Elvis Takes a Back Seat

by Leanna Ellis

  “You can order something else,” Ben suggests.

  “Oh, no. I’m, uh … full.”

  “But you’ve hardly eaten!” Ivy seems genuinely shocked since she’s all but licked her plate and has scarfed down all the rolls.

  “Let her be,” Rae says. “She’s tired. Overwrought. She must figure out what to do with Elvis.”

  “Elvis,” I whisper. I almost forgot about him. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping him. In fact, I think he’d look pretty good on the coffee table. At Christmas I could stick a red ball on his nose, like Rudolph.”

  A frown creases Rae’s brow. Ben narrows his eyes. Ivy tilts her head to the side, her mouth open.

  “I’m kidding. That’s a joke.”

  Obviously relieved, they all laugh, but it isn’t full throttle, and I realize how concerned they all are about my mental stability.

  “I’m okay, really. Just not hungry.”

  “I should have chosen a different restaurant.”

  “No, no. Really. This is fine. Very nice. It wouldn’t have mattered where we went tonight …” I can’t explain my feelings, which seem to bounce from sorrow to panic. I twist my paper napkin in my lap.

  “Those were the best baked beans I’ve ever had.” Ben leans back in his seat. “Dessert?”

  Everyone groans.

  The waitress has already cleared most of the dishes off the table when she asks me, “Want a to-go box?”

  “No, thanks.” Guilty, I glance at my full plate. “We’re traveling.”

  She nods and removes my plate. With her other hand she leaves the bill, which Ben accepts. Both Rae and I protest, but he insists, saying, “It’s the least I can do for all the help you’ve given Ivy.”

  Yeah, I thought, we let her run away! But I keep my guilt to myself. Maybe faith is letting go of that, too, releasing my failures and mistakes. Letting go of my relationship with Stu, the pain and the joy.

  When Ben pays, we leave the restaurant, gathering together on the sidewalk outside, feeling the warm night air drift over us.

  “Rae,” Ivy says, walking toward the car. Rae pairs up with her as Ivy continues, “I wanted to ask you …”

  I decide it’s a private conversation and hold back.

  Ben waits with me. “Ivy likes her.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. But I think she’s good for Ivy right now. They’ve been through similar things. Different times maybe, but still …”

  “Yes, I know.” But I don’t want to think about Rae as a young woman facing an uncertain future, her belly ripening with me. She had a tough decision to make. I wonder if she considered telling one of the men she’d been seeing or if she hadn’t wanted to be tied down.

  Ben’s presence beside me makes me tense. I twist my watch around my wrist. “Rae will give her solid advice.”

  He nods, still quiet though. I cross my arms over my chest.

  “She’s wise,” I say, feeling awkward. “She is.”

  I glance at Ben beside me. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He stares at the uneven sidewalk, lost in his own thoughts.

  “She’ll be okay. She can go to school. No one will—”

  “I know all that.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Me?”

  He meets my gaze. “You.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know you’re not ready. I’m not asking for anything. I just want you to know that.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t expect he’d be so blunt, so straightforward about all of this. Feeling awkward, I glance over at the car, wish we were inside it and headed back to the hotel. I don’t want to have this conversation. “What if I’m never ready?”

  “Then you’ll be giving up a lot in life.” He laughs suddenly, startling me. “That sounded conceited, didn’t it? I didn’t mean me specifically. I meant, if you don’t open yourself to love, to whomever it might be, then you’ll be missing out.” Looking down, he shakes his head. “I’m bungling this, aren’t I?”

  “No.” I smile sympathetically, wanting to help and yet unsure of myself. “I think you’re handling this better than me. I keep thinking back on things … things you’ve said or done … and it makes me wonder—”

  “If I’m just a big jerk?”

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Believe me, I’ve questioned myself. I didn’t want to do anything for the wrong, sleazy reason.”

  “When did you, uh, know?”

  “College. Finals before I graduated. Just hit me one day.”

  “Really?” Stunned, I feel flattered and unnerved at the same time.

  “Yeah.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I studied harder than I’d ever studied to get you off my mind. You were my best friend’s girl.” He shrugs, looking as if his well-starched shirt suddenly doesn’t fit. “I knew that wouldn’t change. You only had eyes for Stu.”

  “Is that why you married—”

  “No. I loved Gwen. We met the year after I graduated. I’d accepted my feelings for you by then, pushed them away as much as possible. When Gwen left, it took me a long time to get over her.”

  He glances over his shoulder at Ivy and Rae talking beside the Cadillac. “When you came to me, applying for the position in my company … I thought long and hard about it. Probably gave you a harder study than others I hired. I didn’t want to hire you with a secret agenda. I didn’t want to love you and have to look at you every day. So I examined my heart. And really, back then, I didn’t feel anything. I couldn’t feel anything. My heart had been shattered by Gwen. It had no feeling. Like when I got hit in football and cracked my cheekbone and I couldn’t feel half my face for a year.”

  “Oh, Ben.” I remember those years after Gwen left, the silence of his grief.

  “Over the years, working closely with you … I don’t know. I just knew. I knew it wasn’t time. Might never be. Knew you weren’t ready. You were married to my best friend. You might never want me the way I wanted you. So I tried to forget, focused on other things.” He pauses. “But I won’t fight a ghost. I won’t fight Stu over you. That’s a battle I can’t win.”

  “He wasn’t perfect,” I say, touching his arm, feeling his muscles tighten beneath the fabric of his shirt, solid and warm. I know I idealized Stu in my mind during the last year, martyred him. But he wouldn’t have wanted that.

  “I’m not either.”

  Touching his arm was a simple, friendly gesture I’ve done for years. Now I question if I should have. Reluctantly, I let go.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I won’t read anything into what you say or do.”

  I laugh as we begin walking toward the car. “Good. Because I am.”

  He laughs, too. “I know. You’ll get used to it.”

  I’m not so sure about that.

  “And,” he says, his tone deeper, more serious, “I won’t believe anything, think anything … until you tell me your feelings have changed. Until you kiss me.”

  I stumble. Literally, over a crack in the sidewalk. He catches my arm, steadies me, then releases me. I know he’ll always be there for me, ready to catch me before I fall. I give a terse nod, understanding. His terms are clear, precise. I can’t help thinking about the warmth of his kiss, the curling need inside me. My gaze shifts to his mouth, then away.

  “Okay.” I doubt I’ll ever be ready or able to take that kind of a step.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Seeing Is Believing

  The moment I step into the hotel room, I need to leave. I can’t breathe. Too many emotions wrestle inside me. I need time alone, away from everyone, and I won’t get that kind of privacy in the hotel suite.

  “I think I’ll go swimming,” I announce. Not that I brought a swimsuit. But I can fake it, I suppose, and dip my toes in the heart-shaped pool.

  From the couch Ben looks over at me. “Okay. Want company?”


  No. “Well, I—”

  “I’ll go,” Ivy interrupts. “I brought a swimsuit.”

  “Okay.” I’m both relieved not to be alone with Ben and disappointed I can’t find space to myself. But at the same time I’m surprised and delighted that Ivy would choose to go somewhere with me.

  “I’ll change.” Ivy heads to her room.

  “If you don’t mind,” Rae says, settling on the couch beside Ben, “I’ll stay here.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t think we’ll be long.”

  “Just don’t let Ivy get in the hot tub,” Ben says. “Not good for the baby.”

  “I don’t think there is one. Just a pool.”

  “Heart shaped,” Rae adds.

  Ten minutes later Ivy and I flip-flop our way down the hall toward the bank of elevators. Wearing a pair of shorts and a top, I carry two hotel towels over my arm. Ivy wears a pair of cut-off shorts and a bikini top. There’s a slight swell to her belly, but she doesn’t look pregnant. Not yet anyway.

  Empty lawn chairs surround the vacant swimming pool. Chlorine taints the air. We plop our towels down on two lounge chairs. Ivy slides her shorts off her narrow hips and dives right into the pool. Her black hair floats out behind her, her long legs kicking up foam and waves. I sit on the dry decking and put my feet in the cool water. Little waves swell around my calves. I notice a line has been painted along the bottom, giving the impression of a broken heart.

  Ivy turns at the end of the pool and swims sideways, making long sweeping motions with her arms and legs. She stops in the middle of the pool and treads water. “How come you’re not getting in?”

  “I didn’t bring a suit. I just came out here to …”

  “Get away from everybody?” she asks.

  “Something like that.”

  “Me, too. Are you mad I tagged along?”

  “Not at all. You’re easy to be around.”

  “So are you.” A warmth spreads through me.

  She swims closer, props her arms on the tiled edge. “Did Dad tell you to babysit me?”

  “Not exactly.” I wink at her. “I’m supposed to watch you.”

  She huffs out a breath. “Dad thinks I’m still a child.”

  “Well, he is your dad. It’s hard for dads to realize their little girls are growing up.” I decide not to reiterate that she did run away and give us all the scare of our lives.

  “Was your dad that way?” she asks.

  My heart lurches. Not only did my father, the man I will always consider my father, not live to see me to adulthood, but he wasn’t really my father. Grief overwhelms me momentarily. He’s been gone for more than twenty years, yet I still miss him, wish I could crawl into his lap and he could tell knock-knock jokes until my troubles are left far behind in the wake of laughter.

  “I had a great father,” I say. Then I realize my father was much like Ben. “Like yours.”

  She looks down at her belly. “I think Dad’s handling it better than I expected.”

  “He’ll be okay. And so will you. What about the baby’s father?”

  She shrugs a slim shoulder. “Heath wasn’t interested in being my boyfriend anymore, much less a dad.”

  I wonder if my biological father would have reacted the same way as Ivy’s boyfriend if he’d known Rae carried his child. Or if he would have wanted to be a part of my life. “Probably a shock to him,” I say in defense of young fathers. “Maybe—”

  “He accused me of screwing around on him. Said it wasn’t his. You know, all that stuff. Told me he didn’t love me. But I don’t think he ever did.”

  Some lessons come hard. I watch her face change, petulant one minute, angry, shamed, and sad the next. Why did it seem a rite of passage for young women to be treated poorly by men? I’d had my own experiences of heartache in my teens. I’d just come out of a bad relationship with a guy named Bob, who’d two-timed me, when I met Stu.

  There are so many good guys in the world—my father who stood by my mother when she became pregnant, Stu, Ben. Each fallible, but each had a good heart, honor, and a strong sense of right and wrong.

  “Men aren’t all like Heath, you know,” I say.

  “Maybe. My dad’s okay. He’s a good guy. But it’s hard to tell the good guys from the not so good.”

  “I know. Lots of frogs out there. But you’ll start to recognize them.”

  “You think you’ll marry again?” Ivy asks.

  Her question shocks me as if I had fallen into the cold pool. I want to shut down the conversation immediately. I’ve done it a million times over the last year with overly concerned friends. But Ivy’s different. I force myself to open up to her, think of what Ben said about how kids make you open your heart to new possibilities. “I don’t know. I loved my husband. It’s hard to think of being with someone else.”

  “But you could live to be like sixty or something. All alone.”

  Like sixty or something. I almost laugh. How old that seems to Ivy, how young it’s starting to look to me. Yet it’s twenty years away. Will I be all alone? What if I live to be eighty or older? I realize it’s the first time since Stu’s diagnosis that I’ve even thought about my life and what might become of me.

  “Rae’s sixty or something,” I say, “and she seems content.” Maybe I can be, too. Yet Rae seems more independent than me. More of a loner. Was I made to be part of a couple?

  “They say if you love once, you can love again,” Ivy says.

  I smile at her. “Sounds like something Mother Theresa would say.”

  “Who?”

  I laugh. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Sleepless in Seattle.”

  “The movie?”

  Her eyes sparkle. “Have you seen it?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “It’s really good. And it makes a good point. His wife died … can’t remember his name. But he’s Jonah’s father. And he found love again.”

  “At the top of the Empire State Building.” I remember Tom Hanks pining for his wife in the movie and Meg Ryan going in search of the passion missing in her own life. “I live far from New York.”

  “Didn’t the terrorists burn it down?”

  I sigh. “That was the Twin Towers.”

  “Oh, yeah. Anyway, so you can find love again, too.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Do you think I will?” Ivy asks, her voice suddenly reticent. Then I understand her purpose in finding love for me. “I mean, after some guy finds out I’ve got a kid … or had a kid … or whatever …”

  “I’m sure there’s a really special guy out there just for you.” But I also know that many guys might shy away from her. Stu would have.

  He hadn’t been interested in kids. We got pregnant only because I wanted it. Then when we lost the baby, our baby, he didn’t want to try again. He hadn’t really wanted a baby in the first place. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, a “frog”; he simply wasn’t interested in fatherhood. He tried, for my sake, with the baby. Or maybe he wanted a baby more than he admitted. Maybe the loss of our own was more painful than he conceded. Maybe then he closed himself off from the possibilities. Maybe he lost faith in what could be. Maybe it was his way of closing himself from hurt.

  The whys and wherefores don’t matter now. I suppose it’s for the best. If we’d had a child, then I’d be raising him or her alone. Our child would have to grow up without a father. Which makes my thoughts return to Ivy.

  “I hope there’s someone out there for my dad,” she says, her legs kicking under the water and making a ripple along the surface.

  The nerves in my body tighten. Would Ivy be pleased or defensive if she knew we’d kissed, if she knew Ben loved me? She’s never shared her father’s affections or attention.

  “He’s been alone a long time,” she says.

  I wait, unsure what to say.

  “Why do you think my mom killed herself?” Ivy asks.

  “I don’t know, Ivy.” Tears burn my eyes.
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br />   “She was sick. Depressed,” Ivy says as I nod agreement. “I always imagined she’d come back for me someday. But I was wrong. I blamed myself when I was little. Then I started to blame Dad, thinking he’d made her go away. But now …”

  Words fail me. I hurt for Ivy who aches for a mother she’ll never know. I hurt for Gwen who will never know the joy of watching her beautiful girl become a woman. “It’s hard to understand why someone would do something like that. I know it wasn’t you, Ivy. And I doubt it was your father. There was probably something in your mother … something that overwhelmed her, made her feel hopeless. She just didn’t know there’s always hope. If only she’d opened her heart, shared her fears, her struggles. But I think she closed herself off, from me, your dad.”

  My own words surprise me. For so long I’ve felt hopeless. But maybe … maybe this trip has helped me find the hope that was missing in my life and see possibilities rather than despair.

  “Last year,” Ivy says, “a boy in my grade shot himself in the chest. He died. It was weird. He was a loner, always by himself.” She shrugs. “I don’t want to be like my mother.”

  “You won’t be.” I reach out for her across the cold water, grab her hand. Her fingers are cool, slender, and slippery wet. “You have to have faith.”

  “I’m trying. I listened to what Myrtle and Guy said. They talked about God like they really knew him. I’ve kinda started to pray.”

  “Me, too.” It’s been a long time for me. But I’m realizing I can’t do this life all alone.

  “I ran away. Just like my mom.” She squeezes my hand, then lets go. “I’m sorry, Claudia. I shouldn’t have scared you like that.”

  “It’s okay. We all do crazy things sometimes.”

  “Have you?” Her pointed questions jab at tender parts of my heart.

  “I’m here in Memphis with a butt-ugly Elvis bust, aren’t I?” I laugh and she joins me. “Just know this, Ivy: You ran away to get help. You’re different from your mom. We have to keep reaching out. You’ve helped me do that. I’ve learned a lot because of you.”

  “Really?”

  Her fingers trace the lines in the tile along the edge of the pool. Finally, she nods. “I want to keep my baby.” She blinks away tears. Her nose turns red. “But I don’t know if it’s possible.”