Strangled - Brian McGrory [67]
She finally moved beyond the realm of verbalized politesse and said, “I heard you were getting married. I’ve been meaning to call and congratulate you. But you know, you violated our agreement. We’re supposed to inform each other of moves, deaths, marriages, and births.”
I didn’t remember any such agreement, though I kind of liked the sentiment. I smiled a weary smile and thought about the number of times we’d sat on the couch together, or lain in bed, or faced each other on bar stools, sitting close, one of us telling of a recent failure, the other there to do the propping up, always successful until the day it wasn’t, and then the relationship wasn’t a relationship anymore.
I said, “But you didn’t read the follow-up story of me not getting married?” I shook my head self-consciously, expressing, or at least trying to, the full depths of my idiocy in male-female relationships.
She looked surprised without being particularly disappointed, though maybe I was reading too much into that. “Um, why not?” she asked.
Blunt now. She pulled her hair back with both arms in that way she always did, getting it out of her face, getting ready to have a serious talk.
I said, “You know. Life.”
“Or death?”
Clever, her referring to my wife’s death six years before, something that Elizabeth ended up believing would color me for the rest of my days, making it impossible to have a normal, healthy relationship with a normal, healthy woman.
I leaned forward now, my elbows on my knees, looking at her with a cocked head. I said, “No, I’m pretty sure it’s life. You know, sometimes two people aren’t meant to get married, even if they first thought they were, and it’s not because the guy’s wife died.”
She nodded. “Point taken. What went wrong?” Not dropping it, and unapologetic in her pursuit of facts.
“I’m not really sure. I haven’t talked with her.”
She looked at me with a flash of incredulity and bemusement.
“So how did you tell her you didn’t want to get married?”
“I didn’t.”
She guffawed, which probably wasn’t the most endearing or empathetic reaction to this revelation. Then she said, “She called it off, not you?”
“Long story, though I guess not really. I was sitting down at Caffe Vittoria that morning trying to figure a way out of things. I mean, the woman is terrific — for somebody else. I swear, someone’s going to marry her someday soon and think they’ve hit the fucking lottery.
“We were going to do a little justice-of-the-peace deal and then head to Hawaii, you know, everything very low-key. So I finally get up the guts to call her, and when I do, she tells me she’s in the Atlanta airport. It’s five hours before we’re due to be married, maybe less. I say, ‘What are you doing down there?’
“And she comes back with, ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. I was just about to call you.’
“She literally fled town. I haven’t seen her since.”
Elizabeth looked at me incredulously. “You’re sure you didn’t pull a Jack on her without realizing it? You didn’t send her signals? You didn’t drive her away? You didn’t do that thing where you kind of cut her off from everything you’re doing and thinking because you’re afraid to let someone else in?”
Pull a Jack. “That’s real nice,” I said. “Thank you for your heartfelt sympathy in this most trying time.”
I said that last part with intentional, mocking formality. She laughed and absently dropped her hand on the outside of my leg like she always used to do and said, “I’m sorry, but come on. You know how you can be.”
“And I know how you are, which is not very nice.”
Past the awkwardness, everything very familiar again, comfortable.
She asked, “And you really haven’t talked to her since?”
I shook my head.
“What are you doing out here? Don’t tell me you went on your honeymoon on your own.”
I smiled and said, “No. Story.” I didn’t tell her what, and she had obviously been too busy with her friend in LA to have