51. Penelope
fifty-one
penelope
My heart hurts.
There’s no better way to say it. No goofy metaphors or fluffy figurative language can substitute the ache in my chest that won’t disappear. It’s a combination of symptoms: My unsigned contract. The fight with my mom and all of the messages in our text thread I’ve left on read. Most of all, it’s the big grey blob of ambiguity hanging over Ant and me like an impending storm cloud.
If it hasn’t even spilled yet after all we’ve been through, I’m afraid we might not survive the deluge.
We haven’t seen much of each other lately. Work has really amped up for him, and when he isn’t there, he’s at the new house. Part of me hates that I haven’t been able to talk to him—about his progress on the house, or his feelings on taking the assistant principal job. It’s like the moment we would’ve started digging into the real life stuff, our progress came to a grinding halt.
Today, I’m spending a snowy Saturday in a VFW Hall with Debbie Ellis and her knitting club. They host an annual hat knitting day after the new year, and donate all of the hats to the NICU at Mass Gen. There are snacks, raffles, and knitting competitions with all sorts of prizes. My prize today is getting out of my head.
I won’t be at the house that holds the ghosts of Anthony and my “almosts,” and I won’t face either the edits on my current book or the blank outline for the next one. The unsigned contract sits on my office desk too. For today, real life gets to be paused while I busy my hands and mind making tiny hats.
I wish I had any clue as to what to do next. I want it all: The contract, the signings, the events, and all that comes with being a full-time author. And, I want Anthony.
I don’t know if he’ll still have me after seeing the truth of us right there on the pages for all the world to see. We need to stop avoiding one another. I’m as guilty of it as he is. I don’t think either of us are really doing it on purpose—we’re giving each other space. But last time, that space lasted almost two years. I don’t want long separations to be our norm.
Anthony’s ears must be ringing, because no sooner am I making up fantasy conversations with him in my head than I hear his voice from across the hall.
“Wow. Teacher, author, and knitting extraordinaire? Can the famed PJ Layne really do it all?”
I lift my eyes from the half-finished hat and my breath halts in my chest.
It’s one thing to see him from across the school building or to know he’s at home by the rumbling of his steps and the breadcrumbs of his to-do list that he leaves in his wake. It’s another to have his presence wholly consume me for the first time in over a week.
Something about Anthony Ellis has softened. It’s there in his eyes, the weight on his shoulders, the edges of his smile, the tone of his voice. It’s as if the bees that he says are always in his head have dulled their buzz. His brows lift ever so slightly— asking without words if we’re okay—and I tilt my head toward the vacant chair beside me.
“Let’s just keep this secret between you and me. We don’t want the readers to meet the real PJ Layne and be insanely jealous of all that she’s accomplished in her secret life.”
Lifting my finished hat, I hand it to him. He smiles warmly, then inspects my handiwork. Staring down at the baby beanie in shades of pink, his shoulders hitch again.
“Cute. Tiny. ”
“Very. We make them for NICU babies.”
“How big for a newborn?”
“Not too much bigger. Do you want me to teach you?”
His eyes sparkle like lightning bugs.
“Yeah, that’d be cool.”
I show him the stash of yarn and let him pick the colors as I take my hat over to the finished pile.
“Here. You don’t even need needles. I’ll teach you how to finger knit.”
“You can do that?”
“Did Debbie seriously never show you guys?”
“I’m sure she tried, and I’m also sure I couldn’t sit still long enough to make more than a knot.”
I giggle at the thought—little Anthony Ellis using knitting needles as swords because sitting to make a hat took way too long.
“Do you still want a whole baseball team full of kids?” I ask, starting my next hat, this time with shades of yellow.
“Oh, I definitely want a couple. I’ve got five bedrooms in the house, and a basement where I can add more if I want.”
My skin tingles as an invasion floods into my thoughts of that red headed little boy giving a little girl with strawberry blonde hair a piggy back ride.
“What about you? You said you wanted a couple?”
“I did.” I tilt my head, focusing on this layer of yarn before switching my color. “I’d like at least four. Three leaves room for two to gang up.”
“You’re telling me,” he chuckles. “We left Grant out of everything . We used to lock him out of the treehouse.”
“You guys had a treehouse?”
“Yep,” he beams. “Had my first kiss up there. First other things, too.”
I roll my eyes and laugh at his eyebrow waggle.
“That’ll be my next project—after the house is finished. Although, part of me wants to wait until my first little one is big enough to sit there with a hard hat and help me and my dad.”
My eyes clench shut at that vision—the red hair sticking out of a toy hard hat—and I shake it out.
“You good, PJ?” he chuckles.
I shake my head. “I can’t believe you still call me that.”
“ I can’t believe you made it your pen name.”
I shrug, feeling my face heat.
“It worked.”
His laugh rumbles low in his chest.
“I can remember almost everything about that day, you know.”
“Me too.”
We were seven. I hadn’t seen Anthony or the Ellises since his dad came into the picture. Since Mom had Connor. We went down to Revere Beach for the day, just the moms and the kids. I remember Mom and Ms. Debbie talking about everyone’s daddies. Ms. Debbie said Anthony’s daddy had come back, and she had a toddler with her too. Mommy said Connor had a daddy, and she hoped he would come live with us because he had a lot of money.
I still didn’t know who my daddy was.
Me and the boy with the blonde hair were playing in the sand. Well—I was playing in the sand. He couldn’t seem to sit still.
“Anthony James!” Ms. Debbie yelled. “Stay by Penny. You don’t go down by the water without Mama.”
“Anthony James” came scuttling back to our pile of sand toys.
“I don’t like it when she calls me my middle name,” he said, collapsing onto his butt in the sand, spraying some onto my bare leg.
“Well, I don’t like that she calls me Penny,” I said, shoveling sand into my bucket.
“Isn’t that your name?”
“No. I’m Penelope.” I’d tilted my nose into the air. Penelope made me sound more grown up.
“Penny is my favorite song though! Penny Lane is my eyes and ears in the blue bird sky…”
“Those aren’t even the words.”
I shook my head, but little Anthony James kept singing The Beatles to the beat of his own drum.
We built sandcastles in our contented silence. I strained over the babble of my new baby Connor and Anthony’s toddling brother to hear what our mommies were saying about our daddies.
“My daddy calls me AJ sometimes. For Anthony James.” He stood up and pounced into some strange stance with his hands angled in front of him. “It’s my karate name. Hi-YA!”
I stared and shook my head as he started chopping the air, kicking sand up around me.
“What’s your middle name?”
“Jayne.”
With a “Y.” Because my mother had to be different.
“What’s the letter?”
“J,” I said, flattening him with a stare I’d give people when they said something stupid. My mother was starting to call it my “resting mean face.”
“Oh! You could be PJ then! PJ and AJ! We could be superheroes. I like The Hulk. He smashes things.”
I rolled my eyes as he started pounding the ground with his fists.
“I will not be PJ. I am not a Funnybunny.”
Mom read that book to Connor all the time. It didn’t make sense to me that the bunny thought he could be a bear or a beaver.
“PJ Layne is a fireman and she likes finger pies…”
“Stop it, Anthony James ,” I snarked, scrunching up my nose.
“Hey, only my mommy gets to call me that.”
“Then stop singing songs about me having finger pies ? —”
“PJ Layne is a fireman with finger pies ? —”
“Mommy! Make Ant stop!”
“Hey! I am not a ant!”
“Ah. Our first fight.”
I come back to the present, and Anthony James has a silly wistful gleam in his eyes, his hand clenched dramatically over his heart. My shoulders hitch in a quiet laugh.
“I still can’t listen to that song without rolling my eyes. You ruined The Beatles for me.”
“I am truly sorry. Is there anything I can do to make up for it? Can I put your name into Blackbird?”
“Don’t you dare!” I guffaw, reaching over to playfully slap his wrist.
“Hey! Watch the finger knitting! I’m very attached to this hat.”
We’re smiling. Giggling. Can it really be this easy?
He coughs, shakes his head, and looks down at the yarn wrapped around his fingers into the semi-shape of a hat.
“So, uh… Did you sign the contract yet?”
My veins freeze while my skin heats. My eyes track back to my own knitting.
“Nope. I have to turn it in by next week though.”
“You’re going to though, right? You have to, Pen.”
I catch my breath in my throat at his desperate plea, one for me to do something for myself. I nod, knowing that I have some T’s to cross and I’s to dot tonight.
My, “Yep,” is clogged with a torrent of emotion.
We’re quiet again, drowning in the clinking of knitting needles and the gossip of old ladies.
“I’m going to read it,” he says, popping our bubble. “I want to know. And then, I want to hold your hand while we jump over the fences together.”
Never did I imagine that we’d be having this all-important conversation in public, with yarn spinning its way into hats for babies, but it’s now or never. I take a deep breath.
“It’s my best work. And more importantly, it was how I processed all that happened. You can be upset—you have every right to read what I wrote and feel your feelings. It’s not going to change my experience. But hopefully, it will clear the air for both of us. And then…”
Ant’s yarn-covered hands cover mine. He waits until I meet his gaze, then levels me with stone serious eyes.
“And then, we step into the next chapter together.”
His head dips until I nod, until I agree with what we both know to be true.
“I’m proud of you, you know.”
Here is where his gaze falls. When it ticks back up, the seas of turquoise are my own private pool of hope. The corners of his mouth tick up just slightly enough for me to see. It’s not his words that convince me, but the pure candor written on his face. Like the two are finally done being at odds with one another.
“You built an empire with your own two hands. I can’t wait to be standing beside you as you go out and claim what’s yours.”
Over the next several minutes, my heart feels like it’s on a steady inflate, the edges fuzzy with newness. My needles clack, while Ant’s fingers are silently weaving back and forth. There is so much to say, but I’m also content in this purgatory. We both have things we need to do, to work out, and for once, the unknown of what comes next is a slow river of peace.
“Not too shabby for a first timer.”
He holds up his lopsided blue hat, his smile just as crooked. There’s tired in his eyes, and I wonder how many bees are buzzing about his head after all of this.
“Looks good,” I say, offering him a cheesy thumbs up. Ant nods, looks at me as if his tired heart is in his eyes, and then exhales harshly, pushing to stand up.
“I should, uh… I’m going to go turn this in then, I guess. One more to add to the pile.”
He slaps the hat soundlessly against his palm, and my brows and smile turn up.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see you…?”
“Not sure. My dad is helping with the last of the carpeting today, so it might be a late night. And I also have a book to get through. I’ll let you know what my plans are though.”
“Okay,” I nod.
Even in this weird sense of limbo, he hasn’t failed to check in on me, like he’s taken that little nugget to heart and hasn’t let it go.
Matching words and actions .
Something I once thought only existed in fairy tales.
“Hey, Ant?” I call softly after him. He stops in his tracks, turns around, and hums. “I’ll answer any questions you have. When you get to them.”
He nods slowly, his bottom lip sucked between his teeth.
“Yeah. Will do, boss.”
He gets swallowed into the sea of old ladies, and I watch him until I can’t any longer.
I never needed permission from Anthony to sign the contract, but something about the conversation we had pushes pen to paper as soon as I get home.
Three years. Six books. Tours and events.
My future laid out in black and white.
The dates are ambiguous enough that I still have one more decision left to make. A decision that is as simple as the winter in Boston is cold.
When the time comes, will I be able to leave the job that has kept me stable for the last decade of my life and venture into the unknown?