Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 22. Jonquil

She told everyone it was not a big deal, not a big problem, though of course, it was, and there, right there, lay her problem. Not that she had told everyone a thing which was not at all true, she had done that over and over, as was nearly inevitable she should, but that she told it to everyone. That was the problem, the big problem.
She told.
Everyone.
Everything.

She was a really nice girl, but she had this problem. With talking. She never stopped. She couldn't help herself. She didn't try. She told things. She told everyone everything and sometimes people liked that about her and sometimes they didn't. Everything she heard, she repeated. And repeated. She was undeniably useful if you wanted to know anything about other people, but certainly troublesome if there were anything you didn't want other people to know. As most people want both to know and not to be known, frictions were bound to arise. You could really throw your heart into it with her, you could plead and say to her, please, please, don't tell this to anyone, ever, or, on the other hand you could say, please, please, tell me everything you know, but whatever you said the effect was precisely the same. She told everything, all the time, and not only that, she always started at the beginning so it took forever to get through it all with her. You had to really weigh your available time before she plunged in.

People took to avoiding her. It was inevitable. They got tired; she was wearing. Everyone was always promising themselves they would never tell her anything ever again but then, of course, they did. Well. She was family and she was there, and she was so receptive. Never tired of listening. And such a fount of information! But she never stopped, she went on and on. And on and on and on and on.

People, even the family, have assumed, quite unfairly, that he didn't care for her, either because she just repeated whatever he said and who could stand that, or else because they thought anyone so wrapped up in himself could never notice her at all, but they were wrong on both points. He never disliked her empty chatter because he simply never noticed it. He never listened to talk about people other than himself, and he loved that she repeated everything he said. It showed that she had good taste and that her priorities were in order. He had the same taste and priorities. It was one of the things he most liked about her, that they had so much in common. He also loved her prettiness because he loved pretty things. Loved them. She was so very pretty and the fact that she was not as pretty as he made him all the more astonishing to people. As you see, people were wrong to assume he never noticed her, he had noticed her. These were the things he noticed. Then, too, he himself talked, all the time, talked about himself and she repeated everything he said and he thought that was wonderful. Really, he did. Right. Appropriate. No frictions ever arose between the two of them. That was not the problem.

The problem was her aunt.

When the aunt got angry the aunt had a way of making the whole world uncomfortable, and she had made the aunt very angry. People felt it, they all felt very uncomfortable now. People were blaming her and they were right. She had talked, she had talked too much. She had repeated things better said only once, and now everyone knew. It was family, it was family business. No one was to talk to her anymore, about anything, the aunt had made that very clear. And you know, they didn't. The aunt made it her business to see it through, to make it stick. When the aunt spoke, people listened but it would have come down to the same thing in the end, regardless. This was coming anyway, it was inevitable, because people were tired of her, they couldn't trust her and she was wearing. No one told her anything anymore, so all she could do was repeat the last things she had heard. She was cut off, isolated, drying up. Everyone turned away. It's the trouble with family business; it's risky, things can go wrong. No one was speaking to her but him. At least she still had him. He would talk to her, he still told her things. And he thought she was pretty. But he wasn't home much. She made a very nice dinner and sat down to wait. Something was wrong with her, she couldn't stop crying. She waited. He had gone to the mall. She wondered why he didn't come back, wondered if the aunt had called him, wondered if he had noticed none of the family were telling her things. She waited.

He hadn't noticed. He had gotten a haircut. He wondered why she hadn't noticed. He waited for her to say something, waited all through dinner but she never complimented him, she never said anything at all. He said, Well, you're pretty quiet. She said, Pretty. Quiet. When she brought in dessert he sighed heavily and said, So, do you notice anything different about me? She said, Do you notice anything different? He ate his ice cream and waited. She said nothing. He ate her ice cream because she didn't. He said, Honey, I need you to be more observant. She said, I need you. He noticed her eyes were red. Not a good color for eyes. He said, What is wrong with you? She said What? He went to watch the game. She cleared the table, did the dishes. She repeated over and over, what is wrong with you, what is wrong with you, what is wrong with you?

She stood in the door, watching him watch the game. I'm dying, she said, I'm drying up. No one talks to me, I'm wasting away. I can't sleep, I can't eat. I can't seem to put two words together. She took a deep breath. I don't feel like I'm real to you, she said, it feels like I'm just a fan club, a gossip page. I was stupid, I said too much and no one will ever forget, no one in this family ever forgives anything. It's like I'm cursed. Are you listening to me? she asked. Am I talking out loud?
But he never listened when she talked about other people, people like herself. His buddy came in to watch the game. Hey, his buddy said to her, lookin' good. You lost weight? She went out to work in the garden but she just sat staring over the little reflecting pond he had installed last summer. The daffodils hung their heads over the water, the wind blew, it was very quiet. You lost, she said to herself, you lost. What's wrong with her? the buddy asked, you guys fighting? Wrong with who? he asked, glancing at his buddy. With her? No, she's fine. She's whatever. We never fight. He looked at his buddy again. Hey, he said admiringly, lookin' good. You been working out?

If you really read the fairy tales, you will observe that one idea runs from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is the core of the nursery-tales.
-G. K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, 1908