“WHAT? For god’s sake,” Ellen grumbles with her phone on her right ear. “I have no idea, Mom. You’re gonna have to ask Portia. One second.” She hands her phone to Portia who’s sitting next to her. “My mom wants to speak to you.”
Portia frowns. She puts down her burger on her lap, wipes her hands with a paper and takes the phone. “Hi, Betty.”
“Portia! How are you, my dear?”
Portia automatically distances the phone from her ear. Ellen’s mother’s voice sounds so loud in the silence of Shakespeare Garden at noon, where Ellen and her are having a simple lunch together. “I’m doing really well, Betty,” Portia answers with a quieter voice, hoping that Betty DeGeneres would lower her voice. “I hope you’re doing well, too.”
“Of course I am!” Betty answers cheerfully without lowering her voice one bit. “Anyway, Portia, I was just asking Ellen if you’d be willing to name your first born with my middle name?”
Portia chokes midway and coughs. If she’s still chewing her burger, she’s sure that she’d spit it out of her nose. “I’m sorry, what?” she asks with suffocated voice while she glares unhappily at Ellen who can’t stop laughing.
“I hope you and Ellen would be willing to name your firstborn Jane,” Ellen’s mom repeats, undisturbed by her daughter’s laughter who must be audible to her. “I mean, if it’s a girl, of course. If it’s a boy, then it’d be John, I guess? It’s a very sweet name…”
“Betty, I’m not pregnant!” Portia cuts her off with heated cheeks.
“Oh, of course not, darling. I mean once you two get married. I hope you won’t wait too long. So when my first grandchild is born, I hope you’d use my middle name. What do you think?”
Portia is at loss for words for a while. She turns to Ellen but the woman is still busy wiping her eyes and laughing. Finally Portia says, “Well, what if it becomes their middle name, too?”
Ellen stops laughing and stares at Portia in utter shock.
“I hope you understand, I’d like to name my firstborn after my mother or my late father,” Portia goes on.
“Oh, of course!” Betty says cheerfully. “I think that’s a wonderful idea. Yes, yes. As the middle name is great, too.”
Portia hands back the phone to Ellen after Betty hangs up. “What?” she asks when Ellen is still staring at her with unchanging expression.
“Does that mean that you’d want to marry me?” Ellen asks in astonishment.
Portia shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says nonchalantly. “Either way you haven’t asked me before.”
“I haven’t asked you?” Ellen repeats with an astounded look. “Do you not remember how many times… Oh, fine.” She turns to fully face Portia, grabs Portia’s left hand and holds it in hers. For a moment she looks nervous, but when she looks at Portia, her sea-blue eyes look serious. “Portia de Rossi, you know that I love you. Deeply. It would be an unimaginable privilege for me to spend the rest of my life with you. So I’m asking you with all my heart and soul…..” Ellen stops and gulps. Her eyes flash the nervous look once more. Then she squeezes Portia’s hand and continues in a lower voice, “Will you marry me?”
On that chilly afternoon where the spring is hanging somewhere in the air, while they’re sitting side by side on a bench at the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park, Portia stares into Ellen’s eyes with a huge smile on her face and a racing heart in her chest.
Then she nods.
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