LILY
I curled up into a snotty, tearful mess on my couch and let old episodes of The Powers of Suggestion play back at me from my computer. Every time I looked at him, my entire body ached, right down to my bones. I was sobbing over an episode of him in Hawaii—taking a break from searching for some sort of enormous bat to learn to surf—when finally I just couldn’t take it anymore. It hurt too much. Every smile, every wink at the camera, every adjustment of his wet suit made me love him—and miss him—that much more. Slamming my laptop shut, I buried my face in the pillows. I had made my choice, and I knew logically that it was the best thing. For me, maybe not. For him, definitely. Because the last thing he needed was me tying him down. I was not going to be the woman to clip his wings.
I drifted in and out of sleep, but I was so stuffed up from all the crying that I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Every once in a while, I would startle myself awake with a snort, only to find my face stuck to the cushions with snot and tears and drool. Lovely.
“Love you?” said the General. I poked my head up from the couch and saw him watching me, cocking his head side to side.
The General was obviously mystified at the full-blown wallow that was unfolding in front of him. He’d seen me in all sorts of states of happiness and not so happiness. He’d seen me frustrated with men. He’d seen me angry with men. Lord knew he’d seen me disappointed in men. He’d even seen me briefly go on a furious Google quest over “can nuns have birds in a convent?” But he’d never seen me break down into a weeping mess over anybody or anything.
“Love you too.” I wiped my nose and tried to sniffle. It made a painful sucking sensation in my ears, like I was underwater or had a bad cold. I rolled off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen, where I prepared him a pathetic plate of the only easy-to-prepare vegetable I had in the house—frozen peas. Just like I’d recommended Gabe use for his face when I almost knocked him out. Even peas hurt now.
After microwaving them for ten seconds, I slid the General’s dinner through the flap in his cage. He stared at his wrinkly peas and then at me. “Sad.”
“Very,” I sniffled. I sank back down on the couch and stared at the nearly finished hat I had been working on for Gabe. It was so close to being done. I held the work in my hands, getting ready to tear it apart. But I could not bring myself to do it. I could not get myself to destroy it, not because it was one OK-ish thing that I had made so far but because it was for him. And I didn’t want to wreck it, even if he was gone. Or maybe especially because he was gone.
I fought through the waves of tears and finished the hat as best I could. Right as I was casting off, I heard footsteps on my staircase. My heart somersaulted and cartwheeled, and I turned expectantly, hopefully, toward the door. It was him. It had to be him.
It wasn’t. It was my sister in costume, wearing her heavy-soled Victorian boots that made her clomp up the steps like she weighed 250 pounds. “Lily?” she said, bursting in without knocking, “I thought you’d be on your way to Scot—” She stopped midword. She blinked. “Oh my God, what happened?”
I turned away, looking at the hat in my hands. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Daisy closed the door and came inside, sitting down next to me, with her petticoats rustling. “Is it Gabe?”
At the mention of his name, my lips began to quiver. “It’s all over.”
Daisy seemed shocked for a millisecond before settling into a very scary version of the Glare. “What did he . . .” She set her teeth. “Where is he? How about I go find him and wipe that Crest-sponsored smile right off his stupid—”
I shook my head. “Stop. Just stop.” I pulled the magazine out from under the couch cushions and handed it to her. Even though it was the thing that had brought it all crashing down, I still somehow needed it near me. The thought of it getting ruined in a summer storm or blowing down the street into the gutter was more than I could stand. “It’s not what he did,” I said as the tears slid down my cheeks all over again. “It’s what he is. And what I am.”
Daisy still looked pretty mad. “What you are is wonderful, Lily. You’re caring, you’re kind, you’re funny, you’re smart. And he’d be damned lucky to have you.”
I felt like I was none of those things. Or that even if I were, it wasn’t enough. We weren’t chocolate and peanut butter—we were oil and vinegar. I took the magazine from her, and it fell open to the centerfold. It was him at some sort of animal sanctuary, learning to shear a sheep. Then I turned the page, and he looked back at us in a sharp and expensive tux, beaming at the camera. Turning the page again, I showed her the yearbook photo, and Daisy groaned. But then I pointed to the interview, pressing my fingertip to the word travel.
“See? It would never work. You and Boris were doomed. Imagine us.” I held the cover up next to my face.
Daisy took a deep breath and nodded as she held my hand. Her palm felt warm and comforting against mine. All the sadness seemed to drain out of me, and I felt nothing but pure exhaustion. I leaned against her, closing my burning eyes. She wrapped her arm around me and rocked me gently side to side. “How about we get you cleaned up, I get changed out of this ridiculous dress, and then you, me, and Ivan go get something to eat?”
“Not hungry,” I said against her puffy starched sleeve.
“Don’t care.” Daisy gripped me a little tighter. “I’ll take you to get your favorite, how about that?”
I flopped back on the couch and rubbed my face as my sinuses made a sort of worrisome spongy squelching sound. I blinked hard and looked at the clock on the cable box. It felt fuzzy and far away, just as it had on the day when I’d planned to make him dinner. I took the hat from the coffee table and smoothed it on my knee. “What if he comes back? I don’t know when he’s leaving.”
My sister ran her fingers over the stitches. “Do you want to see him?”
Another geyser of grief sputtered up through me, and I struggled to keep it down. Of course I wanted to see him. Always. Now and forever. But I knew it would be the worst thing for me, and I managed a blubbered “Bad idea.”
Daisy wrapped her arm around me again. “Well, then, we can leave his hat for him on the porch, maybe. How about that?”
“OK,” I said, crumpling against her in surrender, wrapping my arms around her and sinking into her starched pleats. “Where are we going? Drs. Fries and Root Beer?” I asked, my voice muffled by her arm.
“Better,” she said and gave me a kiss on the crown of my head.
It wasn’t better; it was Uncle Jimmy’s Secret Ingredient. But I was so busy half-heartedly making Ivan’s baby giraffe dance for him on his car seat while I tried to keep my mind off Gabe that I didn’t even realize where we were until we’d arrived.
“Oh God,” I said as I locked automatically onto the picnic table where Gabe and I had sat. Where he’d pressed his leg against mine. Where I’d felt that warmth and joy inside me—which I’d never feel again. Maybe I really was destined to be a spinster, just like I played at the history museum.
“Told you!” Daisy said. “Better!” She leaped out of the driver’s seat and came around to get Ivan from his car seat. She seemed so proud of herself, so happy, that I just didn’t have the heart to say that anywhere, literally, anywhere would have been less painful for me. Except maybe Auntie Jennifer’s grocery store, which, obviously, I would never be able to enter again without ugly crying so hard that I scared away all her customers. Fantastic.
I pressed the back door open with my shoulder, slumping out with heavy, flat-footed stomps. I followed behind Daisy and Ivan as they headed for the entrance. Jimmy Jr. was still outside pacing, but this time with a huge cigar between his teeth. “Lily!” he boomed.
My wave was a wet-noodle wave, and it actually hurt to smile, like I was wearing an egg-white mask. But I did my best. “Still haven’t figured it out?” I asked. My voice sounded far away, like it belonged to someone else. Someone who had pinched her nostrils with a clothespin.
“Nope.” He placed his cigar on a window ledge. He grabbed a few sauce-splattered menus and led us toward the picnic tables out back. As we got nearer to the tables, he looked over his shoulder at me. He nodded knowingly, with a slow lift of his massive shoulders, like somehow, he just understood. Granted, it was hardly rocket science. There was a very real possibility I still had snot dripping from my nose. But I appreciated his not asking about it, and I was grateful when he led us to the table farthest from where Gabe and I had sat together.
I tried to read the menu, running my eyes over all the usually mouthwatering things, but I felt pretty much nothing. No hunger. No delight. No interest even in barbecue.
“Boy, you are really feeling the feels,” my sister said. She gave Ivan a pacifier and let him crawl on the grass, crouching beside him and looking up at me. I dropped my menu and nodded at her and then let my head rest between my palms. My elbows dug into the raw wood of the tabletop, and two tears splatted down onto the menu’s plastic sleeve.
Within a few moments, Jimmy Jr. brought out my usual tenders with a side order of the sauce. He raised one of his bushy dark eyebrows at me. “That’s the last of it,” he said quietly. “Lord and Uncle Jimmy help us.”
As Jimmy Jr. trundled off, I stared at the table where Gabe and I had sat, and the sadness welled up inside me all over again. Tears tumbled off my cheeks, and my sister grabbed a stack of paper napkins out from underneath their dedicated rock in the center of the table. I pressed them into my eyes so hard that I saw flashes.
“It’s going to be OK,” Daisy said. “I promise. It will.”
I wadded up my napkins and looked at her as the world came back into focus. She dipped one of the chicken tenders in the sauce and held it out to me, same as she would have done to feed Ivan. She was a natural as a mom, and I was so grateful to have her with me. She held her palm underneath it to catch any drips of sauce and held it to my lips.
Biting into the chicken tender, I sniffled hard and was rewarded once again with that sucking thing in my ears. And since my nose was out of commission, I had to breathe through my mouth as I chewed. Like a Clydesdale at the feed bag. I was nothing if not elegant.
But then, between the stuffy nose and the plugged ears, something unexpected happened. I tasted something in the sauce that I hadn’t been able to taste before. It was spicy yet sweet—exotic yet familiar. Star anise, no. Cloves, no . . . On the next big sniffle and openmouthed chew, I had it. Ginger. It was ginger. Not powered ginger. Fresh ginger. That same spiciness that was in my lemonade. And in the fancy bath supplies that Gabe had gotten for me too.
I dropped the tender into the basket and pressed my hands to my face. A noise came out of my mouth that was a rather dreadful combo of a hiccup, a snort, a cough, and a sob.
My sister’s mouth dropped open. “Are you OK?”
Into my tearful palms, I shook my head. I was not OK. I was never going to be OK. In just a matter of days, he’d changed my life. Nothing would ever be the same—not even ginger.
I felt a big hand on my back and turned to see Jimmy Jr.’s concerned face. “Lily?”
“Fresh ginger,” I blubbered into my hands.
“Shut the front door.” He snatched up a chicken tender and tested it for himself. “You’re sure?”
I tried to muster up a smile. But it didn’t last, and within just a few seconds, I was weeping into my stack of soggy napkins once more.