Lost in Love (The Miss Apple Pants series Book 2)

by Charlotte Roth

“Correctomundo,” Mom continued solo. “She also told me that he cried like a baby, poor Frederick—always such a sucker for romance. I guess, the apple, as in Thomas, didn’t fall far from that tree either. Growing old together is so beautiful, right?” She plopped another big piece of pancake, literally dripping with syrup, in her mouth and winked at Mrs. Rockefeller.

  “It sure is, if two people belong together,” Mrs. Rockefeller agreed, though adding a small puff.

  “Yes, but how do you know if you belong together?” I looked back and forth between Mom and Mrs. Rockefeller—the devoted wife and somewhat detached widow.

  “Well, you just told me the other day … you finish each other’s sentences,” Mrs. Rockefeller reminded me.

  “And sandwiches,” I think Mom said around the syrup-marinated pancakes.

  “And you share the same memory-songs, maybe even lullabies, right?” Mrs. Rockefeller’s eyes darted to Ava and Alfred, still stuffing themselves with pancakes, muffins, Danish, and all the other unhealthy stuff Ava had managed to pile onto her small plate.

  “That too. Speaking of…” Mom tapped her sticky fingers on top of my laptop. “You go on now. Make some memories for the memory bank. Mrs. Rockefeller and I will clean up the kids and get them ready in time. We have—” she looked up at the big antique clock on the far side of the breakfast room,

  “—forty minutes until the car gets here to pick us up.”

  I looked over at Alfred and Ava. They both looked like they had been rolled in syrup and gluten. “Yup,” I said, and chuckled. “I’ll start making memories. You hose them down.” Gently, I removed Mom’s sticky hand from my laptop. And soon I was typing away…

  Ella R. Jensen is feeling creative.

  Liverpool is everything I thought it wouldn’t be. I always imagined Liverpool as gray and industrial, hazy skies mixed with chimneys and large buildings. Maybe it’s because of how I’ve always been told stories about the Beatles and watched endless documentaries with Mom about how they all grew up in these tough working-class neighborhoods or slums in a city still recovering from the post-war gloom. Liverpool today is beautiful, and the sun is so bright I’m almost getting blinded as I sit here at the breakfast table. It’s so cheerful too (yes, this is not a word I would normally use, and yes, I know, I sound like I’m sixty-four now, @Thomas;)), but that’s probably the right word to describe it. Maybe it’s just all the singing we’ve been doing ever since we got here. I guess this needs a little bit of explanation. Of course, Mom was the one who started it all, well, maybe not entirely Mom… See, we’re staying in something called the Hard Day’s Night Hotel—the only Beatles-inspired hotel in the world, located right in the middle of where The Beatles used to hang out and play. Yes, for real, @Martha. Don’t worry, Mom has more photos to share when we come home. This photo is all of us standing in front of the dining room, named Sgt. Pepper’s Club. Oh yes, and our suites—located on the fifth floor with balconies overlooking the city—are named The Penny Lane Suite and The Strawberry Fields Suite. All rooms, hallways, elevators, yes even the loo (as they say here), is decorated with everything Beatles—portraits, paintings (black-and-white paintings, psychedelic paintings, Andy Warhol-like paintings), signed record covers. You name it, it’s here. Well, I think you’ve got the picture. Anyway, back to the singing. Ever since Mom was handed the keycards to The Penny Lane Suite, she’s been bursting into songs (of course, this morning, it was “Here comes the sun, doo, doo, doo, doo.”) Every time something reminds her of a specific song, she starts singing. And apparently she has to sing about everything she does now. The worst part is now she has me and Mrs. Rockefeller singing as well. Yes, you heard right. We are all singing. Mrs. Rock came down this morning and when I asked her how she had slept, she started singing, “A hard day’s night,” in the lobby, for everyone to hear. Even Alfred and Ava have started singing. Last night, right before bedtime, they both sang “We all live in a Yellow Submarine,” which makes perfect sense because when we got here yesterday, they accommodated us with a double stroller shaped like a yellow submarine. It’s ridiculously cool and they’ve practically lived in that thing since we got here.

  More Beatles themes ahead. Today, we head to the Eleanor Rigby bench and see where the day will take us. I’m both nervous and excited but… “We can work it out. We can work it out.” God, I’m losing it here … “Help, I need somebody (help). Not just anybody (Help).” Abby, I hope you’re proud of your daughter now, throwing Beatles songs out there like jokes from a standup comedian.

  Cheers from Planet Beatles. P.S. They even have a gluten-free menu. The call it the “Let It Be” menu, LOL. I got delish pancakes, smoked bacon, and scrambled eggs. But, of course, they don’t call it scrambled eggs here. It’s called “Yesterday” named after what Paul McCartney almost called the song. Mrs. Rockefeller was very amused by this. Of course, the Jensen family mix already knew this. Mom’s been calling scrambled eggs “Yesterday” for years. LOL.

  CHAPTER 17

  Eleanor Rigby

  When we finally got in the car—after spending half an hour trying to figure out how to collapse the yellow submarine stroller, I suddenly felt the butterflies. At first, it was just a tiny tinkling, but by the time Alfred Junior announced—over his little scratchy speaker system—that we were only a few minutes away from Stanley Street, where the Eleanor Rigby statue slash bench is, it felt as if a swarm of butterflies had moved in, and for a moment, I was sure I was going to throw up.

  “Is it the pancakes?” Mom asked, always on the alert, analyzing foods that might be a possible concern for cross contamination.

  “No.” I rested my head against the window. “It’s not the food. It’s… the thought… What if he’s actually there?”

  “Well, that is why we came,” she reminded me with a soft voice.

  “I know, but that was before we came here and then, back at the hotel, I got so distracted, nicely distracted, by all the Beatles stuff and all the singing that I kinda forgot about all this—forgot that Alfred’s dad might be out there.”

  She nodded. “I know,” she whispered, adding a knowing smile, and that’s when I realized that maybe it had been all for me—Mom singing at every possible opportunity, even if it meant making a fool of herself at times. It was all for me?

  “Mom?”

  “I love you, baby. And no matter what happens today or the day after, or the day after … you, us, you two will be all right. Remember the first time we saw Alfred’s tiny heartbeat?”

  “When I was down on all fours?”

  “Uh-huh. You recall what I said?”

  “Always wear a condom?”

  She leaned her head against mine and I could feel her cheeks smiling. “No, a little late for that… I said, ‘Love doesn’t have a name, an age, a sex, even a time. Love is all around us.’”

  “You sound like a song. Again.”

  She scooted back a little and stared at me. “Did I? I didn’t even know I did. From Love Actually, right?” She sounded all proud.

  “Yup.”

  “Man, now I’m not even doing it on purpose.” She smiled but continued with a sober voice, “You know, if he doesn’t want to be part of any of this, I mean be part of Alfred’s life, it’s okay. Obviously, I would think he’s a…” she looked over her shoulder and continued with a lowered voice, “a total ass! You have so much love in your life. You have so many people who love you—Alfred, me and Dad, and—”

  “—Yes, but, no offense… I love you and Dad and Alfred so so much, but it’ll not be enough forever. I want someone like you have, like Dad.”

  “I know but maybe if you searched a little more into your soul, maybe you’ll find that you already h—” Her voice was cut in half by Alfred Junior’s loud Cockney voice over the speakers.

  “All the lonely people,” he started singing, the scratchy speakers muffling his voice. “Coming right up.”

  Mrs. Rockefeller turned in her seat and grinned. “Now he’s freaking doing it too
.” Her voice was full of laughter.

  “I know.” Mom found my hand and squeezed it as the car came to a halt. I looked out the window and saw the crowd of people standing or sitting in line, and I swallowed hard.

  “You’ve got this. We’ve got this. Come on.” Alfred Junior opened the door for us and, hesitantly, I moved closer to the edge of the seat.

  “Okay, let’s go hang out with a bunch of lonely people,” I tried joking as I put my feet down on the sidewalk, not sure if my legs could hold me.

  ***

  “She’s rather small, right?” Mrs. Rockefeller leaned over and started reading what it said on the inscribed plaque: “‘Eleanor Rigby. Dedicated to all the lonely people.’ Her feet look disproportional for such a little lady. Did you figure her to be this small?” She said it in a way that reminded me of Martha and the words she had used to describe the statue of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.

  “I tell you, she was so small. When we finally got there, I was like, is that it? Right, baby?” she had asked Thomas, who clearly didn’t remember going there, let alone how small she was.

  “She was like a midget, and she kinda looked like a minion, too,” he had joked, shooting me a look that told me he really couldn’t be bothered whether the Little Mermaid was proportionally too small.

  “Oh, nonsense, but she was small.”

  “She is called the Little Mermaid,” I had chipped in, which sent Thomas and me into one of our juvenile laughing fits, as Martha called it.

  “Ah, you two,” Martha had said with a chuckle, looking at us with her kind eyes.

  I looked at little bronze Eleanor Rigby and wondered what Thomas would have said if he had been here with me—that she was lonely because she was the most boring date in the world, quiet as a rock? That she was as much fun as a fossil?

  I turned around and was about to yell either option to Mom when, suddenly, I turned stone-cold myself.

  On the street, a few steps away from the crowd, I saw Hans. Of all places in the world, this is the place I would finally find him—with Eleanor Rigby and the bench where he had sat so many years ago, his legs not even long enough to touch the ground.

  He looked different—older, with longer hair and visible stubbles on his face, but I still would be able to pick him from a crowd miles away. He was sitting between a young woman my age and an older woman in a wheelchair, and I couldn’t help wondering if that was the grandmother he had talked so fondly about—the one who had gone to kindergarten with Paul. Suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed at something the older woman was saying and it made my stomach flip over. He was here. He was real. After a few beats, he looked up and our eyes met. It was as if he’d seen a ghost, probably mirroring the look on my own face.

  “Oh shit,” I mumbled, grabbing onto Mrs. Rockefeller’s arm, not able to look away. “He’s actually here.”

  “Who? Paul McCartney?” She looked out into the busy street then looked up at me. “Where?”

  “No, not Paul McCartney. It’s Hans.”

  “The guy with the white shirt, blond hair, gorgeous face, and stunning smile, at nine o’clock?”

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  “Oh well, he’s coming this way now.”

  I opened my eyes and watched him cross the street, suddenly acutely aware of each heartbeat hammering in my chest. Not knowing what else to do, I just slumped down to Mrs. Rockefeller and Eleanor Rigby and waved at him.

  Mrs. Rockefeller patted my knee gently and whispered, “I said we might find him here, didn’t I?”

  I nodded. I had been quite skeptic when Mrs. Rockefeller informed us that there had been a change of plans and that we were going here first while we were still waiting to hear back from Colleen and the contact at Stockton Wood Road Primary school. I even said, “You think he’s just going to waltz right up there and sit down on the bench next to me?” But right now, this was exactly what was indeed happening.

  When he was within earshot, I tried to call out his name, but I choked on my words and it barely came out.

  “Ella?” He was so close I could almost touch him. “What on Earth…”

  I stood up and, not knowing whether to hug him or get up on my toes and kiss him, I made a clumsy attempt to do both and we almost bumped our heads together, which made us both smile.

  “Hey there.” When he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my cheek, I got a small whiff of his cologne and suddenly, it all came back to me—the smells, the touches, the kisses, the wonderful warm and fuzzy feeling on my insides.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he blurted out.

  “I could ask you the same, but-but-but you did tell me how you used to come here every summer to visit with your grandma,” I replied in a bit too defensive a tone.

  His mouth turned into an O before he looked back over his shoulder. “That’s her right there. She wanted to come today, since it’s her birthday.” He motioned discreetly down at Mrs. Rockefeller, who was just sitting there as still as Eleanor Rigby. “Who do you have with you?”

  “Oh, how rude of me. This is my friend, Mrs. Rockefeller.”

  Mrs. Rockefeller stood up and extended her hand to Hans.

  “It’s not really Mrs. Rockefeller. Eleanor seems to like to give people nicknames.” She smiled. “I’m—”

  “—You’re Miss T!” Hans looked between me and Mrs. Rockefeller. “Ella told very sehr gut, um, highly of you, I remember you.”

  “No no no,” I began, already feeling that familiar lump in my throat with the mentioning of her name. “This is Mrs. Rock. Miss T, she, um, died. It was an accident, I’m afraid.” I looked down at my hands and took a deep breath. Why did he have to bring her up? It was hard enough to begin with.

  “Anyway…” Mrs. Rockefeller clutched onto her purse and nodded politely at Hans. “It was nice to meet you, Hans. I’d better let you two…” She didn’t finish her sentence but turned on her heel and walked away with small determined steps.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked again. We both sat down on the bench at the same time.

  “Well, you know how I talked about coming here one day and sitting on this damn bench, which, to be honest, I thought would be a lot bigger. Anyway, this opportunity came up. My dad works for this company, solar and windmill energy and stuff... You’ve met him, always trying to save the world, at least one day at a time... And then when he and Mom and the twi—and Mrs. Rock, well, they were all going and so I thought I should go too and, you know, you never know and and...” I stopped to catch my breath and he smiled.

  “I see you still talk a lot about your parents and talk a lot of rambling, I think it’s called?”

  I nodded, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. Damn blushing again.

  “So, what has happened in the last four years, well, except that you now have Mr. Trump for president, which I’m sure is not pleasing your dad.” He smiled but I could tell he was nervous now as well. “I still remember how passionate he was about everything, about the environment, about the work he was doing and about the charity event that morning.”

  I smiled, the memory of the day of the Million Meals Charity event still so fresh in my mind.

  “You finally get good at mathematik?”

  “Nope. You finally good at saying the word orphanage?”

  Recollection flecked in his eyes, and a soft smile spread over his lips. “Um, orphane-nish, um, nope … No, seriously, what has happened since last time… With you, in your life?”

  “Well, since you asked, I have actually, um, a lot has, well, everything has changed. Actually, I just flew in from Berlin.”

  “Ah, you came to see the wall—or the remains of the wall—to see how one would look. I hear you’re getting one in America now.” He chuckled.

  “No, I was actually kinda hoping to bump into you.”

  “M-m-me?” He exhaled heavily. “Um, wirklich?” His gaze roamed up and down the street as if he were looking for something.

  “Yes
, I wanted to see you again, and, well, after we left Berlin I never thought I would ever get the chance, but then Franz Fassbender, though a somewhat peculiar man, he made a pretty good point about your grandmother. Did you know that old people don’t really move after a certain age? And then we figured that, and then Mrs. Rockefeller called Colleen even though it was like effing early in the morn—” I stopped to catch my breath. “I’m rambling again, aren’t I?”

  He nodded, smiling.

  “Well, the point is, I didn’t think I would ever see you again and here you are—sitting on a bench, right next to me and Eleanor Rigby.” I let out of sharp outrush of breath.

  “The other Eleanor Rigby,” he corrected, “and she’s a lot quieter,” he added, which made us both laugh.

  “Yeah, she sure is quiet,” I agreed just to buy me some time as I searched for the right words to tell him. I had rehearsed this very moment at least a thousand times, and still it was a lot harder than I had imagined. Maybe I should just go right out and say it, “Hey, Hansi, you’re a daddy by the way, a vati,” or whatever the hell it was called in German.

  “And now, you are all quiet.” He inched closer, so close that our knees were almost touching, and I felt my legs go liquid again.

  “Sorry, it’s just… I don’t really know where to begin. So much has happened,” I began, but I could tell his mind was somewhere else. He was looking up the street, at the young woman from before, pushing his grandmother in the wheelchair. When she was only a few feet away, she said something to him in German and he said something back, smiling. Of course, I didn’t understand a single word but judging from the tone of his voice and the way he suddenly sat up straighter, he was making excuses to the girl for talking with me. It was clearly his girlfriend. And it was not hard to imagine them together or envision the looks and attention they would get just walking down a street together. She was even more intimidatingly beautiful than Hans, but she looked like one of those people who doesn’t know just how beautiful they are, which, of course, just makes them even more beautiful.