Mitch had no more experience punching people than Luke did, so his swing missed entirely. He grabbed Ryan by the shoulders, gripping his T-shirt as hard as he could. Ryan did the same to Mitch, and for a few stupid seconds, the two men clung to and shook each other from side to side. Mitch called Ryan a son of a bitch, and Ryan told Mitch to “chill the fuck out, for fuck’s sake.”
Ryan quickly gained the upper hand, and Mitch felt himself being turned. Ryan was trying to put him in a headlock.
“I don’t want to have to hurt you, Mitch.”
“Screw you,” Mitch croaked.
“You guys!” said Jessica. “Please stop it. Ryan, let him go.”
Mitch slapped and punched at Ryan’s sides, but his hands seemed to just bounce off, and Ryan was too lean to grab hold of. All the while, Mitch was vaguely aware that, below him and to the right, Emily had started counting. He didn’t understand why. Caught up as he was in this completely unwinnable physical altercation, his daughter’s swelling bravery simply didn’t register.
“Emily, what are you doing?” asked Jessica.
“…seven, eight, nine. Ten!”
“Sweetie!”
“Uh-oh.”
And then Emily kicked Ryan right in the balls.
54
Midsummer in Baltimore can be pretty miserable.
The humidity becomes this omnipresent thing, as constant and relentless as impending death, and you can’t so much as go outside to get the mail without sweating through whatever you’re wearing. The complaints are constant, NPR puts out warnings to check on your elderly neighbors, crime decreases because it’s too hot to break the law, attendance drops sharply at Orioles games, and everyone pretty much avoids human contact.
Thankfully, they weren’t there yet.
It was June, and at just before 7:00 P.M., the air was pleasantly free of oppression, and Fells Point was bustling with people. Mitch walked along in no particular hurry, because as usual, he was right on time, and he was fairly certain Jessica would be late.
He passed a tattoo shop. Two inked-up guys stood on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes. He stopped outside the Sound Garden record shop and looked inside the open front doors, enjoying the dusty, hempy, vinyl-y smell wafting out into the street. Aretha Franklin was coming from the speakers inside. There was some protest art on a mural nearby, and the ground shook from a passing tricked-out Humvee with purple ground effects. An enormous cargo ship, like a tipped-over skyscraper, was docked at the port, spoiling his view of the harbor.
Luke was home with Emily and Jude, babysitting.
Things had been understandably awkward between Mitch and Luke for a few weeks, but, as teacher and student, they’d powered through it. As far as Mitch could tell, Luke also had a metal box for storing unpleasant imagery. It helped, of course, that Luke was a much happier kid now. Having a girlfriend will do that to a guy. Scarlett and Luke were dating now, because, according to Scarlett, she was “done with super-hot assholes.” Mitch had chaperoned prom the previous month and taken special pleasure in separating them during the evening’s final slow dance. “Dial it down, you two,” he told them, slapping Luke on the shoulder. The kid had a look on his face like, Can you believe this?
Jessica relaxed her patient-therapist standards—standards that seemed more symbolic than hard-and-fast at that point—and took Scarlett back. “I kinda had to,” she said. “In good conscience, how could I unleash that girl on another therapist?” Jessica couldn’t tell Mitch anything specific, of course, but apparently Scarlett was doing quite well. She was even going to one of the local colleges in the fall. Her father had made a generous donation, so she was enthusiastically accepted, despite her checkered academic record.
As with Luke and Scarlett, things were going well for Ellen, too. The dresses that the Wives had helped her pick out at Nordstrom that spring were the beginning of a full-fledged makeover, it seemed—another postdivorce reinvention. Just that morning, Mitch had waved to her as she jogged up their street in a pair of neon-orange running shoes.
Mitch passed a few sports bars. More music and baseball. He passed an Indian restaurant, an Italian place, and an ice cream shop with about a hundred figurines bobbing and swaying on the windowsill. Two women walked out onto the street, both licking ice cream cones. They looked around and then tentatively held hands. As they walked toward him, Mitch discovered that one of them was Tara, his spin instructor. Her red hair was pulled back, and she was smiling. There was ice cream on the other woman’s nose, and they laughed. Tara didn’t notice Mitch as she and her smitten girlfriend walked away in the direction of the water.
“Good for you, Tara,” Mitch said as he stepped around some pigeons who were eating french fries from a Styrofoam carton.
Things were understandably awkward between Jessica and Mitch, too, for a while, if he was being honest.
The speech about loving her that he’d given in the driveway, amid the mess of that morning, had been like the last scene of a thousand movies. The thing about movies, though, is that they always seem to end right when the real work is about to begin. So you never see the couple having breakfast the next morning or lying in bed a week later, quietly struggling to earn the romance that was woven into all those sentimental things that were said in desperation.
Bar Vasquez was a few blocks over. He couldn’t see it from where he walked now, but he knew it was there, and he knew Ryan was probably working. Mitch was surprised how civil he felt toward the guy. A couple of months on, he harbored very little ill will. After all, how could he be mad, really? Ryan was a single guy in his twenties—too young still to understand what he had been tampering with. Ultimately, the only thing he was guilty of was the same thing Mitch had been guilty of for nearly two decades now: being in love with Jessica.
That said, seeing him get racked into oblivion by Emily had been nice. It was a direct shot, and the poor guy fell to the ground like a wounded animal. When he finally gathered himself, after Emily had brought Mitch a Band-Aid for his neck, Ryan offered to take the pieces of their bed frame. “The wood’s pretty decent, actually,” he said. “I can maybe do something with it.” He took that goddamn end table with him, too, thankfully.
The restaurant Jessica had picked was new, next to a rebuilt luxury hotel along the water. It had an open-air plaza outside with tons of seating. In a few weeks it’d be too hot to eat anywhere that wasn’t air-conditioned to the hilt, so she’d told him she wanted to take advantage.
There was a sign near the entrance directing outdoor patrons to go in through the main restaurant. Mitch did as it said, passing an empty hostess stand and an elaborate bar full of fellow Baltimoreans. Like so many places in the city, the décor was old-school, with paintings of crabs and boats and racehorses. A pretty girl with a nose ring smiled as she buzzed past him carrying a tray of drinks, and he wondered why there had to be so many beautiful waiters and waitresses in the world. Beautiful people in general. How much easier would life be if, the moment you get married, you take a pill, and everyone else turns plain and boring?
Mitch stopped at the entrance to the restaurant’s outdoor section, which was partitioned off by some flowerpots and railroad ties. All the people and tables briefly overwhelmed him, and he wasn’t sure if he had to backtrack to find a hostess, or if things were first come, first served, so he just stood there trying to get his bearings. His phone buzzed in his back pocket. It was a text from Jessica.
You’re not going to believe this. I beat you.
He looked around. And there she was.
She was at a two-top table right in the middle of it all. She set her phone down and looked at the menu, and Mitch just watched her for a while. Her hair was up, because she’d come from work, and she almost always wore it up at work. She reached for it, and it fell down across her neck and shoulders. He scanned the crowd around her, registering the effect she caused. A gu
y walked by her table and glanced at her. Another guy, who was by himself a few tables over, glanced at her, too, thinking whatever he was thinking. An older guy—silver hair, a red tie—looked at her out of the corner of his eye while polishing his silverware with his napkin. The woman across from him didn’t seem to notice. Jessica was oblivious to all of it. Or maybe she was just ignoring it. Mitch wasn’t sure which, and, as he often did, he wondered how women can get through the day without flipping something over and screaming, “Will all of you please stop looking at me?”
“You need a table, hon?” It was the waitress with the nose ring. She was even prettier up close. “You look a little lost.”
Mitch smiled. “Nope, I’m good,” he said. “I’m meeting my wife.”
FOR MY BALTIMORE FRIENDS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes a village, right? Well, this one took a bigger village than usual.
Ryan Effgen and Catherine McKenzie read this book when it was a mess. Their thoughtful feedback helped save it from the brink.
Jessica Anya Blau gave me the title. I ran into her at a coffee shop in Baltimore last year and told her the title I’d settled on. She said, “No, I don’t like that. It should be Last Couple Standing.”
My agent, Jesseca Salky, was everything that I needed her to be— like smart, kind, and absolutely relentless—as always. I’m so lucky to have her on my side.
The team at Ballantine was a writer’s dream. Special thanks to Jennifer Hershey, Kara Welsh, and Kim Hovey for so much support. And to Mimi Lipson and Janet Wygal for their copyediting expertise. They saved me on nearly every page. And to Anne Speyer, my wonderful editor, who guided me and this book to a place I wouldn’t have found on my own.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Kate, and our daughters, Caroline and Hazel. And to my Baltimore friends, to whom this book is dedicated. As far as big, sprawling, man-made modern American families go, we could do a lot worse.
BY MATTHEW NORMAN
Last Couple Standing
We’re All Damaged
Domestic Violets
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MATTHEW NORMAN lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and two children, and holds an MFA from George Mason University. His previous novels include We’re All Damaged and Domestic Violets, which was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award for Humor.
thenormannation.com
Twitter: @thenormannation
Instagram: @thenormannation
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Last Couple Standing Page 25