Page 11 of The Second Chance Cinema
“Hi, Mom,” Ellie said.
“It’s great to see you, Sandra.” Drake handed over the grocery store bouquet. Sandra’s button nose, which Ellie knew was her least favorite feature, scrunched up for a second before she reached out to accept it. Drake shot Ellie a hesitant look as it changed hands; he must have spotted the posh floral display worthy of a five-star hotel in the entrance. “My folks send their regrets.”
Drake was being polite about his parents’ absence. Ellie’s mom had planned this party without checking to see if the date worked for them, and Beth and Robert were already booked for a nonrefundable vacation. Beth had gone back and forth for weeks on whether to skip it, but Drake insisted they go. The Nielsonsrarely broke their routine or left town. The fact that their “trip of a lifetime” was a lodge three hours from home with “a really decent dinner buffet” was proof of this.
“Thank you, Drake,” Sandra cooed. “Come in. Make yourselves at home.”
Ellie imagined that other adult children bounded up the stairs to their old bedrooms or leaped onto worn-in sofas to indulge in their favorite comfort movies. Instead, she froze in the entrance like a stranger hypnotized by the smell of crisp apple. Two caterers in black uniforms stood at the heart of the cream-colored furniture in the formal living room, waiting for more guests to arrive and grab their crudités. A bar was stacked high with crystal glassware, andNEGRONIwas written underneath the handpainted sign announcing a signature drink.
“I didn’t know you liked a Negroni,” Drake said.
“I don’t,” Ellie told him. She turned to make sure her mom was out of earshot. Sandra was already greeting a few more guests at the door. As Ellie watched the room begin to fill up with vaguely familiar people, she wished she’d taken a more active role in planning this event. Jen, Marc, and their other close friends weren’t anywhere to be found. She also felt the absence of her immediate family. Ben would have a lot to say about the decorative needlefelted gourds on the mantelpiece and the home’s many shades of white. “Look at this, sis,” she pictured him telling her. “Once again, we return to our former abode—the love child of a Nancy Meyers movie and a Restoration Hardware catalog.”
Ben would’ve made this party fun. Even her dad’s presence would’ve made it interesting.
But the only faces Ellie recognized were her uncle David, who liked to brag about stocks, a few casual childhood friends, and her cousins Martha and Jonathan—fraternal twins, both attorneys. Many of her mom’s esteemed aquaintances from the country club chattered around the room about things like pickleballfundraisers. The party had almost nothing to do with the two of them. It was a pageant of sorts—a chance for her mom to paint the illusion of closeness with her daughter in front of a crowd.
A glass clinked at the top of the stairs. “Hello, all,” Sandra said. She brushed her hair off her shoulders. It had been dyed blonde for so many years that Ellie didn’t know its true shade. “Thank you for being here. And for helping me eat all the little meatballs and cheese circling around. It’s an important job, you all have here today.” Her mom’s friends laughed at this humor attempt. Ellie was certain Sandra had avoided the meatballs and cheese entirely, nibbling at a few briny olives to fit in. “To those of you who don’t know her, I wanted to introduce my daughter, Ellie.” Sandra gestured to her from the top of the stairs. “Ellie is an esteemed writer. And a television host.” Sandra cued the group to “ooo” and “ahh” with the appropriate wave of her hand; she could be such an entertainer in public.
“And next to Ellie is her fiancé, Drake,” Sandra said. Drake nodded hello. “He works in construction.” Ellie bit her lip hard. The way she had knighted them by their jobs set her on edge. Plus, the way Sandra said it didn’t even make what he did clear; he was a project managerforconstruction sites. He also hated his current job and constantly spoke about the business he wanted to start. Ellie feared her mom’s introduction would bring all that up, but Drake seemed unbothered.
“They met …” Sandra glanced down at Ellie, searching for clues. Did she even know the story of how they met? Ellie wasn’t sure she had ever asked. “Well, I’ll let you tell it.”
“We met at a bar,” Drake said. Everyone gathered in the formal living room and kitchen turned their attention from the stairwell to where Ellie and Drake stood in the foyer.
“We met at a lounge,” Ellie clarified. For some reason, she felt the wordloungewould help this group. It surprised her that she cared.
“We did,” Drake agreed, giving her a funny look on this point. “I went there all the time because I liked how the bar … lounge … was always the same. It felt familiar. And then, Ellie walked in one night. There was this shift in me, I guess. We sat and talked for hours. I walked her home in the rain.” He cleared his throat and held his hands up. “Just a walk, I swear.”
The crowd laughed a little at what was implied. Ellie was impressed by the way Drake took the stage, especially since his group gatherings rarely extended beyond dinners with their friends or his parents.
“I don’t like walking much,” Ellie explained, “or the rain. But I agreed to alongwalk in therainafter talking to Drake because I wanted to spend more time with him. I was worried at first. He seemed too perfect. You know? Like, what is this guy hiding?” This confession was met with a polite collective laugh. “But once I got to know him, I realized he’s not perfect at all. He’s a total goofball, this one. I love him a lot,” she said. “And that’s the way that we met.”
Sandra blotted her eyes with a handkerchief; the story had affected her. Was she happy for her little girl or sad that her daughter hadn’t ended up with someone in finance? “To Ellie and Drake,” she said.
Glasses raised around the room. Ellie felt herself performing. She couldn’t help it. The need to be on was in her blood. She didn’t want any of this fanfare on her wedding day—the forced camaraderie, or the reminder that key members of her family wouldn’t be there.
For about the thousandth time, Ellie daydreamed of eloping.
After an hour of talking to the guests they didn’t know, Ellie took Drake’s hand and led him upstairs for a moment of calm. Her bedroom had been untouched for years. Styles clashed in everycorner. The base layer was feminine and frilly, but little touches of Ellie’s taste shined through. Sandra had never understood her poster for a band with Death in its title or the collection of vintage paper moon portraits that hung across from the canopy bed.
Ellie sat down on the thick white rug as Drake surveyed the room. On this floor, Ben had cracked open a root beer, used the can to cool down her ears, and pierced them. On the mattress behind Ellie, her first boyfriend, Charlie, had furrowed his forehead while trying to do the homework she had finished in minutes. On her tall ceiling was the floral glass pendant that her dad had affixed. Ellie recalled a rare, good conversation between them as he moved up a tall ladder. She read him a story she wrote, and he laughed at all the right places. When William climbed back down, he looked at her with new eyes, signaling she’d graduated from a child to a peer.
“Nice space,” Drake said. “It’s very you. And also somehow … not at all you.”
Ellie agreed. Being there brought back so many memories. But the memories were vague outlines, nothing like the real and vivid scenes she’d encountered at the cinema. They fell away quickly.
“Do you think we should get back downstairs?” Drake asked, thumbing through a stack of her old DVDs. “People are here for us, you know.”
Ellie made no move to get up from the floor. “They’re here for my mom,” she said. “This is basically a big show-off for her. And what’s with the Negronis, anyway?”
Drake shot Ellie a look of warning. He was so polite that it pained him when she began to tread into rude territory, especially when it involved her family. “Ellie—”
“It was nice of her to try,” Ellie told him. “But this day is more proof she doesn’t get us at all. What we like. Who we like. Everything Sandra Marshall does is about looking good to other people.”
Someone cleared their throat in the doorway.
Ellie turned to find the subject of their conversation staring at her.
