Second Chance At Two Love Lane

by Kieran Kramer

That was Hank’s look.

  But Ella wasn’t going to be anyone’s doormat ever again. She always used to say she was Hank’s cheerleader, but that was a delusion. She let herself believe love was a good reason to give up her dreams for someone else, but it wasn’t.

  And she wasn’t blaming Hank. It had been her decision.

  She pushed off the counter. “So, are you ready to come meet the nonnas?” They had quieted down again.

  “Sure.” Pammy made a face. “Old people scare me, kind of. They’re way too honest. And whoever is out there was yelling pretty loud. Are you sure they’re all right?”

  Ella laughed. “Fighting keeps the nonnas young. And as for honesty, consider it part of the perks of being old. What are you afraid they’ll be too honest about?”

  “All their health problems,” Pammy said. “Bodily functions are awesome, but hey—I can only take so much. And then they might say stuff about how I look.”

  “My nonnas are cool,” Ella assured her. “They don’t talk much about their health problems because they’re in excellent shape. And they’re too kind to comment on people’s appearance, unless they want to compliment you. Then they’ll say something nice. Here”—she grabbed a full-sized apron—“why don’t you put this on so they don’t have to read your shirt.”

  “Fine,” Pammy said.

  And it was fine. Pammy ate almost all the antipasti. And she got the nonnas to watch the Seahawks play the Eagles. They’d never watched American football. During a commercial, Pammy showed the nonnas how the fireplace needed some work.

  “See?” She had her own pocket level and she’d propped it on the mantel. “It’s off. You gotta do something about it.”

  “Like what?” said Nonna Boo.

  “Like straightening it out,” said Pammy, and rolled her eyes.

  The nonnas weren’t fazed at all. “A little crooked is good for the soul,” Nonna Boo said.

  “That’s right,” said Nonna Sofia. “Who wants perfection, eh?”

  And they both laughed.

  Pammy put her level back in her pocket. “I gotta go,” she said.

  “You go,” said Nonna Boo serenely. “But you come back here every Sunday you’re free and have supper with the family at six o’clock. I know we’re boring old ladies, but you need some family while you’re here. Maybe you can bring your cousin Hank around. Call him and tell him he made a big mistake with Ella.”

  Pammy’s eyes popped. “Uh, Hank doesn’t live here. And that’s their business. Right?”

  “Right,” said Ella. “Don’t listen to them, Pammy.”

  “You do what you want,” said Nonna Sofia. “But we nonnas are only looking out for everyone’s best interests. Yours too, Pammy. Be ready for some nosy questions about your love life.”

  “Yeah, well”—Pammy sounded doubtful—“it doesn’t exist. But I guess I’ll come back.” She tossed them a grin.

  “Look at that smile,” said Nonna Boo. “It lights up the room. By the way, Ella, we need to put two more Sicilian cousins in your apartment.”

  The nonnas always tried to squeeze outrageous demands into otherwise ordinary sentences, as if no one would notice.

  “But Nonna Boo,” Ella said patiently, “I’m already taking two.”

  “Two more,” said Nonna Boo. “Cousin Julio and his wife Dorotea. Julio says Dorotea is very, very picky. She needs a nice queen-sized bed. No doubles. No kings. A queen. She needs him close enough to knock him when he snores, but not too close that he gets the wrong idea. She’s too old for that kind of nonsense, she told Nonna Sofia. Once she hit eighty, she was done.”

  “Dorotea’s done,” Nonna Sofia said. “No more bedroom nonsense.”

  Ella didn’t know what to say. “But where will I go? The sofa is so uncomfortable. It’s got a spring jutting up in the middle. I need a new one.”

  “Yes, they want you out,” said Nonna Boo. “Five people sharing one bathroom is too much, they say.”

  “I-I guess I could go to Miss Thing’s,” Ella said. “Or Macy’s, or Greer’s.”

  She hated to go to Macy’s or Greer’s and interrupt their honeymoon periods for an entire week.

  “No one else in the family can take you in,” said Nonna Boo. “We’re all chock-full of Sicilian relatives.”

  “But we know you have lots of friends,” said Nonna Sofia.

  Ella looked at Pammy, embarrassed. “I have friends, but it’s such an imposition staying a week.…” She shrugged. “I’ll work it out.” She would have to buy earplugs so she didn’t hear Miss Thing’s guinea pig. And then work around all the paint cloths that would be lying on the floors. Wet paint drying overnight wasn’t exactly going to be great for her sinuses either.

  “You can stay with me,” said Pammy. “I’ve got plenty of room at the carriage house.”

  “Really?” Ella said. “You wouldn’t mind? I wouldn’t have to show up until tomorrow morning with my suitcase, and then I’ll head to work. But it’ll be a whole week. Are you sure?”

  “It’ll be great,” said Pammy. “I’ll get the spare room ready, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  They exchanged phone numbers.

  The nonnas exclaimed over Pammy’s generosity and said she’d grow to love their granddaughter Ella—who wasn’t the best cook in the family yet but someday might be if she tried a little harder.

  “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” said Nonna Sofia. “Just ask Ella’s sister Jill.”

  It was true that Jill’s carbonara played an instrumental role in capturing Cosmo’s attention when they first met. “But we each have our own strengths,” said Ella. “And I don’t need a man to be happy, Nonnas. You have to join the twenty-first century.”

  “We know you don’t,” said Nonna Sofia. “But a good one is nice to have around.”

  “That’s right,” said Nonna Boo. “Especially a good one who knows his way around the bedroom.”

  “And takes out the garbage,” said Nonna Sofia.

  “Nonnas,” protested Ella. “You can’t talk like that.”

  “We just did,” said Nonna Boo.

  And they both laughed.

  Ella gave them both a kiss and a hug. She was doing great as a single woman. She didn’t need a man to feel good about herself. But she had to be honest: living with Hank’s cousin Pammy for a week was going to be slightly rough. She’d put the past behind her, but she hoped she didn’t have to hear Pammy talking to him on the phone—and God forbid Pammy FaceTime him with Ella in the room.

  And then she remembered: she never called Hank about that favor he wanted, which was obviously for her to contact Pammy. She wouldn’t bother. Pammy would tell him. No way did Ella want to talk to her old lover on the phone.

  She’d moved on, no matter how her body and soul had reacted when she’d received those flowers. When she’d realized they were from Hank, it was as if her world was starting anew. As if none of the past ten years had changed the simple fact that she still loved him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hank was doomed. No, really. He didn’t know how to get out of going to tea with his parents on Sunday at the Plaza, the famous hotel in Manhattan that chicks loved to go to and men had to dress up for to please the ladies in their lives. He wasn’t a fan of scones and clotted cream and jam. He especially didn’t like tea. It reminded him too much of Ella.

  And his mom told him they were bringing along a birthday card for Aunt Sarah. They wanted him to sign it while they were together. She always got so mad at him when he paused for long stretches over cards, and then just wrote, I hope you have a great birthday. Hank.

  “That’s all you can come up with?” his mother would say. “You act for a living. I’ve seen you cry real tears in a movie when you picked a rose off a bush. And you can’t say anything more meaningful and personal?”

  No. He couldn’t. He was unable to express personal feelings very well. He wasn’t sure what they were, to be honest. He was too tired, too stressed,
to recognize them. And even before he’d become tired and stressed—like when he was a teenager, pre-Ella (everything was pre-and post-Ella)—he’d had difficulty showing people his real face. Not that he was a phony. But he was profoundly shy beneath his confident exterior and wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, especially since his parents and the few trusted friends he told didn’t believe him.

  After all, he’d been the friendly busboy at Serendipity 3 for years. He’d talk to anyone! As an employee at the fanciful, family-oriented New York eatery, he’d never been bored. The truth was, he liked watching people. He loved observing their gestures, overhearing the things they said.

  The closest he came to figuring it all out was in English class senior year when his silver-haired teacher saw how sensitive his essays were. That was what she called them: “sensitive.” No one had ever remotely associated him with “sensitive,” not even the acting coaches he’d had later.

  His high school teacher was an old hippy who encouraged him to take a gap year after he graduated and go travel the world. He wanted to, badly. He decided he’d read Kerouac along the way—it was almost required of teenagers who wanted to run off and have adventures—and maybe some poets, like Whitman and Wordsworth, and a few contemporary ones, like Elizabeth Bishop. She’d written his favorite poem.

  Yep, “The Fish” was the best poem in the world, but the only person he’d ever been able to tell that to had been Ella.

  He’d told her on their very first date, which was like out of a movie. He’d waited for her at Serendipity 3 four years to the day after he’d asked her to …

  And she’d shown up!

  He also told her he wished he’d taken that gap year instead of going to college—and then quitting—and then heading straight to Broadway auditions to prove his point that he wanted to be a professional actor. He wished he’d worked on a pineapple farm in Hawaii for a summer. Or bartended in Paris.

  He’d really just wanted time apart from everyone who knew him and had pegged him with all their expectations. He wanted time to think about what he really, really wanted.

  He wanted time alone.

  On that first date, Ella had completely understood. She liked thinking, too, and she said she did it best when she was sitting with her tea at home, although sitting with a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 always made her think interesting thoughts too.

  “How have the auditions been going?” she’d asked him.

  “I love it,” he’d said, “but I also want to know if I’d love anything else too. I’m on my fourth year of auditioning and getting small parts. But maybe something else is out there. Nothing hit me over the head in school.”

  And she’d understood. She’d also understood that he couldn’t sit still, that he had to at least make the move toward a dream, even as he was unsure, and so she never made fun of him for his somewhat ambivalent acting ambition.

  A guy had to do something, he’d said. And he’d rather act than sell insurance or real estate, or join the military, or drive a cab, or become an attorney.

  All these years, post-Ella, things hadn’t changed. Hank still pursued acting because it was what he did, and he would do it until he found out the thing he really wanted to do—or had he already found it? Was acting it? Did you ever really find something that was a perfect fit? Would he ever feel as if he’d synced with his purpose in the universe—locked in, like a rocket with the mother ship?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But he was such a good actor, no one could sense this uncertainty in him.

  The day Hank’s parents invited him to tea was the afternoon after he’d sent the flowers to Ella’s dressing room at the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston. He was in a limo heading to the Plaza. He hadn’t gotten over the shock of telling the florist over the phone her name. He hadn’t said it out loud in so long.

  Ella.

  Ella-bella.

  He sang the name in the shower that morning while soaping his chest. He held the soap right up to his heart and stood under the sluicing hot water and thought about her. Ella was the only thing he’d always been sure about.

  Their connection had made leaving her impossible for him. But he’d done it. He’d done it because the acting was panning out. He saw eventual success … he saw his parents’ beaming faces. He saw money, and he saw that the stars could align there.

  And he knew in his heart that there was no guarantee that stars aligned for lovers. There was always the possibility of a supernova. Or a black hole.

  He couldn’t afford to have the one thing in life he was certain about blow up in his face. He’d rather live with it in its potential state.

  What could have been …

  With Ella.

  He tucked that possibility away in his heart. It was more important to him than his two Oscar nominations. It was what he’d look back on when he was an old man, that perfect love—

  That he ended before it could end him.

  “Do you ever just think?” he asked his driver.

  “All the time,” said the driver. “While I’m driving you.”

  “Hardly anyone has time anymore to think … to kick back, or hike, or sit staring out a window for no good reason.”

  “What do you do when you look out the window of my limo?”

  “Hah. I look at my phone. And the few times I do glance up, I’m thinking about something else. Like a movie script. Or a contract. Not what I’m seeing.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I don’t know anyone who takes the time to really look.”

  “Maybe you’re hanging out with the wrong people.” The driver laughed.

  Hank did too, but he loved his friends. He loved his family. He had two brothers and a sister, all older than he was, and they were terrific people with nice families and fulfilling careers. Hank was the golden boy of the family, but he could tell no one else at family gatherings wanted to be in his position: super rich and famous. They were all glad to leave it to him. He could tell they pitied him his lack of normalcy. And he appreciated that. It was rare to run into anyone in his life who didn’t think he was the luckiest guy on earth.

  Occasionally, his brothers would try to get him to go camping with them out in the Tetons or rafting down the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon. But he always said no because he was afraid he would get time to think—that thing he used to crave.

  He craved it no longer because he was afraid of what he would find out.

  So Hank stayed busy, busy, busy.

  No surprise there, being a celebrity, of course. Everyone thought the busyness was what happened to famous actors who got lots of work. But no. Actors could carve out downtime if they wanted to. But he didn’t want that. He hired people who would keep him moving.

  And he’d never read Kerouac. As for “The Fish,” he hadn’t thought about it in years.

  At the Plaza, he kissed his mom and gave his dad his usual one-armed hug. They’d changed a lot since he was younger. When Hank was a kid, his mom had always been wrapped up in her social life, and his dad had worked late all the time as an attorney. But these days, post-retirement, his dad was pretty laid back. They got along well, and he saw his parents at least once a month when he wasn’t away on a movie set.

  They were still living in the comfortable brownstone he’d grown up in on the Upper East Side. He’d never had to worry about money back then except for when he had lived with Ella and refused his parents’ help. He was going to make it on his own.

  And he did. It was a rough couple of years, but now he out-earned his dad and all his siblings combined. It wasn’t fair because he saw how hard they worked.

  But they didn’t know what he’d given up. They didn’t know that part of him, the slice of his soul that would always look at his own success from far away and never be quite attached to it.

  “I’ll take coffee,” he told the server a few minutes later.

  “Coffee at high tea,” his mother said, and waved her hand at him. It was
her typical gesture. She didn’t get him. But she loved him.

  “Mom,” he said, “I’m finally going to admit to you why I don’t like tea. It’s because it reminds me of Ella, my old girlfriend. She drank it all the time. Remember her?”

  “Of course I do!” his mother said, almost defensively. “She was a very nice girl. Whatever happened to her?”

  “She moved to Charleston. South Carolina.” In case she thought he meant Charleston, West Virginia. “She’s a matchmaker.”

  “Where Pammy is! Such a splendid town, so I’ve heard. Is she still single? Like you?” His mother always liked to remind him.

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t keep up with her?” His mother always acted so surprised about everything.

  “No, Mom.” But of course, Hank knew Ella was still single. He wasn’t going to admit to his mother, however, that he checked the Internet every once in a while to see how she was doing.

  His father only sat there, comfortable, immobile, enjoying the fact that he wasn’t in the fray.

  No one said, “You can’t drink tea because of Ella? Why? Are you still in love with her? Is she the love of your life?”

  Nope, his parents just moved on. That was how it had always been. He’d drop these massive hints, but no one picked up on them.

  “Speaking of Pammy,” Hank said, “I just talked to her. Sure, she’s made a huge name for herself in historic-home restoration, and it’s paying off with this professor position. But she’s feeling a little homesick.”

  “Oh dear,” said his mother in that faint voice she used when they talked about the Oregon branch of the family. They were too weird. A girl carpenter—that’s what she called Pammy. And Oregon might as well have been the moon, it was so far away.

  “So I lined her up with a project on the side,” Hank said, “Beau and Lacey’s house. They’ll treat her like family. But right now they’re out of town.”

  “Beau and Lacey,” said his mother with a lot more energy. “What a lovely couple.” She looked at him expectantly. She loved a good gossip, especially about his movie star friends.

  But Hank wouldn’t get sidetracked. “I did contact Ella to see if she could check in on Pammy.”