I have been sitting at the dining room table for hours now. I can’t bring myself to face her, my wife. I never expected the evening to turn out this way. I don’t think I can ever look at her the same way again.
The day started like any other Saturday. It began with us having breakfast at this very table.
“Are you coming with me to do the pickup?” Her coffee cup slightly hides her face.
“Eh, I don’t know. I was hoping to get a run in.”
She laughs. “I’ve heard that before.”
“No, I’m serious,” I take another swig of my coffee.
“I’ve got my shoes right there,” I motion to them, sitting on the bottom step. “I just need to run upstairs and throw on my gear.”
“Well, there you go. Then you’ll have gotten your jog in.”
“Very funny,” I cough as I swallow a few coffee grounds.
“You okay?” She seems genuinely concerned.
“Yeah, yeah, thought I had more left in the cup.”
“You gonna have another?”
“No, I should keep it to one a day on the weekends.”
“Just come with me for the CSA pickup. Then, we can get the rest of our errands out of the way and come back home. You can run after that.”
“It’s not like you need me for this.”
“Seriously, just come with me.”
“Fine, alright. Let me go shower real quick.”
“I’ll get the bags ready. Thank you.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll be right back.”
I’m bounding up the stairs; I really didn’t want to spend my day off running errands. Errands that she can surely do by herself. But here we are.
“This is ridiculous. There’s no goddamn reason for me to go on these errands.”
I’m talking to myself. I mean, I know she can’t hear me.
Most of the time, she goes by herself. Yes, I complain about it when she comes back with fennel again. I can only eat fennel so many weeks in a row before I want to pull my hair out.
“Fucking fennel,” I say to myself as the water gushes out of the showerhead, and I jump into the shower. I’m in and out in about five minutes.
Now dressed, I rush down the stairs and grab my running shoes.
“You’re not even going to untie them, are you?”
“What?”
I glance up at her, and she looks miffed. I’ve already got one shoe on, as I stomp my foot into the other shoe.
“Never mind. Bags are in the car. Let me just grab my purse.”
“Alright. I’ll meet you at the car.”
I head out to our driveway and stand by the passenger side door.
I hear the front door close. I still don’t know why I’m being dragged along on this trip, which is making me uneasy.
The car chirps, and I pull on the door handle, but the door is still locked.
“Can you do it again?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says as she clicks the fob again, and I fling the door open.
I flop down in the passenger seat and slam the door shut.
She’s walking so slowly. “I really do want to go for a run today,” I say trying to urge her along.
“Please don’t complain the entire time.” She starts the car, and the radio blares some 50s song.
“I’m not, I’m just saying.” I turn the knob to lower the volume.
“We should be finished by 1, maybe 2 at the latest.”
She backs out of the driveway and takes a different route than the one I’m used to.
“Are we going the right way?” I ask, panicking a little bit. My palms are sweating; she knows how I feel about unexpected changes.
“Yup. It’s already 8:50, so I’m taking a shortcut.”
She cuts down a side street. “This is different. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“We have to pick up by 9:30, but they usually start breaking the tables down around 9:15.”
Suddenly, we’re on Cherry St. I look at the clock on the dash; it’s 8:57.
“Uh, wow. That was some shortcut.”
“I told you.”
She drives around the corner and makes a right on Columbia Ave.
“Can we go in this way?” She doesn’t answer me.
She pulls into the church parking lot and backs into a parking space. We’re facing the back of the church.
“Are we allowed to go in this way?” I ask a little louder; I don’t think she heard me the first time.
“Yes, it’s fine.”
I hop out and grab the bags from the back seat.
“Come on, let’s try to make this quick.” I’m practically speedwalking up the rampway as I say this.
“It’s almost 9. Relax, we should be in and out in less than 10 minutes.”
She says from behind me; she’s walking at a much slower pace.
I wait for her as I reach the steps. She takes my hand as walks up next to me.
“Hey, you two!” says a dark-haired woman standing in the entryway as we walk through the door.
She’s unnerving me; no one should be this peppy at this hour.
“Hey,” I say sheepishly because I can’t remember her name.
“Michelle,” my wife says warmly.
“Hi Michelle.” I chime in.
“You remember my —” my wife says before I can introduce myself again.
“Of course; great to see you!” Michelle says, smiling while staring down at her paper. “It’s been a while,” she says, taking her eyes off the paper to look at me.
“They get a full share,” Michelle half yells as she turns to look at two women standing between the tables and crates behind her.
I let go of my wife’s hand and walk over to one of the tables which has numerous vegetables set out on it. I’m holding the reusable bag while standing there staring at the contents on the table.
From behind me, I can hear Michelle and my wife talking.
“We got three different kinds of peppers today. Two types of tomatoes. Some scallions, carrots, and a bunch of lettuce. And fennel,” Michelle says cheerily.
“Don’t,” my wife whispers as she rushes up alongside me.
I’m now back at the car. I yank the car door open and throw the bag in the back as I hop into the passenger seat. I see my wife walking towards the car.
She gets in and hands me the eggs, buckles her seatbelt, and starts the car.
“Do you want to just drop me off at home with this stuff?” “No. Let’s get the other errands out of the way.”
“Grocery store next?” I ask as she puts the car into drive.
“Yup,” she says, and she pulls the car forward and we exit the church parking lot.
She pulls back out onto Columbia. She’s again taking a route I’m not familiar with. My heart starts racing, but after a few turns, we’re on Main St. I can relax a little because at least it’s our normal grocery store.
Driving into the grocery store parking lot, she quickly pulls into a parking space.
As she puts the car in park, I say, “You don’t need me to come in. You know what we need; you made the list.”
“Nice try. Come on, it won’t take long.”
She gets out of the car, and before I know it, she’s knocking on my window.
“Come on!” she says through the glass.
I open the car door and get out.
She’s walking several feet ahead of me.
I grab a cart as she walks through the store entrance.
I’m still walking behind her as she makes her way down the cereal aisle.
She tosses a pack of granola into the cart.
“Did you want Cheerios? And oatmeal?”
“Yeah, sure, you know the ones I like.”
She grabs a box of Cheerios and tosses it in. Then walks further down the aisle and grabs a box of oatmeal.
“I’m not going to throw that from here. I’d never make it.”
I laugh as I move closer to her with the shopping cart.
“Weren’t you on the basketball team in high school? Come on, All-Star, you can make that.”
Behind her, at the end of the aisle, I can see a man turn down the aisle with his shopping cart.
She shifts to move out of his way. As he passes her and moves down the aisle closer to me, he stops and turns back to look at her.
“Hey, Jamie, is that you?” the man asks.
“Hmm?” she responds without looking in his direction.
“Jamie, I know it’s you. How’ve you been?”
“Sorry?” she says a little louder.
“Jamie, come on. I know it’s been ages, but it’s me. Doug.”
“I think you have the wrong person.” She finally looks at him.
I watch this unfold, unsure what to make of it. My palms are sweating again. My heart’s beating a bit faster; I can’t tell what this guy’s deal is.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I love my wife, but she’s got kind of a plain face.
It’s the kind of friendly, non-descript face that makes strangers open up to her.
The kind where when she’s standing in line at the local pharmacy, the person behind her decides to launch into their complaints of the day. And the only thing she may have said was, “Hello.”
It’s a warm and comforting face, but unremarkable.
I’ll be honest; I zone out a bit as this guy continues to try to get my wife to conjure up some memory of him. As he continues to insist that they know each other, or at the very least, that he knows her.
He’s getting agitated as she continues to say they don’t know each other.
“Uh, honey, we’ve got to go. We’re getting behind schedule.”
I walk quickly down the aisle towards her.
She doesn’t look rattled. She doesn’t even sound nervous. I guess I’m the only one freaking out.
“Seriously, you’re going to pretend we don’t know each other?” He asks as we walk away. The tone in which he says this is somewhere between hurt and angry.
“I’m sorry. I’m positive I don’t know you; we’ve never met before.”
She’s still holding the oatmeal; she has such a tight grip on it now that she’s denting the packaging.
She drops it into the cart. She grabs my arm as I push the cart and turn it around the corner. She’s gripping me so tightly it’s making it hard for me to steer.
We’re several aisles away and are now in the freezer section.
“What was that all about?” I’m still confused by the situation.
“I have no idea,” she says. She let go of my arm a few rows back.
“Why’d he keep calling you Jamie?”
“Beats me. Do we need anything from the frozen section?”
“You dragged me over here. Don’t you know?”
“Let’s just go pay.”
I look at the contents of the cart. There’s not much here.
I walk down the aisle and grab some frozen items from the freezers.
“Alright, let’s go.” She pushes the cart towards me and we head up to the front of the store.
As we leave the store and walk through the parking lot towards our car, I spot her scanning around for the guy.
“I think we’re good. I don’t see him.”
“I’m looking for the car; I forgot where we parked.”
I point it out, and she walks ahead of me. I unlock the car and put the groceries in the trunk.
She gets in on the passenger side.
As I finish roasting the fennel and grab some plates from the cabinet, my wife walks into the kitchen.
“Do you want to get the drinks?”
“Sure. Let’s have some wine. Red or white?”
“I don’t care.”
She heads to the basement to grab a bottle of wine.
I take the chicken out of the oven and start to make a plate for each of us.
“Nice pick,” I say as I notice the wine she’s selected. She loves white wine, but surprisingly tonight she’s come back with a red.
She walks off into the dining room with the two glasses she’s just poured.
“The fennel looks great!” she calls from the other room.
“Everything looks delicious!”
“Thanks. Can we skip the fennel next week?”
“I guess. You always do something interesting with it, and it comes out tasting great.”
“So, are we going to talk about what happened today?”
“We nearly finished on time. If it hadn’t been for that weirdo.”
“Where do you know him from?”
“I don’t. I already said that.”
“He certainly knew you.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Something that’s not a lie.”
Her evasiveness is weirding me out. This isn’t like her.
“Remember the first time we met?”
“Yeah, of course.”
I panic a little. I don’t remember every little detail from when we met.
“Relax, this isn’t a test.”
“Your car ran out of gas.”
“Right outside that gas station.”
“I helped you push it to the pump.”
I laugh, thinking back on how ridiculous it is to run out of gas at that exact moment.
“You asked what I was doing way out there.”
“You said something like, ‘I went for a drive and got lost.’”
“That’s not exactly true. That was the day I left my hometown. That’s how Doug knows me.”
“I’m confused. Very confused.”
“He’s from my hometown. We went to high school together.”
“I had been running some errands. I was backing up on a busy street and-“
“What the–?”
“I heard a noise from behind me. Something hitting the back of the car. The trunk. Or the bumper. Then some honking.”
“Did you hit someone? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know. I panicked.”
“What the fuck?”
“I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t see anything.”
“How do you just drive off after that? Did you at least get out?”
“No. It was daylight out. Figured I would have seen something if I hit someone or something.”
“Who does that?”
“There was a car behind me, and it just kept honking. So, I pulled away.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“We were at a light, and it was green. Thought maybe that’s why they were honking. You know how impatient people are.”
“You just drove off!”
“The light had been green for a while. I had been looking around. When I didn’t see anyone or anything, I just slammed on the gas.”
“You didn’t call anybody?”
“No, I just drove. I mostly stayed on the local roads. Then I got on the highway to really get some distance.”
“I noticed you had out-of-state plates. I didn’t think it was that weird at the time.”
“I drove until I ran out of gas. I didn’t plan to run out of gas; I stopped because I knew I was low.”
“Were you actually lost?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t have a plan for where I was going to go.”
“You asked me for directions to get somewhere.”
“Yeah, I needed a place to stay while I figured out what to do.”
“I don’t understand. If you didn’t hit anyone, why run?”
“I did. I hit someone.”
“That’s why you showed up with a different car. On our first date.”
“Yeah. I got rid of it. Got something else. I had to.”
“I - why wouldn’t you go back and turn yourself in?”
“I didn’t want to miss our date.”
“This isn’t a joke. You hit someone and just drove off like it was nothing.”
“I feel awful.”
“But, not enough to turn yourself in.”
She gets up from the table and heads to the kitchen. I heard her plate and fork as she drops them into the sink.
I sit there stunned at everything she’s just told me.
She reappears in the dining room but stands by the doorway, peering in at me.
“Let me know about how to make this right.”
“Uh-huh. Alright.”
“I’m heading upstairs. You coming?”
She turns and walks away.
I have been sitting at this table for hours. The back of my legs ache from the chair digging into them. I can’t bring myself to go upstairs. To face her. To face my wife.