Ethan Welcomes Back the World
Part 1: Enter Ethan. Enter Chris.
They’re in the Laundromat now, brightness glaring down on them from fluorescent bulbs lining the ceiling, machines humming as they drown clothes in soapy water or jerk them around in hot air. They’ve been here long enough to start her wash and settle into plastic chairs, blue plastic that reminds Ethan of grade school and wooden rulers. The date is three hours in. He’d picked up Christina at her house, and he’s always liked that she goes by Chris, yet in the pauses at dinner he articulated in his head ChristinaChristinaChristina to get a feel for which name he really preferred now that they were on a date. Between two asparagus bites, he had the thought, Chris really is better. Chris really does suit her. Chris. Chris.
The dinner conversation was polite, informative, covering things that should be covered after coworkers give it a go outside the office. After the restaurant, they’d found a café for coffee, and now they’re at a Laundromat, sitting in a corner near her wash. They’re here because her son pissed in his dinosaur pajamas and tomorrow’s Pajama Day at school. They’d eaten their chicken, rice, and asparagus, then had their Americanos at a charming café, and then they meandered tree-lined streets like they were in their teens, all giddy with the possibility of a new body to cozy up to, and she grabbed his hand. She grabbed his hand, and he looked over at her as they walked, and that required him looking upward since he was short and she was tall. Or, at least, she was tall in those heels. And he was definitely short, is still definitely short, and he knows this because he is five-foot and one-point-five-inches tall. One-point-four inches if being super technical.
And he does not know her height when she’s barefoot. Five-nine? He wonders. Five-ten? But she’s at least six-foot now in those damned heels. But good for her for wearing them, thinks Ethan. But not really. But she did grab his hand. But she also dropped his hand on Second Street to take the call from the sitter. Chris kept calm while saying to the girl she shouldn’t have let her little man sleep in his favorite pjs. They drove to her house, and Ethan stayed in the car while she crept inside and came out with a plastic bag with pee pajamas and a duffel with other clothes so as not to waste a cycle on one outfit.
So now they’re here, still in the corner on blue chairs, doing laundry, and she’s just said, “Thanks for coming with me. I’m glad our evening didn’t have to end.”
He says, “Me too.” He shifts in his chair. The hard plastic is uncomfortable. He likes silence except in rare moments like these when he’s on a date or talking to a new friend he wants to keep. He says, “I liked dinosaurs when I was Trevor’s age, too. I had posters all over my room. The stegosaurus was my favorite. I liked the shield spikes on its back. And the T-rex seemed too popular a choice.”
She says, “You remember his name. I didn’t talk about him tonight, did I?”
“No. About a month ago. Getting coffee in the breakroom. You said you needed an extra cup because Trevor had a rough night.”
“That’s sweet,” she says. “Sweet that you remembered.”
“I was going to ask about him at dinner, but I was enjoying learning more about you.”
“And I was trying not to talk about him. My girlfriends told me, ‘Just don’t spend all of dinner talking about Trevor.’ So I was trying not to, but of course he’s the biggest part of my life.”
“Of course,” says Ethan.
“And he always will be.”
“Sure,” says Ethan. “Of course he will be.”
Then she says, “The ankylosaurus. That’s his favorite. It’s the one with kind of a club on its tail. He likes the stegosaurus, too, and the triceratops, but the ankylosaurus is his favorite.”
“Yes, that’s a good one. Also one of my favorites.” Then he pauses. Then he fidgets with his hands while the machines hum all around them, balling his right fist and examining its smallness in this big, open room. “When I was in sixth grade, there was a boy who made fun of how short I was, and I’d be so mad when I got home that I’d set up my army guys, pretend my fist was an ankylosaurus club, and knock them down with a single swoop.”
She smiles. She says, “Trevor does that, too. You guys would get along.”
Ethan can’t take it anymore. He says, “I used to get made fun of a lot for being short, and I still worry about it sometimes. I don’t have many exes. Just one substantial relationship and a few minor ones. And part of that might have been that I always had this rule that I should only date people my height or maybe one or two inches taller.” Ethan’s voice cracks. He wishes he had water.
“I see.”
“I guess I felt I needed to say that. I was wondering if you were thinking about it while we were walking after dinner.”
“It’s not a deal for me. It’s not something I’ve thought about.”
“That’s good,” he says. “I worried it would be a hang-up.”
“Well,” she says, “I’m a single mom, and you knew that before asking me out on this date. And here we are in a Laundromat because he wet his bed in the pajamas he wants to wear tomorrow. And we’re out on a Thursday night because he threw a tantrum when I told him I was going to get the sitter for Friday and would have to postpone mommy/son movie night. Those are red flags for some people. And I’ve got other hang-ups. And maybe after you learn more of them you’ll still want to go on a second date.”
“I know I will.”
“Good,” says Chris. Then she gets up to throw the wet clothes in the dryer.
They sit there for thirty more minutes, talking about work and themselves and her son, and there are small moments of silence here and there, but Ethan is okay with them more and more, and he thinks Chris is okay with them because she looks at him with a steady smile and her round eyes seem even rounder than earlier despite the fact that they both yawn a little, and then when she gets up to throw the dry clothes in the duffle bag without folding them, he’s thinking that he’s only! forty-three (when it used to be, I’m forty-three! Oh God! Oh God!) and he knows she just turned thirty-two because of that birthday card in her cubicle from some friend named Alice, so he’s thinking, If if if this works out we could be married for thirty years realistically and perhaps even forty years or more, and isn’t life actually pretty wonderful and aren’t my best years actually still ahead of me?
They pull up to her house again, and he turns off the car and gets out to open her car door, but she has opened it already, so he opens the back door and retrieves her duffle bag. He is waiting for her to say goodnight. He is wondering if he should try to kiss her. Yes, he will try to kiss her. He says, “Can I carry this bag to the door for you?”
She says, “Yes, thank you.”
They get to the door, and she unlocks it, and his stomach is sweating and his hands are sweating, but he can’t wipe them because he needs both arms to hold the large duffel bag. He wants to laugh at himself for feeling like a foolish teenager, and he loves feeling this way because even if she denies him, he is so alive right now, and he will lean in when she turns around, except she has passed through the door and is saying, “Could you set the bag down in the hallway, thanks?”
He steps inside and sets the bag down, and there rising from the couch is a teenage girl, and he had forgotten about the sitter, and Chris hands her a few folded bills, and she hugs her and says, “Sweet girl, I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? I overreacted, okay?”
And the girl nods.
And Chris releases her from the embrace, and she says, “You drive safe, and text me when you get home. And say hi to your parents.”
And the girl says, “Thanks, Mrs. Henley.”
And Ethan cringes at Mrs. because she is Ms. now, thank you very much, and perhaps even the future Mrs. Robbins, though there’s no pressure there certainly, but now he does wonder if Henley is her maiden name or ex-husband’s last name, because perhaps she should either take his name or go back to her maiden name, except, of course, there is Trevor to think about because they both might want to stay Henleys together if in fact that is not her maiden name but her ex’s. These are minor details, and Ethan would actually take on her maiden name if that’s what she has now but he will not be taking her ex-husband’s name, if that was even an option, except, perhaps, when he thinks about what might be best for the boy.
But Chris doesn’t seem to mind the Mrs. Henley blunder, and she shuts the door and asks Ethan if he would like a cup of coffee.
Ethan says, “Sure.”
“Decaf or regular?”
He thinks. He won’t be able to sleep either way. Good night or bad night, he’ll be up. “I’m okay with either,” he says. “I’ll have what you’re going to have.”
“I’ll put on some decaf if you don’t mind.”
“Sounds great,” Ethan says. “Thanks so much,” he says.
Chris directs him to the couch. He sits and waits for her while she dumps the laundry on the carpet, finds Trevor’s dino pjs, folds them, and then takes them with her to the kitchen while she makes coffee.
He gets up to see if he can help her in the kitchen. She’s finished scooping the grounds.
“Anything I can do?” he says.
“Thanks, no,” she says. “Just started it. But let’s sit in here actually. It’s nice and bright and we can smell the coffee while it brews.”
“Sounds good,” he says.
They sit at the round kitchen table. There are four chairs. Ethan wonders if Chris and Trevor always sit in the same two or if they switch things up. His arms are resting on the tabletop, not sitting in his lap like normal.
Chris says, “I bet this is the most interesting first date you’ve ever been on. Not because of the company. I mean having to go to the Laundromat right in the middle of a romantic stroll after dinner. It is for me anyway, the most interesting first date.”
“Yes, me too,” says Ethan. And he’s thinking that he sure hopes this is the last first date they’ll ever have.
Part 2: Enter the Madman.
And as he’s thinking that, the back door in the kitchen is kicked open, and Chris and Ethan jump to their feet as some stranger bursts in holding a golfclub over his head. Ethan can’t move. He thinks, ShitShitShit—What do I do? But his body is paralyzed, and he’s holding his breath, and all he can do is stand dead still and stare at this madman while time has frozen, but Chris slides in front of Ethan and yells, “Damnit, Wes!”
Feeling returns to Ethan’s limbs, but he doesn’t budge behind Chris’s frame.
And again she yells at the intruder, “What the hell!” But then she quickly whispers, “Shhh. Quiet. Trevor’s asleep.” She walks up to this guy—this Wes—and Ethan is exposed but feels less scared now since Chris doesn’t seem scared at all. But he’s self-conscious and would really prefer he was safely at home sipping tea while doing a crossword.
“I didn’t say anything,” this Wes says.
“You kicked in my damn door. You need to go. Now.”
“Who’s this guy?” says Wes, pointing the golfclub at Ethan.
“That’s Ethan. We work together. We’re on a date. Now leave.”
“A date? Cute. I think I’ll stay.”
Chris holds out her cell phone. She says, “I don’t want to have to call the police. Don’t make me do that. And don’t wake Trevor. Just leave, please.”
“I’ll leave. Just give me a few minutes. You give me some time to sit here with you all, and then I’ll be on my way. But if you try to get rid of me, I’m swinging this club around and knocking things over. Okay? The boy will be up crying. Your mom’s china over there might get broken. All before the cops cart me away. Just let me sit.”
“Five minutes,” says Chris.
“I’ll take a cup of that coffee,” Wes says. “This really is cute. You guys having a coffee here after your night at The Lazy Goat.” Wes sits. He moves the golfclub to his left hand, holds his right hand out to Ethan. “I’m Wes,” he says.
Ethan takes his hand, squeezes tighter than he’s used to, says, “Ethan.” And then he sits back down at the table and says, “How did you know we were at The Lazy Goat?”
“I saw you there. I was at a table with Melinda, my new gal, but I made eye contact with Chrissy, and she pretended not to see me, but I know she saw.”
Chris sets two mugs of coffee on the table. “I saw,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you can turn up here.”
“Relax,” says Wes. “I didn’t know he’d be here. I was nostalgic. Seeing you there. I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing. But I saw his car out front, so I decided to come in the back. I’ll fix it. I don’t know why I didn’t knock. I guess I like a grand entrance.”
“And a grand exit.”
“That’s true. Grand coming in and grand coming out.” Wes winks at Ethan.
Ethan wants to strangle him. Ethan wants to beat him senseless with his club.
“So now you’ve seen him,” says Chris. “Now you’ve made your big scary self known, and now you can be on your way.”
“Soon, Chrissy, soon. I haven’t had my coffee.”
Chris brings a third cup to the table and sits down. She mouths I’m sorry to Ethan, and he shakes his head, trying to signal to her, No, it’s not your fault.
She sets her phone in front of her. It vibrates. “It’s just the sitter,” she says, texting a reply, then sliding the phone closer to the table’s center.
Wes stands. He lays the golf club on the table. He says, “I don’t recommend anyone touching that or it will get real noisy in here. Think about the boy and yourselves.” Then he heads to the fridge and opens the cupboard above it. “Where’s the whiskey?”
“I don’t like whiskey.”
“We always had whiskey.” He brings down a bottle of brandy. “What’s this?”
“It’s better, but I’m not having any. Trevor has school. I have work. Maybe you’ve forgotten those things.”
“I know those things.” He splashes brandy into his mug and Ethan’s mug. “This guy will have some with me.”
“Ethan,” she says. “It’s Ethan.”
“I know that. Ethan will have some with me.”
“Just one,” says Ethan. “Then we should both go. Let Chris get some sleep.”
“Yes, indeed. She’s found a true gentleman.”
Ethan’s hands are folded in his lap and he’s doing that thing where he hunches forward when he wants to disappear into his surroundings. He knows he could never intimidate someone like Wes, but he decides he needs to sit upright and put his arms on the table to take up more space. He does that, then he wraps his hands around his mug and brings it to his lips. The ceramic is warm on his skin. The brandy in the coffee is sweeter than he thought it would be.
“Okay,” says Wes. “See. This is nice.”
“It’s time for you to go,” Chris says. “I want you to leave my house.”
Wes pours brandy into his coffee until it’s full again. “I’ll leave this house. Relax. I’m just not finished here. Let’s talk about something. How did you guys meet? How was your date?”
“We don’t want to talk about that,” says Chris.
“Well then, what’s your story? Ethan, what’s your story?”
Ethan sips. Ethan says, “Well, I’m two cubicles down from Chris . . .”
“No, no, no. Tell me something of substance. Any kids? Ever been married?”
“No kids. But I was married once. Kind of.” Ethan is surprised he let that out. But he’s also relieved. He glances at Chris and she looks curious, focused, clearly wanting more.
“Well?” says Wes. “Did she leave you? Did you leave her?”
“She left me. Or I guess I left her. But I didn’t want to. I mean, we were young, both twenty-two when we decided to do it, and it wasn’t going well. The marriage. We fought all the time, but I loved her when she was kind. But she yelled at me a lot, and I didn’t always know why. It was one of those things. I’m a quiet person, and I don’t ever like to argue. So I’d try to talk my way out of it. And she’d say, ‘Why are you so angry?’ even though I thought I was being calm, even though I never raised my voice.”
“That makes things worse,” says Wes. “You need to be passionate, too. You need to rise to the occasion, contribute to the argument.”
“Let him tell his story.”
“I can’t do that,” Ethan says. “I didn’t want to do that. I just want peace all the time. So we were twenty-two, and we’d gotten to know each other in the last year of college, and we started dating a few months before graduation, and then into summer, and we were working jobs and had two apartments, and in June we were just being spontaneous, and we got married, and I loved her. And, you know, you hear those stories about people. You hear, ‘Oh, we dated for three months or six months and got married and that was fifty years ago.’ So we thought, What the heck?”
Ethan’s finished about half his coffee, and Wes pours in another shot of brandy. Ethan has a sip. Wes and Chris seem to be waiting for him.
“So it was a brief up-and-down marriage. Two years. I found out later that she was bipolar or was something like bipolar. I don’t know. I knew she was depressed, but I didn’t know the extent of it. Her meds worked until they didn’t and then I wasn’t ready for the lows. She and her doctor were trying to find the right mix, and I read later that antidepressants need to be taken with mood stabilizers to prevent the wild highs and lows if someone’s bipolar, if that’s what she was, but I didn’t know then, and I wanted to be there for her. I told myself, ‘This is a commitment.’ And I told myself, ‘This is the life you chose.’ And I was going to endure the fighting as best I could because I hoped it would go away and we’d be back in love like we were so many times, and leaving didn’t seem an option for me. I just didn’t want to be a person who leaves a marriage. No offense. And maybe one day I would have. But in those days I told myself, ‘The thing to do is ride it out.’ So we had a couple of years together, the highs and the lows, and she mostly stayed in our apartment but some nights after fights she would drive to her mom’s and stay a night or two. And then one night she screamed at me and said I was the devil, and she stayed at her mom’s for a week until her mom called me and said that we’d never actually been married and that me and Lindsey—that’s her name—needed to decide if we could do this for real.”
“How were you not really married?” asks Wes.
“It’ll sound stupid. I felt stupid.”
“It’s okay,” says Chris.
“We had a small ceremony in her backyard. Her family, my family, friends from college. We had the ceremony and the reception there, and her uncle is a pastor, so he performed it. We signed the marriage license together and her uncle signed it as the officiant, and it was his job to turn it in, but apparently Lindsey’s mom convinced him to give it to her, to let her hang on to it. So we wore our rings and lived together and fought together and we were young and stupid and never thought it was funny that we didn’t get a marriage certificate in the mail.”
Chris says, “I thought my mother was controlling.” She pours a bit of brandy into her mug. “I’m having one,” she says. “Just one.”
“When did you find out?” asks Wes. “That you weren’t really married.”
“Taxes. But in the second year. So we got married in June, or thought we did, and then when April came we were scrambling to do taxes, and her mom told her we should just file individually since we’d waited and it was too close to the deadline. And we listened, and I just did mine online, clicking ‘single’ because of her advice, but then in the next spring I was planning ahead because I knew we’d get tax breaks filing jointly, and we had a big fight in March. Don’t ask me what about. And she was at her mom’s, and that’s when her mom called me. She said we weren’t really married, and she’d torn up the marriage license she’d never turned in, ripped it right in front of Lindsey to prove a point, and she said that now that we’d had a sampling, she would stand as a witness at the courthouse if we wanted to make it official. But that we needed to think long and hard about it.”
“What did you tell her?” asks Chris.
“My mind was racing, but I felt such relief, like I’d dodged a bullet. I told her mom, ‘I don’t think I can ever make your daughter happy. I don’t think I’m the right fit for her.’ And I know that marriage isn’t supposed to be about making the other person happy, but I felt like if what I experienced in those two years was a taste of the next twenty or thirty years, I just didn’t want it. And I think I really would have stayed married through all the bad years because that’s how I was brought up. You ride things out. You think about others. This gave me an out I never would have taken. She was way more than I could handle. Am I terrible? I feel like a terrible person sometimes. I didn’t want you to hear all of that this way.”
“It’s okay,” says Chris. “We’re getting to know each other. I don’t think you’re terrible. I don’t know what was to blame for your fights. Communication is tricky. But I don’t think you’re terrible.”
“She sounds crazy,” says Wes.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Chris says. “You don’t know what she was dealing with.”
“What I’m saying is, calm and fire don’t always pair well. That’s Mr. Calm right there. Some other man, I’d have to keep my hands on this club, keep it raised in the air to be able to stay here at this table with my ex, but not him. I saw that right away. Fire thinks it needs calm. Not always true. And calm probably always needs calm. I’ll be interested to see what becomes of the two of you there.”
“You don’t get to have a front seat for my relationships. Nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Ethan, Chris, and Wes drink from their mugs. Ethan’s coffee is lukewarm, but he doesn’t mind it that way because of the brandy’s sweetness. They shift in their seats.
“I was paralyzed for so long,” says Ethan. “Socially I mean. And emotionally. And I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t wonder how I could have been better, or more of what she needed. Maybe she did despise my gentleness. I don’t know. I just know she carried so much anger and I felt like it wasn’t my responsibility to endure it any longer. And I felt more than ever that life could be the most beautiful thing except that it never is. Do you guys know what I’m saying? Some things have potential. An athlete has potential to be something really special. Right? Two athletes, I mean. And one of them reaches their potential and wins a gold medal. But another one never really does. And fails. And, well, okay, that’s how potential works there. Some realize it, and some don’t. But what I’m talking about, what I’m saying, is that life has the potential to be incredible for every human being. And okay, I get that some people are born into really unfair circumstances. Of course I get that. We’re lucky here. Truly. But I’m thinking that there is so much beauty in the world. And when people click well together, they really click. So it seems like, yes, life can be so good. But the point I’m making is that life is never good. Ever. For any of us.”
Part 3: Enter Dumb Luck, accompanied by Restless Teens. Then enter the Vikings.
Chris pours more coffee into Ethan’s cup. Chris says, “It’s the good pockets. It’s the good pockets that make life worth living.” She sips from her mug. “That’s what I tell myself, anyway.”
“It’s good advice,” says Ethan. “I’ll remember it. The good pockets.” He adds a splash of brandy to his coffee, and Wes does the same. “But it still makes me think, you know, that we have so many bad pockets. That life in theory could be mostly wonderful for all of us, but it just isn’t.”
“You’re a depressing one,” says Wes.
“I’m just opening up.”
“Well, you could be happy if you had better perspective. So I’ll tell you a story that helped me. But before I get to it, you need to know I love Chrissy there, and I always will even though we split. But we recognized we needed to split. Didn’t we?”
“We did.”
“We’re better off for it. But you’re not doing enough in life, Ethan. Okay? You want to date my ex-wife, well that’s her choice, of course, but I’ll always hate you a little bit because part of me wishes we’d never split, and part of me loves her still, and all of me will be jealous seeing her with another man.”
“I gathered that when you kicked the door in.”
“I made my point.”
“What’s the story?” says Ethan.
“My story?”
“You said I needed to hear a story to gain perspective. You were going to show me the grand road to happiness.”
“Okay. Make fun if you want, but this story will change you.”
“Let’s hear it, then.”
“So our old neighbor across the street in that blue house. This happened to her sister’s husband. So there was this family. A husband, a wife, and two kids. One a teenage girl and one a boy of eleven. The wife in this story, that’s the neighbor’s sister.”
“Got it.”
“So on a Saturday morning at like five a.m. the husband gets up early. He normally isn’t up that early, but it’s spring and he hears the birds chirping and their dog is scratching at the door to go pee, so he gets up and he cracks open the back door for the dog, and then he makes a cup of coffee and he must have thought that he’d like to have his coffee on the back porch since it was a nice spring morning. With the birds and all. And he steps out onto the deck and the door closes behind him, and he’s standing there in the cool morning. He’s in his bathrobe holding that cup of coffee, and then bam! A bullet strikes him between the eyes and tears clean through his brain and into the kitchen. Just like that. In his own backyard. And when the coroner measured the distance between the dead husband’s eyes and the bullet hole, he said they were the exact same distance. The two eyes and the bullet hole in the forehead made a perfect triangle. An equidistant triangle.”
“Equilateral,” says Chris.
“Yes, same thing,” Wes says. “So, Ethan, you’re thinking a sniper, right? You’re wondering who was camped out in the woods behind their house? Who had it in for this guy and took a perfect shot? But it was just a random accident. There were these seventeen-year-old boys up to no good, still up from their Friday night, bored as hell, driving around shooting at mailboxes and street signs. Well, one of them missed a sign from two streets over and the bullet crossed over two streets, passed through a patch of woods, missing this tree, missing that tree, just going straight as can be without encountering any of those possible obstacles. Any one of those trees could have saved this man’s life. But it was just a random thing. Just real bad luck. And the bullet was just perfectly centered in his forehead. Dead like that. Perfectly centered.”
“This sounds made up.”
“It’s true,” says Chris. “They had a gathering across the street at her sister’s. A wake. We were invited but didn’t go.”
“I mean the details, I guess,” Ethan says. “It sounds like a story that had some truth but gets added to in its retelling.”
“It’s all true,” says Wes.
“It is,” Chris says. “And you left out the saddest part.”
“So the family heard the gunshot and raced downstairs. And there’s the wife and son and daughter weeping over his body. Trying CPR, calling an ambulance, screaming, but he’s dead and there’s nothing they can do. So of course they’re shocked and sad. But in the next few days it comes out that he was having an affair. His girlfriend finds out about how he died, and she thinks it’s a divine message. They were real religious. The whole family and the unknown girlfriend if you can believe it. So guilt sets in, and the girlfriend visits the family and confesses everything to the wife and the two kids. Says how they really loved each other but the husband couldn’t leave his kids, so they just kept their relationship secret. Well the sad part is—I think we agree this is what’s really sad—the sad part is that the wife and kids didn’t mourn his death after that. And you can understand the wife. But the goddamn kids. The son heard the girlfriend’s story and said, ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’ And the daughter looked at her mom and then back at the girlfriend and said, ‘Me too.’ And I just can’t imagine that part. You know. This man made a mistake. But he also took his kids to soccer practice. He helped with math homework. He stayed in the house to be there for them, and they say they’re glad he’s dead.”
“That’s what gets me,” says Chris. “I understand the wife’s anger. Was her name Sharon?”
“Sheryl.”
“But it’s sad the kids were hardened against him. And from what we heard, they kept that attitude. They were actually very glad he’d been shot in the head after his secret came out.”
Ethan says, “So this helps me because, what? I shouldn’t take life for granted? Any of us could die unexpectedly? Life is short, so make the most of it?”
“It made me think about how I want to be remembered,” says Chris. “And yeah, I think being reminded that we could die in unexpected ways, a car accident or something, that helps me appreciate what I have. I’m to the point where I want two things in life: to see Trevor live into his thirties or so and just make sure he’s got a good head on him and can take care of himself and be a decent person before I die.” She pauses, then sips her coffee, and then she pours just a bit more brandy in.
“And the other thing?” asks Ethan.
“I was going to say, just to have some little pleasures here and there. Just little joys here and there. But I actually do want to find someone to settle down with again. I know that. I do want to find someone to share in these coming years.” She squeezes Ethan’s hand. “Be patient with me, and we’ll see if we’re a fit or not.”
“I’d like to see that, too,” says Ethan.
Wes opens his mouth to speak, but he clears his throat and seems to have lost his words, so he finishes the liquid in his mug. Then he pours more brandy for himself and for Ethan, and he says, “I’m sorry I kicked your door in. It’s your door. I know that. It’s your door.”
“You just need to knock, okay? I might open it. I might not. But you can’t barge in. You can’t take things.”
“I didn’t take anything. But I’ll knock from now on. Whether you’re on a date with Ethan here or someone else. I mean, I won’t show up on those nights. But I’ll always knock other times.”
“You’ve taken things. Men take things. We’re in the past. What I’m talking about is raising Trevor.”
“What does that mean?” says Wes. “I’m a good dad.”
“You’re a great dad so much of the time. Okay. But look at you. You showed up buzzed, kicked in my door and waived around that damn golfclub, and now you’re getting drunk with a guy I’m trying to get to know. You interrupted our night. Has that not sunk in yet? If you weren’t sitting here at my table, Ethan and I would be alone. We’d be talking still or the night would have fizzled out and I’d be in bed. I don’t know. It wouldn’t be this. That’s all.”
“I said I was sorry,” says Wes.
“But you’re all energy. Men are too much energy. You’re a bolt of lightning. You’re rash. You’re walking desire. You’re selfish. Oh I could scream but I won’t because I’m thinking of someone other than myself. Why are men so selfish?”
Ethan thinks it’s not the best time to say something, but there’s a lull in the conversation and he’s warm with brandy, so he says, “You’re right. Men are often so selfish. And women certainly can be, too, but more men in this world act out of selfish desire.”
She says, “No.” She says, “What I’m talking about is just men. What I’m talking about is not what women do wrong. This is a man thing. Him with his golfclub. You as a boy wrecking your army men with your fist. I know you were only a boy. I know all boys play like that. But you’ve all got something pent up inside you. A man is a club waiting to swing. That’s what I know a man is. Maybe you’re not like that. Maybe you’re not fighting impulses anymore. But I’ve got a history that tells me to stay guarded, okay?” She squeezes Ethan’s hand again, then releases it. She brings her hands to herself, intertwines her fingers and lays her clasped hands in front of her chest. “All women have deep history even if they haven’t learned it yet.”
Wes says, “Now she’s going to tell you about the Vikings.”
“I wasn’t going to tell him about the Vikings. I’m just talking. I’m making a point.”
“Ask him what you asked me. Ask him if he’d still love you if you didn’t have a nose.”
“He doesn’t know me yet. He’s not in love with me. I wouldn’t ask him that.”
Ethan asks, “What’s with the Vikings?”
“They would invade these people,” says Wes. “They would invade, and the women would cut their own noses off.”
“You’re saying it wrong. You don’t get to talk about this. You still don’t get it.”
“She was a history major,” says Wes.
“That’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Will you tell it?” asks Ethan.
“When the Vikings were invading England, they ransacked monasteries because there was great wealth there. The monasteries had tons of goods and money. And there were mostly monks there but some nuns. But the convents were full of nuns. And these were women who devoted their lives to God. One of their main jobs was just to pray for people, just to think of others and try to make their lives better by lifting them up to God. But the Vikings raided the convents, too, and they would rape the nuns. They would do that, okay. They would just sail up and do that. And the nuns would hear reports of that happening. So if they saw ships coming, if they knew what was coming their way, they’d mutilate themselves. They would cut off their own noses, their ears. They would disfigure themselves so they wouldn’t be attractive to those men. They would rather be seen as grotesque and endure that kind of physical pain than have themselves be defiled. Okay. Only men do things like that. That’s part of my history, too.”
“That’s terrible,” says Ethan. “Heartbreaking. I mean it cuts to the heart. It’s heart-piercing, is what it is.”
“That’s the world women grow up in. Even now, okay? That’s the world.”
“I’m tired,” says Wes. “It’s been a long day.” And he stands, and he arches his back, and then all at once Ethan and Chris and Wes see Trevor standing there in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.
Trevor says, “Hi, Dad.”
Wes says, “Hey, bud. How’s my man?”
“Good,” says Trevor. “Just sleeping.”
Chris walks over to him. She says, “Back to bed. You’ll see daddy on Sunday.” And she directs the boy back down the hallway and disappears with him.
“Maybe we should go now,” says Ethan.
“First I’ve got to pee.” Wes heads to the bathroom by the front door.
Ethan touches the golfclub on the table, running his fingers from the handle down to the part that hits the ball. It’s cold. The toilet flushes by the door. Ethan rises to use the bathroom, too. He says to Wes, “I’ll walk you out in a minute.”
“Sure thing,” says Wes.
Ethan pees and washes his hands, then hangs the towel back up and comes out to see Wes passed out on the living room floor. He’s arranged the clean laundry into a pillow, and he’s spread out one of Chris’s flannels and a pair of jeans over himself as blankets. Ethan nudges him with a foot. “Time to go.” There’s no response. Wes breathes heavily.
He goes to check on Chris. He wants to ask her if she’s okay with Wes sleeping on the floor. He walks slowly down the hallway, unsure whether he’s violating any boundaries. There’s a cracked door with blue light coming out. Ethan pokes his head in, then tiptoes in. Chris and Trevor are sleeping in Trevor’s twin bed. On his dresser is a small lamp with a blue shade, and beneath it are rows of neatly lined-up dinosaurs, at least seven or eight ankylosauruses all in front. He has the urge to kiss the sleeping mother and son on their cheeks. But he backs out quietly and returns to where Wes passed out. Then he leaves Wes sleeping there, figures he shouldn’t be driving anyway.
Part 4: Enter Eros
Ethan grabs the golfclub, turns out the kitchen light, and leaves through the back door. He gets to his car in front of the house and realizes that he shouldn’t be driving either. He is buzzed, feeling restless. He needs to walk. He’s not sure what time it is now. Maybe one a.m. Maybe two. He doesn’t bother checking. He just walks.
He wonders if he’s falling in love with Chris. Actually, he thinks, I am in love with her. He’s just not yet certain if it will stick. He thinks it will. He knows falling for someone is the easy part. And he knows infatuations can pass quickly. But this seems like more than an infatuation. This feels like his heart is bursting, or growing, or maybe like it has a Chris-sized hole he really needs her to fill. He doesn’t know how to describe it. He just knows that he longs to be with her and he’s aching in a way he hasn’t in a long time. That’s what he knows.
He’s a few blocks from her house and still walking. He wonders what he would look like to others, a middle-aged man walking late at night with a golfclub in his hand. He doesn’t think anyone would find him dangerous, but he likes the idea of people thinking he’s mysterious. In third grade he spent months acting like a robot whenever Tara Felton was near because he wanted to seem mysterious to her. He wanted her to think there was something intriguing about him.
He walks past rows and rows of houses with neat square backyards, and then the houses end and he’s approaching a small bridge. He stops in the middle and looks down at the stream below. He finds some loose pebbles and rocks and lines them up. He grips the golfclub’s handle and raises his arms together and then he swings, then swings, then swings, then swings, and the rocks plop into the water, and he swings again and again and then the club slips away from him and splashes into the stream.
He thinks about walking back to his car now, but he has so much energy, and his heart is hurting for Chris, and he hates and loves feeling this way, and he walks farther away from her house to see where the road takes him.
Eventually the road leads to a small parking lot with a few shops, and he realizes he’s at the Laundromat Chris had directed him to earlier in the night, where they sat in blue chairs and he was nervous and unsure how he felt about her. The Laundromat is closed, and the small post office is closed, and the hardware store is closed, but there is a twenty-four-hour market with a neon sign lighting up the parking lot, and he steps through the automatic doors, and the sensors sound out a ding, and then the idea hits him.
He gets a basket and tosses in two packages of bacon, a dozen eggs, some butter, a loaf of bread, a box of pancake mix, frozen sausages, maple syrup, raspberry and blackberry jams, fresh strawberries, fresh blueberries, bananas, a cantaloupe, and napkins and a packet of paper plates with green leaves patterning the edges. Then at the checkout he also grabs two canvas bags to help him on his journey. The cashier is in his twenties or thirties. He is wearing a green and gray flannel shirt. His shaggy blonde hair reaches his shoulders. He scans the items and loads down the two canvas bags. His eyes are not bloodshot, but they are encircled in gray. He smiles with closed lips. Ethan pays for these things, and the cashier hands over the bags.
The cashier says, “You enjoy that feast.”
And Ethan says, “Life is actually quite amazing, isn’t it?”
And the cashier—this man one or two decades younger than Ethan, this spent man working at this market because of the little things that added up to place him at this place in this moment—he says, “If you say so, boss.”
And Ethan wants to inspire him, he wants to impress on him the beauty of the world, of relationships, of kind people and second and third and fourth chances at goodness and happiness, but he cannot do that with the few words he has to offer now, so Ethan says, “You take care,” and he exits the automatic doors to the same ding that announced his arrival.
Ethan walks the same route back to Chris’s house, stopping every now and then to set the bags down and rest his muscles before picking them up and walking to her. When he reaches the bridge, he kicks into the water the last pebble he’d missed with the golfclub. His body is tired, but his mind races and his heart beats hard with new joy.
He enters her house through the back door. He turns on the kitchen light and sets his bags on the table. Then he puts away the nearly emptied brandy bottle, and he sets his mug in the sink and Wes’s mug in the sink, and he picks up Chris’s mug and brings the porcelain to his lips, not kissing it exactly but just letting his lips rest against the brim where Chris took her sips. He puts the mug away but then he misses her, as if she was somehow right there with him when he touched and smelled and considered the surface that her lips had pressed against just hours ago, so he puts the porcelain to his lips again and stands like that for a while. At length he sets her mug in the sink with the others, but he doesn’t want to leave the dishes for her, so he washes them and places them upside down in the drying rack. There’s a rustling in the living room, and there in the shadows Trevor is asleep curled into Wes. The boy stretches his legs, then forms himself again to his father’s shape. Ethan wants to check on Chris to see if she’s okay in Trevor’s bed or if she’s made it to her own bed, but he doesn’t want to risk waking her and ruining the surprise and he’s still worried about overstepping boundaries in this young relationship.
In the kitchen, he makes pancakes and French toast and bacon and sausage. He cuts the cantaloupe and the strawberries and places the pieces in a large bowl and then sprinkles the blueberries on top of them and around the edge. He fries four eggs and then scrambles the rest. He wishes he had remembered cheese and peppers and onions for the scrambled eggs, but he doesn’t want to open Chris’s fridge just yet to check and see what she has, and he thinks the plain eggs will be okay because there is salt and pepper there on the counter anyway. Then he pops in four pieces of toast, and he arranges all the food neatly in the center of the table, and he puts down four paper plates and silverware. He knows they’ll have to microwave everything before they eat together, but all he wants is for the display to be perfect when Chris wakes to see the feast.
Then he washes the pans and utensils he used and puts them in the drying rack with the mugs, careful not to splash Trevor’s clean dinosaur pjs folded there at the edge of the counter. He stands alone in the lighted kitchen, and he thinks about lying down on the living room floor, too, to get an hour of sleep before the household rises, but he doesn’t want to weird out Trevor or anger Wes, and he absolutely knows it would be inappropriate for him to try to find another place in the house to sleep. His mind is still screaming ChrisChrisChris, and his blood is stirring in his limbs, his chest thumping with possibility, so he exits the backdoor for some fresh air, and then he thinks he’d like to walk some more, and he thinks maybe it will be good for Chris to see the breakfast he’s prepared without him being there. Maybe it will be best for her to take in all that he did, and then when he comes back and joins them, she’ll smile and hug him and say, You shouldn’t have. Oh, you really shouldn’t have. But thank you.
He’s walking back to the bridge to sit there and stare at the water until the sun comes up, but then Ethan’s thinking that Chris might not want to wake up and find Wes still in the house. He had every intention of walking him out before he fell asleep on the floor. He decides he must do that for her. Escort Wes home. So he turns back toward the house, walks through the kitchen yet again, admiring his beautiful feast once more, and then he approaches the sleeping Wes and nudges him gently. Ethan wonders, Is it odd that I kind of feel like my hopefully-new girlfriend’s ex-husband is becoming my friend? But Wes doesn’t budge when Ethan nudges him a second, then a third time. Actually, thinks Ethan, screw this guy. Ethan pulls hard on Wes’s arm and is able to drag him a few feet away from the sweet sleeping Trevor. Trevor rolls over, and Ethan places a couch cushion where Wes had been, and Trevor wraps his arms and one leg around the cushion and stays asleep.
Ethan keeps dragging Wes across the floor until he gets him into the kitchen by the broken backdoor. Then he fills up a glass of water and dumps it on Wes’s head. Wes shoots up, towering above Ethan, and he looks like he’s about to yell, What the hell? But before his lips can part, Ethan whispers, “It’s Melinda. She needs you. There’s been an emergency.”
And Ethan ushers Wes outside into the dark morning air, darting away while leading Wes by the bicep. Wes stumbles along, saying, “Melinda. Melinda. What’s wrong with Melinda?”
“She needs you,” says Ethan. “She called here in a panic. Where’s your car? Is that it?”
Ethan fishes Wes’s keys out of his pocket. He helps Wes into the passenger seat. And Ethan drives them away, crossing the bridge and the stream—the stream where Wes’s golfclub sits at the bottom, the moving water no doubt stripping away its shine. Wes falls back asleep while Ethan drives a few more blocks away. Ethan doesn’t want to drive too far since he still needs to walk back to his own car at Chris’s house. He finds a street where the houses give way to a field. The neighborhood is still being developed. Eventually it will be all houses with little yards, but for now there is an open field, and Ethan drives Wes’s car into the center of the open space. He turns off the engine. He holds the keys. He wants to hurl the keys into the grass. He wants to swallow the keys. He wants to walk back to the stream and toss them in beside the golfclub. His better self is saying, Just leave the keys in the car. But he takes them. He slips them into his pocket and starts yet another trek back to Chris’s house.
He reaches the bridge. The sun will be up soon. He has now decided that he would like to eat breakfast with Chris and Trevor. He’s very tired now. A bit delirious. But he’ll be fine with coffee. And he’d like to be there when she sees the feast he made for the three of them, when she dresses Trevor in his dinosaur pjs for Pajama Day at school and then says to him, Eat over your plate, honey. We don’t want any syrup dripping on your pjs. Ethan and I don’t have time to go to the Laundromat again. And if she said that, would she wink or smile? Perhaps both. Perhaps a smile and then a little wink. And he’s thinking this while staring at the stream, watching the trickle move down its path, mesmerized by the faint light reflected on the water, and then an arrow screams out of the darkness and buries itself into his heart, and he falls to his knees in shock, and he cranes his neck down and there in his chest is a circle of blood widening and widening around the arrow’s shaft until so much of his shirt is red. And it looks as though the arrow lodged itself dead center into his heart, and he can feel that yes, it stopped the beating right in the center, and before he crumples forward, he wants to weep for the life he almost had, but all he can do is wonder about where the arrow came from, and he knows that later in the day someone will give an explanation to Chris. Someone will learn how this randomness unfolded: perhaps some boy rising early, grabbing his bow and quiver from the closet, slipping into the backyard and shooting arrow after arrow into his practice target until he loads the final one, aiming for the bullseye that’s eluded him so far, holding his breath in anticipation of the release, then letting it loose at the same time some bird squawked overhead, causing him to jerk upward and send the arrow above the target, missing his mother’s magnolias and the pines beyond the fence until it embeds itself in Ethan’s heart, striking him there while he’s standing alone on the bridge. And the story will circulate at kitchen tables, and the listeners will gasp and say, I don’t believe it, while the tellers insist, No, but it really happened.
But Ethan knows they’ll tell it wrong. Whatever explanation the daylight reveals won’t be the real story. He’s read things, too. And he’s thinking about how the Greek Eros was a fierce warrior god before the Romans named him Cupid. And what a ridiculous guise he’s been given since, a chubby angel with a tiny bow and arrow gracing the fronts of five-dollar cards in February. Because Eros rode on a lion’s back. Eros hurled great spears. And when his massive arrows connected, they consumed all they hit. Ethan is still on his knees. He thought his heart had stopped beating, but now he’s not sure. Now he wants to stand and return to the table, but he doesn’t have the strength. Now he wants to run to Chris and live for her with this arrow guiding his words and actions, but he cannot move, and he is bleeding and bleeding, and he hopes that the sleeping duo will think fondly of him when they rise and see the breakfast awaiting them. He hopes they will smile between bites, smile before their work and school, before learning fragments of his story. Ethan is about to slump over. But first he focuses on the view: the stream, the enormous lion walking away, and the back of the cruelest god, glowing proudly after reminding Ethan what it’s really like, the arrow embedded just deep enough to affect the ridiculous throbbing.
Derek Updegraff is the author of the novel Whole (Slant Books, 2024) and two fiction collections. His stories have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and other places. Originally from southern California, he lives and teaches in South Carolina.