All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [70]
The Peruvian birthday party is a big success, everyone complimenting the food and the photos of the trip. Guillermo has made perfect pisco sours with a little egg foam on top. Evan is his usual gregarious self, all my friends tell me how it seems as though they’ve known him for years, we have a rousing romp at the end of the evening, and I go to bed happy to be forty-five, or at least satisfied that I’ve arrived at middle age in good spirits.
My actual birthday is two days later, and I have plans to meet Evan at my favorite kind of place, a southern Italian–style trattoria with locally grown food and an honest wine list. I go to a yoga class and am feeling balanced and flexible. When Evan shows up at the restaurant, late, he is carrying a Hallmark bag covered in pink roses.
I open my present. Inside is a bar of chocolate. A large bar, to be fair. It is not, though, Turkish gold earrings, tickets to an Elvis Costello concert, the new Murakami novel, or a CD of love songs he compiled just for me. It is not even artisanal French chocolate or Fair Trade single-estate 72% cacao. It is not any of the words that go perfectly well with “forty-fifth birthday,” “girlfriend,” and “present.” But it is dark chocolate, which is my favorite. I thank him, lift my glass, and focus on the tiny prosecco bubbles.
I’m not quite sure what turn the conversation takes between the appetizers and the main dish. I know I get pensive around birthdays, trying to sort out the big picture—what do I want in life, who are we together, have we examined all the red flags, why don’t you like broccoli rabe with anchovies—but somewhere two-thirds of the way into the Barbera, I hear Evan say, “Maybe we should just break up.” He isn’t asking for my opinion.
That definitely isn’t the way I imagined things: breaking up on a birthday—a multiple-of-five birthday, no less—over dinner, in public. I can’t believe it’s happening. But there he is, moving his mouth, apologizing, saying he is just a guy, I’ll find a better one, none of his relationships lasts long, it isn’t the end of the world, it just didn’t work out, we aren’t in love. All of this is undeniably true, no matter how I might have tried to see it otherwise, but it is my birthday, my forty-fifth f—ing birthday, the finish line in my campaign to better myself—and I don’t like having those particular facts pointed out right now.
When the server approaches the table, I am embarrassed that tears are rolling down my cheeks, pooling into my new coral satin bra—which, now, no one will admire (and which cost the equivalent of forty big bars of chocolate).
“I’m sorry,” I tell the waitress in Italian, which Evan does not speak. She gives me a kind smile and a shrug. “Non fa niente,” she says. It’s nothing.
“Can you believe,” I go on, trying to explain why I have completely lost it over the excellent milk-fed pork, “that this stronzo is breaking up with me? On my forty-fifth birthday?”
“Him?” she replies, pushing back her black curls. Without skipping a beat: “I thought he was gay.”
I retreat to the restroom to wash my face, and when I return, she’s put a piece of serious dark chocolate cake on the table, with a candle. This is one of those occasions when you can rely on both Italians and really good dark bitter chocolate—not a big bar of grocery store chocolate—to comfort and cheer you. “He’s not worth it, cara,” she says. “You’ll find someone better.”
Evan reaches his fork over for a bite of the cake, but I intercept, push it away, cut him a sliver, and place it on his plate. There will be no more sharing from the same dish. There will be no more living with jock talk in the morning and no more moving to the suburbs. I realize I am going to miss his dog. I tell Evan we could be friends, which I know probably won’t turn out to be true, and blow out the candle.
But what can I wish for? I’m