He ran his hand over the wooden picnic bench and felt a smooth divot where countless hands, ring fingers mysteriously out of a Friday night had caressed the oak or cedar top. Naked from any claim or memory, lightly unhinged and waiting like he waited now for her to come back from the bathroom. It was a long bathroom break he thought to himself but wondered if maybe she was doing something else. The way women used to go to powder rooms and re-apply their make-up that had melted off or washed off over the span of the evening. Tears, or rain or wind or snow or the salty taste of sweat dripping off your forehead. Some skinny man behind the counter shuffles and keeps eyeing the table, his movements are measured by minute to minute interactions with the divorcees and the future divorcees whispering softly that nothing without sweat or tears or rain or snow will ever work out.
He wondered if he had told her, the woman in the bathroom about the time he was engaged for a span of entirely three months which felt like the six years that preceded it. Until he came home to his fiancé and another man in their bed. He wondered if he told her about after the break-up, his future wife had told him about all of the seven times she cheated on him with other men and one woman. The love that was made in their bed while he was working overnight at the call center. How the headset left marks on his cheek, how dry his throat would get. How tired he would be walking to his car under the strange green-lit parking lot. Had he told her about how he left the job? Or how he was let go after the mess of his life spilled over onto his desk and into the conversations with claimants and policyholders, the tears onto the papers and the awkward hallway conversations with managers and regional managers. Under the false halogen moonlight backrooms. These people weren’t sympathetic, in a system built on sympathy and empathy there were as vacant as the left side of the bed in their home. In what was their home, she had given him thirty days to get out and he had managed to make it in three, shoving his clothes into trash bags and taking a moment to look back at Clementine. “Clem” they called her was the small gray kitten she had gotten for her as a surprise while she was visiting her parents in England. The now 4 year old full grown cat stares back, having stopped playing with the trash bags scattered across the bedroom floor. This is always the worst part of any of these things. Who decides what happens to “them” the unspoken for, the pets and the infant children with their lack of language cry and scream and run after the end of things instead of away from it. Clem stares back and he swears there is some exchange here. Some sort of good-bye or good-luck or good-job being that aside from the marriage, everything else around them turned out just fine. They hadn’t had any kids yet but if they did they would be probably in their infant state or at least very young and clinging to some crib walled thing. Looking over the edge of the world as they know it past the toy mobile and binkies and stuffed animals to see collapse.
“One day you’ll miss me” He thinks to himself. Some years later he gets a strange Facebook message and the hard English accent is pulling through.
Immediately after the split she went back home to England with her parents and spent time there. Got accepted into a literary revue attached to the distinguished Trinity College. They catch up strangely well and there is nothing strained about the interaction, nothing official; they talk briefly about the one time they attempted to get back together a few years after the split. She was still in the house and invited him over for drinks after a few ghostly instagram conversations and a movie date had been arranged. Maybe he was stupid or lonely or both and it seemed she was the same. She was stupid drunk sitting in their bedroom just like they used to do after seeing some movie about an alcoholic woman who covets motherhood and watches the lives of others from a seemingly never ending train ride. Its gotten late and she tells him he’s too drunk to drive but if he’s going to stay it has to be for good. Something about the idea makes him run. He did not forget and the gravel of the long driveway leading up the house chatters under the tires of his 1996 Nissan. The one that was at one time parked for so long in front of the house it had permanent stains on it from autumn leaves collecting. The headlights illuminate the address one last time, before disappearing into memory.