Five
Five
The rest of the day moves slowly, like a bad film that will not end.
Everyone is in the condo, and yet it’s as if they all exist on their own individual planes. Bunny spends the day heating and then reheating the lunch leftovers, which she schleps back and forth to the coffee table even though no one wants to eat. Jonah sits on the couch, vacillating between checking sports updates on his phone and periodically excusing himself to the bathroom, thanks to all that melted cheese. Frank sets himself up at the dining table with his multiple pairs of reading glasses, shaking out the flimsy pages of a newspaper and then slowly flipping through them to pass the time. Maggie hangs out alone in the sunroom, reading (or pretending to read and study) some book about ethical farming.
Ellie paces back and forth across the shiny white tiles, thinking about the ripple effect of her and Jonah’s choice. One decision—out of the millions of decisions they’ve likely made together over the years—and look at the impact.
She pauses at her parents’ entryway table and looks at the many framed photographs on it. Most of them are snapshots of Ellie, Jonah, and Maggie during better times. Nestled among them is one of Maggie’s childhood drawings, her signature little-kid illustration, preserved in a frame: a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses and a wide smile, like the one back home once taped to their fridge.
Ellie looks away from the console and over at the back of Jonah’s head of thick hair. They’ve mostly gotten along on this trip—a few blips here and there—though Ellie knows this is a type of performance they’re both putting on, a small gift to each other to make up for all the fighting before they say goodbye, which is what they plan to do once their plane lands.
The doorbell rings, a shock wave to their quiet environment. They all turn to see. Bunny rushes to the door, drying her hands on a dish towel.
“Shelia?” Bunny questions, surprised, and maybe a touch annoyed. She tosses the rag over her shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
Shelia has been Bunny’s neighbor for a few months now. Other than their brief interaction at the pool, Ellie is only aware of her from phone conversations with her mother. Since Shelia has moved into the unit several doors down, she and Bunny have said hello to each other—physically crossed paths—practically daily and made a habit of exchanging vague pleasantries. Still, Bunny hardly knows her. It doesn’t matter. Ellie can tell that Bunny’s already decided she cannot stand her.
“Hiya, Bunny.” Shelia wears a pair of bermuda shorts and a windbreaker, even though the faint hint of a breeze does not warrant it. She cranes her neck to get a peek inside the condo. “I brought this for your visitors.” She’s holding a tray of something. “Cream puffs,” she announces. “Who doesn’t love cream puffs?”
“Thank you, Shelia,” Bunny says, though Ellie can tell her mother’s remark is not sincere. “They’re leaving in the morning,” she explains and accepts Shelia’s offering. “Otherwise, I’d invite you in.”
Shelia nods, still peering past Bunny’s shoulder. “I understand.” She touches her short, ashy hair and pauses long enough to suck in an audible breath. “I’d take every minute with my Johnnie if he were here visiting me, too.”
They exchange a cordial farewell before Bunny closes the door. Ellie follows her mother into the kitchen to take a peek at the dessert Shelia has prepared—not that she has an appetite for it. Cream puffs are one of Ellie’s least favorite desserts. It’s the texture, plus the fact that they remind her of an old boyfriend who was obsessed with them.
“That’s what you’re going to end up like,” Bunny admonishes her the instant Ellie steps into the room.
“Like a cream puff?” Ellie asks, confused.
“Like Shelia ,” Bunny whispers. “Look at her! Divorced. No husband. Just out galivanting around. No one knows her backstory. She doesn’t talk about it.” Bunny crosses her arms over the chest of her brightly colored top. “The other women in the neighborhood don’t care for her,” she announces. “Not even her own son—that Johnnie —comes to see her.” She starts to wash some dishes. “Lord forgive me,” she adds.
Ellie settles into a kitchen chair. Through the bay window, she sees Shelia outside talking to another neighbor. “Maybe divorce was the right choice for her, Mom. Maybe she wasn’t happy being married.”
Bunny turns and gives her daughter a look. “Please.”
Ellie’s whole life, her parents’ marriage has been like something from a black-and-white rerun. Quiet mornings together with their newspapers and their coffees. Dinner on the table every night at 5:30 p.m. sharp. Everything about their relationship, as far as Ellie has always seen, has been framed by comfort. Ease. Contentment. A sense of infatuation and commitment that seems like an artifact from another time. Still, Ellie wonders.
“I’m serious,” Ellie explains. “I’m sure at some point in the more than fifty years that you’ve been married to Dad, you’ve at least thought about what your life would have looked like if you hadn’t married him.”
“What?” Bunny asks, clearly offended.
“Come on, Mom,” Ellie continues. “You mean to tell me you’ve never—not once—thought about what your life might have been like—who you might have become—if you hadn’t ended up with him?”
“No,” she says quickly. “Literally never.” She turns off the faucet. “I made a commitment—a vow —to your father the day I married him.”
Ellie thinks back to the night of her wedding. After the ceremony and the party and the dancing and the champagne, she and Jonah finally found themselves alone—still wearing their wedding clothes—on their hotel balcony. Jonah stood behind Ellie, wrapped his arms around her waist, the two of them looking toward the future that still waited for them.
“Out of all the people in the world,” Jonah said, “what made you choose me?”
Ellie laughed, her bare arms prickled with goose bumps thanks to the mid-October air. “Your terrible driving,” she joked, referencing the mishap that had first brought them together.
It was funny—in a charming way—that they’d picked each other. Jonah, with his love of numbers and sports, a bit of a jock. Ellie, with her passion for books and stories, someone who would have sat at a different lunch table than him in high school, that was for sure. Jonah, who’d traveled away from home for college to find himself. And Ellie, who’d more or less stayed put. He liked the lights in their apartment turned up bright, whereas she preferred them to stay dimmed. They were like two opposites who inexplicably matched—complementary hues on a color wheel.
“What made you choose me?” Ellie asked, her face tilted onto the shoulder of his suit jacket.
“Choose?” Jonah laughed quietly. “I didn’t,” he said. “It was fate.” He kissed her head. “It did the choosing for me.”
Back in the kitchen, Bunny folds a dish towel, sets it on the counter. She swats Ellie’s hand away from the foil wrapping on Shelia’s platter. “Don’t eat those,” she scolds her, quickly changing the topic, as if the homemade cream puffs are poison. “God only knows what she does over there.”
“How’s your back?”
Jonah appears in the doorframe of the front bedroom, where Ellie has begun to pack. He wears a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of cotton shorts, sleeping gear. It’s getting late, the world outside the window fading to a deep blue, though not yet black.
“Not great,” Ellie admits as she folds up the few articles of clothing she’s actually removed from her suitcase in these last two awful days. “I should probably call the doctor on Monday.”
Beyond the bedroom, the condo is mostly quiet. Bunny and Frank have both already fallen asleep in their respective reading chairs. Maggie, who’s under a blanket on the couch, is starting to nod off as she half watches an old rerun of Family Feud (the irony of the show’s title not lost on Ellie).
Jonah sits on the edge of the bed, runs his hands across his face. Speckles of dark stubble—a sign that the day is ending—have begun to appear along his cheeks. “The truth is that I don’t know what we’re doing,” he admits, finally circling back to their conversation from earlier on the bench. “I have no idea if this is all a mistake or not.”
Ellie sets her folded shirts down on the dresser, takes a seat next to him on the mattress. “I thought we’d feel better after we told everyone,” she admits. “That we’d be relieved to not be holding on to this secret anymore.” Jonah nods his agreement. They’re both looking straight ahead at the bad beach art Bunny has hung on the wall. “But, in truth,” Ellie continues, “I think I feel worse.”
Neither of them says anything for a long beat. From the living room, they hear a familiar commercial jingle for a cleaning product.
“If you could go back,” Ellie finally asks, breaking their silence, “would you do it all differently?”
Jonah turns to her, leans his head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“Our marriage,” Ellie states. “Would you still do it again, even if you knew it would ultimately end?” She lets her question sit for a minute. “Not counting Maggie, of course,” she adds with a wave of her hand. “Maggie would still exist in this scenario.” She lets herself laugh quietly. Jonah does, too. “Just imagine that we had a one-night stand or something.”
Jonah’s nostrils widen as he inhales a deep, level breath. He exhales, bites his pink lip. “I think so,” he admits. “I mean, despite where we’re at right now, and not counting all the fighting and messy stuff from the last few months, I like to think we had a pretty good run.” His mouth levels into a subtle smile. “I still think that, for the most part, we were a success.” He watches Ellie, trying to interpret her expression. “What?” he asks. “You look like you want to say something.”
She sighs. “It’s nothing,” she lies. “It’s ... silly.”
Jonah raises a brow, a silent form of encouragement for her to continue.
“It’s just ... sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we met for the first time today. If, maybe through the wisdom of age or something, we’d approach our relationship differently.” Ellie pauses, picking at her pale-pink fingernail. “Or if we’d choose each other out of a crowd if we didn’t already share so much history.” She stops again, a new strain of sadness infecting her. “Or if maybe we wouldn’t, you know? If we’d just walk right past each other, not even notice one another at all.”
Jonah rubs his hands across his thighs. “Who knows, Ellie.” He stands. Outside the window, the neighborhood’s lampposts have all turned on. “Unfortunately, in life, we don’t tend to get those sorts of second chances.” He stops, some thought crossing his mind. “But I’d like to think that we’d at least notice each other.” He smiles softly. “Maybe say hello or something like that.” He steps toward the doorframe. Before he leaves the room, he turns back to her. “You should get some sleep, Ellie,” he says. “The car will be here early to take us to the airport.”
Ellie nods, knowing he’s right. This is what she really needs more than anything right now, this impossible thing she hasn’t been able to get. Sleep. Rest. A chance to shut off her brain. To somehow not exist for a little while. Maybe then she could magically think.
With one blink of her eyes, their whole life and past together appear to Ellie in a flash. The fender bender. Their first months spent dating. The sunset engagement at the beach. Their wedding. Their first shared duplex apartment. The starter home. Maggie’s birth. Watching together as she took her first steps. Listening, side by side, when she said her first real word. Infinite holidays and birthdays. So many choices that had led them through the maze of life and into endless happy moments. How had those same choices managed to lead them here, too?
“Good night, Jo,” she says, knowing it’s the last evening they’ll do this—stand only a few feet from each other before they both retire to sleep. That the next night when she goes to bed—and all the nights that will follow it—she’ll be alone.
“Good night, Ellie,” he says and briefly closes his eyes, as if he’s thinking the same thing or trying to capture the moment. He opens them again, slowly, a delayed camera shutter. “I hope you have good dreams.”
He shuts the door.
Ellie bites her lip, but the tears come anyway.