He always has tea around three pm. He is not a terribly precise man, but a man of certain rituals. Actually, he starts each day with such sluggardly motions, sleeping in and mainly puttering around until his breakfast eventually became lunch and lunch got pushed back to three pm. Therefore, it wasn’t so much tea time as lunch time, but he never bothered to change the name because “tea time” just sounds so dignified.
You might be thinking that Chive is British, on account of the tea. You might also be secretly making fun of his name, and for that you will not be faulted. I will first address the tea and then the name. He is not in fact British, just a queer little red-haired man of small frame and stature and yes, he is queer in both senses of the word. He and a man name Joe Fairview were quite in love once, but Joe left for the city and Chive just couldn’t leave behind the small town that would always love but never quite accept him. Joe died of AIDS because that was what happened to a lot of gay men back then. He would be around 65 now, Chive supposes. They were high school sweethearts, but of course they never told anyone.
As to the name, Chive Oakfield’s parents were hapless hippies. They named all their children after foods they could forage at the commune where they once lived. Chive has a sister named Strawberry Wild and a brother named Orchard, so Chive really feels that he got the better deal. After Strawberry was born, the Oakfield family split up and both of his parents went on to build successful careers which would earn them the money to buy nice houses in separate suburbs, but the Oakfield children never fully adjusted to this life, some say.
Here he is, middle aged, living in the same town his mom dragged him to as a sulky preteen. He doesn’t live in the subdivision anymore, though. He moved downtown and bought a house which has surely seen better days, but definitely has character. Once Joe left and he had all that extra space he opened up what started as an antique store but is now something else entirely. It has painted wooden signs above the front door and out in the front yard that say “Trash ‘n Treasure” because Chive has no delusions about what his house contains. I guess some would call him a hoarder, but that would be because they lack the class it takes to recognize what he’s created here. He doesn’t post hours because he doesn’t keep hours. In fact, he did away with the cash register a few years ago and no one seems to have missed it. Visitors pop by when they are looking for some odd antique or the perfect lamp to go in the guest bedroom. Sometimes they come just to talk with Chive and see what his latest setup involves and because he always has cookies and tea and time to talk. His displays often include creepy porcelain dolls, chipped, mismatched china, and yellowing lace. Of course, the record player still works and he has boxes of old records that are technically but not actually for sale.
Every afternoon, after Chive’s breakfast/lunch, his next door neighbor Caroline comes over to visit and do some cleaning. She’ll dust his collection, vacuum his floor, make those cookies everyone loves and generally straighten up the place. The truth is, though, that he doesn’t really need the help and Caroline doesn’t really need the money. They just like to keep each other company. Caroline’s husband works in the city and is gone from dark to dark most days, and all her children are in school now. She works from home as a medical transcriptionist or something like that. They discovered not long after they became neighbors that they were kindred in that special way that only two people who are the same kind of odd can be. They don’t chat a lot, but enjoy the comfortable silence which they both prefer over small talk. Some days, they have very long and very deep conversations, and some days she never gets around to cleaning because it is so nice on the back deck and the plants are showing off and the cookies really are too good to neglect. She’s the only one who knows just how much Chive misses Joe Fairview.
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