Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
Love is caring deeply about someone that you would sacrifice your life for them.
From the text conversation of Ellie Sterns and her mother:
MOM : Good morning.
ELLIE : Morning.
MOM : Honey, your brother mentioned Gilbert moved back to Austin.
ELLIE : I’ll have to thank him for that.
MOM : Be nice to Chris. He’s delicate.
ELLIE : And I’m not?
MOM : You, Eleanor Sterns, are made of strong stuff.
ELLIE : Really?
MOM : Of course. Don’t you ever forget it.
ELLIE : Thanks. That means a lot.
MOM : Now tell me what happened.
I waffled back and forth about reaching out to Gil.
The first couple of days after he left, I had almost convinced myself he’d return.
Of course he wouldn’t just leave. Would he?
But there were no phone calls or texts from him, no surprise knocks at the front door.
With each day that passed that first week, my heart grew heavier and heavier until I felt like I was dragging it around on a chain everywhere I went.
People asked where he was even though they knew the answer. Nothing happened here without someone finding out, after all.
The first week after he left, the café was busier than ever—mostly full of Nosy Nellies and I was a recipient of many long looks of pity.
“How are you holding up?” they’d ask.
“Doing fine,” I’d say with a reassuring smile, and got about my business.
What I’d wanted to say, as my heart clanged around on that chain, was, “Careful there, don’t step on it. I only have the one and it’s fragile.”
The next couple of weeks, I kept as busy as I could. There were muffins, of course, as well as an assortment of baked goods. So many baked goods, I dropped off some to the fire station, the sheriff’s office, and the one nursing home in town.
I not only finished the slipper for Mom, but I crocheted an entire sweater. Well, almost. I needed to finish one of the sleeves.
I spent a lot of time at Chris and Mae’s house in a shameless campaign to hold my niece as much as humanly possible.
I took Oliver shopping for school supplies and in mid-August he started the second grade.
He made me promise not to cry when I dropped him off on the first day.
One I kept until I got back in the car, so I think that’s a win.
By week three, my sadness had begun to take a decidedly angry edge after I began to find sticky notes Gil had left behind that said things like, Check the washing machine.
You have clothes in there . And dammit all, I did.
I found another one in the office at work: Don’t forget to add in the receipts every day .
So, I found myself sitting at the computer doing just that.
It wasn’t fair he knew me so well. What right did he have? I decided I was done dragging my heart around. It was too messy, and I just needed to forget about him and move on.
The next day, Iris came into work with red-rimmed eyes and a promise ring missing from her finger.
“Love sucks,” she said.
“Yeah, it does,” I said. “You wanna talk about it?”
So, we did. Over muffins and pie, we talked.
“Men suck,” Iris said.
“Yeah, they do.”
I didn’t say it was a deep conversation, but we understood each other on an elemental level, the element being rage.
That weekend, I filled up a box of things that reminded me of Gil.
He’d not left much behind, so I improvised—an old screwdriver, what was left of his expensive laundry soap, an iron (it wasn’t like I planned on using it ever), and a few other odds and ends.
I donated it all to the church thrift store.
But that night I lay in bed, worrying I’d been too hasty.
The bargaining stage came quickly thereafter.
I reasoned with God, asked if there was anything I could do to bring Gil for a visit.
Just one time so I could thank him properly.
I promised to never miss a Sunday school class.
(Except when I overslept.) I promised to do more volunteer work.
I promised to never speak badly of Peter Stone again. (I was desperate, okay?)
“Mommy, come see,” Oliver called from his room one day.
“What is this? You cleaned your room.” Everything was put away with the precision and care of a six-year-old boy. “It looks awesome. I didn’t even ask you to do it.”
“I’m the Man Club president, I gotta follow the rules,” he said. Before I could answer, he grabbed my hand and pulled me over to his dresser. “I found something.”
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to not step on the loose building blocks that were still hidden in the carpet.
He pulled a black sweatshirt from one of his drawers. “I found it when I was cleaning. It’s Mr. Gil’s. We should send it back to him.”
I took the sweatshirt from him, remembering how Gil liked to wear it in the mornings. Heart racing, I promised to make sure he got it back but then I realized it smelled just like him and I couldn’t part with it. Even though just holding it made me feel like crying.
When I made it in to see Sunny, I’d been in a constant state of near tears. I hated it. I wanted to get over Gil the way I got over all the other guys I’d dated: pick up the pieces of my broken heart and move on.
“Ellie, how has that worked out for you before?” Sunny asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I crossed my arms and stared at her.
“Okay.” She crossed her arms and stared right back.
It was like a game of therapy chicken. Who would speak first? Me. It was me. I lost.
“I want to stop feeling all these…these…”
“Feelings?”
“Yes. Those.”
“Sorry. Feelings are part of being human. Be gentle with yourself now. It’s okay to cry or not cry, to laugh or not laugh, to be angry or sad. Feelings aren’t the bad thing.” She said it like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Sure,” I said, slumping against the couch.
“How do you think Gil is feeling right now?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Have you reached out to him?”
“It didn’t seem like a good idea, especially with how he left.”
Sunny nodded. “What about a letter?”
“Maybe,” I said.
It turns out I did have a reason to send him a letter, about a month after he left.
Dear Gil ? —
Hi. I’ve debated whether I should contact you, and Sunny (my therapist) said a letter was least confrontational. Not that I’m confrontational. At least not right now. Two weeks ago? Definitely.
I hope Mikey is doing well. Oliver misses him a lot. He talks about both of you all the time. Some days I think he’d happily trade me out for you two. He’s hoping Mikey will answer the letter he sent soon.
You never gave me the chance to thank you, so…
thank you. It’s the most remarkable thing anyone has ever done for me.
But sometimes, especially at night, I think about how unfair it all seems, and I get angry.
At you, at me. But I guess that’s how life is.
Ollie taught me a lot of things but especially that life doesn’t just stop when things don’t work out.
Otherwise, you end up old and grumpy and alone.
You’ve probably already noticed the big cashier’s check in this envelope, and you might be wondering if I robbed a bank. I did not.
Remember at Easter when my sister Aggie stayed the night?
She happened to admire Fred the Sad Clown on a Bike.
If you don’t know, Aggie works for a big auction house in Oklahoma City.
She thought Fred looked familiar, so I let her take it back with her to get it checked out.
It took her a while, but it turns out he was created by some fancy Italian artist. Hand-painted, one of a kind, and all that.
He sold at auction for over two thousand dollars.
When I sent in photos of all the other clowns, Aggie was over the moon.
There were a lot more valuable clowns in the bunch.
A lot more. Who knew? Aggie put feelers out for someone who might want to buy the whole lot of them, and someone paid big money.
This is your half. I hope you can use it to help with Mikey or to buy yourself a fancy iron for your clothes.
I guess you could buy a whole lot of irons now if you wanted.
So, raise a glass to creepy clowns and the people who love them.
I hope you’re happy too, Gil.
Ellie
P.S. You’ll be happy to know after many weeks of consideration, Oliver finally settled on names for the kittens—Gilly and Mikey. Wonder where he got those?
P.P.S. I miss you.
P.P.P.S. I probably shouldn’t have told you that, but it’s the truth.
I waited an entire week before I mailed the letter to Gil.
First, I had to track down his home address from the attorney who gave it to me after extorting a dozen muffins.
After that, I put a stamp on it and took it to the Sit-n-Eat and set it on the desk in the office where it had been for the last four days.
For some reason, mailing that letter felt like a momentous step, like a final farewell to Gil. We’d always be connected. We were joint owners in the property, but that could all be done through the attorney. I didn’t have any other reason to reach out to him. Mailing that letter felt like the end.
Teddy showed up right as I was closing, in his usual happy-go-lucky mood. “How you doing, Ellie?”
“I think I’m doing okay,” I said as I set a plate of chicken fried steak in front of him. I wasn’t even lying either. Maybe for the first time in weeks, I did feel okay. I wasn’t sad or angry or depressed.
“That’s real good,” he said around a forkful of mashed potatoes.
“It is, isn’t it?” I grinned.
“Oh, shoot, I got something for you,” he said. He frantically patted at his shirt before he pulled out two photos from the front pocket. “Now this one is an old one I found.”
The photo showed three teenagers spread out on a blanket.
I recognized them immediately. “This is you”—I pointed to the lanky guy at the end—“and that’s Amelia.
” She smiled back at me with eyes that sparkled with intelligence.
Finally, I tapped the boy in the middle, smaller than Teddy and with wildly thick eyebrows that worked on him.
His smile was there but smaller, quiet, even shy. “That would be Ollie.”
“Yup. That was the last Fourth of July we spent together.” He traced the faces in the photo, smiling wistfully. “It was a real good day. We were young and happy to be together. Didn’t know what was coming next and we didn’t mind that so much back then. It was nice to be happy right then, together.”
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “I guess a lot changed after that.”
“It sure did. Lately, I’ve been wondering what life would have been like if things had happened differently.
But I’m an old man now and I’m allowed to get all sentimental, I suppose.
I’m here on borrowed time and stubbornness.
” With a sigh, he gently pushed the photo away.
“But you young people…You have so much life left to live and maybe learn a thing or two from the mistakes that have gone before you.”
Before I could think of a way to respond, he flipped over the second photo. I gasped and snatched it up from the table. It was also of another Fourth of July but it had been taken only two months ago. “Where did you get this?”
“Saw someone with a camera and asked them. Not a one of you was paying any attention.”
There in the photo were Oliver and Mikey, Gil and me, all laid out on that blanket, staring up at the sky. Although it was dark, the fireworks cast enough light to pick out our smiles. “I don’t have a photo of all of us together.”
“And now you do,” Teddy said.
I threw my arms around him. “Thank you.”
“It’s not a big deal, I swear,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“You all looked so happy there.” He shrugged. “Maybe that means something.”
“Maybe it does,” I said. It meant that, for a little while, I’d been loved and had loved. It hadn’t been like the romance novels. Not a pirate in sight. But it had been real and messy, and I would treasure every second of it.
“Don’t start crying,” Teddy said with more than a little trepidation. “I ain’t so good with crying women.”
I smiled at him. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“I have a letter that needs mailing. Would you drop it off for me?”