The Idea of Love (20 page)

“I'm so glad you stopped by. Come in. Come in.” Mimi opened the door wide and brushed her hand into the room. “Oh, dear, are you here to complain about Bruiser's bark getting worse? I'm getting all excited about your visit and you might just be here to…”

“No. I'm here to say hello. Check in. Take you up on your offer. You know”—she leaned closer to Mimi—“the bourbon
and
pound cake.”

“I was hoping so.” Mimi shuffled to the kitchen. She never fully lifted her feet off the ground and her slippers were worn thin. Her white hair stuck out on the right side, flattened and then puffy as if she'd slept on it and not moved at all. Maybe she got halfway through doing her hair and forgot to finish.

Ella dropped her purse on the kitchen table. “What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Not a thing. Just sit right there in the big chair and let me serve you. I bet you've been on your feet all day.”

Ella obeyed, and dropped into the chair. She flipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes. Her ankle looked better and she twisted it to stretch. Last night, she'd painted her toes a seashell pink and today already they were chipped and ragged. But what else was there to do? Watch
E! TV
and see the “reality” that was not reality at all?

Mimi sang in the kitchen, a song about stars and heavens.

“Sinatra,” Ella called out.

“My favorite,” Mimi said.

Bruiser rested on a doggie bed so large that it looked like a hand-me-down from a taller brother to a smaller one. Ella felt she needed to whisper so she wouldn't wake Bruiser.

Mimi shuffled to Ella, her feet almost murmuring, and put a piece of cake on the side table. The plate was the same as last time, bone-thin china with a smattering of pink roses in a woven pattern around the edges. “I'm afraid to eat off that gorgeous plate,” Ella said as Mimi placed a small silver fork next to it.

“Always use the good stuff,” Mimi said. “Why else have it?”

“Life by Mimi,” Ella said.

“If only I'd ever taken my own advice.” Mimi's laughter was deep, as if she'd earned it through her years. She returned to the kitchen and then brought back a small antique glass with a pale pink hue to it, a splash of bourbon resting on the bottom.

“Thanks,” Ella said, and took it from Mimi's hands. “More Mimi life rules for me, please?” Ella smiled and lifted her shoulders in a pleading expression.

“How about this?” Mimi shuffled toward her seat. “After watching you be someone new with Hunter. Here's one:
Be the person you want to be
.”

“I'm trying; I really am.”

“And this isn't my rule, because I really don't have any rules, but please try to remember that we teach people how to treat us. We really do.”

“God, I'm a terrible teacher then,” Ella said.

Mimi laughed. “Begin again. Always begin again.” She sat across from Ella and lifted her own glass. “Well, here's to the end of another day. A good one, I hope.”

Ella lifted her glass and took a sip. Warmth spread across her chest and she remembered standing on the rooftop bar with Hunter, slugging back his drink and listening to the story about his invitation to a dead man. She remembered how for a second she almost touched him. “Yes,” she said to Mimi. “Here's to a good finish to a good day.”

Ella took a bite of the pound cake and groaned out loud. “What is in this? This is the best cake I've ever tasted. It's better than Amber's cookies.”

Mimi laughed. “Oh, yes. I've heard of Amber's cookies.”

“You have? She's my best friend.”

“Really?”

“Well, not really. Not right now. She was, though.”

“What happened?”

“The girlfriend, the one sleeping with my husband, that one.”

“Your best friend? God, I'm getting you more bourbon.”

“No. Not Amber. Her sister, Betsy, a girl I've known for years. The younger sister who grew up and out and then slept with my husband.”

“Oh—so, this part I didn't know. Your husband's affair is with your best friend's sister.”

“Yes.”

“Please run away with that gorgeous Hunter. Please.”

Ella tried to smile, but it was useless. “He's already gone, Mimi. He's back home to his life and his work. I was a quick intermission, and—”

“You could never be an intermission.”

“Anyway, this cake is amazing. Secret ingredient?”

“I'll never tell.” Mimi winked.

“You don't have to tell me. As long as I can eat it, I don't have to make it.” Ella took another bite. “So, I have a little story to tell you.”

“Please do.” Mimi settled back into her chair and took another sip of her bourbon, so Ella did the same.

Her tongue loosened, her breath deeper and warmer. “I stole something.”

“Stole?”

“Took it back.”

“I'm confused,” Mimi said.

“You see, a few days ago my boss, Margo, saw one of my wedding dress design sketches, and she told me she wanted to make a copy of it and then she'd give me back my original. But when I asked for the original back today, she said she gave it to me, that she'd put it into my paycheck envelope, but she hadn't. Then”—Ella leaned forward, placed her hands on her knees in urgency—“and get this, she said she never made a copy because it was so much like one she'd already designed.”

“Oh, she's evil,” Mimi said with a little hiss behind her words.

Some internal cue brought Bruiser back into the world, and he went off and started barking, still in his sleep almost, only one eye open and a whimpering noise in the back of his throat, and then he was off to sleep again.

Ella exhaled in relief. “Anyway, when she went for her coffee, I had Nadine open the office and I stole it out of a file.”

“Good,” Mimi said with authority. “Very good. Not that I have any right to be, but I am proud of you.”

“Thank you,” Ella said. “So am I. And further, it seems Sims is now jealous. He is asking about the guy who was with me the other night when he saw me. Maybe he's having … second thoughts.”

“Do you want him back?” Mimi asked. “Really?”

Ella answered so quickly that she surprised herself. “Of course I do. He's my husband.” Then she paused. “And I love him.”

“Yes. Love.” Mimi looked off toward the window like the word was etched in the grime on the glass.

“Love,” Ella repeated.

“It's one of those things we put in the gap.” Mimi stood and shuffled over to Bruiser, leaned down, and scratched between his ears. “A gap filler.”

“What?” A soft warm haze settled over Ella: the cake, the bourbon, the stolen sketch. “Love is a gap filler.”

“The hole inside. You know, that place we talked about before—the hole in the soul. The place we are
always
trying to fill.”

“I don't know what you mean. I just miss my husband. I miss Sims. It's like he has his very own empty space inside me. His. Like it belongs to him.” Ella had that feeling again, the helium inside her skull, the heaviness of tears behind her face.

“Well, it's not
just
his space. It's yours. You just put him in there.”

“I didn't put him anywhere.”

“Listen, Ella, I don't know a lot, but I know this, everything changes and you can't stop it. There is nothing, not one thing in the world, you can do to stop turning another day older every day. But there is a bonus, and it's this: I've learned to live with my gap. I wouldn't trade all those years of looking prettier for what I know how to do now.”

“The gap?”

“The hole. You know. The thing no one talks about. The missing piece inside. The spot inside you're always trying to fill. It has its purpose. It makes us search for love, for meaning, for something larger than ourselves. But the emptiness also makes us stuff silly things inside.”

Mimi waved her hand through the air. “I know it sounds nutty. I bet a smarter person could explain it better. A psychology book perhaps. I just call it a gap. Every time you try to put something in there, it just falls out the other open side. You can't keep anything. Nothing stays. It's all temporary. And when you realize that”—she took a breath as if she had been running while talking—“it's all just a little bit better. You can enjoy everything in a different way.”

“Stop with this, Mimi. Seriously. I didn't put Sims anywhere. I fell in love with him. I do love him. It's not an empty space. Or a gap. Or anything of the sort. Stop. Don't you believe in love at all? Falling in love?” Ella's frustration, the pent-up bird inside her chest, fluttered.

“Of course I do. I'm sorry, dear. I'm not trying to be flippant.”

“Well, you don't know him or me really. I shouldn't have even told you so much. I don't know why I did.” Ella dropped her face into her hands. “He's not a gap filler.” Tears filled her eyes and she looked up. “He's my husband.”

“Well, it's not something to be taken biblically or anything. It's just my idea of how we work and how I can be happy and still have this gaping hole inside. It's always been there. It always will be.”

“Really? Always? That's ridiculous.”

“Yes. Always. It's an ache where you want more and more. Nothing is ever enough.”

“Oh.” Ella wanted to stay mad, but something in what Mimi said made sense. She couldn't find truth's edges, the shape of it all yet.

“Well, I'm not trying to fill some hole with Sims. I just miss him terribly. Or the Sims that he used to be. That's all.”

“I know.” Mimi stared off. “Love is always the exception.”

Ella smiled now. “Maybe it's just an idea anyway. That's what Hunter said, too. A theory. An idea. Not much more.”

“No,” Mimi said. “It's real. A real thing that changes everything.”

Ella leaned back in her chair and looked up at the water stain on Mimi's ceiling. It looked like a butterfly. “I bet that's from my sink,” she said. “It won't stop dripping. I've called the landlord at least ten times.”

Mimi looked up now also. “Oh, I didn't even see that. Funny.”

“What?”

“It looks like a butterfly.”

This hit Ella with such relevance, how they both saw the same thing in a stupid water stain. She was awash with the feeling she labeled love and she went to Mimi. She bent over the small woman in the slipper chair and hugged her so hard that Mimi laughed and said, “Ow. You're gonna crush these old bones.”

Bruiser barked louder now, maybe afraid Ella was hurting his master. So Mimi rose with a sigh of resignation and popped a doggie Xanax in his mouth, hidden inside a treat.

“If only I had one of those every time I felt like coming undone,” Ella said.

“Oh, you don't want to start that, honey. Been there, done that, as the young ones say.”

“Really?” Ella sat back down, lifted her bourbon, and took another chest-warming sip.

“Yes. But that was a long, long time ago.” Mimi sat down in her chair and closed her eyes, and just like that there was the slight sound of her snoring, a breathing in and out that signaled sleep.

Ella was envious of the way Mimi fell asleep so quickly. Since the breakup, it took Ella hours to find sleep, even when she was exhausted. Her mind, it wouldn't stop, it wouldn't be quiet. She'd never, until recently, thought of her brain as something separate, but now she did. She tried the mantras, the mindfulness of focusing on her breathing, the counting, all of it. But still she never found sleep the way that Mimi just had.

Ella rose quietly and picked up the dishes, gently placing them in the sink. She wrapped the extra cake slices in tin foil and when she placed them in the tiny refrigerator she saw it: Sara Lee All Butter Pound Cake in the aluminum container, the saw-toothed tin-foil edges folded down to keep the cake fresh. Ella held in her laughter and glanced over at Mimi. She was flooded with love and a very particular kind of happiness that felt like home.

During the one-floor climb to her apartment, it hit Ella how glad she was that Hunter hadn't answered the phone. She wanted to tell him about the sketch, but he thought she
was
the designer. He believed it was what she did all the time. Why would she need to steal a sketch back? Lying was confusing. She didn't know how Sims did it for so damn long. It got tangled with the truth, and then you stumbled over every word.

Her apartment seemed dingier than normal. Even with the extra clothes and towels, the dishes and bakeware she'd taken from home, the space seemed just as empty. But she was happy she'd stopped at Mimi's. Happy she ate pound cake for dinner, and happy that Sims was jealous. She dug her sketch out of the satchel and put it on the table with the rest of her drawings.

That's when she saw four missed calls from “hubby.” She picked up the phone and took a long breath before listening to the voice mails.

“I see you've been to the house and you took a few things.”

Next one: “Did you take the Le Creuset? Low blow, Ella. You know my mom gave that to me.”

Next one: “Please call me.”

Next one: “Are you okay?”

Ella turned the window air conditioner fan to high, hoping for some cool air to wash into the room. Even these messages couldn't dampen her mood. Call the cops, Sims. Go ahead. And when you do, tell them I stole from my boss also.

She spread her dress designs across the coffee table. She'd drawn at least twenty dresses by now, a
collection
it would be called if she were a real designer. What could she do with the collection, if anything? She flipped on the TV and walked the four or five steps to her bed. There was no bedroom here; it was all one room.

She slipped on her cotton tank and pajama bottoms, fresh ones she'd taken from the house. God, she was so glad to have them back. Little things. Then she returned Sims's call while
E! TV
muttered something about the latest celebrity sightings, about the Kardashians and their new season. Ella stared at the screen, punching the channel button on the remote, which wasn't working. The phone rang five times and Ella decided she wouldn't leave a message. She reached for the end button when Sims answered.