The Long Way

No More Hints

At half-past four later that same Friday Isabella strolled from the old-fashioned street over to the Danville senior lodge to call on her grandmother, mother side, an admirable if somewhat compliant-mannered lady from old times of black and white and paper letters, whom the outside world deemed a partial depletion of resources because it derived no particle benefit from her generation anymore, but who was considered generous and brave by the society as she fed the economy with her time and skills.

Her father had been one of the lucky few that managed to outlive the discrimination for his kind when he reached these lands back in the 20th century and managed to claim a stable place for his family here in the tri-state area. His daughter, who had been the previous owner of the family restaurant, had retired along with her now-deceased husband, somewhat regretfully as was thought at the time, and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set herself to the serious study of the great sexagenarian art of needling, gossiping and doing absolutely nothing.

She had inherited two large acres of land where she had a summer cabin for when the urban life turned bitter, but she preferred to live in the lodge as it was less trouble, and took most of her meals along with the clique of her own age at the lodge's cafeteria. She paid some attention to her daughter's and granddaughter's, mostly her granddaughter's, management of life and pursuit of advice when they came to visit at irregular intervals. In politics she was tactless, she had stopped caring a long time ago, except when the tact was on television, during which period she roundly kvetch at the screen of being a box of ultras.

When Isabella entered the room, it was like she had stepped into another era. It was, in a way, a very charming room, with its Ashley grey walls covered in all kinds of photos, portraits, and paintings from different periods; from classic to realism and romanticism, its many bookshelves and cleverly placed pots with vibrant flowers, its cream-colored ceiling and cleverly disguised tube television as a fireplace, Its brick-dust felt rug. On a tiny satinwood coffee table laid a snack place full of recently baked cookies that filled the room with the sweet aroma of bakery and homemade, and next to it a pair of teacups, one of her grandmother and the other property of her grandmother's best friend, Harley, reading a classic novel of the brown leather cover.

Isabella had not yet spoken. She was always observant in principle, her principle being that intrusion is the killer of essence. So the girl was walking rather sidetracked, as with swift feet she performed a complex path around the inhabitants of that room, making sure not to disturb their doings.

She found her grandmother sitting on a bouncy green couch, needling a new scarf she seemed to have accumulated in a pile twice her since next to her. "Hey Nana, watch doin'?"

"Oh, Isabella, what brings you here?" She said in her raspy yet sweet-toned voice, "What are you doing here so late? I thought you kids were back to school already."

"School does begin early, but Nana, it's barely past four, and today is Friday. We don't have school tomorrow." Isabella clarified, sitting on the sofa ...

"Oh, is it?" She said, putting her needles and pile of cotton and wool aside, "So how did it go?"

"It went great," she exclaimed. "We are going to do a play next month, and our home teacher is super cool, and Phineas and Ferb did this cool thing with the swings at the playground where you'd go up and down through tubes and trampolines and loops. It was a lot of fun."
Her words trailed at the end.

She let it play out in her head, and sulked; brought it up and pondered it; let it manifest itself again before putting it away; made it apparent in her head, and labeled it with jealousy. For a split moment, she let her thoughts run wild, picturing the events that happened earlier that same day, and the divergences and possible outcomes that trailed.

"Well, I'm glad you had fun," Her grandmother answered, pulling Isabella out of her thoughts.Her grandmother took a sip of her cup of tea, still steaming, before exchanging a glance with her friend by her side, whose smile reflected off of each other in what could only be described as the link only shared by people of extremely close relationships that warranted the alignment of thought.

"Oh, do you know what I just remembered?" Harley queered. "Back in summer, you wrote a letter to a boy, what happened to your crush? Did he get your letter?"

"Well, kind of," Isabella said, avoiding eye contact.

"Now you have to tell us," She said, lowering the book to her lap. Isabella yielded.

"He did, but he didn't read it." She paused, trying to gather the proper words to describe her situation. She sighed. "It's just, it feels like all my attempts have failed to reach him."

"Oh, that's too sad. Don't worry, I'm sure he'll come around, I mean you kids are only then, there is plenty of time." Her grandmother consoled.

"You really think so?" She asked.

"Don't be so disheartened honey, but I don't think that's a good idea."

"What do you mean?"

"Your grandmother has, had, a tendency of keeping stuff for herself, she stood silent for 20 years before your grandfather confessed to her, and I don't think that suits you. If you want it, really want it, it's time you stop wasting your time with subtlety and subcontext."

Isabella considered her words. She didn't appreciate the bluntness of her words towards her Nana, but she also dreaded in the realization that, if what she had said was indeed true and that it consequently might apply to her as well, she would have to stand there alone for years for that moment to come, if it'd come at all. She didn't want that.

"What should I do then?"

"He's been blind to you for years, right? If he hasn't come around already he won't in a long time. You have to take the opportunity. Tell him how you feel, directly."

At last, unwrapping in the words of the elderly, reality presented itself before Isabella in an echoey voice between her ears to tell her that, ultimately, everything boiled down to the fact she had been for so long denying and adverting, that unless she spoke her mind clearly and concisely before him she would spend the following years griefing and resenting not doing so.

"But what if he says no?" She uttered, hugging and blurring her head in a nearby pillow until the point its polyester stuffing compressed in the edges, permanently deforming the stuffing distribution.

"Oh, what if he says no?" Her grandmother repeated. "What if he says yes? You kids worry too much about the mights and maybes. I can tell you from experience, standing there, by the sidelines, boiling in self-doubt and jealousy as other people get the attention you crave. It's not pretty. He might say no, but loving and losing is better than nothing at all, don't you think?"

Isabella lifted her raven head from the cushion, and with a tense face and ever so slightly frowned eyebrows looked at them, as she pondered the deal presented to her. What was she doing there? Her consciousness was straying about among the possibilities of sunshine and rain, seeking for something. Yes, it was for the spider thread devoid of self-made fantasies or rotten nightmares, with its thin silver lining of rationality and common sense. She had found it, at last, the reason to commit to it. She was going to confess.