that your purpose has grown up and moved away, you’ll feel it at the end. It’s really just a matter of whether you want to front-load or back-load the emotions.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again today,” Gabby playfully notes without lifting her face from her work. A customer approaches the counter and sets down two novels to purchase. Near the window, the other employees twist their heads in preparation for some idle chatter. “Planning to introduce me to your new friend?”
How can Ellie say it? How can she possibly explain? But then again, how can you ever really explain marriage or love or divorce to someone who isn’t steeped inside it?
“This is Jonah,” Ellie offers and looks over at him. When she does, she sees all the versions of him she’s ever known. The unsure twentysomething. The nervous boy who offered her a ring. The young man in that dapper suit who stood across from her at the church altar. The doting new father. The thoughtful son-in-law. Over the years, he’s been so many different people to her. So many versions of himself. Right then, Ellie becomes overwhelmed by an emotion. It feels like drowning, and yet like floating, as if she’s just now coming to the surface of something. She misses him. All of him. All of them. All the lives they’ve ever lived together. All the versions of himself he’s ever been to her.
Gabby’s eyelashes flap like butterfly wings while she waits in anticipation. She sets down her papers, looks up at Ellie, and then back at the customer, whom she begins to ring up. “And did you just pick Jonah here up off the street, or ...?”
Nearby, the girls pretend to do everything except eavesdrop on this exchange.
“We lost touch for a little while,” Ellie explains, knowing it’s the truest thing she’s spoken in days. “But I guess you could say he’s an old friend.”
Back in their twenties, Ellie and Gabby had practically nothing in common other than their communal living room and their shared admiration for literature. Ellie liked things quiet, while Gabby preferred life to be loud. Ellie chose to present herself in a simple fashion—straight hair, a pale-neutral nail, classic jeans—whereas Gabby outfitted herself like a toddler given too much freedom—everything clashing and wild and full of color—and yet, for her, it worked. Why hadn’t they been friends then? Why had Ellie completely shut her out?
It’s been so many years since Ellie has had a real friend, one outside her family and her home, one she’s not connected to because of Jonah or Maggie, but someone who is just hers. There was a woman in college, a fellow English major, whom she was close with for several years, but it didn’t last. There was a friend in high school, though that fizzled out shortly after graduation. Yes, Ellie could have— should have—put in more effort with the women from town—her fellow book club members, the other moms from Maggie’s school—though she never did, through no one’s fault but her own. Some part of her always felt their relationships were not entirely organic but were rooted in their children’s friendships instead.
Standing near Gabby now—Gabby, who’s been nothing but nice and knowledgeable and reliable and kind in her own quirky way—Ellie regrets not putting in any real effort with her back when they were roommates. She wonders about what other opportunities she might have missed.
A look of amusement lifting her glossy opalescent lips, Gabby steps away from the counter. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Jonah, the old, long-lost friend.” She turns in such a way so only Ellie can see her face. What is happening? she mouths and then drifts off toward a shelf.
Jonah stands beside Ellie and squeezes the back of his neck. She hovers beside him, unsure if they should stay or leave. Before either of them has a chance to decide, a pair of tiny hands pushes the shop door back open, the bells tinkling like glitter for one’s ears. The little girl in the Velcro sneakers rushes past, just like yesterday, and straight toward the children’s section in the back. A second later, the girl’s mother—looking happy and tired and content and drained—steps inside, a beige book bag strapped over her shoulders, which Ellie guesses is filled with her child’s many things.
“I’m sorry,” the woman says and fruitlessly waves a hand in her daughter’s direction, as if this motion will quell her excitement and make her slow down.
Mothers always apologize for their children. Anytime they say the wrong thing. Anytime they act even an iota out of line. Really, though, they’re apologizing to and for themselves. I’m sorry. Am I doing this right? Is this the way she’s supposed to behave? Is this the way I’m meant to feel? This is all so much harder than I ever imagined.
“She’s fine,” Ellie reassures this stranger. You’re doing fine. More than fine. “Really.”
“Friend of yours?” Jonah gestures at the child as her mother joins her on the area rug.
They don’t need to say a word to know what they’re both thinking. The girl looks just like her. The big, wide, jack-o’-lantern-tooth smile. The woven pigtails. The sweet cotton dress and stretchy, patterned leggings. The way she sits on her hands and bounces, and then quickly plops herself down onto her belly, and then pops straight up and sits on her hands again, like her body is made of springs.
Back when Maggie was about this age, on the morning Ellie and Jonah dropped her off at preschool for the first time, they were both such messes. They’d walked together—the three of them hand in hand like an inseparable chain—to their church, the same place where Ellie and Jonah were married, and to the secured preschool entrance, which was accessible in the back. After they helped her hang up her precious pink book bag and find her pint-size seat, they waved goodbye to her from the carpeted hallway. They both knew Maggie would be safe and happy there. But they were also smart enough to know they stood at the start of it. The letting go. It hurt so bad. Jonah had held it together for Ellie’s sake on the walk home, though a short while later, she heard him sobbing through the bathroom door. Years later, when things between them had begun to crash, she would look back on this day all the time—during those long stretches of night following a particularly noxious fight, when they went to bed without a kiss or an apology and she couldn’t even think of sleep—and recognize that, in more ways than one, it had been the beginning of the end of everything.
“Excuse me?” a tiny voice interrupts, pulling Ellie away from this memory.
Ellie blinks several times in fast succession, briefly forgetting where—or when—she is, everything she’s nearly thrown away.
“Is there a Cinderella part two?” the girl asks now. “I want to know if she stays married.”
“Oh, um.” Ellie hasn’t read children’s books in years, though she wishes this were not the case. She loves these books, all of them fairy tales in their own ways. Inside these brightly illustrated covers, anything can happen. Animals can talk. Any old fool can become a superhero. Everyone always finds her happily ever after. Characters can fall asleep in one place and magically wake up somewhere else, without any real purpose or explanation. No one is ever left feeling hurt in the end. “Hmm.” The child’s question is both heartbreakingly innocent and deeply profound. “I’m not sure, actually. But maybe I can recommend something else?”
Close by, Gabby—taking a brief pause from her tasks—plops herself down into one of the shop’s comfortable, upholstered chairs. Jonah steps backward and watches Ellie—his wife, or his old friend, or both—as she navigates this new circumstance. She moves with the child across the store and back toward the children’s section, where she crouches down and browses through the kid-size shelves.
“How about this one?” Ellie squats and pulls down a book with a cartoon castle on the cover. “It’s an old one, but a classic.” She smiles at the girl’s mother. And then, without thinking, she utters the next part. “It used to be my daughter’s favorite.”
Her words are like a record scratch.
“What did you say?” Gabby instantly asks, her voice akin to tires screeching. At the window, the twentysomething employees’ eyes double in size, suddenly looking as wide and round as dinner plates. “Your what ?” Gabby scoffs.
Ellie quickly pops back up, the fast movement triggering the pain inside her body all over again. “I—uh—I meant—” She feels herself fumbling, like a clumsy child who’s trying to catch a ball. “I meant my daughter—no, no, my friend’s daughter, it was her favorite when—” She can’t get the words out. They’re caught in her throat like a too-big bite of something difficult to swallow. It doesn’t matter. She already knows it’s too late to save face. Children are fiercely curious creatures. The questions immediately pour in, like spilled paint.
“Are you married?” the child asks, her mother behind her already becoming red faced. “How many kids do you have? Are they boys or girls? Is there a baby in your belly right now? Do you have a dog?”
“Ellie?” Gabby asks as she rises from her seat. “Are you okay? You look, um, kind of flushed. And are talking like maybe your mind is going a bit cuckoo or—”
“Ellie?” Jonah interrupts her.
“I just—I—”
But Ellie can’t speak. Not really. Deep inside her, she feels something about to detonate. This setting—this barrage of unsolicited questions, none of which she has the capacity to answer, but which she wishes she could—it’s breaking her.
There is no logical way to explain it. That, yes, she has a daughter, but she’s far away from this disaster her mother has intentionally (she did, in fact, utter the word “divorce” first) or unintentionally (she did not, however, intend to make a wish and screw up the entire concept of time) created. Or that, yes, technically she is still married to the man who stands right here, because she lost her phone and never called the attorney. That her life—her real one, which she only now realizes was so wonderful—exists someplace else, somewhere that is not here, in a space she cannot wish herself back into right now, let alone try to articulate.
“I—I—I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.” She looks at Jonah, his nostrils slightly flared, his breath quickening like hers, both of them becoming enveloped in panic. “ Am I married, Jo?” she asks him. “ Do I have a kid?”
“Ellie?” Gabby’s face is awash with new worry. She moves toward the counter, shoos another customer closer to the glass door so she’ll quickly leave. “Maybe I should call someone. Are your parents still—”
“Sweetheart,” the child’s mother says, hurriedly and sloppily reshelving the titles her daughter pulled down. “I think it’s time for us to go.” She looks at Ellie, briefly makes eye contact with her. I’m sorry. Please don’t judge me. Please don’t judge her. She never acts like this. She always acts like this. I don’t know why she behaves this way. I don’t know why I do, either. I’m trying. She’s trying. I’m trying. I’m trying. I’m trying.
“I think we’re going to head out now,” Jonah decides. “I should get you home so you can rest.” He places a gentle hand on Ellie’s back.
She winces beneath his light touch. The pain. That muscle. Every emotion and memory stored inside that set of cells, it aches and aches and aches. She doesn’t want to be here. In this store. In this life. She thinks of Bunny’s comment the other morning as the two of them sat at her table in sunny Florida.
You think marriage is about love?
Um, yes, Ellie had foolishly said then.
It’s only now that she fully realizes it’s about more than that. Marriage, love, relationships—they’re also about history. And about memory. Right now, all of hers feel convoluted. Mixed up. Like she can’t recall what’s fiction and what’s not.
The mother—her face burning with embarrassment—and her sweet, adorable, not-meaning-to-cause-any-trouble daughter, quickly exit the store.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Gabby,” Ellie stammers as Jonah begins to guide her out the door. “It’s been a really strange week. I think I need to go—”
“I’ve got this,” Gabby insists, her nostalgic T-shirt tugging at her chest. “Really. I promise I’ll take care of everything.”
“Thank you.” Ellie nearly stumbles over her own feet. The pain ripples through her. Jonah stays beside her, his hand still tenderly set on that part of her that aches. “You seem like a good friend, Gabby.”
Gabby quizzically tilts her head. “I seem like—”
“I’ll see you soon,” Ellie says, and she hopes her words ring true. “I’ll find you. I promise I’ll reach out, okay?”
“Come on,” Jonah whispers, and together they take a step toward the door.
“Wait a second,” Gabby interrupts, her pupils glazed over with questions. “How did you two say you know each other again?”
Jonah turns to Ellie, a look in his eyes silently asking her for permission. Ellie nods. “I’m her husband,” he states.
The bells tinkle. Someone is pushing the door open. No one inside bothers to look in the direction of it.
“What the—” Gabby gasps. Her brightly made-up lips pull back on her face, like she’s caught in a wind tunnel. “This has seriously been a week for the books! You can’t make stories like this up!”
“Ellie?”
A voice. One Ellie has not heard in years, though in recent days it’s become familiar to her once again.
She looks over at the door.
“Jack?” Ellie asks, as if she’s not seeing things quite right, like she’s wearing smudged-up glasses or has a piece of fuzz in her eye. “What are you—” Ellie feels breathless for a myriad of reasons, one of them being that she feels Jonah, clearly taken aback by whatever is happening, pull away from her. “What are you doing here?” And then, she remembers. “Oh God. Our date,” she says, not meaning to actually say this aloud, her interior thoughts just slipping out. “I—I forgot.”
“Your what ?” Jonah moves away from her, as if she is made of poison.
Jack takes another step inside the shop. He’s wearing khaki bermuda shorts and a crisp, white button-down, a pair of preppy loafers. His aviators are pushed up onto his head of golden hair. In his left hand, he holds a colorful floral bouquet. His green eyes dart from Jonah to Ellie and then back to Jonah again, like he’s watching a tennis match.
“I’m—I’m sorry.” Jack offers up a confused look, one that is also ripe with disappointment. His high cheeks blush, like they’ve been pinched. He quickly averts his gaze to the ground, and—clearly embarrassed—positions the bouquet behind his back, as if no one in the shop has noticed him holding it. “I—I think I misunderstood something.” Jack takes a backward step. “I’ll come back some other time,” he stammers and quickly walks out.
The next part happens so fast that Ellie hardly even processes it. As Jack backtracks onto the sidewalk, looking defeated and delirious, he stumbles right into a passerby: an attractive blond woman in a pale-pink sweater, her eyes hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses, though not enough to conceal the rest of her face, which quickly reveals she’s been crying.
“Oh no,” Jonah blurts. “It’s her.”
“It’s who?” Ellie asks and swivels her head to look at him.
“My fiancée,” he sternly notes. “The one I called things off with this morning.” His face grows red with anger. “Because I foolishly thought I could patch things up with you.”
“What?” Ellie is breathless. “Wh-why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Man,” Gabby proclaims. She’s on her tippy-toes, staring through the window behind the counter. “The plot twists today!” She kisses the tips of her fingers, offers up a chef’s kiss.
Jonah doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, they all watch together as the woman slowly lifts her sunglasses away from her face. She laughs at something. Jack—his face scrunched up in question—laughs, too. He pulls the bouquet out from behind his back and offers it to her, his face aglow with disbelief.
“I need to get out of here,” Jonah states, a new sense of urgency cropping up in his voice. He takes a step forward, then stops, realizing he can’t go out through the front entrance just yet. He spins in a circle, as if looking for an emergency exit. “This was a mistake, Ellie. This whole day. I don’t know what I’ve been thinking.”
Ellie knows she needs to respond. But at the moment, she feels too emotionally paralyzed to move. She watches Jack through the glass—the boy who, once upon a time, broke her heart because his heart was beating for someone else. She sees the whole narrative unfolding, page by page. Line by line. Choice by singular choice.
“Jonah, wait.” Ellie’s focus remains set on the windowpane. “I need to ask you something.” She feels like her body has been cast in stone. There’s no way she can move. “I—I need to know. What was your fiancée’s name?”
Jonah throws up his arms. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she says, suddenly desperate to hear him say it, even though, deep in the pit of her, she knows it. It already sits on the tip of her tongue.
He huffs. “Kristin,” he says, like she knew he would.
And isn’t this just life, Ellie thinks.
In any given moment, for some people, the timing is off. And for others, finally, it’s exactly right.