Three Good Things Read online

  Not that she hadn’t had her share of boyfriends in high school and college, but Max was different. He was tall, athletic, easy to be around. Strangers warmed to him immediately; it seemed he could find something in common with anyone, the kind of guy you’d want to share a beer with. And for women, well, he’d always been magnetic. A charmer, head-turning handsome, with those striking blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones, a slight cleft in his chin. Ellen liked that all the women would look when they walked into a restaurant together.

  She laughed now. “Can you imagine? Us getting back together again?”

  “Whoa. Hold on there,” Lanie interjected. “No one is suggesting rekindling anything. This is just Max’s wishful thinking. Lonely, wishful thinking. He always was a dreamer, remember?”

  Ellen blew her nose again.

  “You’re right. He probably had one too many mai tais before writing this. I should just throw it out and not respond?” It sounded like a question. “Even though he called to ask if I got it? Even though he sounded like he really missed me?” She had cut the conversation short when he called, begging off with the excuse of customers, her heart racing.

  Lanie came over to the couch, sat down, and put an arm around her big sister.

  “I know you’re usually the one to give the advice, but yes. I think that would be best. You’ve moved on. In a positive way. There’s no sense in going back to Max-land.”

  Ellen smiled at the mention of “Max-land,” what she and Lanie used to call it when Max would come up with another one of his harebrained schemes: “He’s in Max-land right now.”

  Lanie was right, of course. All the spring snow was making her stir-crazy. She’d lost her head, her good sense. She curled up next to her sister as they watched the end of a made-for-TV movie.

  “What is this anyway?” Lanie asked.

  “No idea.” Ellen paused. “Something about angels.”

  “Heavenly.”

  A few pints of butter pecan ice cream later, as the credits rolled, Lanie turned and asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Ellen waved her away. “Get back to your husband and son. And here, take this with you.”

  She shoved the half-eaten container of ice cream, the spoon still protruding from the carton, into Lanie’s hands. “That’s the last thing my hips need. You know, it’s so much easier to stay skinny when you’re not depressed.”

  “You should write a book about it.” Her sister thought for a second. “Something like, Grin to Stay Thin.”

  “That will be my next midlife crisis.” Ellen sighed.

  Lanie gave her one more hug. “You’re not depressed, just in shock. I’ll check in on you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

  Ellen walked her to the door, locking it securely behind her before heading upstairs to bed.

  • • • •

  But the next morning Ellen woke up in a dour mood. She hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning most of the night. She had tried counting backward, then forward, then visualized herself on a beach sipping piña coladas but Max popped up beside her on a beach towel with a schoolboy’s grin. At three in the morning she put on her slippers and robe, went downstairs, and poured herself a tall glass of milk. She was upset with herself for letting Max get to her. That was old business, done and through. Why had one little e-mail and a phone call suddenly gotten the wheels spinning in her head? She knew better.

  She went to the living room and looked out at the yard. The shadows of the birch branches danced across the lawn in the moonlight. The Lannigans’ house across the street was dark, and she imagined the elderly couple sleeping soundly under their warm blankets, not a care in the world. Her milk finished, she went upstairs to call on sleep again.

  But to no avail. She had gotten maybe two or three hours the entire night, hardly enough to sustain her. She’d have to make do somehow. Some days were meant just for getting through.

  She’d heard on NPR about a study on happiness and the effects of smiling. Apparently, just the act of smiling could make a person happier. Something about hormones kicking in, tricking your brain into thinking you were happy when it sensed you were turning up the corners of your mouth. She had practiced grinning several times in the shower this morning, wide, teeth-baring grins, and was still waiting for the happiness quotient to kick in.

  As she turned the key in the lock at the store, she felt her usual pep was missing. Gone was that initial rush with the first step onto the hardwood floor, the anticipation of the day ahead, of her customers’ stories. She set her purse down on the shelf underneath the register, took off her coat, and replaced it with her apron. She whispered, “Good morning, store.” Out front, she got the coffee and filters from the bottom cupboards and filled the brewers: hazelnut, vanilla, and decaf. She waited for the first drops of hazelnut to brew and caught them for herself in a cup.

  In back she pulled her hair into a ponytail and washed her hands at the sink, wiping them dry. Her hands were perpetually rough, it seemed, ever since she’d opened the store. She pulled the chilled rectangles from the refrigerator and patted the dough, letting the cool sink between her fingers. Then she fed each through the machine, watching the lumps dissolve, thinking how this lump looked a bit like Max’s nose, this one like his ear. Next, she folded the thin, stretchy swath over onto itself, back and forth, to better move it to the baking table. Just like her life these days, she thought, back and forth, back and forth. When she was sure she’d moved on, here was Max popping up again like a renegade lump of flour.

  She uncapped the fillings for the day, raspberry and almond, and spread them evenly on top. Then she folded up the sides of each rectangle and brushed egg white onto the seal. Almond was how she was feeling; raspberry, she hoped, was a cheerier flavor that might boost her spirits. At last, thirty-two elongated rolls lay before her like horizontal hieroglyphics.

  She wished they held some answers.

  Max’s e-mail, she felt certain, had been written after a few cocktails on the beach. He was positively drunk if he thought she was going to visit him. Perhaps she hadn’t let him down hard enough when she filed for divorce citing “irreconcilable differences”?

  Their split had been quick. Indeed, she’d barely seen the door hit his ass on the way out, but that’s what they’d both wanted. Or so she thought. Ten years was enough time to know whether a marriage was working or not and when she’d broken the news to Max that she was pretty sure theirs wasn’t, he hadn’t seem surprised. Maybe a little disappointed, even sad, but not surprised. She’d interpreted this as agreement. She had done enough soul-searching before filing the papers not to want to revisit the matter again. And yet? Carefully she knitted the ends of the doughy ropes together and transferred the ovals onto the baking board before slipping them into the oven.

  Back in the front, she tidied up and pulled open the blinds. The sun was beginning to peek out. Erin had wiped down the tables the night before, but now Ellen turned over the chairs, scrubbed the counter, and filled the milk and cream canisters at the help-yourself-station at the back. She restocked the napkins, spoons, and knives. Then she picked up the chalk and in yellow letters wrote:

  Drips: Hazelnut; French Vanilla; Decaf

  Tips: Sally gave an orange to Tim and me. (Me is the object of the preposition to. It should not read, as so often is the case, to “Tim and I,” which, though it may sound intelligent, is incorrect.)

  She stood back and admired her work, then put the chalk down and brushed off her hands. She offered up a silent prayer that her customers would provide some inspiration and enlightenment today. Surely there were lessons to be learned from their lives. Ty’s wife had left him, and he was still pining for her. Ellen most certainly did not want to be that kind of ex-spouse.

  She then noticed a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting by the door. There was no note, only her name printed in all caps. As she pulled back the paper, fastened charmingly with masking tape, she saw the familiar bold letters of an F an
d an M poking through. The cover was yellowed, slightly torn in the upper-right-hand corner. She opened the book to the copyright page. Sure enough, it was.

  A rare first edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage! The book she’d come to consider as close to a bible as she’d ever have in her lifetime. She held it up and breathed in its musty scent, then thumbed through the first pages. She took a little breath to see that there was a handwritten inscription on the title page: “To my dear Gretchen, whose words give rich meaning to each day. All my love, Anthony.”

  How romantic! The black ink was smudged, the “thony” in Anthony blurry. Who were they? she wondered. Star-crossed lovers? Fledgling poets or writers? Her mind swum with the possibilities.

  When Jack walked into the store, Ellen held up the book for him, told him about the gift she’d discovered. “Crazy way to tell someone you love them, if you ask me,” Jack said. “The inscription, I mean, on a grammar book.”

  “Don’t spoil it for me, Jack. I need a lift today. Let me just enjoy the romance of it all for a minute.” Then: “I wonder who on earth would get this for me.”

  She thought of Lanie first. Something to cheer her up. Her sister must have snuck it into the store last night with her spare key. But even Lanie didn’t have time for such thoughtfulness. Could Jack have been making light of it on purpose? Maybe he left it for her? A secret admirer all this time? She looked at him, thumbing through the sports section of his paper. It seemed unlikely. What about taciturn Henry? He had mentioned the other day how he loved all the Peterson Field Guides to Flowers. He seemed to relish a good reference book as much as she did.

  But if it were Henry, why wouldn’t he have left a note? There was no reason to hide. Then it dawned on her: Larry, of course. He appreciated a good turn of phrase as much as herself. His minor was in literature. He must have left the book when he closed up the shop yesterday afternoon. She’d have to thank him later in the day, once she’d sorted through the Max saga spinning in her head.

  “Clearly someone who doesn’t have much of a life.” Jack chuckled. “No offense.”

  “Just because someone is thoughtful and appreciates a rare edition when he,” she caught herself, “or she sees it, doesn’t give you an excuse to poke fun. You can help yourself to your own coffee today,” she said, enjoying the surprised look on Jack’s face.

  • • • •

  When Henry came into the store later that morning, his arms were full of books.

  “What’s all this?” Ellen asked.

  “I was clearing out some old paperbacks, and I thought maybe your lending library could use a few new ones.”

  “Well, I hope they’re not just dull gardening books,” she teased, but she was secretly delighted as she was anytime a customer added to her library. Then her heart skipped a beat. Might Henry have left her the Fowler’s after all? But no, she was reading things into his unexpected kindness.

  “Nah, mostly mysteries.”

  “Well, thank you.” She watched while he unloaded the books and then made his way to a table. Ellen went to inspect the titles, most of them of the Nelson DeMille and Tom Clancy variety.

  “So does that mean that Tim and you had to share an orange? Or did you both get an orange from Sally?” Henry interrupted her thoughts.

  Ellen had to stop and think for a minute.

  “Oh right, the board. Don’t be silly, Henry. Of course, we both get an orange.” Erin cocked an ear in her direction. That did sound a bit rude. Good old Max. Even across southern seas he was ruining not just her night but also her day. Lanie was right; she wouldn’t honor Max’s foolish e-mail with a response. All that sun was going to his head. Sure, Ellen had her own doubts from time to time, wondering if they’d done the right thing, worrying she’d signed up for a life of celibacy and loneliness after divorcing him. But, on her better days, she didn’t think so.

  “Well, I don’t think it’s clear. Maybe you’d better have another look.”

  Why was Henry being difficult all of a sudden? Honestly, she didn’t have the patience for it. She was about to brush him off, go out back and tell Erin to deal with the customers, when another thought came to her. Maybe Henry had a point.

  Maybe she should rethink the oranges. After all, she hadn’t written that Sally was handing out two oranges. On second glance it was a little unclear. She picked up the chalk, erased, and rewrote the sentence so that it read: Sally gave one orange each to Tim and me.

  “Better?” She looked at Henry.

  “Better. Now I understand what you’re talking about.”

  And, instead of feeling slighted for being corrected on her muddy grammar, she was grateful to have someone paying attention for once. Instead of turning on her heel, as she might have a day ago, she turned to him now and asked, “Henry, would you like to have dinner at my house next Friday?”

  He paused for a moment. “With you?”

  “Yes, with me, you dimwit.” A hush fell over the store. Ellen swore she could hear the coffee dripping in the pot behind her.

  “Well, in that case, I’d be honored. Thank you.”

  “Good, now be quiet about Tim and Sally and their orange, won’t you?”

  And she turned to pour the coffee, butterflies fluttering in her stomach, wondering what on earth she had just done.

  “Bringing up your child won’t be a complicated job if you take it easy, trust your own instincts.”

  —The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

  She had to admit, mommy biases aside, Benjamin was pretty cute. Adorable, really, when he stuck out his pudgy pointer finger at his stuffed elephant, the stroller, his juice cup. How did babies know to use the pointer finger instead of, say, the thumb? she wondered. She loved it when he babbled with his intonations, as if he were punching up specific words with meaning, recalling events from his day. He’d get excited, clap his hands together, ending with an animated “Oooh!”

  “Is that so?” she’d ask. “Tell me all about it.”

  And he’d continue on, filling her in. One day last October, when she’d just begun to feel comfortable in her mommy shoes, she strapped him in his stroller and rolled him under the big maple tree in the front yard while she planted mums along the stone fence. He was an outdoors baby, for sure. She had been bent over, sticking in the bright purple blooms, only to look up and see his five-month-old face with a big toothless grin, tilted toward the canopy of leaves above, taking it all in.

  She thought of this now as she strolled him around the neighborhood, the air crisp and inviting on a Saturday. Rob was at work again and so she was enjoying her alone time with Benjamin on this gorgeous spring day. Finally, they’d gotten the weather they deserved.

  She knew that labeling was an important way for babies to learn language, and she was careful to point out the trees, the grass, the dog across the street as they walked.

  “Do you hear the birdies singing?” she asked.

  Benjamin kicked his baby-stockinged feet, and she could swear she saw a glint of recognition in his eyes as he turned his face upward. She laughed to see him riding around so confidently, holding on to the stroller’s front tray, as if he were mayor of their little neighborhood.

  She imagined him as a hockey player one day or a baseball player, if his dad had anything to say about it. He was solid, stocky, with those fat baby hands that looked as if they were attached at the arms like a baby doll’s, no wrists. Snap-on hands, Rob called them.

  When she and Rob had brought him home from the hospital, Benjamin weighed only 4 pounds, 10 ounces. He seemed so fragile with his wobbly head, his tiny feet. He tugged at her arms no more than a flour sack.

  Now that it was spring and Benjamin nearly a year old, she could let herself breathe more easily. She reminded herself of how far they’d come. The feelings of joy she’d been waiting to open like a present at the hospital hadn’t arrived during those first weeks. Instead, her days and near-sleepless nights were checkered with heart-stopping fear, with the si
ckening uncertainty of not knowing if Benjamin, a preemie, would be all right. Every movement, every noise he made, was analyzed by them for “normalcy.” But really, what did she and Rob know?

  The physical therapist came for weekly visits in the early months to keep an eye on the baby’s development. She saw things they didn’t notice, good things. He could bring his hands together; he would track their movements with his eyes; he gradually was pushing up higher on his tummy. With each pronouncement Lanie let herself calm a bit more. But above all, she sensed—could it be motherly intuition?—that her little boy was a social being, a little person hungry to interact with the world, who seemed never to miss a beat. Ellen joked he’d be a newspaper reporter one day; he was constantly gulping in the world. But this was a few months later, after Lanie’s heart stopped quickening with every mid-night cry. When it seemed as if everything might, really, be okay.

  Still, in a moment, she could call up that first wrenching week in the maternity wing, the palpable ache that had come when she woke every few hours to hear babies being wheeled back and forth in the middle of the night from the nursery to their mothers’ breasts. She could feel the tears rising, the lump in her throat with every hammering of wheels on the tiled floor. Her baby couldn’t come to her; she couldn’t go to him, miles away in a pediatric hospital, not until her blood count had reached certain levels and some of her strength returned.

  She, herself, had lost a tremendous amount of blood, her uterus rupturing to push Benjamin out into the world much too soon. And so, what she had looked forward to as a few leisurely days at the hospital, her last chance for sleep, with food ferried to her on trays, had turned into a relentless check-your-vitals, wheel-you-down-for-more-tests kind of visit. She couldn’t wait to go home, fall into her own bed, and quiet the wheels that kept spinning in her head.

  During those first painful, scary days, Rob had jockeyed back and forth between hospitals, giving her updates. “Benjamin’s off the ventilator,” he called, in tears, after they’d released him from the machine that had been breathing life into his lungs for the first three days. “You should see him, Lanie. He’s beautiful. Big blue eyes, a spray of hair, perfect little lips.”