by Holly Jacobs
The subjects we didn’t speak of added to the wall that was growing between us. Each visit, it became more apparent and harder to ignore.
Ned had been busy with work, too. I wondered if he was investigating things for Anthony’s case, but he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. I just knew that he left his house early, so most mornings, I went over, got Princess, and walked the dogs together. But without Ned’s company, I had even more time to think.
Normally I’d be thinking about whatever book I was working on—my work-in-progress. Or I’d be thinking about Amanda’s Pantry. But now, all my thoughts were on Anthony as I tried to work out what I should do.
When I was totally honest with myself, I acknowledged I didn’t need to work out what I should do. I was working out how to accept it. How to accept that I’d spent a year with a man I didn’t love.
The week before Christmas, Anthony called and asked if he could come over. It was a very formal request, especially coming from a man who more than once had made decisions on both our behalves.
As I waited for him, I realized there was no sense of anticipation. I hadn’t missed him. All the little snippets of thought that had skittered around the fringes of my awareness landed with a thud.
I thought about what Ned had said about Mela. He could picture his life without her.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I couldn’t avoid the realization any longer . . . I felt that way about Anthony. I could picture my life without him in it.
And I knew what I had to do. Or rather, I admitted what I’d known for some time.
When I met Anthony, there’d been no spark. But he was nice and I thought that warmth was just as good as full-out flame.
The two of us would have been good friends, but we’d tried for something else. But it’s hard to find something that was never there in the first place.
We’d been seeing each other for over a year and I knew that we would never be any closer than we were now.
That wasn’t fair to Anthony, and it wasn’t fair to me.
I couldn’t decide if I should tell him after dinner or before.
I decided to make a salad and have it in the fridge.
He arrived promptly at six. “I thought I was going to be late.” He was bouncy happy and carrying a bottle of wine, which he thrust in my direction. “The verdict came in. Not guilty.”
“Congratulations,” I said and meant it.
“Thanks. I know that the case took a lot of time away from us. We never really talked about Thanksgiving and . . .”
Part of me—a part I’m not very proud of—wanted to forget about breaking up with him tonight. He was so happy. It was unkind dumping news like this on him. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t like him. I did. We’d been dating for a year. What were a few more days?
A lie.
“Anthony, we need to talk.”
His happy expression melted away. “So this is it?”
“Could we sit down?”
He nodded. We sat on the couch. Anthony on one side, me on the other. There was an entire empty cushion between us.
I thought that pretty much summed up our relationship.
“I had a dream a while ago. It started out as a scene for my new story. It was about a midsummer’s celebration. A bonfire. I don’t think we’ve ever had a bonfire, or even a spark between us. Anthony, we don’t belong together.”
“I thought with time . . .” He let the sentence die off.
He didn’t need to go on, because I knew just what he was saying. “Me, too. I like you. And I care about you. But we both want different things.”
“Kids,” he said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“I thought you might change your mind on that as well.”
I shook my head. “It’s more than just that one issue. When we spend time apart, we both seem comfortable with it. We both seem to get along just fine without the other. Maybe I think we both deserve to be with people we can’t stand to be apart from.”
He nodded. “I’ll confess, I was relieved that you didn’t kick up a fuss when I was spending so much time on this case. I’d had other girlfriends who weren’t so understanding.”
“And I was happy to have uninterrupted time to work on a book.” Maybe if I were completely on my own, it would have been different. But Cooper and Ned had both been around. And my parents were always there. My life still felt well populated with people without Anthony around.
I think that was the point. If I were with someone I truly loved, even if my life were filled to capacity, I’d still feel the lack of his presence.
“So we’re over.” Anthony made it a statement more than a question.
I nodded and spanned that no-man’s-land cushion and took his hand. “I think we both deserve to find people we can’t live without. People we can’t be apart from because it causes an almost physical pain. People who know us inside and out and like us anyway.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to say something. I had an inkling last Christmas.”
“What happened last Christmas?” he asked.
“I was living in terror you’d want me to go to that hockey game with you,” I confessed with a laugh.
He gave a little halfhearted chuckle, then said, “I guess I can confess that I worried you’d want to come. I knew you didn’t like hockey. But at least you came up with the idea for a perfect gift. I didn’t have a clue, and while I did notice that your copy of Have Space Suit—Will Travel was worn, I only noticed after Ned gave me the idea. I was thinking I was going to have to ask him for a suggestion for this year, too.”
I laughed. I should have known it was Ned, my sci-fi buddy, who realized how much I loved that book. “I had the idea of giving you some sporty sort of gift, but Ned was the one who told me the team and game.”
“So what you’re saying is Ned knows us better than we know each other?” Anthony half joked.
Only half, because I think he realized that there was a lot of truth in that statement.
I thought about Anthony’s comment about my clothing on Thanksgiving. He wished I’d make an effort more often. Ned had said he liked me in my normal mode of dress.
Yes, Ned knew more about me than just my love of science fiction.
The thought made me uncomfortable, so I brushed it aside and concentrated on Anthony.
“So we’re okay?” I asked. “I mean, I hope I see you at the annual Amanda’s Pantry dinner along with the rest of the firm. I don’t want things between us to be . . . weird.”
He smiled. “I’ve never had an ex who worried about us being okay after a breakup. But then you’ve never been an average girlfriend, so the fact you’re going to be a non-average ex makes sense. But to be clear, yes, we’re fine.”
“If I ever need a lawyer, I’d call you,” I said and I meant it. I had complete faith that if I ever needed help and asked, Anthony would come running.
He smiled. “Well, of course you would. After all, I just won a big case. I’m good.”
I looked at Anthony and realized he was a friend.
I don’t know how I could have thought he was anything more than that, but I knew for a fact he wasn’t anything less. And when we met in the future at dinners or just around town, I knew I’d always be genuinely happy to see him and anxious to catch up.
“So, would it be weird if I asked you to stay for dinner after I broke up with you?” I asked.
There was no halfhearted smile or small chuckle. Anthony shook his head, rolled his eyes, and genuinely laughed. “Yes, but Piper, we’ve been together for a year . . . I’ve gotten used to your weirdness.” He paused. “Maybe that sums us up. I’ve gotten used to you; you’ve gotten used to me. But just because we’re accustomed to each other doesn’t mean we’re in love.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it does mean we can be friends?” I said more than asked.
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
We had the wine he’d brought and my salad. He told me all about his case and I told him about my book.
We talked and laughed.
And that’s when I realized how relieved I was that I wasn’t going to lose his friendship.
Maybe we didn’t have a spark that would lead to love and a relationship like my parents, Ned’s parents, and his bosses had. But we had warmth between us that I thought would make us very good friends.
And I had room for more friends.
After the most painless breakup I’d ever had, I couldn’t get my dad and Aunt Bonnie out of my mind. They’d been friends for years, but never more.
I didn’t want to ask him about her in front of my mother, in case it was a sore spot—though I didn’t think it was—so I went to his office a couple days later.
Dad was working on a new textbook. He found working at his office was more conducive to writing than working at the house.
His office was the equivalent of my front porch, so I understood it.
But while my front porch had a few pieces of wicker furniture, a plant, and an expansive view, my father’s office was filled with a desk, an extra chair, and his books—four walls of books. His lone window was Hobbit-sized and looked at a huge pine tree, so what little natural light filtered through it had an odd green tinge to it.
I liked writing when I felt I was a part of things. My father liked writing in a literary equivalent of a solitary cave.
He looked up from his desk and smiled. “Piper, what a pleasure.”
“I know I’m interrupting, but Dad, I wanted to ask you something.”
He waved at the single chair that was meant for students and visitors. “Sure, honey. You know you can ask me anything.”
The university had offered my father a bigger office a few times, but he’d always declined. I’d once asked him why and he said it was because he was lazy and didn’t want to move all his things, but I suspected it was more than that. He liked his cave.
“It’s about Aunt Bonnie,” I started. “I mean, I know she was your friend, and not mom’s. No, I mean, I know she was friendly with mom, but she was your friend.”
I sighed. This was not coming out the way I wanted it. “I know you and Aunt Bonnie had been friends for years and she became friends with Mom because of you. I know she was a good enough friend that you made her my godmother and she took me in all those years ago. You were never specific, and I wondered if the two of you . . .”
Some people have smiley expressions. It’s as if their faces’ default expression is a smile.
My father’s default expression was more serious. Contemplative. His natural look was one of deep thought. But when he smiled, it could light a room . . . even a cubbyhole office with weird green light.
He gave me one of those smiles now. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, then my answer is no. Bonnie and I were never together like that. We had friends who thought we would be that someday, some who even thought that we should be that, but no.”
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t fathom anyone thinking that. “We grew up together, you know. We built tree houses in the woods behind your grandparents’ place. We rode bikes together. When Bonnie had a breakup or a fight with someone, I was her shoulder. And she . . . I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that even then, I was more at home inside a book. I loved being surrounded by books. Bonnie was forever dragging me out into the world. She showed me the joy in things I’d never have noticed otherwise. She was the sister I never had. She was my best friend. She was family. Part of me has never recovered from losing her.”
When Amanda was five, Aunt Bonnie got sick with the flu. Dad had talked to her and threatened to drive to Ohio that afternoon if she didn’t go to her doctor.
She promised she would.
The next day he got the call from the hospital. She’d gone to the doctor’s and he’d immediately had her admitted to the hospital. They’d done everything they could, but she’d died that night.
I didn’t know that until later. What I remembered was Dad getting a phone call, then dropping the phone. Mom and I hurried to his side as he fell to the floor crying. Great heaving sobs.
My mother sank down next to him and simply held him as he cried out that Bonnie was dead, and Mom cried as well.
Afterward, I remember him raging, “Who dies from the flu?” almost as if he blamed Bonnie for dying. But in hindsight, maybe he simply blamed her for leaving him.
The rest of Aunt Bonnie’s family had passed, so my father was her executor. I remember driving to Ohio for her funeral. A few months later, we went back to see her headstone on her grave. My father hadn’t cried then, but it was almost worse. His pain rolled off him in waves.
Now, more than a decade later, I could still see that same pain. Maybe it had softened, but it was still there.
He looked at me and said, “I know that people say you can’t be just a friend with someone of the opposite sex, but I think they’re wrong. Bonnie was always my friend. And for a while, we thought, along with everyone else, that it might be more, but it never was.”
He was lost in thought for a moment, then said, “Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?”
I shook my head. My parents loved me, but they rarely shared any intimacy of their relationship with me.
“It was Bonnie. We both went to OSU and saw each other often. One day, she met me for coffee and had a girl in tow. The girl in question was your mom. Bonnie said, This is Tricia. I think you two need to meet, so I’m going to leave you to it.
“That was it. She left me sitting with a total stranger at a campus coffee shop. Your mom looked as uncomfortable as I felt. She looked at me and said, ‘She’s . . . an original.’” She inserted this pregnant pause that made those three words seem funnier than they should have been.
“I started laughing, and then so did she. We ordered coffee and . . . Bonnie introduced me to the love of my life, and I loved Bonnie all the more for it. Does that make sense?”
I found myself nodding because it did.
“When you asked us to go away and stay with Bonnie when you had the baby, not one of us in the room doubted that Bonnie would just say yes . . . that she’d welcome you with open arms.”
My question had started my father on a journey down memory lane. I sat on that couch and listened as he shared stories of my mom and Aunt Bonnie.
I know romance is the stuff that books and legends are built on, but so many of my books were built around friendship. I’d never really looked at it that way before, but as I listened to my father, the thought crystalized. Somehow, without ever really thinking about it, I’d come to believe in the power of friendship.
Friendships that were blind to gender. Friendships that were blind to age.
Friendship was as lasting as true love . . . sometimes more lasting.
My father and Aunt Bonnie had had that kind of friendship.
I’m not sure why, but I left his office feeling better.
The next day, Anthony called and told me he’d be moving to Harrisburg, the state capital, after the new year. He was going to work in the attorney general’s office.
Two days before Christmas I met him for coffee across from the firm’s downtown office. I’d bought him a desk plaque that read, “Anthony Long, Esquire.”
“I thought about going with Anthony Long, Kick-Butt Attorney,” I said, “but thought this was probably a better idea.”
He’d bought me a beautifully illustrated book on urban gardens. “I thought of this gift all on my own,” he assured me.
We left the coffeehouse and both went our separate ways.
I’d been wrong.
I did miss him sometime
s.
Chapter Ten
Dear Amanda,
I haven’t picked your journal up since I broke up with Anthony. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you; it’s that if—when—you get this journal, I don’t want it to be full of minutia. I want to tell you the things that really matter. If I never meet you in person—if the only time we have together is that one hour—I want this to be a way to connect with you. More than that, I want it to be a way for you to feel my love.
But even though I have nothing big to say, no revelation to share, I’m bursting to the point of overflowing today. Not because of anything big. No new contract, new boyfriend . . . nothing life altering. It’s mid-March here in Erie. Because the city sits on the southern edge of Lake Erie, our winters can be long, cold, and snowy. This particular winter was all those things. But today, before it’s even officially spring, it’s in the sixties and the snow is melting. I can see the tops of crocuses (croci?) popping through patches of dirt and snow.
The sun is out and the kids will be getting out of class soon. I’ll wave to them. I have a great group of kindergarteners I read to every week, and I’m still working with Coop’s class. There are some very good stories.
I guess I’m writing because I want to say that sometimes it’s the very small things that matter. Ned and I walk the dogs every evening when he gets home from work. My parents are in Florida, so I haven’t been going there for dinners, but most weekends I go out with Cooper or Ned.
I learned to make bread this winter.
See? Nothing big. And yet, today, sitting on my porch after a long winter, I am bursting with happiness.
I guess that’s what I wanted to say . . . take time to look around your life for those small things that can mean so much.
I—
I stopped writing because Jim, my mailman, was walking toward me.
“You’re out on the porch finally,” he said, grinning.
“I am. It was too nice to stay inside.”
He handed me a giant envelope from my publisher. I couldn’t tell by the size and heft of it what was in it. I knew it wasn’t books.
