For the past forty-five minutes, Gretchen has been on the phone, listening to her ex-husband say his life is ruined. Apparently Matthew\u2019s wife Danielle wants a divorce. Gretchen has been saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d and \u201cThat sucks,\u201d and generally performing sympathy.<\/p>\n
Matthew\u2019s a little drunk. His words have lost their shape, like softened butter. So Gretchen says, \u201cCan I ask you something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were married, were you involved with Danielle?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen did it start?\u201d Gretchen keeps her voice calm, like she\u2019s coaxing a nervous cat from a hiding place.<\/p>\n
Matthew says, \u201cYou know my memory is awful, so I can\u2019t tell you exactly when. But I know I was still working at Chase.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that was more than a year before Gretchen cheated on him, more than a year before they separated.<\/p>\n
Matthew says, \u201cAre you upset?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s less a feeling than a sensation, like she\u2019s a boat rocked by the wake of a larger vessel. Half an hour ago, when Matthew told her that Danielle had fallen in love with someone she\u2019d met at church, he said what he minded most was that Danielle had lied. Gretchen said, \u201cAll cheaters lie.\u201d Because they do. Because she did. Still, it\u2019s a shock to learn, sixteen years later, that Matthew had also lied, repeatedly, to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a colleague who has nowhere to go on Thanksgiving. Is it okay if we invite her?\u201d That\u2019s what Matthew had asked her, a little over sixteen years ago\u2014something like that. Gretchen can\u2019t remember his exact words. What she can remember is something strange about Matthew\u2019s face. Something furtive. And some intuition she\u2019d had, which dissolved before completely forming. Like those epiphanies you have when you\u2019re stoned: they coalesce, they pop.<\/p>\n
“Of course! Thanksgiving is for strays,\u201d Gretchen had said. Brightly. And smiled brightly at Danielle too when she\u2019d showed up, with her bottle of Beaujolais and saran-wrapped bowl of cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce, the easiest thing to make, Gretchen remembered thinking, and then feeling badly for having, on Thanksgiving of all days, such petty thoughts.<\/p>\n
Now, she says, \u201cYou let me believe that splitting up was all my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never said it was your fault!\u201d Matthew says. Which is technically true: he\u2019d looked her sorrowfully in the eye and said, \u201cWe are both responsible.\u201d But he knows perfectly well how she understood that statement. She thought he was being magnanimous, and so did all their friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to make dinner,\u201d she tells him.<\/p>\n
He says, \u201cOkay. Thanks for talking. Please don\u2019t be upset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gretchen plugs her phone into its charger. She pre-heats the oven to 425, pulls out the cutting board and olive oil, and rinses Brussels sprouts.<\/p>\n
Why feel upset? This is all old news. Or new news about old news. Besides, some part of her knew and has always known, which is why she posed the question, at this juncture when Matthew was disoriented enough and drunk enough to tell the truth.<\/p>\n
She thinks of the ending of Back to the Future<\/em>, where Marty\u2019s dad is suddenly cool and fashionable, because Marty\u2019s time traveling has improved the course of the past, so the teenage version of his father, McFly, stood up to the bully instead of capitulating to him. Gretchen wonders what version of herself would now be chopping Brussels sprouts in half, if she hadn\u2019t carried this burden for sixteen years, feeling like she alone was responsible for the failure of her marriage. Believing it was all her fucking up her life, cheating on her ex-husband, who defended her to everyone, which of course only made her look worse, who was very sad but graciously let her go, and who had always been so understanding. As if one correction is all it takes to change the course of a life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She thinks of the ending of Back to the Future, where Marty\u2019s dad is suddenly cool and fashionable, because Marty\u2019s time traveling has improved the course of the past, so the teenage version of his father, McFly, stood up to the bully instead of capitulating to him. Gretchen wonders what version of herself would now be chopping Brussels sprouts in half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[2976],"class_list":["post-21296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-kimmagowan","writer-kim-magowan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21296"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21827,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21296\/revisions\/21827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}