I regularly tell my patients that humor eases your worries. I have a whole spiel about how it enthuses your hopes and connects you to others. There’s a reason we refer to laughter as the best kind of medicine—it’s not a bunch of hocus pocus—it’s because nothing balances your nervous system faster. Mother Nature’s most powerful antidote to stress, anxiety, and conflict. I even have a framed poster in my office that reads: “Always find a reason to laugh. It may not add years to your life, but will surely add life to your years.”
It feels like I haven’t truly laughed for a long time; not like this anyway, with pure abandonment. With so much power inside to heal and renew, I’m an idiot for not letting go more. I have plenty of friends and colleagues who are always trying to coax me out with promises of a good time. “Come out, tonight, Harlow,” they say. “We’ll have a laugh.” And I do, I put on a smile and make an effort to join in and have fun, but there’s always been something missing. I’m starting to realize that something is Ellis. I’m somehow more alive when I’m with him.
My giggling is hideous, and right at the point I’m sure I sound like a demented hyena, Ellis’s whole body language does a swift one-eighty. I turn my head, confused at what’s rendered him catatonic, and my mother’s voice registers in my ears.
My living room shrinks in her presence, apprehension filling the space where the air should be.
“Mom, what are you doing here?”
I stand up from where I’m kneeling, one arm snapping across my waist in a bid to settle the jittery butterflies and my other hand shoots straight into my mouth. I bite down on the skin at the side of my thumb—a nervous habit from my childhood. There’s a heavily pregnant pause as my mother’s gaze flits between Ellis and me.
“I, err…” She’s stumbling. My mom never stumbles over her words; Dianne Stevens is the epitome of perfect poise under duress. “I was passing by,” she finally manages to push out. “I haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”
That’s because I’ve been avoiding her. My mother knew Ellis was back in town before she’d even returned from her trip visiting with my brother and his family. We’d had a stilted conversation about him attending Mrs. Adkins’ wake, and I made my excuses to end our call at the first possible instance. Ashamedly, I’ve deflected her at every opportunity since, and have only exchanged texts with her these past weeks. I needed time to process my own feelings about Ellis being back before attempting to digest or even recognize what his return might do to her. I try to live my life without regret, but I’m choking on a hearty dose of it now.
What was I thinking letting her find him here?
Mom’s demeanor shifts and the moment she regains control over her shock is visible in the quick shake of her arms and intake of breath. My pulse hammers in the base of my throat as she squares her shoulders and takes a tentative step further inside the room. The cause of Ellis and my laughter must register with her because she gives Collin a quick look of revolt before settling her glare back on Ellis. I almost feel as sorry for him as I do for my mom. I watch the scene in front of me unfold with a strange sense of suspended animation.
“Ellis,” my mother says again. Her voice is quiet but clear and concise. She’s always had a no-nonsense air about her.
“Dianne, I’ll leave, I’m—”
“Leave, no, no don’t do that,” she rushes out in a quick breath.
Ellis’s face is pure misery. He runs his fingers through his hair, and drags them down his face, squeezing his chin for a moment. He’s no doubt trying to come up with something to explain why he’s here with me in my house. Collin’s grunt as he rolls onto his side, trying to find a comfier spot to rest his head, registers at the volume of a supersonic jet engine. It’s loud and obtrusive in the otherwise somber atmosphere of my living room.
There are a thousand images passing through my mind in the millisecond it takes for my mother to lurch forward, throwing herself in Ellis’s path. My breath hitches as I wait for her arm to sail through the air and slap him. Why else would she rush him? I let out an unexpected noise, a startled inhalation at her advance; I smack my hand over my mouth trapping the sound, but my panic’s unwarranted. She’s not lunging toward him in an attack. Instead, she embraces him. Her arms fling around his stunned body, trapping his own by his side, and she presses herself to him. I watch with incredulity as she hugs him tightly for a long, strange moment.
There are very few times I can recall throughout my life when my mother has shocked me quite this much. I’m completely dumbfounded by her display of affection toward him. My brain is having very real difficulty comprehending it. As punitive as it sounds even in my own mind, he killed my father, her husband. And, yes it may not have been in a cold-blooded attack, but I’d always assumed that she hated him for it. She’s continually avoided speaking about him in font of me, and here she is in my living room, hugging him like she’s yearned to do it dearly. I’m so confused. Has she missed him? Why would she let me believe she might actually loathe him when she so clearly doesn’t?
I moved home for a while after my dad died. I couldn’t stand being in the apartment I’d shared with Ellis at Duke. His absence was oppressing, and I needed to be somewhere that I could ignore the hollowness he’d left. Home didn’t feel like home with Ellis gone either, and my heartache doubled. I’m not sure my mom knew how to take care of me; Ellis had done it for so long. My parents once told me how worried they’d been at how seemingly dependent on each other Ellis and I were. I’d laughed in their faces. I get it now.
Our love started out exceptionally simple, and as time passed it only grew. People’s emotional states at some point in their relationship reach outside the boundaries of politeness, or unwillingness to offend or upset each other. They begin to fight, or start to believe that they’ve lost the spark they once had. That wasn’t true of Ellis and me. Sure, we didn’t agree with each other all of the time, hell, not even half the time, but we never really argued. It didn’t feel like we needed to work to retain our spark—it was always there. Of course, after Ellis went to prison my emotional state was unstable, to say the least. I was trapped on a roller coaster I couldn’t get off. My feelings for him were suddenly an intense paradox of love and hate. For such a long time I’ve believed I was alone in simultaneously missing the only person I’ve ever had a true reason to abhor. Witnessing the grief projecting from my mom, I’m hit with an awareness that threatens to knock me sideways. I wasn’t alone.
“You’re not angry?” I don’t mean to speak my thoughts aloud, but that’s what happens; they slip out like an accusation. I guess they are.
“Angry?” my mother intones, bemused. “Of course I’m not angry. Shocked, yes. I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting to ever walk in on the two of you again, but I’m not mad if that’s what you’re implying, Harlow?”
“Dianne,” Ellis carefully slips from where my mother still has a hold of his wrists. He guides her to the sofa and sits down beside her. “I should have sought you out by now, and I’m truly sorry that I haven’t. I just, well, I guess I didn’t know what to say to you. I still don’t,” he admits. “I wish I had the words to express the regret I feel, and how sorry I am. It was one impulsive moment, I ruined your lives and if I’d just walked away…”
He can’t finish his sentence. Whatever he was trying to say is lodged in his throat, and he coughs to clear it. I swear I can almost feel the sense of shame he’s experiencing. I want to comfort him, but I don’t. I stay motionless, paralyzed in trepidation that if I attempt to console him I might start crying and never stop.
“Why wouldn’t you let us visit with you, Ellis?”
I can only see the back of my mom’s graying blonde chignon from where I’m positioned, but I have a perfectly clear view of Ellis’s face. I’m sure mine is the mirror image of his; startled and sad.
“I was scared.”
His response is raw and honest. Ellis is a foreboding figure of a man, intimidatingly tall and muscular, but his voice is still the same voice that used to hum horrendously out-of-tune ballads to me when I was restless and couldn’t fall asleep. His arms are the same arms that would wrap around me reassuringly whenever I needed a to be admitted for a procedure, or more tests. He’s still the boy I fell in love with in my backyard, and my mother must see it too because her next words floor me.
“You didn’t need to be scared, Ellis. You were a part of our family. I loved you like I love my own boys. I didn’t just lose Mike the day he died,” she quickly turns to look at me fleetingly, and my legs crumple beneath me like a thin piece of paper as I sit back down, startling poor Collin. Her eyes are glossy with unshed tears, and I feel my throat begin to burn. “I lost my daughter that day, and I lost you too.”
Ellis pulls my mother to him, burying his head into the crook of her neck while his vice-like arms envelope her slight frame. She whispers her forgiveness to him in a soothing voice as they gently sway. “It was an awful accident, that’s all.” There’s not a single audible sound from him. It’s only when I notice the small tremors sporadically running across his shoulders, and my mother begins to rub his back like only a parent can do, that I realize he’s crying.
I am too.
It’s dusk before I remember that I’ve not taken my afternoon medication, nor have I eaten since breakfast. My mother left thirty minutes ago, and Ellis and I have sat in a comfortable silence since she went. I finally move, my stomach grumbling to protest that I’ve neglected myself, and Ellis stands too, rubbing his stomach and stretching out his arms, causing the fabric of his sweater to rise and reveal a thin sliver of skin above the waistband of his jeans. I look away as quickly as I can, heading to my kitchen and calling to him that I’m about to make something to eat.
“Are you hungry?” I shout, not realizing that he’s followed me into the kitchen.
“Starving,” he answers in a much quieter voice.
“Jesus! Sorry, I thought you were in the other room.” One more shock today and I’m not entirely sure my heart won’t give out. I shake the morbid thought from my head, open my fridge and realize that I’m falling as an adult in every area at the moment. The sole contents of my refrigerator consist of a lone moldy lemon, a half empty carton of milk, a block of Swiss cheese, and an empty egg box.
“Grilled cheese?” I ask, holding up the Swiss.
“Always, where’s your bread?” he asks scanning the counter tops. I pull the cupboard door open above his head to show him, and it smacks him in the face.
“Oh, Ellis!”
“You’re a damn liability, Stevens. You should come with a public health notice,” he retorts good-naturedly, before reaching in and pulling out the loaf.
“You should probably sit over there, while I make these, I don’t want to kill you.”
I could swear I hear him whisper that I already do—kill him, that is—but he obeys my instructions and takes a seat at the breakfast bar.
I busy myself making our sandwiches as Ellis tells me about the garage owner, Manny, who he does odd jobs for when he’s not doing his regular job.
“What is your regular job? I just realized that you haven’t told me.”
“I flip burgers at McDonald’s,” he says nonchalantly.
My mouth literally falls open. I can’t imagine Ellis working at a fast food joint; he was studying law at Duke before he, well, just before. I attempt to school my face impassively so as not to give away my astonishment.
“Oh, that’s good, err…”
“I’m messing with you, Harlow, I just started working for a small accounting firm in Greensboro.”
My shoulders sag in relief. Not that there’s anything wrong with working at a fast food chain, but Ellis was always so driven, the thought of him flipping burgers saddens me.
“I can just see you in a McDonald’s uniform, I bet you’d look fab in a hair net,” I tease, poking my tongue out at him. I slide his sandwich from the pan to the plate and push it forward to him.
“I can tell you for a fact that I look amazing in a hair net,” he jibes. “We had to wear them when we worked in the cafeteria at Morrison. They were horrible blue nylon things, but they really brought out the color in my eyes.”
As if for effect, he bats his eyelashes dramatically at me.
“I bet they did.” I grin imagining it. I was always envious of his eyelashes, thick, dark and impossibly long. Mine reflect the natural color of my hair, a slight strawberry blonde. I don’t even look like I have any lashes at all unless I paint them on in black mascara.
I position my plate next to his at the counter and then walk over to my medicine cupboard and begin pulling out the medication I should have taken earlier. I place six different pill bottles out on the counter and start shaking out the pills into a little pile, ready to take.
“You want me to fix you a drink?” Ellis asks preparing to move out from his seat.
“No, it’s fine I’ve got it. Eat your grilled cheese before it goes cold,” I order.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I roll my eyes at his mock salute and pour myself a glass of water from the faucet.
“Today has not been what I expected when I first looked at your text,” he says around a mouth full of food.
“Really, how so? What were you expecting?”
“Truthfully?” He swallows his next bite. “I thought I’d covered every possible scenario on the ride over to the coffee place, but I never factored seeing your Mom into any of those scenarios.”
I finish popping my pills at the counter and drain the last drops of water from my glass before moving to sit down.
“I’m sorry about that. I feel terrible, for you and my mom actually. I didn’t know she’d be dropping by and she’s not usually big on impromptu visits. I should have told her that I was seeing you, that way neither of you would have been ambushed.”
He nods in contemplation, and I take a bite of my sandwich.
“I’m kind of glad it happened; it needed to, you know? I’ve got to admit I thought it would go down a whole lot worse than it did.”
“I’m pretty sure I was as shocked as you were,” I say to myself, more than him.
“This is strange, isn’t it?”
“What is?” I ask, peering up from my plate. He’s wearing a sort of bemused smile that makes me swipe at my mouth just to make sure I don’t have food stuck to me.
“Sitting here eating with you. It feels strange.”
“Not to me,” I answer. “It feels natural.”
His eyes widen at my candid response. I could lie and agree with him that eating together feels strange, but it doesn’t. Not at all. A small part of me likes it too much, certainly more than my conscience thinks I should. Every time I catch myself beginning to feel comfortable around him, I’m hit with a tiny pang of guilt about my dad.
Collin slips and slides into the kitchen like a toddler on ice and Ellis laughs at my poor little dog making his way to his water bowl.
“I need to take him out for a walk. If I don’t, he’ll likely pee all over the place.”
“Can you not just let him out back into the garden?” Ellis asks, craning his head back to look out of the kitchen window, no doubt assessing if that’s a viable question.
“I could, but watch this.” I hop down from my stool, and walk over to the back door, opening it wide. “Collin, come boy. Outside.”
Collin looks up from the rim of his water bowl and stares at me like I’m an idiot, waving my hands, trying to entice him to come forward. I try and call him again, this time coaxing him in a baby voice, but he stands frozen just staring at me. I look over to Ellis and shrug.
Ellis laughs and says, “He’s the laziest dog in the world.”
“He won’t move from that spot unless I drag him and literally push him out the door. Then he’ll sit there and cry until I let him back in.”
Ellis looks over to Collin; sure enough, he’s still glaring at me and hasn’t moved a muscle.
“Want me to walk him for you?” he asks.
“I’m not sure how he’ll react to that. Plus, I could kind of do with the fresh air, I think. Do you want to come along with us? I could actually use your strength for carrying him back.” Ellis looks at me quizzically, his brow raising and a deep crease forming from the movement. I smile. “You’ll see.”