Eleanor gently took the spoon out of her hand. “We’re not asking you to stay here so you can be our housekeeper. We’re asking you to stay because you’re our friend, and we want to.”
“I don’t want to bother you,” Teddy said softly. She’d spent so long trying to make Richard’s life as easy and conflict-free as possible, and now here she was, depositing herself on her friends’ doorstep, taking over an entire room of their house, being the biggest imposition possible.
“It would be actually impossible for you to bother us, Teddy,” said Kirsten. “You’re like one of those weird little animals you see in a viral video where people think it’s a stuffed animal because it’s so cute but then actually it’s a real chipmunk or whatever.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Teddy said, and then, even though she was uncomfortably full of ice cream and her face was still streaked with tears, she realized she was laughing for the first time in a long while.
3
If there was one thing getting Teddy through the surprise breakup from hell, it was children’s television. But it wasn’t nostalgia or the annoyingly catchy ukulele theme song of her favorite show that comforted her . . . It was the host.
It wasn’t as pathetic as it sounded—or maybe it actually was pathetic. Teddy didn’t know. All she knew was that, in lieu of an actual therapist, her therapist was Everett St. James, the host of a local children’s show called Everett’s Place. Teddy had a surprisingly common fascination with him—an affliction that affected many people in Columbus, although, to be fair, most of them were moms. Teddy once stumbled upon a local message board where parents of toddlers discussed looking forward to their child’s daily viewing of Everett’s Place and had conversations about how much they loved Everett’s hair and his whimsical (yet attractive) sweaters. “After our seventeenth read of Guess How Much I Love You, I practically leapt at the TV when I saw a human man on-screen,” one mom wrote. “Everett St. James can talk about my feelings anytime,” said another parent. “Do you think he’s married? He doesn’t wear a ring . . . ,” someone posted, but everyone else ignored her. No one wanted to think about Everett St. James being married. Part of the fantasy was that he was always available.
While Teddy wasn’t a mother, she understood what these message board posters were talking about. She’d found Everett’s show years ago when babysitting her niece and had been so distracted by Everett himself that when she finally tore herself away from the screen, she realized that Emma had drawn a picture on the wall, dumped grape juice on the couch, and given the patient family dog a lopsided haircut.
Ever since that day, she’d been watching Everett’s show on her own. No one else knew about her habit. It was just her and a message board’s worth of sexually and emotionally frustrated moms who needed to project all of their desires onto a broad-shouldered, floppy-haired, sensitive puppeteer.
It was now three days after she had officially left Richard’s place (well, after he had officially kicked her out of their place) and Teddy was watching the latest episode on her laptop at work when the bell above the door rang. She quickly slammed her laptop shut as a small girl walked into the shop and gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
From her station behind the counter, Teddy watched the girl in the bright red coat. She trailed her fingers along cabinets, picking up some toys before putting them back disinterestedly. Others she stared at longer, examining them and pulling out an honest-to-God camera, not a phone, to snap a picture.
Weekday mornings were typically a quiet time—even a customer-free time—at Colossal Toys, with most people at work or in school. Why Josie opened the shop so early, Teddy didn’t understand. But the girl’s presence was especially odd because of her age. Colossal Toys was a vintage toy shop, full of action figures from the eighties and nineties—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and My Little Ponies and Transformers—the shelves so overstuffed that they threatened to topple at any moment. Teddy herself, at nearly thirty years old, hadn’t been alive when many of the toys were in their heyday. Any children in the store were usually dragged there by pop-culture-obsessed parents eager to show off original Alien action figures to their uninterested offspring.
As if she could feel Teddy’s eyes on her, the girl whipped around and leveled a stare at her. “I’m not stealing anything.”
Teddy stood up straight and reflexively moved to smooth out the layers of her long brown hair, then remembered that she’d asked a hairstylist yesterday to give her a bob. And so, with a few quick chops, the feature that Richard had complimented most (usually when he was deriding how “unfeminine” he found short hair) was gone.
Teddy pivoted and tucked the edges of her bob behind her ears, chastened by sustained eye contact from a girl whose age was most likely barely in the double digits. “I didn’t think you were.”
The girl lifted her eyebrows as if waiting for Teddy to state her true intentions, and Teddy found herself unable to say anything. I’m the adult here, Teddy told herself. Get it together. This is a child.
“Isn’t today a school day?” she finally asked.
“My parents don’t believe in traditional schooling. I’m allowed to roam the city unsupervised during school hours.”
Teddy blinked.
“I’m kidding,” the girl said, a small smile breaking through her otherwise serious face. “It’s a teacher in-service day.”
“Oh,” Teddy said, relieved. “I forgot all about those.”
“Anyway,” the girl said breezily, “feel free to go back to your job. I don’t need to be entertained.”
Teddy cocked her head to the side, studying the girl. “Do you even know what any of these toys are?”
The girl nodded. “Some of them. My parents are old and I’m an only child. Well, not really. I have a brother, but he’s eighteen years older than me, so he’s more of a very involved uncle than a brother. My parents distrust most aspects of current popular culture, so I’m more familiar with”—she gestured around the store—“this than most of my classmates.”
She walked across the store, which took her only a few steps, as it was very small and packed full of toys. “I’m Gretel, by the way.”
Teddy held out a hand. “I’m Teddy. What a lovely name.”
Gretel rolled her eyes. “As in ‘Hansel and.’ My parents again. My mom’s a literature professor with a concentration in folktales. Where does your name originate? The bear?”
Teddy stifled a smile. “It’s short for Theodora. My great-grandmother.”
“Oh, candy!”
Gretel’s eyes lit up as she saw the large display of vintage candy along the counter (the brands were retro; the candy itself was new). She picked up a packet of Pop Rocks, looking for the first time like an actual child instead of a world-weary middle-aged person shoved into a small body.