Two. Silver and Guilt #2
Grant was studying to be a chef. And, as I’d learn, chefs are at the very least rake adjacent.
When Grant got a job at a restaurant in downtown Chicago, about forty-five minutes north of Powell Park, he was gone most nights.
I’d wait up for him at his place in Powell Park, and even though we couldn’t spend as much time together, I didn’t mind.
Being with him was enough for me to put my notion of moving to LA on the back burner.
I’d gotten a job as a communications specialist for the Powell Park library, putting together its newsletter and updating the website.
What I lacked in exciting work I made up for with a chaotic love life.
Grant’s job as a cook meant there were nights when he told me to meet him at his place above the bar and sometimes wouldn’t get home until the early hours of the morning, exhausted and smelling like kitchen smoke and cigarettes and the industrial cleaner they used to sanitize the prep stations.
My imagination would wander to places that twisted my stomach, worrying he was actually with someone else and our bubble would burst. But really, he seemed as committed to me as he was to his job, and once he got promoted to work directly under the saucier, he’d invite me to come out with him and the rest of the restaurant staff after the kitchen closed at eleven, and I’d be reminded that everyone there—even the exquisitely beautiful hostess, Fiona Leonard, who’d studied hospitality at the same school as Grant—knew about me.
Until he pulled the rug out from under me.
On Christmas Eve three years ago, he came home lit up because a friend of his from culinary school had gained funding for a restaurant in New York and was inviting Grant to be his sous chef.
I’d been blindsided by the way he presented the news to me and the way he seemed to assume I’d just pack up and go with him.
Not that I didn’t want to go with him, but something told me I shouldn’t.
The same something that told me throughout our relationship that Grant would eventually realize he could do much better than me.
It blew up into an all-out fight and he went, proving that he didn’t love me enough to figure things out.
He’d left right after the new year and never fought for me, or for us.
And I’d moved to LA two years to the day I met him.
Knowing Grant always made a point to spend Christmas with his dad, I can’t take the risk of going to Powell Park during the holidays, even if it’s possible that he now spends Christmas in New York.
(Grant’s total lack of social media makes it hard to stalk him online, which is for the best, even if I sometimes yearn to know what he’s up to.)
Now, I stare into my Sapporo and think about ignoring the call from my parents, but then I’ll still have to respond later.
Plus, I feel bad. I don’t want them to worry about me.
So, I turn down the TV volume and answer.
Mom’s face—really, her nose and one eyeball; she’s way too close to the screen—appears.
“Hi, Jilly,” she says, waggling her fingers and peering past my face into my apartment, not so subtly seeking hints as to whether I have someone here with me.
“Hi, Mom!” I go full chipper because to even imply I’m blue would mean instant pressure to come to Illinois.
“We thought you might like to see the tree.” She shakily moves the phone camera behind her to show off this year’s Christmas tree.
Maybe the knack for choosing sad trees runs in our family, because theirs may technically be a live Douglas fir, but it’s not looking much better than my garbage-picked artificial number.
“Oh, it’s nice,” I say, casting a perfunctory glance at the tree, which honestly looks like it’s balding, even from here. “Dad found a good one.”
“Brian and the kids helped him choose it at the high school tree lot,” Mom says. My older brother, Brian, still lives in Powell Park and teaches at our old middle school. He and his wife, Rachel, have two kids who more than make up for my absence at the holidays.
“Oh, the high school. Didn’t you tell me someone embezzled money from the profits of that lot last year?”
“The principal. To take his second family to Hawaii,” Mom says. She raises an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want to come home to catch up on all the gossip?”
“Gossip? Gossip should be sordid. Principal with a secret family is heartwarming,” I joke.
“At any rate, the new principal is much more family oriented,” Mom says quellingly, with a smile on her face.
“Does this one have a third family?”
“Very funny. Are you sure we can’t entice you to come out here?
” Mom says. She’s got her neck craned forward as if this will allow her to see other rooms in my apartment.
“We can go ice-skating, and you can help me with some baking—oh! And we have fudge! Plus, Henry is playing Tiny Tim in the Powell Park Christmas show. It’s a much bigger deal than the school sing-along.
He’d love for you to be there.” Henry, my brother’s six-year-old son, is a colossal ham, and I love him for it. “It would be so nice to see you.”
“We’re not getting any younger,” Dad offers as he wrestles the tree to stand up straight.
“Alice was asking why Aunt Jill is never at Christmas,” Mom adds.
“She’s only three. Does she even remember her other Christmases?
” I’m trying very hard to resist the guilt trip being laid on me.
But that’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?
Spending a lot of money and making inconvenient travel plans because one of your relatives threatens to die before you’ve had a chance to tell them in person that you love them and that they can return your gift for store credit.
“I just…”
“This isn’t about Grant, is it?” Mom asks. “This is a suburb of sixty-four thousand people, Jill. If you want to avoid your handsome ex—who I think is still single—we will absolutely make sure you can do that.”
I hate that the first thing I think is How does she know whether Grant is still single? The second thing I think is how furious I am that she thinks I won’t come home because of Grant. Even if that is why I won’t come home.
“Though maybe you should see if he’s around,” Dad says. “’Cause you’re not getting any younger, either, Jilly.”
If it weren’t for my bad-daughter guilt, I’d surely sarcastically retort that I’d better get married tomorrow because my shriveled crone days are upon me. I’m only twenty-nine.
The situation offers only three options:
Feign a bad connection and disappear myself from this FaceTime.
Sputter an indignant denial and imply I have moved on with a new boyfriend—then do everything possible to give the imaginary man in question a name and a reason to not be here with me.
Throw the iPhone across the room, perhaps hard enough to prove that my arm—though not getting any younger—is capable of extremely youthful feats of strength that an ancient, withered spinster could not manage.
Or wait—there’s a fourth.
Because, as I look around my apartment I keep meaning to decorate beyond my sad little tree, I find myself wishing I were headed to Powell Park.
It may not have a cute bed-and-breakfast like the town on my television screen, but it’s mine.
And I have been avoiding it because of my ex.
It’s been three years. That’s enough time that the fear of seeing him shouldn’t influence my life anymore.
“Get ready to be a suburb of sixty-four thousand and one,” I say, avoiding any mention of Grant. “Because I’m coming for Christmas. Surprise!”