Page 50 of The Second Chance Cinema
Beth smiled and snapped her fingers. “Ooh, babies!” she said. “I have some framed Anne Geddes babies in Drake’s closet. Do you think that might work?”
Ellie swallowed the laughter that was trying to escape. “Yeah,” she said. “Nothing sayshome gymlike Anne Geddes.” It came out with more bite than she meant, but Beth didn’t seem to notice. She was already sorting through the closet with determination. A large cardboard box was right in her way, bulging from the sides. As soon as Beth bent to grab it, Ellie darted over to help. It was terrifically heavy; her shoulders retaliated as she picked up one side. There must have been stones in there, Ellie thought. Mallets. Dozens of nesting dolls. “What’s in this thing?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s the photo albums I made of Drake over the years,” Beth said with a proud smile. “I used to love scrapbooking.”
Ellie eyed the box once it was situated at the center of the room. She tapped on the lid. “Do you mind if I have a look?”
“Of course not,” Beth told her. She continued digging through the closet, calling out to Ellie from behind the door, “There are some great memories in there.”
Ellie wiggled free the tape on the lid of the box and pulled the first album out. Closest to the top was a scrapbook labeled
DRAKE TWENTIES. The cover was decorated with too much fanfare and big cutout letters. Ellie got comfortable on the bed. A certain sadness came over her as she flipped through the pages. They weren’t going back to the cinema. These pictures were the closest she would get to seeing Drake at this life phase.
Here he was holding a giant plastic fish inside an apartment she didn’t recognize. Then, a little older, at work. Drake looked so proud to be building homes in his neighborhood. Homes that would last. It was a pride Ellie had never seen in his current role. How could she help him get back there?
“It’s relaxing, kind of,” Beth was saying.
“Huh?” Ellie asked, mesmerized.
“Scrapbooking. It’s good to do something with your hands. That’s what they say.”
“Right.”
And then, when Ellie least expected it, even though she should’ve expected it, there was Melinda. There were pages of Melinda, actually. The album had been mislabeled. It should have been calledTHE MELINDA ALBUM.Drake had just told her there was nothing to worry about; that it was some young, nonserious romance. Yet right before her, Ellie watched years of their relationship expand before her eyes.
Drake and Melinda were happy, so very happy, in each photo.
They were camping in the woods. They were posed around their small town. They were sharing a ham with Beth over a holiday dinner, so casually, as if Melinda were always at that table. The photos gave away more than the memories Ellie had seen. She closed the book about a third of the way to the end. She couldn’t handle any more of it.
“I know that maybe I shouldn’t ask this, but … what happened between Drake and Mel—”
The oven timer sounded in the distance before she could finish her question. Beth gave up her search, and Ellie followed her intothe kitchen. A ham flew out of the oven—a ham just like the one she’d seen Melinda posed with in the photographs. “What were you saying back there, hon?” Beth asked.
“Nothing,” Ellie said. “It smells delicious.” She hated ham.
Beth set a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Only my very favorite people get a ham,” she told her. Then, the front door clicked shut. Drake was done with his repair work.
“Say goodbye to the gust,” he said, and shot Ellie a wink.
Sitting through dinner was miserable, even though Drake gave her the floor to talk about her show with a captive audience. Beth had a million questions about the potential job as the second-most avid viewer of home renovation programming. They passed around an ambrosia salad Beth had forgotten about in the refrigerator. Drake raised questions about the definition of what classified asalad, a topic Ellie would’ve normally been eager to explore. When his mom pulled the keyboard from the spare closet to regale them with Christmas carols after dinner, Drake asked her to dance.
Ellie refused to get up.
He grabbed her hand and made a cute plea for her to join him. He was being kind, she knew, trying to include her. On any other night, the gesture would’ve gone far. But Ellie wasn’t in the mood. The photo album had tipped things over the edge. During her loneliest years, Drake had lived a full life with Melinda. There was nothing to worry about, he kept insisting, but their relationship had spanned at least two of his ten movies—and now, it took over his photo albums, too. The youthful happiness that Drake had with Melinda made Ellie’s body physically ache. Drake must have sensed her sadness; he pulled her into the hallway to ask if everything was all right as his dad rattled a tambourine and his mom sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him, moving back intothe living room. What was there to say? Ellie wondered how to convey her feelings as the lyrics took on a menacing tone. Her mind spiraled away from her.
Drake was the one who suggested they stop going to the cinema.
How convenient, she thought.
Ellie needed to get him back there. He wasn’t telling her the whole story with Melinda—she felt certain of this—and she had to see how it all played out. If they left the condo soon, there would still be time to lure Drake to the sixth screening. There was one thing she needed to reinforce first, though: the rules. Ellie had no desire to talk about what would play next. The way she treated her parents. Her temporary affairs.
Maybe the part with the cowboy, even.
“I’m going to go warm up the car,” Ellie said when the threeact version of “Rudolph” reached its lackluster conclusion. The suggestion was a cue for Drake to leave with her. His parents took forever with goodbyes, and she had been ready to head out hours ago. “Thanks for having us, Beth,” Ellie said, darting out the door. When she turned around, he was still inside.
Her anger curdled as she moved toward the car. It was only photos she’d seen. She was overreacting. Why was she so obsessed with Melinda? Until recently, Ellie had been confident in herself, confident in them. It wasn’t like she was afraid of Drake running off with Melinda. She was with Jamie now. She wasn’t, in any tangible way, a threat.
