Her hair was down tonight, reflecting a luminous gold halo from the light, and it fell in her face as she stared at the table, the other diners, the bay windows, anything that wasn’t me. Mary had an apple face, the kind of wide cheeks that could scoop up happiness and share it with buoyant democracy, but I couldn’t find any joy in her tonight.
She wore her 1950s blue shirtwaist dress, and I’d hugged her when she came downstairs at the house, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “Hello, beautiful.” She smiled and ducked away. I assumed it was because Elsa was sitting on the couch watching us, but Mary acted the same way the rest of the night. Polite. Distant. Like the entire evening was more of a chore than mucking out Elsa’s chicken barn. The movie didn’t help and that was completely my fault. I picked Knocked Up because Mary liked romantic comedies and it had gotten good reviews, but neither of us laughed much. We hadn’t used birth control since our wedding night and after three years of trying for a baby, she had to sit there and watch two idiots pretend to get pregnant in a sloppy one-night stand.
“I’m sorry about the movie.”
She finally looked up at me. “It’s okay.”
“I should have thought of it.”
“No, really, Peter.” Mary sat up straighter as someone came and quietly put the dessert on the table between us. “Babies haven’t been on my mind lately.”
“That’s too bad. After this I wanted to go park the car somewhere and neck. Or more.” I winked at her. She said nothing so I continued, hopeful.
“It feels like we’re back in the dorms again. Waiting for our roommates to leave, or finding a quiet park. Remember the second floor of the Fourth Street ramp? The side where the lights didn’t work?”
She took a spoonful of chocolate and shook her head. “We have to get back. We’ve already been gone too long.”
“Elsa’s done fine on her own for seventy-three years. She’ll make it through another hour.”
Mary took another bite, ignoring me. Then she abruptly set the spoon down and crossed her arms.
“What is it?”
“Ten dollars for chocolate mousse. That’s crazy.”
“Well, it’s even crazier to order it and not eat it then.” I dug in. It was damn good. Light and rich and not too sweet.
“Try another bite. This one’s the ten-dollar bite.” I hovered a spoonful in front of her face and she sighed before taking it.
She started eating again, but quietly, unwilling to engage. I drank the rest of my coffee and tried to draw her out. Nothing worked.
When the bill came, Mary immediately grabbed it. She paid the waiter and picked up her purse. “Are you ready?”
“Elsa’s fine,” I said, rubbing her arm as we walked to the car.
“I know,” she replied, even though we both knew her mother wasn’t fine.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Sixty-eight dollars for dinner, Peter. On top of twenty for the movie. Who do you think is going to pay for all that?”
“I’ve got a job. We’ll have money.” Her irritation was slowly seeping into me now, too.
“You haven’t even started working yet and you’re already spending it.”
“I just wanted us to go out and have a nice time,” I said over the car roof before we both got in and slammed the doors.
The road to Pine Valley was a dark, flat, two-lane highway lined with crop fields. Neither of us bothered with the radio. The evening seemed, unfortunately, past the point of salvation.
If I was going to be honest—which, with every passing mile of towering cornstalks, sounded like an increasingly reasonable idea—I still couldn’t quite figure out how I’d gotten here.
I was a Minneapolis kid. I grew up hanging out at uptown coffee shops, debating the cover art of my high school literary magazine over pasta at Figlio’s, and spending every weekend flipping through CDs at the Electric Fetus. I met Mary at the U and we got married the summer after graduation. We were probably too young, but Mary’s parents were old. She’d been a late-life baby, their ultimate surprise after years of infertility and relinquished dreams. They gave Mary every opportunity, lavished her with love and support, and in return she wanted to give them the gift of seeing her married and settled. I maxed out my credit card and put that diamond on Mary’s finger and we stood at the altar of her hometown church while Mary’s parents beamed from the front row. The wedding comforted both of us when, the very next spring, her father had a massive heart attack and died planting his soybean fields.
After the wedding, we found a Victorian one-bedroom rental on the bus line, and I started grad school while Mary got a job at one of the banks downtown.
And then congestive heart failure came along.