Luke and I were together for 9 years; we never liked each other. It was not exactly an arranged marriage. No, I will take responsibility for my decision. But there were outside factors that played into this semi-holy matrimony. There was the time Luke’s father was dying and in his hospice bed. He told us that his taste buds had left him and that Luke and I should get married. He died the following Tuesday with the New York Times crossword puzzle in his hand. It had been completed.
“My father really loved you,” Luke told me.
“I know,” I said recalling a time when his father squeezed my left butt cheek, accidentally fingering my butthole. To this day I still don’t know if that was an accident or on purpose.
Luke’s mother had left him and his little brother when Luke was in 7th grade in middle school. She wrote the kids a letter and left it by the toaster oven one morning when Luke got up for class. By the time Luke rolled out of bed, brushed his teeth, pulled his two whole wheat slices of bread out of the fridge and walked to the toaster, his mother had left him.
It wasn’t a suicide letter but Luke didn’t know that until his mother, 6 years later, friend requested him on Facebook to wish him a happy 18th birthday.
This is all to be said that my mother loved making breakfast for my brother and me. She also loved making breakfast for dinner when Luke came over to the house. Luke was the only person my mom was okay serving tempeh or tofurky sausage to. The rest of my friends who didn’t eat meat she thought were ostentatious. I never told Luke this. He already knew and he so desperately wanted to call my mother, mom. “Thanks, Kristine.” Call me my mom, he wished she said in response. She never did.
My mother and father have been married for 40 years. I forget that sometimes. Growing up my friends assumed my parents had separated when my brother and I were in elementary school. I guess it’s because whenever I told family stories I was always either with one of them and never both. In high school during my basketball games my mom would shake off her umbrella and walk all the way to the end of the gym and sit on the risers with other moms and dads. My dad would come in halfway through the first quarter in his trench coat and sit in the second row of the bleachers as close to the gym doors as possible.
Luke remembers this. He told me being my boyfriend at the time was hard because he felt he had to choose to sit with my mom or my dad to watch me play and it made him so uncomfortable he learned how to be a scorekeeper so that he had to six next to Jim, the sweet, depressing volunteer, who ran the clock for every home game.
“Maxine, it’s kind of amazing that your parents are still together,” Luke told me the day after our 9 year anniversary.
“It’s strictly out of fear.” I blurted.
That was a lie. My answer didn’t answer his statement. It answered ours, mine and Luke’s. I knew this because as soon as I said it I saw his expression widen as if he was straining his eyes to hold back tears. My words had affected him and because of this I knew there was truth in what I had said. Rather than word vomit all over my Persian rug we were standing on with apologies and questions and explanations of where to go from here what to do now, I pulled a bobby pin from my jean pocket and put my bangs back and away from my face.
And we looked at one another between blinks. For hours.
“You’re selfish,” we both said at the same time. Our synchronicity made us both titter a breathy laugh.
The following day we had breakfast for breakfast at our local diner on the corner 4 blocks away. Luke got up to go to the bathroom and while he did, I made sure to pay for our meal myself. I knew he wouldn’t like that. I knew he would think that it was a scheming type of closure I decided to make so I reminded him that’s what the divorce papers will be and let him leave the tip for our waiter.
The divorce was hard. Had we stayed together one more year , I could have gotten my citizenship. But I was done with Canada and was ready to be comforted by misery back in New York, and Luke, well he was ready to be Canadian again.