by Mia Sheridan
My entire life had shifted under my feet, and I hadn’t known what to grasp on to, what to clutch so I didn’t fall. I had no idea how to get my bearings. And so I’d grabbed onto the only thing solid in my life: Gabriel. I’d grown emotionally dependent on him in a way I knew wasn’t healthy for either of us. Every small thing caused me to doubt and to hurt, and to feel a thousand insecurities that might not even be real. I’d ceased being able to tell, and I knew in my heart that my desperate sort of clawing love would end up as a kind of prison for Gabriel. I loved him far too much to subject him to a second life sentence. He’d already experienced one. Leaving was the hardest thing I’d ever done, but it was right. I knew it was right.
And so after a couple of days of allowing myself to wallow in pain, I got up and cleaned my apartment, scrubbing every nook and cranny and opening the windows for a short time to air it out with the cold fall wind.
I called the garage where my car was being kept and told the guy who answered the phone I was coming by to pick it up. I put on my sneakers and jacket and made the two-mile journey. I had woken up with a crick in my neck, and it got worse as I walked. My leg pained me a little and my stride grew slower and slower, but despite my aches, it felt great to exercise, and the brisk air felt good in my lungs.
Ricky was at the front desk when I walked into the small front office of the garage, the smell of coffee and motor oil hitting my nose, the heat of the interior space warming me immediately. Ricky smiled warmly. “Well, look who it is. You look great.”
I smiled back as Ricky came from behind the counter and gave me a quick hug. “Hi, Ricky. Thanks so much for keeping my car. Sorry it’s taken me so long to get here.”
He shook his head as he returned behind the desk, digging through a drawer and pulling out a key with my name scribbled on the large tag. He handed it across the counter. “When I told my dad you were coming in, he told me not to charge you. Said you’d been through enough.”
I blinked in surprise. “Thank you. Oh, I … well, I couldn’t—”
“You can. And seriously, get out of here before my tight-ass dad changes his mind.” He laughed, and a burst of warmth filled my chest. I put my hand over my heart as if I’d be able to feel the heat emanating from the inside.
“Thank you, Ricky. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I … will you thank your dad for me, too?”
“Sure will. Your car’s at the back left of the lot. You take care of yourself, okay?”
I nodded, trying my best to hold back the tears. “I will.” And I meant it. Or at least I was going to give it my best damn try.
Once I’d let myself into my car, I turned the key in the ignition and listened as it came easily to life. I leaned my head back on the seat and felt thankful. The money Ricky and his dad had saved me meant so much to me right now.
As I passed through the downtown area on my ride home, I spotted a sign advertising ten dollars off pedicures at the nail shop I’d gone to once in a while when I had a little extra money. It was a small extravagance I’d afforded myself now and again. I certainly didn’t have the extra cash now, yet I pulled my car over into an empty spot across the street, rolling my sore neck on my shoulders. God, sitting in the massage chair while soaking my feet in warm water sounded so wonderful; I stared at the shop window longingly as if I were walking through the desert and it was a lush, green oasis.
I shouldn’t even spend twenty-five dollars on something that wasn’t a necessity, and yet I’d anticipated having to part with two hundred and fifty dollars for my car that I now had in my pocket. Surely Ricky and his dad wouldn’t mind my spending a small bit of it on a brief hour of pampering. Just this one thing, nothing more.
I crossed the street and walked into the busy shop. Lien Mai called a greeting from her spot at a pedicure table where she was using an electric file on an older woman’s acrylic nails. “Long time no see, Crystal. You need pedicure?”
“Hi, Lien. Yes, but it looks like you’re busy.”
“Nah. Canceled appointment. You sit down.” She nodded to the large black massage chair at the end of the row. Ah, sweet heaven. I walked to it, and a petite girl with long, pin-straight black hair smiled politely at me and started filling the basin with warm, soapy water. I sat down and turned on the rolling back massage and sighed as I sunk back into it, submersing my feet in the water.
“What color?” the girl asked, referring to polish.
I closed my eyes. “I don’t care. You pick.”
She giggled softly. “You need this, yeah?”
I smiled without opening my eyes. “Yes.”
When she rubbed the grainy exfoliating cream into my feet and calves, an ache rose so strongly in my chest, I almost gasped. I pictured Gabriel’s beautiful hands moving on my skin, and for a second, the pain of my yearning for him was so intense, I didn’t know if I could make it to the next moment. I focused on my breathing, and after a few minutes, the worst of it passed, and it felt manageable again.
I listened to the chatter and the busyness of the shop as my muscles loosened beneath the chair’s mechanical ministrations. The phone rang incessantly and sometimes it was answered, but mostly it seemed that it wasn’t. “Don’t you have someone to answer your phones?” I asked the girl sitting on a small stool at my feet.
She shook her head. “No. Lien want hire someone but too busy.”
A flutter of excitement moved through me. “I have experience answering phones.”
She looked up at me. “Oh yeah?” She turned toward Lien. “Lien, she want job answering phones.”
Lien was just saying goodbye to the woman in front of her, and they both stood, Lien working to bring herself upright. Once her body wasn’t being obscured by the table, I noticed she was about fourteen months pregnant. My eyes widened. “Oh yeah? You want job, Crystal?” She walked over to my chair and stood next to it, one hand on her lower back.
“Yes. I’d love a job. I have experience answering phones. I recently worked at the quarry over in Morlea. I can provide a reference.”
“Hmm. Okay. You come back tomorrow and we try you out.”
Worry settled in my gut, but I smiled and nodded. I could do this. I could try. It felt like the opportunity had fallen into my lap, almost as if it was meant to be.
When Lien had walked away again, I whispered to the girl, “How pregnant is she anyway?”
“She have eight week left.”
I held my gasp inside. Oh, dear Lord. There was no way her tiny body could get any bigger than it was now.
The next day when I arrived back at the shop, I was nervous, but after an hour or so, I had a good handle on the phone system, and I was taking messages and scheduling appointments as if I’d been there for months. It was busy and the walk-ins were constant, but I handled it.
The longer the day went on, the more accomplished I felt, and when Lien came up to the desk at three, she told me to go into the back office and sign the new-hire paperwork. I felt giddy with happiness, and the first thought that came to my head was, I have to call Gabriel and tell him! But then reality came flowing back, causing me to stumble slightly and clench my eyes shut with sadness. I made a stop in the restroom to get my bearings before heading to the back room that served as Lien’s office. “Lien, I have to tell you something before I fill out this paperwork.”
“What that?”
“Well, my name isn’t really Crystal. It’s Eloise. Ellie for short.”
She regarded me for a moment and finally nodded. “That good. You better Ellie anyway.”
A short laugh bubbled up in my throat. God, I hoped so. I really did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Something tells me I’m going to love you forever.
Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields
ELLIE
I settled into my job at Lien Mai’s House of Nails and after a couple of weeks, I was practically running the place. Not just answering the phones, but ordering supplies, and keeping inventory. I loved t
he casual atmosphere of the salon, the chatter that rose and fell through the shop, both English and Vietnamese, the way the days whizzed by, and the way I was bone weary as I fell into bed.
I woke up one cold Friday night, gasping as I sat up in bed. I’d had the dream again, the one where my mother’s voice called to me as I moved through the darkness. Only this time the walls of the space had been growing wider instead of narrower and she’d been urging me forward. He’s waiting for you, she’d said again. He? The only he I wanted was Gabriel.
But maybe he was waiting. I’d had the dream when I’d been with him, though, too. Only … it seemed I’d traveled the wrong way toward him and ended up right in front of him with a barrier still between us. I’d had to turn away in order to travel the path that would bring me back to him, the path that ended with nothing separating us at all. I didn’t know whether I should even dare to hope it, but in any case, the path I’d been on had been squeezing the life from me. I’d turned back not only for Gabriel, but for myself.
The feeling of the dream clung to me so that I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I got out of bed, shivering, and turned up the heat slightly. It started to rain softly and I stood at the window for a few minutes, looking out into the darkness, the streetlights reflecting on the water puddles in the parking lot below.
Turning, I spotted the bag I still hadn’t unpacked from Gabriel’s and sighed. It seemed I could only let go in very small steps and this, too, I supposed was one of them.
As I emptied the contents, throwing the clothes into the hamper, my hand hit upon plastic and I startled, pulling out the plastic bag I’d completely forgotten about in all my misery. I lifted it out and held it to my chest. Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields. Seemingly broken beyond repair. But maybe … maybe … I set it down on the small desk I had by the window and switched on the light sitting on the corner. I grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom and then carefully, so carefully, I emptied the contents onto the towel, spreading the pieces out to determine if anything was recognizable. Yes, a small foot, and a bouquet of flowers, and two halves of her pretty face. Hope.
I sat down at the desk, rooting through the drawers until I located a tiny vial of superglue I’d bought for some reason I couldn’t even remember now.
I felt completely overwhelmed, but I figured the best place to start was at the beginning, and so I picked up the little piece of foot and started from there. I couldn’t help picturing that tiny shattered girl as a thousand pieces of me, and as I worked, fitting together small shards, I wondered if the work I was doing with my hands was a representation of the work I needed to do on myself. And so I hunched over that table until the light of dawn seeped through the curtains, and I thought about all the things in my life that had crushed and shattered me as well.
I thought about my mother, and that was the hardest of all. I thought about the day she’d left me with Brad—the hollow, aching grief that still clung to me like a second skin, the pain and the anger of being deserted, left scared and alone.
As my hands moved, finding pieces and trying to fit them, setting the ones back down that didn’t work, and picking up a new one until the lines and ridges worked just right, my mind wandered. Something about the constant movement of my hands and the way my mind was half-focused on the task made me feel safe. I couldn’t ignore thoughts of Gabriel, and wondered if he’d found a similar solace in his work when he’d first come home.
I didn’t attempt to stop or control the wanderings of my mind. I didn’t attempt to shut anything out. I thought about it all and I let it hurt. Tears rolled down my cheeks and into my ears, and I blotted them with my sleeve when my eyes grew too blurry to work, but I didn’t move from my desk that night, not even once.
I thought about how my mother had looked that day, how ill—how panicked—and a lump formed in my throat so large I thought it might suffocate me. But it didn’t. I continued to work and continued to hurt.
What had it felt like to be her? What desperation was she feeling to know she was dying and her last option was to drop her only child off with a stranger? She couldn’t have known Brad would treat me the way he did. From what it sounded like, she’d barely known Brad at all. She’d taken a chance and I paid the price. But she hadn’t known. She’d relied on hope alone. It was all she had.
Lord, please give me strength. I have no choice, I have no choice.
“Oh, Mama,” I gasped, my voice small like the abandoned little girl I’d once been. “I forgive you. And I’m so sorry for what you suffered, too.”
A week after I’d been left at Brad’s house, he’d told me that they’d found my mama dead under someone’s porch. She’d curled up there to die like a lost animal. He’d delivered the news in a monotone voice, and then he’d taken a sip of beer as if it hardly mattered at all. And inside, a whole section of my heart had come loose and crumbled.
I’d learned to encase myself in a seemingly hard exterior so no one could ever hurt me again the way my mother had by leaving me without saying goodbye. But the shell was so thin, so thin and so easily broken.
And then there was my father’s friend Cory who had taken and used—raped me, though I’d never said the word before, not even to myself. I had thought I loved him because he was the first person in so long who had seemed to want me at all, who had even noticed me.
My feelings for Cory had been a different sort of desperate, clawing love, but I didn’t want that to be the way I gave my heart. I wanted to offer something whole—pieced back together maybe, but whole nonetheless.
Just as dawn arrived, I surveyed my work and realized I had put back together two little bare feet. I laughed in wonder. There were still small slivers of missing pieces, parts that must have crumbled to dust, but each tiny toe was completely recognizable. Something in me loved those missing parts, too. To me they spoke of the things that were necessary to let go of—the pain I’d held on to for too long, the anger, the misery, the self-blame. And those empty spaces were just as important as the parts that made me whole. I smiled in triumph, wiping the remaining tears away and stretching my aching neck and back.
Opening the window shade, I took in the distant glow coming over the horizon. I thought back to Gabriel’s story about seeing the tiny portion of light through the tinted window of that long-ago basement and remembered my own thought that sometimes that’s all hope is—just a thin sliver of distant light. And for me that morning, that’s exactly what it was.
* * *
My life became a steady schedule of work at the nail salon and work on the stone figurine. I spent most weekends up until dawn piecing the girl together, going over my life, my hurts, all the places my own heart had crumbled away to dust.
It was exhausting and it was hard, but I kept at it, buoyed by the representation of my work: the art that had been Gabriel’s hope so many years ago. And in this way, it was as if he were there with me. I wasn’t completely alone. In fact, despite how much it hurt, in some ways the nights I spent bent over my desk provided my greatest comfort.
You can’t fix me, I’d told Gabriel once. And I’d been right. I needed to fix myself. And he had loved me enough to make me believe it was possible. That I was worth fixing.
Fall turned to winter and the days grew shorter; the trees outside my window, bare skeletons.
I celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with Lien Mai and her family, bringing Kayla as my date. The gatherings were filled with the same Vietnamese chatter that kept a smile on my face, and I felt both a pained yearning as I wondered what Gabriel was doing, and a warm togetherness and affection for my new friends.
A few days after Christmas, I checked my mailbox after having neglected doing so for about a week, and I was surprised to find what looked like a Christmas card with George’s return address in the corner. With shaking fingers, I ripped it open and read the short note he’d included.
Dear Ellie,
I hope you’re spending Christmas in a way that brings peace to your heart. We
miss you around here. Chloe came for Christmas and is spending two weeks with us—she misses you, too. I think about you a lot, Ellie girl, and hope you’re doing well.
Love, George
I’d read the card as I climbed my steps from the mailbox and grasped it to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut against the tears, then sitting down on the top step to catch my breath. God, I missed them all so much in that moment, I didn’t know if I’d survive it. Chloe came for Christmas. A knife sliced through my heart. Surely she was there for Gabriel. Her work on the paper must be done, or if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t need two weeks of Gabriel providing more information. No, her visit must be of a personal nature.
I let the tears flow, hurting so badly inside it felt like a piercing of my soul. But I had to accept that Gabriel and Chloe might be together now. I’d wished it for him. I’d given him the room to explore his own heart.
Will you come back?
I need you to go on as if I won’t.
I sat there for a moment as my tears dried in the frigid wind, looking down at the parking lot. There were still a few spots of snow that hadn’t melted from the mild storm we’d had the week before. I caught sight of something purple and tilted my head in wonderment, squinting to try and make out what it was, but it was too far away.
I walked down the steps and squatted in the snow, sucking in a breath at what I saw. It was a purple flower growing through the frost. “How in the world?” I murmured, running a finger over one soft petal.
Gratitude isn’t a Band-Aid, Ellie. You still have to experience your feelings to work through them. Gratitude is meant to make it bearable. Sometimes gratitude gets you through the day, and sometimes it just gets you from one moment to the next.