The Cleaving

A fancy restaurant. He was certain. The table cloth. Fine stemware. Linen napkins. Classical music playing.

Mike gripped the arms of his chair. He’d never been here before, and he couldn’t remember how he got here, but still he had a sense of peace that all was working as it should. That peace was the best he had most days.

Setting his hands on the table, he looked at them as though they belonged to someone else. How did they get so old—shriveled, mottled, the skin like wax paper, barely hiding the inner workings no one should see?

A window table. Nice, for he loved Michigan Avenue. He watched as people passed by outside, busy with their day. No one looked in at him, which felt strange. It seemed only fair that someone should watch him too. A child—four, five, he wasn’t sure—pulled away from her mother and ran to the window. Mike smiled and curled his hand in a small wave.

The little girl didn’t smile but stared at him. He put his hand to the glass—cold. A shiver went through him. It must be winter. Then, the girl’s lips moved—she said something—but Mike couldn’t hear it, and her mother grabbed her by the hand and tugged her along to rejoin the river of people.

Lunchtime—he was hungry. He glanced back across the table. She’d returned. She reached out and touched his hand, and so he smiled back. He should—he knew that, for she was beautiful.

“Who was that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Some little girl.”

He thought for a moment, then he tried it out—the words. “It looked like … for a minute … like …”

“Like Laurie.” She tilted her head and smiled. “Our granddaughter?”

He nodded—twice. Do you do that twice? “Laurie! Yes, like Laurie.”

Mike watched her eyes scan the restaurant and return to him. People were looking at them. The shame came in these fleeting moments when he felt as if he were a small child again, caught doing something he didn’t know was wrong. “Am I too loud?”

She shook her head and smiled. “No, Mike. You’re fine. They’re jealous of us—two young lovers.” She touched his hand once more, but he pulled away almost knocking over his water glass. An ice-cold splash wet the back of his hand, causing him to flinch.

Mike wasn’t young. He’d seen his hands. Neither was she. She’s so patronizing. He thrust his hands into his blazer.

A young man stood beside the table. “Have you decided?”

The man looked at him.

The menu lay on the table in front of Mike. He grabbed it, knocking over his glass. He gasped as the ice water flooded his lap. Deb jumped up from her seat, and the young man started moving things on the table and wiping up the spill with a towel.

He couldn’t move. The young man spoke to him with words you would use with a little girl, like the girl in the window. “No harm. It happens all the time.”

The man placed a towel on Mike’s lap. He felt embarrassed, but he didn’t understand. The man reeked of food: sour, fermented, fried, saucy, all of it.

“No!” Mike shoved the towel onto the floor.

She sighed, her face reddening. “We’ll be fine. Give us a second.”

When the man walked away, she came and bent beside him, retrieving the towel and patting his lap. “It’s okay. Let me handle it,” she said, her tone clipped.

She pecked him on the cheek and went back to her seat. “You feel like the usual?”

He put a finger in his collar, tugging at it. The menu made no sense. Maybe it was French. He remembered liking French food. “I’ll have the coq au vin.” His favorite.

“Michael, they only have pasta here. I will get you the angel hair—that’s your favorite.” She smiled, showing her teeth. She was pretending.

“I don’t like angel hair! You know I hate Italian.”

She smiled again, but her brow furrowed.

He was being too loud. He knew it.

The young man now with a little electronic box.

“We’ll both have the angel hair with the bolognaise sauce,” she said.

He poked at his box, looked at Mike, nodded, and then walked away.

His mind failed him again, but finally the word came. Pasta—no, no! He let out a deep sigh and started to put the thoughts … in order. He’ll tell her. Why is she doing this? She doesn’t love him anymore.

But he stopped. A small rivulet of the spilled water made its way toward the edge of the table and dripped in his lap. Yes, the water. The wetness in his trousers chilled him, but the clingy, damp fabric became enlivened now—moving.

And he felt the stream, smelled the crisp water, heard its murmuring. They laughed, he and she, wading through the ice-cold shallows. She wobbled and laughed. He caught her waist from behind and they fell back into the stream together. The water stung his legs. They were waist-deep, but he kept holding her to him, and she didn’t move. Instead, she relaxed. The heat of her body against him was pure joy.

Her hands still covered his there in the water. How could they be so warm in the cold?

He looked at her across the table, her hand on his, warm.

“I remembered, Deb.” He smiled but he was so sad inside—and so tired.

“I do too.”

She stood and moved to him and dabbed his eyes with her napkin. “Now, stop your blubbering or they’ll think we’re newlyweds.”

“We are.”

Her expression changed and her face colored.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

He wasn’t certain, but he was sorry.

Deb was looking at him, waiting for something, but then said, “Don’t be silly.”

She gave his hand a squeeze and turned to the window.

He was sorry—he was sure he was, and that he should feel this way with his sadness. But the classical music was so fine. He turned to the window and put his hand to the glass, welcoming the chill and watching the stream flow past.

✧ ✧ ✧

This story is a work of fiction. Except where explicitly identified in the afterword, the names, characters, and incidents herein are a product of the author’s creation and any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.

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