“I…I guess that…”
“You don’t want to tell me,” Esme states flatly.
She’s not one to pout. Even though my first thought of her was that she wasn’t at all like her crusty, awesome great-grandfather who asked me about drinking my own number one—that’s pee, in case you don’t remember or aren’t sure about bathroom numbering—I know how tough she is now. She’s tough in a different way. She tries to put on a hard front, which doesn’t get her far because she has a good heart, and she’s way too nice to pull it off, but she is tough in other ways. She’s a survivor. She helps all these animals, and she loves the ones no one, or very few other people, would love. She gives the homeless a home. This is a woman who has been lied to and hurt by ‘arseholios’ in the past. This is a woman who I don’t want to lose faith in me. She couldn’t possibly understand unless I tell her, and when I tell her, it’s game over for me in the things getting strange department.
“We design toys.” I blurt it because I know if I don’t start opening up to Esme myself, she’s never going to be able to be open with me. What a pair we would make. Two clams who have no problem doing the jam. J Murphy, am I for real? That was pretty bad. I should take a vacay from rhymes for a good long while.
“Oh really? That’s…interesting.”
“Yeah, educational toys for learning. Mostly for classroom use, but not limited. We actually sell quite a few, and um, okay, so maybe we manufacture them too.”
“What? Are you serious?”
I just sit there and nod. “We do. Uh, we might sell them around the world too, and they might be pretty popular. We might have lots of things we design, we might always be designing and producing, and we might also be pretty good at what we do.”
“So…what you’re trying to tell me is…”
I can see Esme doing the math. Literally. I see her adding, subtracting, and figuring me out even as light shines in her eyes like a light bulb in those cheesy old cartoons.
“Is that your rich?” she finishes. “I mean, it makes sense. Your company moving you down here couldn’t have been cheap. And also, when you bought that sewing machine even though it was so crazy expensive. No one would just purchase that on a whim. Only a serious crafter or sewer would buy such a sewing machine for themselves, and then only because they probably put it on a payment plan, had been saving forever, or are so rich that they don’t know what else to do with their money.”
“We do alright for ourselves,” I mutter, remaining pretty tight-lipped as I wait for it.
I wait almost impatiently for the atmosphere to shift, the invisible lines to waver, something to blur or change, or for the air to become electric and intense, but to my shock, it doesn’t. Esme just smiles at me and nods before she takes her taco and finishes it with the type of enthusiasm I can appreciate because just about any and all tacos should be enjoyed with great excitement.
“Do you…um…have siblings?” I know what she meant about feeling corny, but Esme asked me the same question earlier, and I really do want to know about her.
Immediately, she gets a kind of guarded expression, and it looks like she might not tell me, but then I can almost watch her change her mind. It isn’t like a lightbulb, but the air does seem to shimmer a little. “I don’t. My parents…” Heaving a sigh, she sets her taco down. I set mine down, too, because when someone is about to reveal something emotional—and I think she is—it isn’t polite to be stuffing my face at the same time. “My mom is…I don’t really know how to talk about this. It’s always awkward for me, even though she made peace with it a long time ago. We all have. I guess I’ll just say she’s had some serious issue with depression in the past. It was so bad that she couldn’t get out of bed a lot of the time. She tried tons of different medications, and some would work for a while, but some wouldn’t. She also tried meditation, more holistic stuff, natural stuff, exercise, diet. Anyway, she went through the whole struggle that’s frequently spoken about. She’s my mom, but it was hard growing up. My dad has always loved her so much and has taken care of her the best he can and supported her. He’s always been there. I was actually a surprise. They were both thrilled to have me, but my mom always told me that she didn’t feel like she could look after a child, based on the fact that sometimes, she couldn’t even look after herself. And she did say those words to me because she’s not afraid to tell it how it is.”