Ellie

Short fiction.

I began to suspect Ellie Brown to be the same person as Mrs Brown, Ellie’s mother, on Ellie’s 11th birthday. We sat together in the Brown’s backyard, all the way past the herbs and the vegetable patch and the pond, in the section left uncultivated so us kids could play and the adults had their peace. 

The previous summer, Ellie and I had dug a hole in the ground, ten feet wide and 6 feet deep, complete with a ramp for hedgehogs to climb out of should they fall in during the night. Now we dangled our feet over the edge and let the tall grass tickle the soles of our feet. 

“Mom was so upset, she had to work,” Ellie said. “Usually she never misses my birthday parties.”.

I shrugged. I wouldn’t know about that. She missed the previous one, too. I tried following Mrs Brown home from the store where she works and every time she managed to slip away. Either I got tired or my parents called me home or a million other reasons appeared that would prevent me from finding out the truth. 

We, my mother and father and my little brother and I, moved to Brockriver two years ago.  With the birthdays my only solid evidence, I needed at least one more year before I dared confront Ellie and potentially ruin our friendship. 

Brockriver was a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, on both banks of a little river in a valley surrounded by wooded hills.  It was the type of town where when you read that someone was born there, the name glides off your conscience like butter off a potato.

“I hope I will make it to your party,” Ellie said. “I bet it will be fabulous.” 

I bet it will, I thought. Last year my dad baked me a pie which would have been perfect had it not been for the charred crust and soggy middle. There can’t be a party if no one shows up. No one had. I hadn’t made friends in school really and Ellie was sick and had to excuse herself. 

“I do, too, hope you will be there. But it’s ok if you aren’t. I have my brother, Patty, to sing for me,” I said. 

When we first got to know each other, I asked Ellie to come visit me for a sleepover.

“I can’t, “ she had said, “Maybe some other time.” She gave a reason but it was so boring I forgot right away. 

I asked her two more times after that to no avail. In the end I gave up. You don’t want to seem too pushy with friends, lest you push them all the way away. 

Predictably, Ellie did not attend my birthday. Her excuse was ever as generic as the previous ones. I decided to ignore the subject altogether. I had a friend. That’s all that mattered. She respected me for who I was and I respected that she might be two people at the same time. 

Two years later Ellie and Mrs Brown moved to a house a lot closer to ours and the store where Mrs Brown worked. The move happened over the summer when my family and I were on vacation in Hungary for six full weeks. When I called Ellie up, at the end of August, she told me about the move but also that she had broken her arm when tumbling down the stairs in the new house. I asked if I should come visit but she said it would be boring as there is nothing we could do. 

Two more months went by when she finally gave me the green light to come around. I spent a good long hour getting ready. Something had happened to me over the summer and it continued happening now. I had a growth spurt. I put on some muscles. My chin grew irregular patches of hair. Most importantly, I felt excited about meeting Ellie in a strange new way. 

When I reached the new Brown residence I was struck by the ways it looked almost the same as their old home. Red brick walls with a tile roof. Fruit trees hid the upper windows from the street. A long garden in the back, still partially untamed. Already my mind melded the two houses into one. 

The door flung open and there she stood. If I had been granted a morsel of puberty, Ellie had received the whole cake. It was not even a particular body part. She exuded adulthood.  

“Hi,” I said. I felt my face heat up and my stomach flutter. What was happening to me? 

“Hi. Would you like to come in?” she asked. Her eyes twinkled. 

“Where’s your mom?” I asked. My teenage brain was thinking several steps ahead. 

*Oh, she went out. She wanted to give us a chance to catch up.* 

“That’s very nice of her,” I said dumbly. 

We went through the hall and out into the garden and sat together on a double swing chair. We drank cocoa. We talked about the things we have been up to. We sat in awkward teenage silence. 

The more I looked at her, the more striking became the similarity to her mother and with it I remembered that 11th birthday and my conclusions. 

I sat up and grabbed her hands. I looked her in the eyes and asked, “Are you your mother?” 

Her face, so warm and full of affection just a moment ago, went stony. She retrieved her hands and folded them in her lap. 

“How can you ask me that?* she hissed. I felt an energy inside of her rising and, like a drowning man hanging onto an alligator he mistook for a log, I hung onto the hope she would laugh, punch me on the shoulder and we would make out. 

Things generally do not go the way I imagine them.She exploded with anger and shouted at me to get out of her garden and out of her house. I stammered apologies and pleas of forgiveness but she shoved me away. 

I left and at home I cried. I lost my only friend in town. I was angry at myself for creating this intricate fantasy in my head and I was upset at Ellie for overreacting. 

We did not talk for years. Occasionally I would see Mrs Brown while shopping or around town. She ignored me. I am not sure if she simply forgot about me the way parents do with the friends of their kids or if Ellie told her what happened that night and she chose not to get involved. 

I went to college in the big city and stayed there upon graduation. I met an amazing woman and we started a wonderful family. I had kids and they had kids and Earth made room for us: my parents passed away. I moved back to Brockhaven with my wife and we lived in a perfectly stretched out moment in time. 

I saw Ellie a few times. She must have forgotten me. She had a daughter of her own and had taken over her mother’s store. I never went in. The scar our young love had left was a thin white line at the corner of my heart and I had no interest in picking at it. 

When my wife died and I had no more will nor energy to go on I sat on my porch for hours every day, thinking about little things and small moments. My children came to visit once or twice a year and it was nice but they had their own lives and their own ideas and dreams about the future. 

One winter, as it got steadily colder, I stopped adding layers of clothes. I stopped turning on the outdoor heating. I stopped eating proper food. Everything hurt. I was done. 

A young girl trudged up the street one day, through the snow, near the end of everything. She had a fur coat on, of the type you never see anymore and heavy boots. She stopped in front of my house and looked up at me. I still recognized that face after all these years. Ellie Brown, smiling at me through time. Then I shook my head. It was of course only some descendant: a grandchild or even great grandchild of my Ellie. 

“Happy Birthday, friend,” she called, winked and walked on.