Erik shook his head. “I don’t know what surprises me anymore. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Melanie had asked for a divorce ten months ago. Erik conceded. She wondered if she might have the upright piano. He agreed. She asked if she could take the dog. It killed Erik, but he let Harry go.
Then she threw a plate at him.
It went wide and smashed in pieces against a far wall but the intent behind it was unmistakable. “You are emotionally retarded, you know that, Erik? Goddammit, you won’t fight for anything you love,” she said. “You spineless victim.”
And she moved out. With the dog. It was the ugliest moment in an otherwise smooth, no-fault divorce that took less than a year.
Now Melanie leaned forward and began tapping her index finger on Erik’s left hand. He looked at her, looked down at his hand as her tapping grew more deliberate.
“What?” he said. His wedding band was gone. So was hers. They had sold the diamond and used it for lawyers’ fees. But she wasn’t tapping his ring finger, she was tapping down by his wrist, flicking with her nail, nudging his hand to turn over. When it was palm up, her fingertip came to rest on his tattoo.
“You never got over her,” she said, her voice filled with kindness he didn’t deserve. “You just left.”
Erik breathed slowly. “I was young,” he heard himself say. His weight was down again. He hadn’t had breakfast and one beer was already sinking gooey fingers into his brain.
“You started calling for her in your sleep,” Melanie said. “The last few months I was at home. It was November—the dreams always come back to you in the fall. I was used to the thrashing around and the wordless crying out. But then you started calling for her.”
Erik clenched his fist and turned the tattoo down to face the table. His other hand came to catch his brow.
“Hey,” Melanie said, squeezing his hand. “I’m not telling you now to accuse you. I just… I worry about you, baby. You’re not mine to worry over anymore, but I do. I want you to be all right. It’s fall, November’s in two days, the dreams will start coming again. And I don’t want you to be lying next to your second wife calling Daisy’s name.”
It settled onto his shoulders, the great wrong he had done this fine woman. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Mel, I’m so sorry.”
“I forgive you,” she said. Then she sat back, rolling her eyes “Dig me. Can you tell I’ve been going back to church? And doing some therapy?”
“Growing your soul and shrinking your head,” he said. “It’s good stuff.”
“I won’t lie and say we didn’t talk about you.”
“You’re talking about me in church?”
She kicked him under the table. “Smartass.”
He smiled. “Anyway, it’s only supposed to be about you in therapy.”
“If I’m paying, I’ll make it about whatever the fuck I want.”
He laughed, let go her fingers and reached to touch her cheek. He did like her, and it made a warm little dent in the genuine sadness which had cloaked him during the divorce proceedings.
The one drink turned into a two-hour boozy lunch. The beers loosened their tongues and hearts. They cried a little, but they also laughed a lot. And afterward, when they stumbled out onto the sidewalk and Erik hailed a cab, they were still laughing.
“Your heart is huge,” Melanie said, putting a foot into the well of the car.
“Your love is amazing,” he said, holding the door.
She put her cheek against his. “You’re good.”
“You’re adorable.”
Erik waved as the taxi pulled away, laughing when Melanie gave him the finger out the window and catching the kiss she blew before the cab turned the corner.
*
“It was weird,” Erik said to Miles as they ran through Corbett Park.
“How so?”
“It felt almost celebratory. We just got divorced and we were having a party.”
“Would you rather she told you to fuck off forever?”