Three Lonely Hearts.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

~ Helen Keller

A short silence descended upon the four of us as both John and Charlie remembered a simpler and happier time and Charlotte became lost in her own thoughts.

“So, if you’re so convinced everyone that winds up here is a ‘lonely heart’, why are you here?” I asked her suddenly, the rash sound of my voice shattering the silence. I couldn’t get my mind off her words and the way she said them, as if she knew me better than I knew myself. “If you’re stereotyping everyone here, doesn’t that make you ‘lonely’ too?”

Charlotte looked at me with a kind gaze, as if she was sympathetic to my demands. Her look was like a mother to an impatient child, and it infuriated me to be treated this way.

“Well don’t you think you’re better than us all!” I snapped, sliding my coffee cup toward her with a sweep of my arm. “Let me guess, you’re here because you think you’re doing some great community service to bums like us with no where else to go, huh? Like you’re some damn ‘Good Samaritan’ or something!” My gaze narrowed as I spoke, taking some of my pent up anger out on some woman I didn’t even know.

Besides me, both Charlie and John stiffened, uncomfortable but not enough to stop me.

“Well, for your information, I think you’re just as bad as the rest of us!”

My voice had gotten louder and louder and it wasn’t until I heard a quiet cry that I realized how loud I was speaking. From the stool where I sat, I saw a small hand reach up from beneath the counter and grab Charlotte’s apron.

The redhead was still watching me with indefinite patience as she reached down to pick up a small child, maybe three or four years old, and balance him on her hip. Her eyes never left mine, still ready to take any other verbal abuse I threw.

My chest was heaving and I could feel the raw emotions I’ve bottled up over the past few days all churning around inside me restlessly. “Who is that?” I demanded, nodding my head in the child’s direction, wondering how there could have been a child here the whole time without anyone noticing.

“This is my boyfriend’s son, Jacob,” she said simply, though the circumstances of their relationship weren’t as simple as they sounded.

I paused, wiping some coffee cake crumbs off the countertop. “Your boyfriend’s son? So, not yours?” I questioned, calming a bit as the tension in the room lessened a bit.

The little boy in her arms didn’t have any resemblance to her: his hair was blonde, hers was red, his eyes were green, hers were brown, his face was round, and hers was heart-shaped. The differences were clearly noticeable, but she still held him with the same tenderness a mother would hold her own child.

“No, Jacob’s not mine biologically,” she admitted, giving the child a small embrace. “But he’s still mine.”

She set Jacob down so he was on the counter in front of Charlie, and the old man smiled as Jacob waved a small hand at him.

“Why would you have your boyfriend’s kid to a café at half past ten on a Sunday night?” I asked her curiously, wondering what she could have been thinking.

Charlotte shrugged as she pulled out a small glass of milk and gave it to Jacob carefully.

“It’s what I have to do. Jacob’s father is sick, and his grandparents are on a trip, and I can’t afford childcare. So my sisters watch him during the day, and then drop him off before the night shift at the hospital starts and he stays up with me until I close up and go home at eleven.” Looking at the clock hanging on the wall, she said, “Jakey’s been here since nine and slept until—”

“Until I woke him up,” I finished, feeling a bit bad for raising my voice so loud. But still… “It’s not right to have a kid at a café so late at night.”

Jacob put the glass of milk down on the counter more delicately than you’d expect from a four year old, and he motioned for Charlotte to pick him up again.

“If I had a choice, he’d be with a babysitter back at my apartment sound asleep… but I don’t have a choice. He’s a good boy though, and he usually just sleeps in his sleeping bag on a bed of chairs we have back here, or colors on some of the paper placemats.”

Now in his quasi-mother’s arms, Jacob turned his blond head to the side, a mask of exhaustion on his young face. He was not as energetic and destructive as other four year olds would usually be; instead he seemed very controlled.

“Why not just take the nights off and work day shifts?” I suggested.

Charlotte gave me another sympathetic glance, as if there was no way I could understand her situation, and Charlie answered for her. “She does work morning shifts. And the afternoon shifts. And the evening shifts.”

I looked at Charlotte in awe, muttering an unintelligent “Wow, that’s a lot of hours.”

“I’ve picked up a lot of extra hours in the past year to make up for my boyfriend’s medical bills,” she admitted, not in frustration but just as-a-matter-of-fact. “My boyfriend, Henry, has had asthma since he was a child, and he’s been in and out of the hospital for the past few months because of a handful of severe asthma attacks.”

Jacob stirred in Charlotte’s arms, recognizing his father’s name. Clutching to her sweater, he closed his eyes as Charlotte rocked him back and forth, and though it seemed like he was just trying to fall asleep, it also seemed like he was trying to block out Charlotte’s story.

“I don’t see why you’re stuck with his kid then,” I said simply, watching as she murmured quiet words in the young boy’s ear. “If he was born before you and your boyfriend got together and isn’t yours—”

Charlotte looked up sadly as I said these words. Beside me, Charlie reached over the counter and patted her hand comfortingly.

“It wasn’t before my boyfriend and I met,” she said quietly. “He cheated on me once with his co-worker, Julie, Jacob’s mother, and told me after it happened. I forgave him, but did not expect her to show up at our apartment one day with a two year old Jacob in a car seat.”

John and Charlie watched Charlotte with sympathy, their eyebrows pulled together in sadness. “What did she do?” John asked, taking a sip of his cooling coffee.

Charlotte gave Jacob a kiss on the forehead before continuing. “She said that she never wanted a child and that Henry and Jacob were both mistakes that she wanted to forget,” Charlotte said. Her voice was similar to Charlie’s; though she was speaking of a sad and unfortunate event, she told it factually, with sadness but not overwhelming emotion.

“So she just left him with you?” I asked, confused.

Jacob squirmed in Charlotte’s arms, the pained look on his face suggesting he knew that we were talking about him. “Julie left Jacob with Henry, and Henry and I legally adopted him two years ago and had to pay for all of the adoption fees.”

“You poor thing,” Charlie said sympathetically.

“It must have been very finically laboring to pay for that,” John agreed.

Charlotte nodded. “I’ve been working at this café since I was in college, and most of the money I’ve made has already been used for the apartment rent, Jacob’s adoption fees, and Henry’s medical bills.” She looked at me and noted how my eyebrow raised. “And before you ask, Henry does work,” she added. “But he’s been so sick lately that he hasn’t been able to go, and his job won’t give him pay in advance.”

Putting Jacob down on a stool on her side of the counter, Charlotte quickly grabbed a new pot of coffee from one of the coffeemakers behind the pastry display and refilled all of our mugs.

After taking a sip of my coffee, I asked what seemed like the most obvious question. “So, if everything’s so hard with Henry, why not just break up with him? Save yourself the hassle?”

Charlotte’s eyes widened and on the stool, Jacob pouted. Looking between Jacob and myself, Charlotte reached out to pick up Jacob before answering my question. “Shh, sweetie, don’t worry. I’ll never leave,” she soothed.

Beside me, Charlie gave my arm a feeble swipe. “Don’t ask questions that will upset little Jacob,” he scolded.

I put my hands up defensively, “As if you weren’t thinking the same thing!”

With a knowing smile (have I mentioned how Charlotte seems to know me better than I do?) Charlotte answered my question. “It’d be easy to leave Henry and Jacob, I suppose. I can downsize to a smaller apartment, take off a few hours from the café, maybe start going to my art classes again…” She gained a far off gaze, remembering a pre-Henry life.

“But…?” I prompted, sensing there’d be some reason she didn’t just up and leave.

“But it wouldn’t be the same. I love both of them, more than I’d enjoy a life without them, and wouldn’t care if I had to work here for the rest of my life to afford to stay with them.”

By now, Jacob’s eyes had begun to close and he was feebly fighting off sleep. A few moments passed and, when he finally fell asleep, Charlotte moved towards the back of the café counter and set him down on what I assumed was the sleeping-bag bed that she described earlier.

As she wiped off the counter space where Jacob had been sitting earlier, I rearranged her story in my head. “So, you’ll work for hours, spend all of your money, and support two people you have no relation to… just because you love them?”

She gave me a small, sad, knowing smile. “You got it.”

With a look at the clock hanging above the glass door, she sighed, and John muttered, “Ten more minutes till closing…”

“I don’t get it,” I continued, still struggling to understand how she could live the way she did, so selfless and devoted.

On the far end of the counter, John stood up, handing Charlotte his money and the largest tip he could afford. “You don’t get it now, but you will some day,” he told me with a tip of his hat as he donned his jacket and headed towards the exit.

My questioning look followed his retreating figure until, beside me, Charlie began to stir too.

“Thank you, dear, for another night of company,” he told Charlotte, giving her a smile as he slid his money across the counter top. As he turned to me, he paused, searching for the right words to say. “You may not understand our stories now, and that’s alright. You’re still young and still have plenty of time to learn. But… someday, you’ll find yourself lonely and in need of company, and you’ll understand.”

With that, he left too, leaving me in the café with Charlotte and the sleeping Jacob.

“What are they talking about?” I asked her, hushed.

As she took the mugs off of the counter, pouring their remainders into the sink before turning to face me with a sigh, I could tell she was trying to phrase her thoughts into a piece of worthwhile advice.

“They’re saying… it’s alright. That you were here tonight,” she started, wiping her hands on her apron. “Even if you won’t admit it, everyone’s a little lonely on the inside but, no matter what, life still goes on, even if it’s not the way you expect.”

I nodded to her words, fighting to comprehend them.

“Charlie didn’t expect Diane to move or for her to fall in love with someone else, but she did, and he lived with it. John didn’t expect his wife to cheat on him or for his kids to not want him, but it happened, and he’s looking towards the future now.”

She paused, watching my face as her words sunk in.

“I didn’t expect to fall for Henry, or to support the child he had in an affair or his rising medical bills. But it happened. All you can do is acknowledge the past and the present, and move toward the future.”

Noting the finality her speech was heading towards, I stood up, pushing my stool in.

“I don’t know your name, or why you’re here tonight, but I know there’s a reason. And, whatever that reason may be, I know it won’t be as bad as it seems, over time. Time heals everything, especially lonely hearts. And, if that’s not enough for you, just remember there’s always at least one other person out there that’s willing to listen.”

Taking her words seriously, I gave her a dazed nod, leaving my money on the counter and following John and Charlie’s footsteps towards the door, letting her advice lead me to wherever my future was.

“If you ever need to talk about it, you know where to come!” Charlotte called as my hand pushed the cold metal bar on the door.

I hesitated, the small ding of the bell overhead fading into the silence of the night. “No, I’m alright. My problems aren’t as big as I thought after all…” And with that, I took a step out, back into the night that before seemed so foreboding, but now seemed like just another part of life.