I was in a fabulous dress and fantastic shoes, sitting in a beautiful restaurant next to a world famous lake with people who were worldly yet kind.
And a year ago I was in a rotten marriage with an abusive husband and I’d given up on life because I’d convinced myself there was no way out.
Sam probably barely remembered me, considering how many people he had to meet in his life. He certainly wouldn’t recognize me from the back.
So. Onward.
Onward!
This was my motto since Cooter took a shotgun blast to the head.
Freaking onward.
I smiled at Celeste and whispered, “Better than all right. Thank you so much for bringing me here. I don’t even have to eat and it’s my most favorite restaurant in the world.”
Celeste smiled at me as she reached across the table, took my hand and gave it a squeeze. I squeezed hers back. Then I smiled at Thomas.
Then I took the menu I belatedly noticed the maitre d’ holding out to me.
*
I was sitting on the balcony of my hotel with a snifter in my hand filled with one piece of ice and a healthy dose of Amaretto.
I’d ordered a double.
Dinner was delicious. The company even better. And Sam hadn’t noticed me.
He also hadn’t left (not that I noticed, unless there was another exit) by the time we left. He would have to walk by our table and he didn’t. I didn’t want to be but I was on edge all night, waiting for him to do it and hoping he didn’t notice me.
But, even though we ate four seriously delicious courses and took our time, he did not walk by our table.
And when we left, I made certain to get up and walk out without looking back. I put everything into doing it casually, appearing natural so Sam wouldn’t read the effort like he’d done at breakfast.
But it didn’t matter if I pulled it off or not. Even if he noticed and recognized me, it was highly likely he wouldn’t care. In fact, he told me himself such behavior would be a relief.
So there I was, having a nightcap, staring at the dark waters and the blinking lights dotting the sides of the lake and doing this because I was really full and would never sleep even if it was way late but also because, even if I was alone on the balcony and no one could see me, I really didn’t want to take my fabulous outfit off yet.
I lifted my snifter and took a sip. I’d always liked Amaretto. My mother drank Amaretto sours everywhere she went. She made desserts with Amaretto in them. Dad had bought her an expensive set of Waterford snifters for Christmas when I was ten years old so she could further enjoy her Amaretto. She was an Amaretto freak. We had a bottle in our house at all times.
This she had given to me. I loved Amaretto too. Though, when Cooter was alive, the bottle I kept in the house I hid because it pissed Cooter off I spent so much on a bottle of liqueur I sipped on a very rare occasion when he wasn’t around. Clearly, he didn’t think me going through a bottle of Amaretto once every year and a half and him going through a case of beer once a week was fair.
On this thought, my eyes welled with tears and I pulled in a deep breath, rethinking my solitude and my double of almond liqueur on top of three glasses of wine at dinner.
This had been happening unexpectedly, mysteriously and with relative frequency since the day after my plane touched down in Paris. I had not shed tear one since Ozzie came to the house and broke the news, I hadn’t even felt my nose sting but since I started my vacation, it seemed to happen all the time.
I had no idea why and I had, until that moment, been so busy I was able to power through it without giving any headspace to wondering why.
But now, alone, sated, a wee bit tipsy, relaxed, my guard was down and my head flooded.
And it flooded with a memory, years ago, of having dinner at Mom and Dad’s house. After dinner, Dad and Cooter had gone into the living room to watch something on TV and Mom and I had done the dishes. When we were finished, we sat down at the dining room table which we were wont to do when Dad and Cooter were lapsing into food comas in front of the TV (Mom was a comfort food cook, as in, that was all she ever made) and it was time to right all the wrongs in the world.
It was just that, that night, Mom had a specific wrong she wanted to right.
At that time, I’d been married to Cooter for a year and a half. Looking back, I couldn’t say Cooter treated me with love and affection in the three years we were together prior to getting hitched, he’d treated me being on his arm like it was his due. But he’d never been cruel. Then, for whatever reason it commenced, Cooter had started to tear me down three months after we got married. This started small, incidences I could easily sweep aside as bad moods or anxiety due to a change of life, marriage, mortgage, needing to grow up fast and hold down a job in order to take care of home and hearth.
But it quickly escalated.
So by that time, I’d had huge chunks torn from me.