Gulp.
I used to think it was just a movie thing. Or a thing people do in stories that you read. Somebody gets nervous and surprised by a question and they can’t talk, all they can do is…gulp.
But it’s not just a movie thing. It’s real.
Okay, back up….
This morning Mom asked me to go to the supermarket for two packs of kiwi fruits, which she needs for a salad tonight. I had just gotten the kiwis and was heading for the checkout when it happened. Somebody whips around with two handfuls of lettuce and bumps right into me, and while I’m staring at the lettuce, the misty thing that keeps the veggies fresh decides to go off and we’re standing so close to it that I’m getting mist on my face and the somebody who bumped into me is saying, “Well, my my, look who it is.” That’s when I look up and get the shock of my life: it’s Mrs. Lindop.
Mrs. Heather Lindop.
Ernest Lindop’s mother.
She waves a lettuce in my face. “Hi, Jake. Remember me?”
That’s when I did it—The Gulp.
Until something like this happens to you, you’ll never know how long a swallow can take. When I was finally able to talk, I said, “Uh…hi….”
Brilliant, huh?
Her smile was so big it bumped into her hoop earrings. “So how’s it going, Jake? Haven’t seen you guys lately. Where ya been?”
“Oh, around,” I said.
I couldn’t believe she wasn’t clobbering me with the lettuce and kicking me in the shins.
“Ernie misses you,” she said.
It took awhile to sink in.
Ernie misses you.
I thought, Is it possible? He didn’t tell her what I said?
“Especially since what happened,” she said.
I did a mini gulp. “What was that?” I said.
“Oh, somebody knocked down Ernie’s clubhouse.” She pitched the lettuces into her cart. “Haven’t you seen?”
“No,” I lied. “We were on vacation.”
“Who would do such a thing?” she said. I was going to answer something like “Beats me,” but I saw that she wasn’t really asking me, she was looking around the ceiling. She was asking the universe. Her eyes came back to me. “So Ernie was pretty sad there for a while.”
That’s not all he was sad about.
“But then”—her face and her voice got peppy again—“you know Ernie. He bounces back. So now he’s busy rebuilding.”
She was looking hard at me now, and for some weird reason I knew exactly what she wanted me to say. So I said it. “Good.”
She nodded. She squeezed my shoulder. “Y’know, I shouldn’t tell you this, because Ernie likes all of you. But”—her voice got whispery, she leaned in—“you’re his favorite, Jake. He likes you best.”
He never told her!
I heard my mouth saying, “I like him too.”
“And the strangest thing,” she said. “Guess what somebody did?”
“What?”
“Somebody left one of those leveler thingies in the hut, that carpenters use.” She laughed. “I guess they couldn’t stand to see the lopsided walls anymore!”
We both laughed.