The Idea of Love

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Ella turned slowly. If she didn’t disturb the air, maybe they wouldn’t see her. But her eyes found them just as theirs found her, all at once and with wide surprise. She froze, as if in a dream where she couldn’t move. A really bad dream. There was Sims, his hand on Betsy’s back, his mouth open in surprise.

  They pulled in closer to each other and Betsy placed her arms around Sims, a move of ownership. Ella’s world was in turmoil, a twisted metal car accident. But she knew how to save face. She turned away from them and sauntered—she would not run—toward Hunter. “You ready to go?” she asked.

  “Ella,” Sims called her name. She heard it. So did Hunter. He stopped.

  “Someone is calling you,” Hunter said.

  Embarrassment would come later, a sick aftertaste in the back of her throat. But for now, she needed to get out of the café. She put on her best shaky smile. “Oh, I’m not in the mood for him. He’s … kind of annoying. Keep walking.”

  “Okay,” Hunter said. Not quite a statement. Not quite a question.

  “He’s an old friend of my husband’s and I don’t want to hear any more condolences. I’m done with false reassurance, with prayers and love being sent my way.”

  “I get it,” Hunter said. “When my dad died I got more texts and e-mails and letters with ‘prayers’ than I’d received in my whole life. I know they meant it, but the words started to sound candy coated.”

  “Yes,” Ella said, “exactly.”

  They rounded the corner and, brave face or not, Ella was starting to feel sick.

  “Are you okay?” Hunter asked as she dropped to a bench. “I thought you had to go to work.”

  “I’m fine.” She patted the bench. “So this park square is one of three in the town. The elementary school kids come here from half a block away. Sims and I had picnics here about once a month during the good weather, just to watch people and sit in the sun.”

  Hunter sat next to her. “I’m so sorry. It must be terrible to see him on every corner.”

  Oh, he had no idea.

  “Do you all have kids?” he asked. “I didn’t even ask…”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We couldn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Seems like you’re having to say that to me a lot,” Ella said.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, and then laughed. “Comes too easily I guess.”

  “Do you have kids?” she asked him, twisting to face him.

  “I do. A fifteen-year-old daughter.”

  “You have a fifteen-year-old daughter? Oh, God. You’re in the thick of it for sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was once a fifteen-year-old daughter,” Ella said.

  “Ah, so is this normal? The kind of father-daughter standoff that hits at this age?”

  Ella closed her eyes for just a moment, imagining those days when she’d been so close to her mom, when her dad had tried so hard to be a part of their closed circle. She opened her eyes and looked at Hunter. “I don’t know, really, if it’s normal. But I know that you just have to keep being there for her.”

  “Are you close to your dad now?” he asked in a voice that sounded full of hope.

  “No,” Ella said. “But it’s different. Very different.”

  “How?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Ah, it’s complicated. Meaning, you don’t really want to talk about it. Got it,” Hunter said.

  “Thanks,” Ella said.

  “Well, now for the business part of our conversation.” He pulled out his notebook. “Tell me more about your city.”

  “Back in the day, whatever that means, the town was originally one square mile sitting on a bluff. They say we started the secession movement.” She spread her arms wide. “So this was the place where defiance was the definition. But still we are so small that both our movie theater and our bookstore closed.”

  “So if a tourist came here, what would they do?” he asked. While she’d been talking, he had taken out his black notebook and scribbled in it.

  “I don’t know. Maybe go out in the boats from the marina. Paddle boarding and kayaking seem popular, too. We have a slave relic museum. Then there is the art—we have about five studios.”

  “A slave relic museum? What the…”

  “I know. It’s odd … especially if you’re from L.A. It probably seems barbaric.”

  “I have to see this. Now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s the first interesting thing I’ve had to write about in a while. Take me?”

  “Well, it’s only a block away. We can walk there. But wouldn’t you rather run by the city hall and get information and all that? I mean, don’t trust me on dates and facts. There’s a library with old documents and—”

  “I will definitely get all those things, but before I get the facts I’d like to see the city from your vantage point.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  They walked side by side. Twice their hands brushed each other as their arms swung. She tried to see the town from his point of view, that of a stranger who had never walked these sidewalks or seen these houses. The town was like a painting, she’d once said to Amber. She wondered if Hunter saw it this way. The brick sidewalks buckled in places where the oak tree roots pushed upward, groaning against the mortar. White picket fences really did surround the yards; the gardens were riotous in their need for attention. Rocking chairs and hanging ferns dominated the front porches, almost a parody of a Southern street. Every fifth house or so was decrepit, falling in on itself with the weight of neglect. Cars squatted in those yards, grass growing underneath the metal carcasses as if for protection from a lawn mower that didn’t exist. Someone would come along and buy this house, see it as a fixer-upper, and the structure would turn into a home, join the ranks of the others with kids in the front yard on plastic play toys, dogs barking, and small boxed herb gardens for the green generation.

  They rounded a corner and Ella pointed to an empty building, a painted white brick structure with a crumbling sign hanging sideways: FOR LEASE. Above the white brick structure a marquee had three words on it: You’ve Got Mail. “That was the last movie that was here. We keep hoping someone will turn it back into a movie theater, but for now…”

  “What is it now?”

  “Well, all the seats and equipment were sold in the bankruptcy, so now it’s just an empty building. Sometimes it’s used for parties or high school concerts, but you have to stand or bring in seats.”

  “Can we go in?” Hunter walked to the door and pulled at the locked doors, which made a rattling sound, groaning against being touched.

  “Do you know anyone to ask for keys?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Will you?”

  “Sure. It’s really pretty inside. There’s beautiful millwork and stars painted on the ceiling.” She walked away and then looked back at him. “You coming?”

  Hunter remained in front of the movie theater, his forehead against the glass, trying to see inside. He looked so young, a little boy wanting to sneak in. He tried the door one more time and then walked to Ella.

  “I adore movie theaters,” he said. “Everything about them. The smell, the chairs, the sticky floors, the hushed waiting.”

  “Me, too,” she said, “but I have to drive a half hour for that. Sometimes I go alone, just to sit in the air-conditioned quiet and eat Milk Duds and popcorn.”

  “Raisinets for me,” he said.

  She stared at him for a minute. What an odd creature. He looked the part of the writer, with his glasses and rumpled hair, his notebooks and satchel. But he seemed interested in everything but what he said he was writing about.

  They reached the slave relic museum and the sign, handwritten with a handless clock image, said CLOSED.

  Ella made a noise in her throat. “Sorry. I don’t really know the opening hours. It’s not somewhere I go. In fact … I’ve never been.”

  Hunte
r touched her arm and then pulled away quickly. “No big deal. Just to know it’s here is enough to write about.” He shook his head. “The South. It’s a funny thing sometimes. Even though I grew up in the South, it was definitely not Southern.”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “South Florida,” he said. “The Everglades. The snake and alligator part of the South. But definitely not Southern like this, with the history and plantations. It’s not the same.”

  “Yes. It’s different.…”

  “Your husband,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Was your husband from here?”

  Ella didn’t know what to say, how to describe a dead man who was still alive. This was absurd. They could run into him any minute—not that he’d be strolling through the slave relic museum—but they were standing in the middle of town. “Yes.” She stopped. If she kept going, she’d trip over her lies.

  “Tell me about meeting him,” Hunter said.

  He looked at Ella through those black-rimmed glasses. “I didn’t want to love him,” she said. “He was all bravado and smoothness, all wonderful and hip and cool. And my boss.”

  “Yes?” he asked in this quiet voice that made Ella want to tell him everything.

  “His family had always owned the marina,” she said, walking slower now and glancing sideways at Hunter. This was more fun than she’d had in months and yet it also felt wrong. Yet she continued. “He had a big sailboat and I was hired to work on it, a ‘stewardess’ if that’s what you want to call it. The rules were strict: absolutely no fraternizing. It was grounds for firing. I needed the job. Badly. So I lived in an eternal state of longing. Constantly passing him in the tiny passageways or on the docks.” Ella closed her eyes as if she could see what never existed. There’d been no sailboat. No yacht. Only the docks and some rental boats. But she’d talked her way into the story this far.

  “How long did this go on?” Hunter asked.

  It had been so, so long since someone asked about her life that she dove back in. “A year or so,” she said, and looked at Hunter. “Have you ever been in love for that long and just known you were supposed to be together but also knew there was just no way? That it was impossible?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “You’d know,” she replied.

  “So what finally happened?”

  “He offered to teach me to sail. We’d come back to port and we were unloading the boat. His girlfriend ran off to the spa because she needed an emergency mani-pedi and a blow-dry. We were there, just standing on the edge of the boat, the wind blowing…” She paused and looked away. “And that was that.”

  “Love arrived,” he said

  “Yes. Love arrived.”

  four

  FADE IN:

  EXT. DOCK OF WEATHER-BEATEN MARINA IN SMALL HARBOR. DAY.

  Late afternoon. Slightly tackily dressed, silly woman saunters off, leaving her boyfriend, NAME TK, to finish tying up boat with female crewmember, WOMAN. Departing woman seems indifferent, ignoring his good-bye.

  WOMAN and MAN TK—who is clearly the boss—work together easily and efficiently, though he is continually indicating what she should do; this is new to her, clearly. His hand brushes hers when handing her a rope and he jerks back as if electrified. WOMAN pretends not to notice, but smiles.

  WOMAN breaks tension by laughing at little boy on dock who is chasing seagull.

  MAN

  Do you know how to sail?

  WOMAN

  No. That’s bad, right?

  MAN

  Bad? Why bad?

  WOMAN

  (laughs)

  Well, I DO work on a sailboat.

  MAN

  (laughs)

  Good point. Do you want to learn?

  WOMAN

  Yes, I just haven’t had the chance.

  MAN

  You’ve got the chance right now. How about it?

  WOMAN

  (friendly smile)

  Great! Do I get overtime?

  MAN

  Not until you can tie a clove hitch and steer by the North Star.

  Blake shut his notebook and leaned back on the hotel bed. He felt peaceful for the first time in a very long time. It could have something to do with the slow Southern pace of the world he’d found himself in, or Ella’s delicate voice. But no matter. He would relish the moment for what it was: happiness.

  The day nudged into evening. He thought of what hell the past year had been. It was nice to feel good again, if only for a moment. He’d spent the entire afternoon with Ella and told her more than he meant to about himself and his life. If she suspected he was up to something, or lying about his job, it wouldn’t take more than a quick Google search to discover that a man named Hunter Adderman had never written a book about anything, ever. But she had seemed so trusting, so accepting.

  So he’d told Ella that his father died and that he had a fifteen-year-old daughter. He would tell her nothing about his L.A. life, his ex-wife.…

  His ex, Marilee, hated him. It wasn’t exactly a mystery why. The bigger mystery was that they had ever loved at all. Love. It was supposed to be the be all and end all. Wasn’t that what his movies were about? How he made a living? But in the real world, the world where people lived and ate and slept and made love and worked … well. That was a different matter. Love was just something else to muck up, something else to fail at or with. It was the hammer to the heart.

  This was his new life philosophy. Yet, if they hadn’t loved each other, what had it all been about? Status? Survival? His ex could probably answer this. What was therapy for if not to help her process her hatred of him? Okay, so he deserved her disgust. In the black-and-white world of deserve or not-deserve, he was getting his due. He cheated on her. There wasn’t a dainty way to say it. He drank too much JD on the night of his movie premiere three years ago and slept with a rising TV starlet who had been cast as the main character’s best friend. She’d been known for her offscreen hijinks as much as her drama. He couldn’t even really pretend it was a mistake because he’d wanted to sleep with her since he met her. But he’d resisted. Until that night. Oh, the paparazzi didn’t care about him, but unfortunately they most definitely did care about her.

  There were photos.

  Even if Marilee did love him still, which she said she didn’t, she couldn’t stay with him. Didn’t he understand that there were pictures out there—in magazines, on their friends’ computers, out in the big wide world? How could she stay?

  He’d wanted her to stay. He’d wanted to sleep with the actress, but he hadn’t wanted to lose his family. As Marilee said when she kicked him out, “You can’t always get what you want … but—”

  He didn’t stay to hear the end of it. He knew the Rolling Stones as well as the next guy.

  * * *

  Ella walked up the back stairwell of the Crumbling Chateau, running her hand along the brick wall to guide her because the overhead light was out—again. The dog, the damn dog from the apartment below, was yapping—again. Ella paused in front of the door on the second floor. She’d do it. She’d tell the guy to shut that damn dog up when it barked at all hours and minutes of the night. What was wrong with people?

  The door opened just as she lifted her hand to knock. She looked straight into the apartment and saw a small white puff running in circles. It was an apartment just like Ella’s but different, full and cluttered with furniture and flowered patterns, rugs and books, and knickknacks. Everywhere knickknacks. Where was the stinky old man and the dirty dog? A woman appeared in the right side of the doorframe. “You scared me,” she said. “I heard you out there in the hallway.”

  Her snowy hair spread in every direction like a compass. Her face was lined in the way happy people’s faces were, an unidentifiable pattern. She was short, five feet tall at the most. She held her hand up to her face and smiled. “But you don’t look so scary after all.”

  Ella’s anger about the dog and the bar
king stopped in her throat. “I live upstairs,” was all she said.

  “Well, how nice. I thought I heard footsteps the past month.”

  The woman wore a floral dress appropriate for a fifties dance. She held out her hand. “I’m Mimi.”

  “I’m Ella. I just moved in about a month ago but I won’t be here that long.”

  Mimi laughed and it was a tinkling sound. “Oh, dear. I said the same thing years ago. Just a transitory place. You know, until I decided where I really wanted to live.”

  Ella smiled. She couldn’t help it. This woman deserved a smile. “It’s nice to meet you.” The dog, the one that never stopped barking, wasn’t barking. Ella looked past Mimi into the apartment and pointed. “Yours?”

  Mimi motioned for Ella to step in, which she did. The apartment smelled of chamomile and lavender and buttered toast. Framed pictures and books were stacked everywhere, in corners, on tables, underneath furniture and against walls, double deep on bookshelves.

  The couches and chairs were plush, overly plump, as if in opposition to Mimi’s tiny self. Mimi motioned to the kitchen and Ella followed. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” Ella said. “I was just on my way to…”

  “Oh.” Mimi’s face fell. Her disappointment was palpable. She leaned down and picked up the dog. “This is Bruiser.”

  Ella, despite her best intention to hate the dog, reached forward to scratch his head. Her fingers sank into his downy hair and she felt the fragile bones underneath. “That’s a funny name for a tiny dog.”

  “Irony. It’s one of my best qualities.”

  Ella laughed. “Okay, yes, I’d like that cup of tea but I won’t stay long.”

  “I’m sorry about the barking. I really am. Bruiser has sort of a condition that irritates his vocal cords and he feels he has to bark all the time. Or that’s my theory. The vet has no idea what is wrong with him, and wants me to put him down because he is obviously miserable. I can’t. We could remove his vocal cords, but that seems so … barbaric.”