Andy was forty-five years old when he learned that you could spend years building a life with
someone and still end up having to ask whether they wanted to stay.
Not that he hadn't suspected it before. Marriage had given him plenty of opportunities to
discover that love and permanence were two entirely different things. You could love someone
on Monday, argue with them on Tuesday, make up on Wednesday, and spend Thursday
wondering whether the person sleeping beside you was the same person you had married.
By Friday, you might be back to discussing what to have for dinner.
Life was strange that way. It kept going, even when you weren't entirely sure what the hell you
were doing.
But a divorce was different. There was something particularly cruel about having to reduce a
relationship to paperwork. All those years, all those ordinary mornings and shared meals and
private jokes, and eventually someone would file something with a court. A judge would sign it.
An administrative process would conclude that you were no longer married.
The government, at least, was going to have a definitive answer.
Andy wasn't so lucky.
He sat on the edge of his bed, holding his phone to his ear, listening to Ben tell him that their
divorce would be final in two days.
Ben was thirty-six. Nine years younger than Andy, although the difference had never seemed
especially important until they began disagreeing about what the rest of their lives ought to look
like. Nine years wasn't much when you were in love. It could feel like an entire geological era
when one person wanted to keep trying and the other had decided he was done.
"So our divorce is final the day after tomorrow,
" Ben said.
Andy looked at the wall.
"Are you sure you don't want to change your mind?"
He hated himself a little for asking. Not because the question was unreasonable, but because
he already knew the answer. Ben had been clear. He had said it more than once, in more than
one conversation, with varying degrees of patience.
Still, there was a part of Andy that believed people could change their minds.People changed their minds about all sorts of things. Restaurants. Jobs. Where to live. Whether
they wanted children. Whether they preferred coffee or tea. Surely a person could change his
mind about ending a marriage.
"I'm sure,
" Ben said.
"I just want to get this over with and move on.
"
There it was. The word move on.
Andy had always found the expression vaguely irritating. It made grief sound like a minor
inconvenience, something you could put behind you if you just got organized and stopped
dwelling on things. As though the heart were a room you could clear out in an afternoon.
"Okay,
" Andy said.
He wasn't okay. They both knew that. But there was a limit to how many times you could tell
someone you were hurting before the conversation became less about your pain and more
about their desire to escape it.
Andy took a breath.
"Well, if you change your mind, I'll be at our usual date place tomorrow. Around six.
"
There was a pause.
"That's very sweet,
" Ben said.
"But I don't think I'll be making it.
"
Andy closed his eyes.
"Well, just in case. Maybe it's a way to show each other we can start over again.
"
He didn't know exactly what starting over would mean. They couldn't return to the beginning,
back when they had been younger and everything seemed possible. There was no way to undo
the arguments, the disappointments, the things said in anger and the things left unsaid because
they were too frightened of what might happen if they spoke honestly.
Starting over would have to mean something else.
Perhaps it meant acknowledging that two people could hurt each other and still have loved each
other. Perhaps it meant that the end of a marriage didn't have to erase everything that had come
before it.
Or perhaps Andy was simply looking for a reason to spend one more evening with his husband.
Ben didn't answer.
"I should go,
" he said eventually."Yeah. Of course.
"
"Goodnight, Andy.
"
"Goodnight, Ben.
"
The call ended.
Andy continued holding the phone against his ear for several seconds before realizing that the
conversation was over.
He lowered it and looked at the screen.
There was nothing there. Just the familiar interface, the time, and Ben's name.
It was astonishing how ordinary everything looked.
He had imagined that the end of his marriage would feel different. He wasn't sure what he had
expected. Perhaps a sense of finality, some internal mechanism that would click into place and
tell him that the waiting was over.
Instead, there was only the bedroom, the quiet, and the knowledge that tomorrow he would go
to a restaurant and wait for a man who had already told him he probably wouldn't come.
The sensible thing would have been to cancel the reservation, if there was a reservation to
cancel. He could stay home. He could order food, watch something on television, and avoid the
indignity of sitting alone at a table intended for two.
But Andy had never been particularly good at abandoning hope when hope was still technically
available.
And tomorrow, at six o'clock, hope would be available.
Just in case.