I want Melody to be free to be with me. This request is no longer about Melody; it’s to fulfill the desires of my own selfish soul.
His answer seems unequivocal: Never.
MALE E BENE A FINE
VIENE
(EVIL AND GOOD COME TO AN END)
Two years and nine months later
ONE
Maggie Mullen swirls a glass of wine she started aerating an hour earlier, stares at me and laughs and says, “You’re so funny.” I can’t remember the words I just spoke, distracted with tidying up the kitchen of her father’s restaurant. “You can really make me laugh when you want to.” When you want to—the point of her statement. Over the last couple years, women have drifted in and out of my life, relationships where the strongest bond occurred the first days of our meeting and slowly dissolved over the course of weeks or months, where we shared a mutual warmth that I eventually chilled over like a berg of ice; Chuck’s daughter has yet to drift out, seems committed to trying to make something of our intense friendship. A decade ago she might have been my ideal companion—a soft-spoken, sweet-natured gal who inherited the bulk of her family’s Irish genes, down to the red hair and fair skin and a face that readily blushes and carries a perpetual smile. But I know now how this will go. Her words will reshape as they did for the three women before her, will shift from you’re so funny to you’re so distracted. Maggie and I are partners, in a sense. We open the place, close it down at night, are together through the full bell curve of activity that any successful restaurant experiences over a day’s time. She and I are not just friends; we possess a rhythm, offset each other’s abilities and deficiencies. We keep the tables full and the customers happy and the restaurant well reviewed while her father completes his long recuperation from back surgery. And every night after we step out the back door of the restaurant, I walk her to her car, where she leans forward and gives me a peck on the cheek and pauses, wonders if tonight is the night I will turn my face and capture her affection in the form of a kiss on the lips, take the first step toward a physical encounter that could lead to love.
As I wind down the last few chores before we leave, Maggie picks up the bottle of Syrah and wiggles it a little as she catches my eye. I wave her off while wiping the counter. She stares at the wine like it has failed her, frowns as though I didn’t notice she was wearing a pretty new dress or had gotten a new haircut. She swirls the wine in her glass less vigorously, then gently empties the contents of her glass in the sink.
Chuck and Maggie, this ready-made family for me to join, meet every requirement I could’ve wanted, a tidy package comprised of warmth and security and attraction. Yet the table of contents suggests more than the chapters provide.
After Maggie steps outside, I set the alarm and lock the door. I walk her to her car, perform what has become the final task of my day. She stares at me a second longer than usual, feels like minutes. She stands on her toes and I can smell the wine on her lips as they meet my skin. And now I see: The offer of wine was not to loosen me; she required the loosening. This moment was planned if not practiced. She lets her peck linger a few seconds and exhales against my cheek, to which I cannot respond, feels as though I am about to cheat on my spouse. She drops her body back to the ground and gently turns my chin so I face her.
“It’s okay to let her go,” she whispers, referring to April Martin, the wife who lived and died without a single breath, created to fill a gap in my fabricated life.
But there was no April; she could’ve never been on my mind. That last image of Melody had recurred through my head instead, my final glimpse of her as she disappeared into the center of the Greyhound station. I tell Maggie, “I’ll never be able to let her go. She was the best part of who I was, of who I am. How do you let go of what makes you stronger?” She could never understand how the person I have