Chapter 23 #2
The Marshalls were going to the cemetery.
William blurted out the destination as soon as their seat belts clicked.
His declaration was forced; he seemed set on tearing a bandage off, even though everyone knew what was underneath it.
Ellie and Sandra ignored him, perhaps hoping they could enjoy the illusion of driving anywhere else for a little longer.
The cemetery upheld this pretense. What followed beyond the curved red-brick entrance could have been mistaken for a college campus or a park. Sun streamed through the windows as the car glided along a freshly paved road. The dying grass outside was flecked by trees clinging to their last foliage.
“Where did you put the flowers?” Sandra asked as they slid into a parking space.
“What flowers?” William killed the engine.
“Ben’s flowers.” She set down her lipstick and snapped her mirror closed. “I left you a message.”
“Didn’t get a message.” William shrugged.
Sandra shook her head in annoyance. “So, there aren’t any flowers, then.”
“I guess not.”
“And how do you think that will look?”
“It’s going to look like someone forgot flowers.”
“It will look like we forgot him , Will.”
Ellie glanced up from her phone in the backseat.
She was thinner than the last memory—too thin.
Despite the tough exterior she’d worked hard on, Ellie flinched easily, and her body tightened in reaction to the tension unfolding in front of her.
“What’s going on up there?” she asked. Sandra crossed her arms over her chest.
“I say we tell her,” William said. He leaned his seat back to get comfortable for whatever reveal was about to happen.
“You know this isn’t the right moment,” Sandra insisted.
“Tell me what?” Ellie asked.
“Well, when would be a better moment?” William wanted to know.
He ignored Ellie’s question. “She’s always busy.
I’ve tried calling.” He turned to look at her in the backseat.
This must have been the newer, free-spirited version of her dad.
Ellie had mentioned how he had switched from a person who cowered behind her mom to a fan of radical honesty immediately after the accident.
“Please wait, Will.”
“Can somebody fill me in?”
“We’re getting divorced,” her dad announced.
Sandra winced like an insect stung her.
“Are you …You’re serious?” Ellie gripped the door handle, ready to run away from it all. “You’re telling me that you’re getting divorced. At the cemetery. On Ben’s birthday.”
“I’ve tried to call,” William told her. “We’ve tried to set up dinners. I offered to swing by your place.”
“No. You don’t get to put this on me.” Ellie looked between her parents. “It’s you, Dad, isn’t it? This was your idea.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because,” she told him. “Because Mom’s not saying a word.
And because you’ve always talked about living somewhere far away as this big aspiration of yours.
So, why don’t you just do it, huh? Go off the grid?
You have my permission.” Ellie brushed her hands clean.
She paused and waited for her dad to fight her.
Or, to fight for her, Drake considered. Neither parent moved to comfort Ellie.
“Let’s not get cruel. We’re here for Ben,” William reminded them. “And it’s his birthday. So, let’s go pay our respects.”
Ellie pushed back in her seat. “I think I’ll stay here.”
“You’re going to see your brother, Ellie,” Sandra insisted.
“What are you so afraid of, Mom? That a stranger will notice I’m not there?”
“We need to show up for him.”
“Show up for Ben?” Ellie asked. “Ben is gone. Mom, you care so much about what people think. Do you want to know what I think about you? I think you’re terrified of people seeing that you’re broken.
” The target switched over to William’s back.
“And, Dad, don’t worry, I won’t miss you when you leave. You’re barely around now.”
“You’re being hysterical, Ellie,” Sandra said softly.
“She’s ticked off,” William observed. “She’s ticked we’re getting divorced. We hear you on that, Ellie.”
Ellie gave a concerning laugh. “You don’t hear me, Dad. Neither of you ever ask what I need. What’s going on in my life. You lost the kid you liked better, and you can’t stand to face the one you’re left with.”
“That’s not—” William started.
“But thanks for the news.” Ellie nodded, preparing to sink her teeth in. “You two were never right for each other. Maybe you’d have been happier if you were never together. And speaking of bad past decisions, maybe you should’ve thought a little harder about becoming parents.”
She could say awful things when she was hurt.
They were all hurting, weren’t they? Her parents couldn’t step up because they were grieving.
Ellie’s grief pushed them further away. It clicked for Drake why the Marshalls didn’t talk much, so many years later.
They each seemed to share the quick ability to judge and inability to bend.
They would need someone, or something, to bring them back together.
In the seat next to him, Drake heard Ellie whisper something.
“Jerk,” she was saying. “Jerk. Jerk.”
“Who?” Drake asked.
“Me,” Ellie said, her eyes glued to the screen. “I was a jerk,” she said. “I don’t remember being a jerk this day. I just remember getting that news and being furious. How I assumed the divorce was my fault, too.”
The movie kept playing. Drake talked right over it.
On-screen, William got out of the car, and Sandra walked behind him.
Ellie stayed put. “You’re not being a jerk here,” Drake said.
“Come on. You were young.” He motioned to the movie.
“It was a rough time to give you that news. Of course, you would have a reaction.” The familiar blur and switch of the memories happened.
Drake held his breath and hoped the cinema would be on his side tonight.
“I pushed my dad away,” Ellie said. “Shoved him, more like. Maybe I’m the reason he moved. I’m probably the reason my mom and I barely talk. And I didn’t …I didn’t even visit Ben that day. I still haven’t. Can you believe that?”
Drake set Ellie’s head on his shoulder.
Shortly after, Melinda’s face took over the screen.
On their first real date, Drake and Melinda huddled up inside their town’s only Thai restaurant. Melinda ordered drunken noodles. She made a joke about not getting the noodles too drunk. “I’ll have the same,” Drake added, and then they were alone again.
“You look … great tonight, by the way,” he told her. His hands fidgeted on his lap under the table. He wasn’t hiding his nerves well.
“Thanks. So do you.” Melinda tugged on the pink-and-white gingham fabric that reminded Drake of a chessboard. “This dress was in bad shape when I picked it up from the thrift store,” she said. “But I added some sleeves and cleaned her all up. Now she’s like new.”
The waitress dropped off some free spring rolls. Melinda reached out to grab one. “Nice of them to bring these,” she said, dunking the top into a fragrant peanut sauce. “They must know they’ve got a customer for life in me.”
Her words unsettled Drake; they reminded him that he hadn’t thought through the logistics of them being together.
Sure, their town was a nice place to visit on holidays, but unlike Melinda, he didn’t want to stay there.
Since living at home after college, he’d felt stuck, held back, limited in every way.
Drake dreamed of big-city skylines. He wanted to be surrounded by one-of-a-kind homes and people.
Everything was the same here. The same as what he’d always known.
“A customer for life, huh?” Drake tried to ask casually.
“Oh, yeah,” Melinda said. “Why go anywhere else when you’ve found a good thing?”
Drake wanted to take Melinda somewhere more grown-up for a second date.
He’d picked up an extra shift at Peat’s Hardware to make sure he could cover the bill at Lake Lounge.
Out the window, boats glided over the surface of a small, dark marina.
The restaurant was romantic at first glance, but as he took in the expensive wine list and stiff white tablecloths, he feared he’d made a mistake.
“I’m sorry if this place is a little stuffy,” Drake said. They had just learned from the waiter that their dinner did not come with a free appetizer or even free bread. His stomach protested.
“This place is nice,” Melinda told him. The corners of her lips turned into a smile.
“Although, it would make things more interesting if you kissed me.” She set the menu up in front of them, and Drake kissed her then.
His heart was beating so fast that it became a cartoon heart he worried she might see.
It jutted right there out of his sweater, like he was an illustrated animal responding to the swell of keys and strings.
The third date was more intimate. Melinda had invited Drake to her home, which was an apartment above the shop.
He jumped a little as she slammed a knife into a wooden cutting board, chopping up ingredients for homemade sushi.
She was tired of going to restaurants, she told him, especially ones that didn’t come with bread.
Bread was a staple of the human experience.
If it wasn’t provided freely, the restaurant wasn’t for them.
Drake watched her float around the balmy tiled kitchen as she rolled salmon and avocado into sticky rice.
“This dinner was a mistake,” she said after trying a bite. The sushi looked irritated, but Drake told her it was delicious. She served it on her table lined with two taper candles tucked inside antique gold mice.
This apartment always felt like an attic to him; the lines of the roof moved into an A-frame shape, and patterned rugs rested on floors that were nearly covered by the bed in the center of the room.
“Never compromise on a bed,” Melinda had insisted when she gave him a quick tour.
“Get your shoe budget under control and buy yourself a nice bed.”
Drake woke up in her nice bed that week and the following one.
When they weren’t in bed, they sat at the terrible tiny couch that faced her wood-burning fireplace.
Melinda met Drake’s parents at the Edison building and stayed for dominoes.
They went to Nathan’s Diner for grilled cheese sandwiches and ate candy that hurt their teeth from the gumball machine.
They shared lime kisses inside Drake’s parked car.
Eventually, an invitation broke their small-town routine.
Melinda asked Drake if he wanted to join her at a friend’s baby shower in the city.
The friend had a modest, but airy, apartment with a second bedroom where her baby would sleep.
She mentioned an Italian restaurant that she and her husband frequented in the area.
Drake suggested they stop by on the way home.
Their menus arrived, and before the waitress could give them time to think their choice over, Melinda asked if the meal came with bread.
“Of course, it does,” the waitress said. “Although, I do have to recommend you order the garlic bread, too. It’s kind of what we’re known for.”
“Makes sense,” they agreed in unison.
“I’m really happy, Drake,” Melinda told him. How long had it been since they started dating. A month? Two?
“About the double bread?” Drake asked.
“With you,” she said. “I’m really happy with you.”
“I love you, Melinda.”
The statement was true at the time. Drake did love her.
Drake loved her in that insatiable, first-love way—the kind that resulted in late-night talks on the phone about nothing in the hours they weren’t together, winding the cord around his wrist as he heard her voice.
He had loved her since that night at the school dance, he believed.
It was an easy love, though, a love without challenge or growth.
A love of sameness, much like the town itself.
But at the time, at that moment, it was just love, and it was the only romantic kind Drake had known.
“I love you, too,” she said.
The bread arrived. They kissed, and the red lights cast over them from a blinking sign in the window that spelled out the name of the restaurant: THE GARLIC brEAD PLACE .