Splitting the Difference

by Tre Miller Rodriquez

  A fresh start?

  Not the words I would use.

  And given his sensitivity about my turndown request, not the words I’d expect from him either.

  Wait, I say, do you think I’m here alone because of . . . divorce?

  He nods.

  No, it’s the other thing, I say, softly. It’s the other reason a wife would be alone and escaping the holidays.

  * * *

  I used to know how to do sushi for one, but I may have overreached with Zuma sushi tonight. The lobby is all couples. Ditto for the bar. I’ve officially decided to leave when I hear someone calling my name.

  I turn to find a hostess beckoning me.

  Apparently, I am doing this.

  Crossing the room, I feel the gaze of a hundred couples on me. I slide into the sushi bar and make fast friends with the gay waiter, who brings me a glass of champagne. I keep my eyes on the menu, but when one of the chefs—a twenty-something with kind eyes—brings over a comp dish and introduces himself, I start to relax.

  I sweep my eyes across the restaurant, observe the other patrons.

  And realize I’m not the white elephant in the room.

  I’m just a girl having sushi on a Wednesday night.

  * * *

  It’s Thanksgiving somewhere, so I’m off to Hyde Park with a camera, ashes, and a bag of flowers. I circle the Albert Memorial looking for the perfect angle, but it’s under construction, so every shot is a disappointment.

  Even more disappointing is Long Water pond, where I planned to spread his ashes. Water access is limited and the area is crowded with people and dogs. I scan the lake, looking for a more private spot, and see a plaza at the opposite end with a Roman balcony jutting above the water.

  When I reach it, my pulse quickens. Moss-covered cherubs and crumbling goddesses surround a stone fountain that spills directly into the pond. A baby gull swoops past my shoulder, alighting in the fountain for a bath. I look around and realize I’m the only person on the plaza.

  This is the spot.

  I shoot the scene and when I check the digital images, I realize how lovely the light is just now. I bring out the box and flowers and do what I came across the Atlantic to do.

  * * *

  A close friend of my brother’s moved to England in the ’90s and upon hearing I was headed across the pond, invited me to supper on Thanksgiving night. I said yes—on the condition that he found somewhere for us to dance to house music afterward.

  Over a fancy dinner, Chris and I catch up on the past decade before heading to T-bar: a sweaty, subterranean club with bass so deep, I have to go old school and stuff the corners of cocktail napkins into my ears.

  Chris asks if I want to get high?

  I laugh.

  Back when Chris, Phil, and I went to raves, I definitely needed a drug to dance like no one was looking. But eventually, the trance music became house and the drugs became beer. After college, chemicals just seemed to interfere with my dance flow. I’ve found my groove tonight so I tell Chris that the lager is serving me just fine but he’s welcome to party.

  Okay, Tré, he says. Okay. Good on you.

  An hour later, he’s wearing a beanie and looks like he’s ice-skating around the dance floor.

  All seven feet of him.

  Good on him, I laugh, and bring him another water that he yet again spills.

  There’s only one other person here whose moves have the same cadence as mine, but I slide away from his approving nods and glances. Tonight is about losing myself in something that’s uniquely mine, something Alberto and I did not share: a love of house music and dancing to it ’til dawn.

  Fast-forward to 4am, after I’ve played Frisbee with vinyl records and shared a cigarette with the dancing stranger. The party is ending, Chris is high, and the stranger named Paulo has invited us to his flat a few blocks away. Chris is just coherent enough to say this bloke wants to take you home and I’m just patient enough to say that’s exactly why you’re coming with me.

  He’s got beers, I tell Chris, and he’s offered coke so you can do some of that. Keep your high going.

  He perks up.

  I’m not ready to end my last night in London yet, Chris. There’s something else out there: Let’s go find it.

  Yes, let’s, he agrees.

  The three of us exit the place, trailed by a guy in a short jacket who knows Paulo, and walk a few blocks to the flat.

  I help myself to a beer in the fridge as Short Jacket Guy pulls out a satchel of MDMA and a bag of coke big as a flour sack. I pass on the line and take a lap around the place: two floors and a terrace. Good art on the walls. Graphite sketches of haute couture scattered about.

  I return to the first floor as pills are being handed all around.

  Nah, I’m good, I say, raising my beer.

  The boys try the we-all-do-it-or-none-of-us-do-it approach, but I just shrug.

  The last time I took E with a man, I say, I married him.

  They lean in closer.

  That was supposed to scare you off, I laugh.

  They wait for a different answer.

  Do it first, I say. I want to see what your jaws are doing in thirty minutes. Then I’ll make an informed decision.

  It’s 98 percent pure MDMA, says Short Jacket.

  I pick up the satchel, touch my finger to the residue, and lift it to my tongue.

  Doesn’t taste like college-campus E.

  No speedy bottom note.

  It tastes like 1991: like fake IDs and purple clubs on Sunset Boulevard.

  Tastes like what could be a fun night.

  I hear myself announce a couple ground rules.

  No attempts at orgies. Everyone keeps their effing hands to themselves. And I’m gonna need water. Lots of it. Also, a pair of warm socks and some ChapStick.

  Agreed?

  They smile.

  Understood?

  They nod.

  Well, then, cheers, I say, chasing the pill with my warm beer.

  The fellow who owns the flat is a fashion designer who’s obsessed with duct tape this season. Thirty minutes into the pill, he’s shirtless except for my Jimmy Choo faux-fur vest and he’s dancing on the stairs with turntables attached to a trail of colored wires.

  In the bathroom, my pupils dilated, I see the same brown bottle of discontinued Helmut Lang Cuiron that Alberto wore.

  The whiff I do not let myself take.

  The 6am market excursion we make.

  The bags of soda they lose. Then find. Then lose again.

  The boot of mine they hide to stop me from leaving at 10am.

  The extended game of hide-and-go-feet that commences.

  The email address I scrawl in red lipstick on the white radiator in exchange for my other high-heeled boot.

  The taxi I take.

  The flight I make.

  The Atlantic, over which I recover and wake to see a driver at JFK holding the letters of my name on a sign.

  The apartment into which I collapse, after somehow gaining five hours and not misplacing anything but my grief.

  (Not) Home for

  the Holidays

  All I want for Christmas is you . . .

  but I’m settling for Brazil.

  (December 8, 1:51pm via Twitter)

  * * *

  A week away from his tangible absence makes returning to New York a fresh hell.

  Would living elsewhere ease the pain?

  Hard to be content with any other American city after living in Manhattan—but maybe overseas?

  Venice is on the To-Visit List. So is Portofino and Mykonos. And Saigon and Sydney. Maybe if I keep mapping and flying and shooting and crying, one day I’ll wake up without a stuffed monkey in my bed or the words goodmorningiloveyou in my head.

&
nbsp; * * *

  We’re on for Cuba, Hilda shouts through the phone.

  As in, legally?

  Thank Obama for that one, she says. As of this year, Cuban citizens can escort American relatives into the country on a tourist visa.

  We can fly directly from Miami?

  Yes, she says. And because we’re booking a hotel for at least five nights, the Cuban government doesn’t require you to get your visa through an embassy. We’ll pick it up through the travel agency when you come to Miami next week.

  So we spend money on a hotel and Cuba throws in a free visa? For a communist country, that sounds a lot like capitalism.

  Welcome to fucking Cuba, she laughs.

  * * *

  Are those real? my friend Erin asks, pointing to the vase of flowers atop the box of Alberto’s ashes.

  They are, I say.

  And you replace them every week?

  Every few weeks—orchids die rather elegantly.

  Why don’t you just get fake ones?

  I don’t know, I say. Maybe because I’m not eighty with plastic covers on my sofa.

  She laughs and asks if we should go to dinner or do the ashes first?

  Erin has become my go-to girl when I transfer the ashes. She lost her sister a decade ago—she was babysitting her when it happened—and she knew Alberto, so she cries along with me while somehow keeping track of the urn’s base screws.

  Tonight, I transfer more ash than usual because I’ll be spreading him in two places in Brazil. As I’m pushing the air out of the Ziploc, I suddenly become conscious of what I’m holding and folding.

  Of the sharp shards.

  His bones.

  His teeth.

  The clutch in my esophagus starts.

  My hand movements stop.

  Can I give it a try? Erin whispers.

  I hand it over and she finishes what I cannot.

  * * *

  When my Friday-night flight lands in Miami, I make my way toward Arrivals to find the driver holding a sign with my name.

  I’m Alberto, he says.

  Of course you are.

  I shake his hand and my head.

  * * *

  After picking up my Cuban visa, Hilda and I head to lunch in Coral Gables, where I’m mesmerized by her method of eating French fries: it’s the same dainty two-finger method as Alberto.

  I don’t like getting my hands dirty, she explains.

  I’m well aware, I say.

  Hey, have I ever told you the Albert-Moving-to-New-York-story?

  Tell me.

  He had a girlfriend named Kristen here in Miami. She had a car and they were going to drive to New York for his new job and get a place together.

  How old was he?

  I think he was twenty-three. But the night before the road trip, Albert says, “They need me in New York, Mumu. Can you drive up with Kristen?”

  I said “okay” and he hops on a plane, leaving me and the girlfriend to drive one thousand miles. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any crisis in New York, but off he went. I realized only after he was gone that Kristen’s car was a—what do you call it—a stick shift. When I tell her I don’t know how to drive it, she says, “Albert said you could do anything. And that you used to drive stick shift when you were at school.”

  So I drove the stick shift with the ridiculous girlfriend and we got stuck in a storm in North Carolina.

  Sounds like a road trip from hell.

  It was. Kristen didn’t last long in New York. And when she left, she took the car, along with the dining table and all but one of the dining chairs.

  Do you remember what it looked like? I ask. Because there’s a random French chair in our storage unit that I never asked Alberto about. It’s got black-and-white striped upholstery—and tons of rips.

  Sounds about right, his mother says.

  * * *

  Back in New York, I sit down to write Christmas cards, one of the wifely duties I’m determined to carry on. I launch Alberto’s Christmas playlist, open a bottle of wine and take a red pen from the desk drawer.

  I’ve powered through half the cards when I notice the bite marks on the pen cap.

  His bite marks.

  I stare at the pen, an object he once held in his hands and mouth.

  I leave the Christmas chaos on the coffee table and head to bed, where I fall asleep spooning the stuffed monkey.

  * * *

  Tré, darling, Mariana says, between sips of sauvignon blanc. I’m thinking of spending the summer in Europe. I know June is a long way off, but I have family scattered about the continent, so I’m just putting it out there.

  Should I start missing you now, I ask. Or start planning to join you?

  Join me, silly, she laughs.

  The following December, I do join her.

  She will have taken a flat in Budapest, where we’ll spend a snowy week dancing, drinking Palinka, and lunching with her embassy friends before flying to Venice for Christmas. In Italy, we’ll spend our afternoons apart—she at the ancient museums and me at the modern ones—but we’ll eat together every night on the Ponte di Rialto. On Christmas Eve, we’ll splash through two feet of acqua alta for midnight mass at St. Mark’s and a nightcap at the Bauer Hotel.

  * * *

  After work tonight, I sort through the mail and open an envelope containing a 2010 calendar, courtesy of the funeral home.

  A calendar.

  I cannot think of a more inappropriate item and I’m rattled enough to dial the number on the mailer.

  Greenwich Village Funeral Home, how may I help you?

  Hi, I’m Tré. You carried out the viewing services for my husband nine months ago and I just received a calendar from you that I can only describe as insensitive and insulting.

  Silence.

  I’m a widow. This is my first Christmas without my husband. Why would I want a funeral home to remind me that time is marching on?

  Silence.

  Maybe if I’d had a civilized experience with your company, this wouldn’t seem so tacky. But your funeral director is the same man who left cookies “with his compliments” in the limo that took us to my husband’s service—cookies! Who eats dessert on their way to a funeral?

  Uh, would you like to leave your name, Miss?

  I’m sure you didn’t sign off on the calendar, but have you seen this thing?

  I haven’t, no. I’m offsite. I’m just with the answering company.

  Of course you are. If you could leave the director a message from Tré Rodríguez, a former client. Tell him this calendar is one of the most hard-boiled things a funeral home could ever send to a person in mourning. Tell him, next year, maybe try a toothbrush. Or an extra set of house keys. Something that people like me keep losing track of. Because time is the one damn thing I do not need a funeral home reminding me to remember.

  Well, Tré, thank you for calling. I’ll pass on your message.

  His dignified voice.

  His Emily-Post-formality.

  Dear God.

  Have I become that girl?

  The one ranting about a free calendar in the middle of the night?

  * * *

  I come with several decades of Christmas ornaments. When I was a kid, we made them as a family: snowmen with top hats, skiing pandas on popsicle sticks, our names stenciled on plastic apples. As we grew up, the ornaments were store-bought and commemorated a new hobby or a major milestone.

  During my first December with Alberto, I hauled out the ornaments. From the couch, Alberto raised an eyebrow as my sea of mementos crept across the dining table.

  You’re putting all those up?

  They’ll fit! It’s a big tree.

  He walked over, examined a badly painted dough figure in the hollow of a walnut.


  Seriously? he said.

  That’s the first ornament I made, I squealed. I was, like, three!

  He laughed, shook his head, and went back to the TV remote.

  You’re not? Going to help?

  Um, no. This is your thing.

  I was newly married and a little devastated. Hadn’t yet realized that everything in a marriage isn’t met with mutual enthusiasm, so I decorated the stupid tree with a pout on my face.

  That first Christmas Eve, he’d grimaced when he unwrapped six ornaments from our respective families and me.

  And then.

  He handed me a box that contained a flaming, Mexican-style heart decorated with the words “I Love You.”

  The following year, I dressed the tree on an early December night when he worked late. No pouting.

  By Christmas Number Three, as we drove back from Jersey with an evergreen on our convertible, he announced that it would only be fair if we switched off the Christmas-tree theme every other year.

  What does that mean? I asked.

  This year, we continue your Craft Land Adventure. Next year, we do an all-monochromatic tree. The lights, the ornaments, everything. I’m thinking white or silver.

  Does this mean you’ll help me decorate? I laughed.

  Are you kidding? I will art-direct that motherfucking tree!

  When Christmas Number Four was within sight, I reminded him about the monochromatic tree.

  Right, we need to do that.

  The second weekend in December, I mentioned it again.

  Honey, he smiled, how would you feel about not getting a tree this year? I mean, we’re leaving for Quebec in ten days and then we’ll just have to pack everything away when we get back . . .

  I did not interrupt to say that, actually, I would have to pack everything away when we got back.

  Instead, I agreed. Not getting a tree sounded brilliant. And practical.

  I did not give him an ornament on our last holiday together.

  He didn’t get me one either.

  And as we celebrated Christmas Day from our suite in Montreal, neither of us gave two shits about ornaments or trees.

  * * *

  In the Rodríguez household, Alberto was the I.T. department. He handled warranties, billing, and service for the equipment that kept our home office humming. The wireless in our apartment stopped working a few weeks after he died, but the mere thought of repairing it had exhausted me. Unfortunately, the cable Internet has now gone the way of the wireless, so a service visit is scheduled for today.