The Door is Always Open by ViviansTales
Elena and Gabi had been the best of friends for so long they often asked each other if they had a life before they married and had their boys, Niall and Oscar, around the same time. The similarities did not end there. They were each divorced, Elena longer than Gabi, but when their men had left them their sons were almost through college and Elena’s business, ‘Verdant’, active in landscaping and lumber. It had been the foundation for her life from the moment the ink had dried on the papers. Gabi worked at whatever she could find and that kept her mind occupied, rather than be at home and suffer the silence now that her son, Oscar Kennett, had left and joined the Marine Corps. His loss in that way had cut her deep.
He had been into all things military since he had been a kid, his closest friend, Niall Jackson, not tempted by doing the same thing. He was now a vital apart of Elena’s business, it being his idea to also deal in lumber, what Verdant cut down on a customer’s lot and that they either logged and stacked for the customer’s fire or the brash was shredded for mulching. That too a client could keep, or Verdant took it all away. Once rotted down, some, Niall bagged it and they turned what had been mulched into cash.
The boys had been inseparable until Oscar had joined up and had gone to Parris Island. It might just as well have been the other side of the country, San Diego, because Gabi had not seen him until recruit camp time was through, she never doubting that he would pass out from boot camp.
“There sure is goin’ to be a space to fill in my life once you’re gone…you’ve always been my best pal around here and we’ve done almost everything together,” Niall had blurted out when he’d been round at Oscar’s place, a compact ranch style house set in a patch of woodland scrub and where they’d often throw a football or a basketball into the hoop and net set high over the garage door. Girlfriends came and went; they’d fooled around with them and learned along the way, but none had hooked them enough to make either think on what the future might hold.
“I’ll be back soon as I get through boot and recruit camps…and have found my way around the Corps,” Oscar had observed casually, not wanting to let his pal know that it was going to be a wrench for him too.
He would also miss the four of them, their moms and them, having a barbie out in the yard of respective homes, but he knew that Niall was way deep into the business his mom had set up before her marriage to Niall’s father hit the skids. The woman sure didn’t deserve that, and he’d gotten to thinking that he would miss the sight of her. She sure was competent, never could conceal what she’d bring to a man even when she wore only too functional work clothes, some washed-out dungarees along with a blouse or T-shirt, a colourful bandana at her throat and her stark blonde hair cut in an only too functional bob. In winter that would be hidden by a knitted beanie hat, her body wrapped in a quilted jacket zipped to her throat, and only too functional patch-pocket pants replacing the dungarees. Her bright smile always made up for it all.
But relaxing at a barbie, out would come the swirly skirts and tops, clothes to catch the sun, the bracelets and the necklaces. When she, and his mother, did that both he and his buddy saw another side to the women who were constants in their lives, and that set them talking.
It was then that they gave voice to youthful fantasies that the girls they went with, or had gone down on, never quite satisfied. They had also taken to wondering what their moms found so funny when seeing them fooling around before them. They were both lean and strong, jocks in their college days, he the more muscled of the two, taller and broader than Niall, but he had seen how his friend had filled out some more when he had begun working for Verdant. The heavy lifting bulked him out. Yeah, they were over six foot tall, lean and strong, their mothers not knowing that they still catalogued every curve and dip of their bodies when they had the chance.
“I sometimes think it’s disrespectful…to think of them as we do, sometimes… as we each do, pal,” Niall had gone and told him.
“It’s not sometimes when I’m with you…and Elena, your mom, so I’m glad that I’ll be away for a spell. It will let the heat cool down…”
He had stopped from saying how his mother wound his clock too. She’d touch his arm, give him a smile that revealed what was at work in her again, an unmistakable tremble of her lips, a softer wondering look of her eyes on him as the clock wound down to him leaving her.
“But it won’t help me…with what I feel, sometimes.”
“Then you’ll have to find a way to work it out of your system, pal,” Oscar had laughed.
Niall had been too embarrassed to admit that he already did that, when he was alone and in his room. His mother’s frequent calls to Gabi, how they were heard to laugh and, sometimes, the cutting short of a call when he was near, suggested who it was they were again talking about.
2
Gabi heard the knock on the front door. It was louder than usual, and she knew that her months of waiting were finally at an end. Her small home, with its clapboarded walls and neatly trimmed hedge to the front, had been spotlessly cleaned, the ceiling fan in the living room cooling the air.
“I’ve gotta go…sorry, Elena…my boy’s home!”
She spoke out in a soft, honeyed voice, her look in the mirror soon showing a bright smile, her long auburn red hair brushed out and a blush of makeup and soft lipstick just as she wanted, the wide-eyed wonder that the house would again be lively to the sound of Oscar’s deep voice and engaging laughter, his energy as he strode from room to room, or slumped down on the sofa beside her and they could talk. There was so much to catch up on.
“I’ll leave you two to it…won’t trouble you until tomorrow, okay?” Elena felt her spirits lift too, hoped it wouldn’t be long before they were all together.
“Sure…we can meet up for supper,” Gabi enthused, checking her reflection in the hall mirror, once again, and adjusting the fit of her patterned wrap around dress that shaped her. She had a reason to make a fuss over how she looked, doing her best for her ‘boy’, as she still thought of him. “I sure have missed Oscar being around…”
“That goes for me too…”
“You missed him too?” Gabi blurted out in some dismay. “I guess it’s no longer illegal…”
Elena was heard to laugh softly. “I remember us talking of our boys often enough. Who else was there in our lives? I work all the hours I can with Niall’s help, so we’re bonded really close…”
Gabi knew it well enough, but being abandoned by her husband, and Oscar’s father, had shaped their relationship.so much further than she dared to speak of, even to Elena. Joking about the young men took things too close to how it was for her, had been before Oscar had gone away. Now she had a week or so to make good their bond once more and that Zoom calls were no substitute for.