Untitled Love Story

This is a story I've written for which I cannot think of a title. I thought it might be a good idea to post it here and see if any of my fellow authors can help.

(Please limit comments to title suggestions. It's an early draft, so I already know it needs work.)

In a secondhand store somewhere in middle America, there is a shelf labeled “TOYS: PRICED AS MARKED.” On this shelf are old fast food kids meal toys, some die cast cars, action figures from movies no one remembers anymore and a myriad of other forgotten toys. But also on this shelf is Devon. Unlike the other cheaply made, mass produced toys on the shelf, Devon is a high quality plush bear, made as a special Valentines Day promotion by a major chain of greeting card stores. If you were visit this shop and walk past his shelf, you would probably be struck by how dapper and handsome he looks in his green tuxedo and pink bowtie.

That’s what first caught Mabel’s eye, when she was browsing the shelves, waiting for her father to come pick her up for their weekend together. But when she got a better look at him, the thing that struck her most wasn’t his adorable outfit, his fine stitching, or even his price tag ($5; the most expensive thing on the shelf by a wide margin). It was how sad he seemed. She didn’t know why he seemed so sad. He was cosmetically identical to dozens of other teddy bears. But when she looked at Devon, Mabel knew that he was sad about something.

She took him down off the shelf and looked him over. That’s when she saw the tag. Not the $5 price tag the secondhand store had put on him in the hopes that he would sell, but his original tag. The little white piece of paper stitched into his rear. It gave his name, Devon, and identified him as a limited edition “Kissy Bear.” She found a metal toy and held it up to Devon’s nose. It stuck. This confirmed her suspicion. Devon had a magnet sewn into his nose.

Now, Mabel knew why Devon was so sad.

The Kissy Bears had been created and marketed during the Valentines season many years ago. When customers spent more than $20 in the store, they could get the Bears for an additional $10 (half their normal retail price). The boy bear, Devon, wore a green tuxedo with a pink bowtie. The girl bear, Sandy, wore a pink gown with green ribbons. Each bear had a magnet sewn into their nose. When the bears were brought together, the magnets connected and the bears appeared to be kissing.

The Bears were top sellers and resulted in a very good quarter for the greeting card store. All over the country, happy girlfriends and wives received the gift of Kissy Bears from their significant others. And for many months to come, Devons and Sandys from Maine to California were blissfully kissing one another, to the delight of their new owners.

Everyone was happy.

The trouble, of course, was that these were toys marketed for adults, not children. And when adults buy toys for adults, they are novelties, gag gifts, tokens. Not the cherished playthings and companions that children’s toys are. Sooner or later, grown ups decide that, while receiving the gift was fun at the time, having the gift is…well, sort of silly.

While the greeting card company was working up a similar product launch for Easter (which was doomed to failure since kissing has nothing to do with Easter) Kissy Bears were thrown in boxes and shoved in the back of closets. Locked away in storage spaces and attics. And, in some cases, actually thrown away with last night’s Chinese takeout boxes.

There are exceptions to every rule, regardless of what your teachers told you at school. In this case, the exception was Sandy Turner. She had been given the Bears by her fiancée, Devon McMannus. When he saw them in the store window while frantically looking for a last-minute gift for his sweetheart, he knew they were just what he needed. What, he asked himself, were the chances of the Kissy Bears having the same names as me and Sandy? Upon receipt of the Bears, Sandy Turner also took the coincidence as a sign that they would be together forever.

And, in a way, they were.

It grieves me sorely to relate that the marriage of Devon McMannus and Sandy Turner lasted only five years, before the latter’s untimely passing. If it’s any consolation, she went without pain, holding the hand of the person she loved more than anything in the world. None of us has any right to ask for more when it’s our time to go.

Mr. McMannus was understandably devastated after losing his wife. But life goes on, even when pain refuses to let us be, and eventually he was faced with the unhappy task of deciding what to do with the material possessions she had left behind. Those too important to get rid of were placed in a box in the hall closet. Those too painful to look at were put in storage. Others were bequeathed to various friends and relations, sold online, donated or simply thrown away.

As for the Bears…

Well, Devon McMannus decided that he had no further use for them. They had been a symbol of his life with Sandy Turner, and that was over. He therefore set the Bear with the green tuxedo and pink bowtie in the box he intended to take to the local secondhand store. But, as he went to put the Bear with the pink gown and green ribbons in the box, he found he could not. His Sandy was gone, and all he had left was this Sandy. Maybe, he thought, I should keep this one. Then it will be like a part of her is still with me.

So it was that Devon, and only Devon, was donated to the secondhand store, while his other half, Sandy, was kept in a closet with a box of papers and photographs.

You may (or may not) take comfort in the fact that Devon McMannus did, eventually, move on. Sandy Turner would always live in a small part of his heart that he kept locked away, but he and his new wife, Susan, are very happy together, and the signs indicate that they will remain so for many years to come.

Devon the Bear, however, sat glumly on his shelf in the secondhand store. Over the years, many people picked him up and seemed interested in buying him, until they perceived that he was part of an incomplete set, and decided their money was best spent elsewhere.

That is, until Mabel found him. She understood how lonely he was. How sad. And she hugged him tight, and whispered into his cotton ear, “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Devon didn’t see the other items that Mabel purchased that day, because they were kept in a small plastic bag whereas he was placed gingerly in the girl’s backpack. He remained there during the drive to Dad’s apartment, the depositing of the backpack on Mabel’s bed and the next hour or so, during which time Mabel and her father had dinner, watched a movie and talked about what was new in the girl’s life.

Finally, Mabel returned to the room where she slept on alternate weekends, unzipped her backpack and took Devon out. He was grateful for this, as the straight edge of the ruler she used in school had been stuck to his magnetic nose for quite some time and it had been most uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry you’re all alone,” said Mabel. “My mom and dad are alone now, too. They don’t live together anymore and I don’t really understand why not.” For just a moment—maybe even a fraction of a moment—Devon thought Mabel was about to cry. In spite of his own sorrow, he wanted to comfort the girl who had taken pity on him. But there was no need, as Mabel was soon smiling at her new toy. “But you don’t have to be alone anymore.”

Setting Devon down on her bed, Mabel went to the closet and took out another plush toy. This one was also a bear, rotund, mostly white with black ears, black arms and legs and black patches over its eyes.

“Devon, meet Panda Sue. My dad bought him for me when he and mom got divorced. I always thought she seemed kind of sad, too.”

Then, Mabel set Panda Sue down and picked up the plastic bag she had gotten from the secondhand store. She emptied t he contents onto her bed where Devon could see them. One was a sewing kit, consisting of needles, thread, and even a small pair of foldable scissors. The other was what looked to Devon, at least, like a tiny metal banana.

“This won’t hurt a bit,” said Mabel, and commenced the surgery…

It should be noted, in the interest of total fairness, that Mabel was only seven years old, and, for this reason, I think it’s only right to overlook her lack of skill as a seamstress. Especially when one considers that her heart was in the right place. Cutting into the fabric above the nose with the tiny scissors had been easy enough. So had inserting the banana-shaped refrigerator magnet. Sewing the incision together, however, had proved more difficult than Mabel had expected, and she had run out of white thread very early in the process, at which point she was forced to finish the job with black thread, red thread, green thread and, finally, a dab of her father’s superglue.

Panda Sue, however, didn’t mind. Indeed, being a monochromatic animal, the splash of color was quite welcome. And the important part was that she now had a magnet in her nose just like the one in Devon’s. He didn’t mind the scar, either. After all, when they kissed, all he could see were her button eyes, looking into his.

Devon would never forget Sandy, not really. After all, they were quite literally made for each other. But loving someone new doesn’t mean forgetting someone you’ve loved before. Love is far more interesting, complicated and amazing than that.

We lose people we love all the time. No one can do anything about that. But, if you were to ask me, I would say that the best way to honor those we’ve lost is to do the one thing they no longer can: Live. And that means moving forward, growing and, above all, loving.

And I think Devon and Panda Sue would agree.