"Oh – I think that's my tea." Eleanor hadn't quite heard who'd been called but went ahead and wrestled through the crowd at Bean and Bud. She reached for the cup of peppermint served up by the barista. A young woman went for it simultaneously, and held tight, despite Eleanor's claim.
"It's not either one of yours - it's his, actually," the barista interrupted. A thin man with a thin nose in a grey suit jostled between the two women to grab the mug, muttered apologies that did not sound authentic to Eleanor, and absconded with the tea she'd thought was hers.
"Of course we all have peppermint. It's so seasonal." The pleasant-looking girl leaned on the last word. It didn't bend under the pressure but cracked into brittle pieces. She didn't seem the type to be cynical. Her brown eyes were too large, her lashes too long, her hair too loved and neatly braided.
Eleanor felt compelled to respond, perhaps secure a foul temperament at the holidays co-conspirator. She was in quite a mood to run-down the concept of joy after Caroline's latest stunt. "I was actually going to have lavender, but the cashier strong-armed me into changing up."
"They must be overstocked. Or commissioned."
"How can anyone your age be so cynical at Christmas," Eleanor asked.
"Cynical is all anyone is, at my age. My mum says it wears off after –" the girl cut herself off, and the edges of her upper lips curled, and it reminded Eleanor of – her thought evaporated as the girl finished, "My mum says the cynicism wears off."
"I don't know." Eleanor's wife came immediately to mind. "I think perhaps it calcifies."
"Now who's the grinch?" The girl smiled, finally. Her nose scrunched, and her eyes did as well.
Again, Eleanor felt too familiar. She was cute. Perhaps she just had one of those faces you wanted to feel like you knew.
The barista set up another cup, "Peppermint for Flora."
Eleanor watched, too shocked to speak, as the young woman fetched her tea. Eleanor touched her on the elbow as she came back by. "Your name's Flora?"
"Yes." Flora held out her hand.
"Eleanor." She smiled as they shook. Her harried afternoon was almost – not quite – but almost forgotten in this moment of serendipity. She'd wanted to be alone in a crowded place, but now she wanted to talk to this Flora. The misplaced familiarity of the girl placed itself but was now far more confusing. The woman was spot-on Flora in twenty years. "That's my – daughter's – name as well. And you look – I can't quite believe it, actually."
Eleanor's tea appeared, and Flora collected it for her, then gestured to a cramped table in the sunny corner near the front window. "Perhaps we can share, if you're not taking to-go?"
"I was going to stay." She'd wanted to walk, and never stop moving, but honestly it was far too cold outside. Steam rose from the storm drains and the rooftops. Even in her lined gloves and boots Eleanor had begun to freeze.
They sat. Eleanor did a thing she hated very much from others, started the strangers on a plane who don't ask if you want to talk instant conversation. "Are you out shopping?"
"No," Flora replied. She looked at Eleanor curiously, almost in the way Eleanor had been sneaking glances at her all along. "I'm kind of – traveling. Bit of a quest."
"At the holidays? Are you away from family?" Now you're just being creepy, Eleanor. Stop it.
"I am – but – I'm kind of overdosed on Christmas. I love it to bits. But it can be intense."
"Yes."
"You're not with your family today?" The girl with the chestnut doe-eyes made obvious notice of Eleanor's ring, which was hard to miss. "With your – wife?"
"Oh. Umm – no. I mean, yes, not out with my wife." Flora was so direct – but unassuming. Eleanor liked her quite a lot.
"It was the eye contact. And the handshake. Gives it away every time," Flora winked. It was familiar but not too much. It was sweet and knowing and comforting in a way that outpaced her youth. "I've got two mums of my own."
"Oh. I see." Eleanor couldn't collect herself to say anything more. At least she'd stopped with the assault of personal questions.
Flora wrapped her hands around her mug. Over a picture of Fred Flintstone next to a Christmas tree was printed in white block letters, "Bad timing." She blew over the top. "They always have to pour it thermonuclear with the crummy bagged teas. But it's worse when they annihilate the loose leaf with scalding water."
"I couldn't possibly agree more." How many conversations had Eleanor struck up with strangers over the years? In hotel bars, airport bars, airplanes, trains, waiting in deathly long rental-car lines. Of them she could remember perhaps two or three. Women she'd met and really wanted to talk to. Felt as though she were learning something, changing and growing and speaking with a kindred rather than just killing time and in the back of her mind dimly judging the fate of humanity. Much like a woman she had once met in Munich, Eleanor found that she could sit at this sunny little table in the bustling coffee shop while everyone else did unimportant things and talk with Flora until they closed and be sad when they did, for realizing there was no civilized way to say she didn't want their time together to end.
"Big family day to be out. Are you buying secret presents and left the clan at home," Flora asked.
"Not exactly. As you said, holidays can be intense. Just needed a breath of fresh air."
"You might say we're in the very same boat, Eleanor. In my case, I had to get away from my mother."
"Which one?" Eleanor leaned her elbows on the table, closer to Flora.
"The autocrat with the wrong priorities."
"We must have booked an entire passage across the Atlantic together in our little boat."
"I'm sorry." Flora reached over and gave Eleanor's forearm a quick squeeze. The gesture reminded her of her grandmother Abigail. "It hurts more to fight at Christmas."
"I feel like I ought to be comforting you," Eleanor said, more abashed but ever more taken by her fortune at meeting this woman, right at this time that she had felt so very low.
"We can do for each other and see where it gets us, then settle up. So what did your wife do to draw you on the outside?"
"Well – " Eleanor turned to the window, spared one more glance at her youthful yoda, then stared into her tea. "We have a daughter, and we're married. But Caroline – that's my wife – " Flora nodded, and those thin upper lips curled again – "Flora, our Flora, was Caroline's already before we married. I've adopted her, and it's all legal. I'm her mum. In every way. But Caroline's temper got the better of her and she said - some things -" Eleanor had to stop. In a way, as it always did, speaking aloud and summarizing the events made them seem so much less dramatic. But the conclusion of them – relating what Caroline had done - she physically could not speak the words, no matter how many different ways she tried to arrange and diffuse them.
