Requiem for Ellie

“My great grandfather was an Okie,” Tom explained. “Think he was nineteen when his family went out to California. He met Great-Gram at a refugee camp, if you can believe that.” He stopped and chuckled. “Family legend has it when they were picking lemons together, she kept looking over and finding his ladder right by hers. Grandma was two when he went off to war, I guess.”

“No doubt she never saw him again after that,” Ellie said. Her eyes were dry for the first time in an hour at least, Tom judged.

“Oh, no, he was one of the lucky ones who came back alive,” Tom said.

“I meant he probably went off to sow his wild oats after the war,” Ellie said.

Tom laughed to keep from snapping at her. “Yeah, okay, Ellie, you’ve been through a bad spot with men, I know. But no, he came home. His father’d found work during the war and Grandma and her mother stayed with his family. They had a tiny little apartment in LA, but it felt like a palace after what they’d been through. Grandma told me once, her earliest memories were of her Pa having the tiny bedroom at the end of the hall to himself. He was studying on the GI Bill and they’d get a place of their own as soon as he got his degree.” Tom couldn’t resist a glance out at the ivy-adorned landscape outside the dorm window. “No way I’d be here if he hadn’t done that.”

“It’s not just a bad spot, Tom,” Ellie said. “And give it a rest with the rags-to-riches. Your parents are both lawyers, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, and they had the good sense to leave Southern California when it wasn’t a wonderland anymore. I’d never want to live in Grandma’s old neighborhood now. But her pictures of the place back in the fifties…”

“Course you’d like that, Tom,” Ellie said. “You’re a model husband, you know that?”

“I’m twenty-one and never had a long-term relationship,” Tom reminded her.

“Lucky you.” The tears came again and Ellie grabbed her partially shredded tissue out of her jeans pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Maybe I ought to go out to California and slum it in the orchards. It’s not like anyone here cares if I stick around!”

“You don’t mean that!” It took every ounce of resolve for Tom to remind Ellie, whose father was the biggest banker in Little Rock, that she didn’t know the first thing about slumming. “Trust me, the stories my family has about that…I mean, that’s my whole point. You’ve got your health, you’ll have your BA next year, you’ve still got lots of friends, and Jason is – look, he’s my best friend, but he’s also an immature brat who never takes anything too seriously. There are a lot of other guys out there.”

“I’ve had it with guys,” Ellie grumbled.

“Gee, thanks,” Tom said.

“Oh, you’re not a guy, Tom. Sorry, but you might as well be a girl.”

“I don’t think I have the legs for it.” Tom grinned and hoped Ellie would respond in kind.

She didn’t. She pulled her well-used tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes again. “I wish the past seven months never happened! I wish I could get shipped off to war. I keep feeling like no one here would miss me anyway!”

“Ellie, that’s not true! I’d miss you terribly!” Tom took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I know a few people care about me,” Ellie retorted, although she did return the squeeze.

Something snapped in Tom, and all at once he wanted to tell her to get out of his room and stay out forever. The words wouldn’t come, but he was able to stand up and look out the window again.

“Tom, I didn’t mean it that way,” Ellie sniffled.

“Yes you did. You do that every time I try to let you know how much I…value your friendship.”

“Can I help it if I’m not there to mother you right now?”

“I never asked you to mother me.” Tom turned and glared at her. “I never ask anyone to mother me. My mother is an angry, bitter control freak and the last thing I need is a second one.”

“You did bring up your family.”

“You know why?” Tom asked, turning back to the window. “To give you some perspective.”

“Perspective on what? My parents were poor when they were kids too.”

“Right, exactly,” Tom said. “And Jason’s weren’t. Haven’t you ever heard his giveaways on that?”

“Giveaways?” Ellie stuffed the tissue back in her pocket.

“Yeah. At cross country practice, we’d be out on some back road somewhere, running, and when he wasn’t being totally irreverent –”

“Which he often was,” Ellie recalled.

“Yes, which he often was,” Tom went on. “But when he wasn’t, he was always going on about how he might have a new car next semester, or about his dad sending him to Tahiti for Christmas or Rome for spring break. And that’s fine, but he never showed any sign of realizing how unusual or lucky he was!”

“That’s what I loved about him, though! So young at heart. He didn’t make me feel fifty, like everyone else here does.” Ellie had taken two years off after sophomore year. At 23, her age was her only bigger sore point than her ex.

“Yeah, I know.” Tom was feeling wonderfully emboldened now. “Ellie, you loved him for all the exact reasons why you should’ve stayed away from him, can’t you see that?”

“Oh, what do you know about our relationship?!” Ellie snapped. Upon hearing her own question, she grew deadly serious. “Seriously, just what do you know?”

“If you’re asking if Jason has dished the dirt on you, the answer is no.” Tom returned to his bed and sat sideways on it, facing Ellie. “He hasn’t talked about it at all, except to say it just wasn’t working anymore. And I know it’s none of my business.”

“Figures,” Ellie grumbled. “Men never communicate about anything.”

“But you know I had a front-row seat for the whole thing,” Tom said. “You know I saw how you always fawned over him, how you came to all our cross country meets and he never came to any of your rugby games – which I did, remember?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Right, and the way you taught yourself all about motorcycles because he liked them, and he never learned anything about horses, did he?”

“How’d you know I love horses, Tom? Did he tell you that?”

“No. You did. That day in your room last Christmas.”

“What day in my room?”

“You don’t remember that?!”

“Tom, I don’t have a photographic memory, all right?”

“But we talked for three hours! I told you all about my family, and my crazy ex and the things she said about my body when I wouldn’t jump in bed with her…”

“Oh, right, that day I wanted to show you that porno mag Jason gave me,” Ellie said. “I remember that. It was a nice day, wasn’t it?”

“It was maybe the best day I had all last semester,” Tom said. “When I had to go home the next weekend and put up with all the bullshit with my mother, that memory was so comforting! And I thought it was mutual.”

“It was!”

“Not if you needed to be reminded of it, it wasn’t.”

“Look, Tom, I really did enjoy our friendship, whether you believe it or not.”

“Did? Past tense?”

“Well, the main thing we had in common was Jason, wasn’t it? I’m no runner, for one thing.”

“What did I just tell you about my family background? Does that have more in common with you or Jason?”

“Well, it’s neither, Tom. I mean, I went to a snooty high school too, yeah, but I wasn’t a scholarship kid like you. No offense, but kids like you were the ones my friends and I used to look down on.”

Tom had no difficulty believing that.

“It’s not that you didn’t belong in that world, Tom. I admire guys like you for clawing your way up. But you were always the kid who thought you had a chance with the beautiful people, and you were just too uppity to see you were never going to be one of us. Jason, he may be a selfish asshole, but he was one of us. You said it yourself, with the stuff about his father.”

“Wasn’t it you who told me to give it a rest with the rags to riches?”

“Exactly! I mean, yeah, it’s my background too, but I don’t go around amazed I ended up here. It doesn’t define me the way it does you, Tom. And that’s why you and I don’t have the chemistry, like Jason and I did.”

“You still think you had chemistry after what Jason did to you?”

“You wouldn’t understand, Tom. Confidence is sexy, and Jason, he never needed to tell anyone about his great grandparents. It didn’t matter to him!”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“It’s a great thing. You talk like you’re running from some demon of your family past, and Tom, you can’t run forever. Jason didn’t feel the need to do that, and I adored him for it.”

Tom was silent for a long moment. It was getting close to dinnertime, and he’d been hoping to talk Ellie into joining him, notwithstanding that she’d canceled on him the last time he’d asked.

“I didn’t mean we can’t be friends anymore, Tom,” Ellie said when it became clear Tom wouldn’t be saying more.

“Maybe not,” Tom said, “But I think we can’t.”

“Tom, come on!” Ellie’s tears returned. “I’m in pain here, and I need my friends right now!”  

“I need my friends too.”

“Haven’t I always been there for you?” she demanded.

Tom laughed. “Look, it’s almost dinnertime.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me?”

“Last time I did, you canceled.”

“I told you, I needed to talk to a friend about something.”

“My point exactly.”

“That was then! I wasn’t sure about your feelings for me. But you could ask again.”

Tom stood up and gathered his wallet and keys from his desk. “Yes,” he conceded. “I could. Goodbye, Ellie.”