Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [70]
By the end of the main course, I really just wanted to be alone with my baby. I loved Liz’s family dearly and I knew that they loved me, but we hadn’t yet figured out how to mourn together, and I needed that to heal. Especially today. When dessert was served, I grabbed Madeline, presumably for a diaper change, and left for a walk around the hotel where the restaurant was. I sat down in a big leather chair in the middle of the lobby and gave up keeping my shit together. What a scene: a bearded man alone with a baby, crying like a little bitch in the lobby of one of the nicest hotels in Canada. I let myself sit there for ten minutes, and then returned to the table without a word.
After dinner, we all drove together back toward our condo. I was still feeling restless. While we waited for a traffic light in the center of town to turn green, I said quickly to no one in particular, “Would you mind taking care of Madeline for a bit?”
They were kind of caught off guard, and without any fanfare or hesitation, I thanked them and hopped out of the car, striding alone toward the bars I had been thinking about all evening.
The place I walked into had horrible live music, but I needed booze to dull my senses more than I needed to be a music snob. I sat down at a table near a window, far away from the few people who were inside. Minutes later a waitress stood over me, listing off a bunch of Canadian beers from memory. The last one she mentioned caught my attention: Kokanee. Liz and I drank that crap on a retreat we took to Whistler with the first company she worked for. I ordered it along with a shot of whiskey.
The waitress returned with my drinks and placed them in front of me silently. I threw back the shot and quickly downed the beer. I put my hand up like I was in third grade, eager to call out the answer to the math problem on the blackboard. She came back and I said, “Same thing, please.” Soon I had a glass in both hands, and soon both were empty again. Up went my hand; over came the drinks. This continued for four more rounds.
As I drank, I sat passing judgment on the guitar player with the awful voice and the asshole businessmen trying so hard to pick up women at the bar. Everyone there seemed so happy and carefree. Fuck them, I thought. I’m in pain, real pain. The kind of pain no one would wish upon anyone else. That night, sitting alone at that table and getting more and more drunk, I wanted every single person in the bar to know my heartache.
A while later, the waitress approached me to see if I needed anything. My slurring made her persist when I tried to brush her off. “Are you alone?” she asked.
Well, that’s a complicated question, I thought. “I’m in town with my in-laws and my baby,” I said.
“And what about your wife?”
“My wife died,” I said.
After months of being asked that very question, I had discovered that people reacted differently depending on how I worded my answer. When I said she passed away, I got a very sympathetic reaction and the person I was talking to generally asked more questions about my life. When I said she died, well, that was a conversation ender, every single time. The waitress didn’t bother me again. I sat there with my thoughts, taking in the shitty music and observing the scene until the bar closed.
When I finally left, I walked for what seemed like hours, eventually arriving at our condo. I went inside and headed straight to my room, where I found Candee curled up in my bed with a sleeping Madeline in her pink pajamas with the white polka dots. Without a word, Candee gave me a hug and went upstairs. I sat down at the edge of the bed and looked back toward my best girl. This was not how our life was supposed to be, but this was not how I should be dealing with it, either.
I hadn’t had this much to drink since my last trip to Vegas for a friend’s bachelor party, and I knew it could never and would never happen again. I crawled into bed, kissing Madeline twice on one cheek: once for what is, and once for what could have