by Kelly Rimmer
When I finally give up ten minutes later and admit he can well and truly outrun me, I collapse on a park bench gasping for air as Paul does an effortless victory lap around me. I feel like maybe there’s a chance the better versions of ourselves can find something amicable out of the chaos.
CHAPTER TEN
Paul
I’M SITTING AT a café eating breakfast with my wife.
I’m sitting at a café eating breakfast with my wife, and it is beyond surreal.
The truth is, I wasn’t at all sure how today was going to play out. I just don’t know what to make of last night. I want to chalk the whole encounter up to good old-fashioned sex, but I can’t. Good old-fashioned sex might explain what happened on the sofa, but it doesn’t explain how much I got out of that chat at the park, and it sure as hell doesn’t explain Isabel and me sleeping in each other’s arms. If we were just scratching an itch last night, she’d have left the bed after we finished, and I wouldn’t have desperately wanted her to stay.
How to define last night feels like some exceedingly complex logical problem that I just can’t solve—and what’s missing is data. I need more of it...a lot more. I just didn’t know exactly what that data looks like, or how to get it. I’d been pondering that very question as I ran until I saw her on the footpath jogging toward me. Then, in a heartbeat, it came to me.
Find common ground.
I mean, there’s clearly still something between us—some deeply buried atom of mutual respect. Last night, we uncovered it, and maybe today, all we need to do is stop ourselves from burying it in our garbage all over again.
Could we really form some kind of new friendship, even after all of the pain and heartache? I’m not even sure how to feel about the idea of Isabel being my friend. I’m attracted to her on a level so deep that even when I was utterly livid with her, I was still aware of her... It seems a fair assumption that I’ll want her until I die.
But given our circumstances, I know I’d happily put that aside if it meant we could exist harmoniously in the same social circle...and I’d probably chop off my own dick if it meant I didn’t have to wake up in the morning and think frustrated, angry thoughts about her. As we raced one another to the café, it occurred to me that what I crave more than anything right now is peace, and that the only way to get it is to reconcile with Isabel in some shape or fashion.
So here we are—at Marie’s together for the first time in over a year. Isabel stopped on her way into the café for a long chat with Marie, who seemed very surprised to see me and far less surprised to see Isabel. That makes me suspect that Isabel has been visiting our vacation home in the year since we separated. I’d assumed her bloodlust for that house was entirely about inflicting pain on me, but maybe Isabel really does intend to make good use of the place.
Right now, Isabel and I are seated at a table, two steaming meals in front of us. We made some somewhat awkward small talk about the weather and Marie’s new decor while we waited for our food. Now, Isabel is eating her ricotta pancakes, and she’s periodically reading a newspaper, except that in between brief stints staring at the paper she keeps glancing at me quizzically, as if I’m doing something odd.
I smile briefly at her the first few times she looks at me, but then she starts to frown, and eventually she says abruptly, “Paul.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Eating?” I say, glancing down at my bacon and eggs.
Isabel regards me suspiciously. “Since when do you just eat?”
“How else do I get food into my body?” I frown, and she sighs impatiently.
“You don’t ever just eat. You always read while you eat—in fact I only picked the stupid newspaper up when we came in because you always read and eat in the morning.” Her gaze sharpens, and she crosses her arms over her chest. It seems that Isabel has already become both defensive and irritated. “You pick today of all of the days in your life to stop doing that?”
“Oh,” I say, and I look at the newspaper she’s holding. I suddenly remember times when she’d be inexplicably furious with me over breakfast—including one or two particularly harsh encounters that evolved into her giving me the silent treatment right here in this very café. But toward the end there, it felt like Isabel was vaguely angry with me all the time and I could never really pin down exactly what I was doing to upset her. I always assumed those snippy comments over breakfast were actually about something else, something deeper or more important. Maybe I was wrong about that.
“I try not to read and eat these days,” I admit.
“Why?” she says, and she closes the newspaper, and she turns a little in her chair so that she’s facing me fully. Her gaze settles on mine. I notice it now—the way she removes all the distractions because she’s interested in what I have to say. I never noticed those things before. Maybe I’d have felt her attention, but I wouldn’t have taken the time to understand exactly how she gave it to me.
“It’s rude,” I say stiffly, and her eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline. She blinks at me, and I feel compelled to explain, even though the thought of doing so makes me feel awkward as hell.
Isabel is still staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind, and it seems the only way out of this moment is through it. “I was absorbing information from the minute I got out of bed until the minute I went back to bed. If it wasn’t the tech pages of the paper, it was emails, and if it wasn’t emails, it was reference books. I was never really anywhere, because my mind was always elsewhere. So I broke the habit of trying to digest data twenty-four hours a day. I don’t look at any electronic devices until I get to the office, and I still read the tech news or reference guides or whatever, but only when that’s all I’m doing. If I’m eating, I just eat. If I’m spending time with someone, I try to give them all of my attention. It’s not a big deal.”
“For anyone else it wouldn’t be a big deal,” Isabel says. Her voice is very small. She looks at me hesitantly, then looks at the table again. “For you, it is a big deal.”
We sit in silence for a moment. It’s my instinct to end this conversation now. I want to cut it off before I have to reveal any more parts of myself that I’m not proud of. I’m tensing up at the very thought of splitting myself open to her and handing her information that she could effectively weaponize.
But Isabel still looks wary, as if this is some kind of trick. I’ve made a few lifestyle tweaks because I learned from the failure of our marriage. Some naive part of me wants her to know that. A stupid legacy from the connection we once shared makes me wish she’d be proud of me for the way I understand myself now.
“I figured something out this year,” I admit tentatively. Isabel flicks her gaze back to my face. “I can’t multitask.”
She snorts. “That’s ridiculous. Your entire life is multitasking.”
“Maybe it looked that way, but that’s not how my brain works. In fact, hardly anyone can effectively multitask—the human brain just can’t effectively complete more than one high-level function at a time. I only really realized this year just how singular my focus actually is. I can eat and read, but I don’t taste the food. I can run and listen to a podcast, but I either tune out of the podcast or I’m not concentrating on the run. I can pack the dishwasher and have a conversation, but I’m not really listening. I don’t need to tell you I’m not exactly a people person.”
“Right,” she says, wincing a little.
“I realized that part of the reason other people bewildered me was that I just wasn’t listening in the right way. If I stop everything else and force myself to pay attention to body language and tone and the words people use, I actually hear more of what they are saying. Does that make sense?”
“Oh,” Isabel says. She takes a sip of her juice, then lowers the glass. “Yeah, okay. I can see that. So it’s kind of a mindfulness thing.”
“E
xactly. And it’s kind of ironic if you think about it.”
“It is?”
“I remember you talking to me about mindfulness one day. You read an article about how some businesses were introducing mindfulness practice to increase employee morale and efficiency.”
“I remember that article.”
“Then you likely also remember the way I rolled my eyes and scoffed at the idea when you told me about it.”
“Yeah.”
“I probably rushed off to get on with whatever things I was half doing that day. Then you left me, and I wasn’t paying attention and I didn’t see it coming.” I shrug. “Bang. The concept of mindfulness suddenly makes a lot more fucking sense.”
She turns her gaze away from me. Her gaze is intense, her brows pulled inward.
“What did I say?”
Isabel hesitates, then she looks back to me. “It used to drive me insane how I never had your full attention, but you never understood why I was upset about it.”
“Well, I didn’t actually realize how much it bothered you. It’s not like you called me out on it,” I say easily.
“I spent years trying to call you out on it! Why did you think I mentioned that article to you?”
“Hoping I’d read an article and somehow in doing so also read your mind is a little different than ‘calling me out,’” I say with a confused laugh.
Isabel’s mouth falls open. Her big blue eyes go wide and her nostrils flare. Oops. I hastily backpedal.
“I just meant—my listening skills are awful. I know they are. You could have hit me over the head with a brick to try to get my attention and it wouldn’t have worked half the time. But you have to admit, you never told me what you wanted from me. I always had to guess, and then you’d get pissed at me if I didn’t guess correctly.”
“Seriously? This ‘truce’ lasted less than twenty fucking minutes,” Isabel snaps, and she stands. I stand, too, and I catch her hand gently in mine.
“Bel...just hang on—”
“This is exactly why this is a stupid idea,” she says. She snatches her hand back and presses it into her temple. “You promised me no trips down memory lane. That was less than half an hour ago.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to bring up the past, I was just answering your questions. I’m really sorry.”
She scowls at me, and I prepare myself, knowing she’s going to storm off and that when I reflect on this later, I suspect I’ll discover it was my fault. However, right at this minute, I have no idea what I’ve done to provoke her to a reaction like this. I’m surprised when she sits heavily, but I quickly, cautiously follow suit. I watch her as she picks at the ricotta pancakes on her plate, and then as she opens the newspaper again.
“You’re staying?” I check carefully.
She glances up at me, then looks back to the newspaper, but her gaze is clouded. Finally she closes the newspaper again, and pushes it away.
Our eyes meet. There’s so much pain in her gaze I have an irrational desire to hunt down whoever hurt her and punch that bastard in the face. Unfortunately, I’m the culprit. It’s a bewildering sensation.
“You said sorry,” she says.
“Of course I did. I upset you.”
“You noticed you upset me and you said sorry,” she says. Her voice breaks, and I glance at her, stricken. She blinks rapidly, then says, “We’re going to be friends, right?”
“Yeah.” That’s the goal here, although I do recognize that outcome remains somewhat unlikely.
“That’s what friends do, they apologize. And that’s how friends forgive each other, they accept the apology.”
Would I not have done that before? I pause, scanning my memory, and the images that flick by me do nothing to assuage my sudden guilt.
No, I wouldn’t have apologized. I’d have glossed the moment of tension over and I’d have accused her of being oversensitive. And maybe she is a little oversensitive right now, but I can see why. It’s hard to be rational about all of this because we’re navigating an emotional minefield.
“I really am sorry,” I say, then I close my eyes and admit, “Fuck it, Isabel. I’m sorry for pretty much everything at this point.”
“Well, I’m staying,” she says stiffly. “But you better change the subject before we push things too far.”
I scan my mind for a safe subject...something I know she’ll engage with.
“Tell me more about this seniors fitness program.”
I’m listening to her. I swear I am, especially since we just narrowly avoided an argument about communication and multitasking.
But I also can’t help but notice the way the tension drains from her face, and her eyes light up as we talk about her work. She just loves the human body, and she takes immense satisfaction from helping people achieve fitness—I know instinctively that this seniors program is the perfect blend of technical challenge and sheer altruism that brings Isabel to life.
“You should have seen your dad the day he bench-pressed one hundred pounds for the first time.” Isabel beams. “He had this look of surprise on his face afterward, as if he still couldn’t believe he’d done it. And I swear I floated around on cloud nine for the rest of the day. I was so proud of him.”
“So you’ve got Dad and his buddies doing weights?”
“Progressive resistance training is ideal for seniors. As we age, we lose muscle strength, so that kind of training can help maintain or even rebuild it. Your dad has a great approach to his fitness now—he’s constantly looking for the next goal, so weights are great for him because the quantifiable data of his performance keeps him motivated. I have some of the other seniors doing different activities. I’m coaching an under-nineties basketball team, and I run a ballet class for a group of octogenarians on Tuesdays.”
“You’re teaching ballet?” I say, eyebrows lifting. Isabel was raised on ballet but stopped dancing in her teens. Until now, the closest she’d come to dance was the barre classes she instructs.
“Just that one class, and mostly because the ladies were so excited about the idea of it and I couldn’t find anyone else to teach them.”
“And are you enjoying it?”
“You know I’ve always loved to watch dance.”
“I remember that.”
“Well, everything I love about dance as an art form is palpable in that group of women. They love the idea of telling a story through movement. One of the women told me she’d stopped exercising when she was in her twenties because it started to feel pointless, and it became a chore. That’s almost sixty years of inactivity, which is brutal on the human body. But it’s never too late. Now, that same woman is doing two sessions a week for the dance class and she’s added extra time in the gym to help her balance and strength. This was a woman who was struggling to walk up and down stairs when we started three months ago.
“I think the secret to that class’s success is that I understand where those women are coming from. Dance once felt like a chore to me, in the same way that exercise became a chore to them. But now that I’m using those skills to help those women, I’m actually enjoying it again. Purpose brings meaning. These seniors classes have made me fall in love with my work all over again.”
“And apparently your classes are a hotbed of romance for the gray-haired set.”
Isabel laughs.
“That’s just your dad and Elspeth, as far as I know. Although those retirees sure do know how to socialize. I don’t think your dad’s friends even realize that it’s possible to work out and go right home afterward, without going out for lunch or dinner or drinks.”
“The way I remember it, you, Abby and Jess seem to have much the same approach.”
“Yeah, there’s some truth in that accusation,” Isabel chuckles.
It’s peaceful. It’s good. It’s easy. This kind of conversation was the absolu
te best-case scenario I had in mind when I suggested breakfast this morning. Sure, these are surface-level chats—nothing more than small talk, but small talk can be a big deal sometimes. Especially when it’s between two people who’ve dug out space for an ocean of hate between them in the recent past. This kind of lighthearted chat is precisely how we lay down the foundations for a bridge to span the distance between us now.
We finish our meals, and I see Isabel finish her coffee, so I order us another round, as I remember Isabel likes a second cup most mornings. Every now and again, a thought forces its way to the front of my mind.
I’m enjoying this too much.
This conversation is nothing at all, and yet it feels like the most meaningful thing I’ve done all year, and the more aware I am of that conundrum, the more confused and conflicted I become. Soon, I’m a giant, pulsing ball of conflicting emotions that I’m all too aware of, and I hate every second of it. Pick up the newspaper and zone out? That sounds fucking divine, thank you.
But now I know that kind of dissociation comes at a cost. It cost me my marriage. It cost me the love of my life. It’s far too late to undo any of that—but Isabel is here, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reach for closure. So I focus on her, and I focus on the casual conversation, and I try to force myself to do something I’ve never been good at...not with her. Not with anyone, if I’m really honest with myself.
I try to be her friend.
“Ready to head back?” I ask her.
She smiles quietly at me, almost shyly, and she nods, but then she warns me, “I can’t run after all of those pancakes.”
“Let’s just walk then,” I say. “It’s not like we’re in a rush to be anywhere.”
“What’s happening with your retreat?” she asks.