Pulling onto I-4, heading out of Orlando, Fay told herself to relax.
On the seat next to her was her purse and an overnight bag stuffed
with a couple days worth of clean clothes, suntan lotion, a romance
novel, and a manila envelope with the divorce papers. She was going
to Cocoa Beach for the weekend, just long enough to clear her mind
and sign the divorce papers Dale, her soon to be ex, had the nerve to
send certified mail to Dr. Hasell’s office where she worked as a dental
hygienist
Fay concentrated on staying between the white lines of the highway.
Driving had gotten somewhat easier in the last month. More than
once, in those first few weeks after the separation, she’d had to fight
the urge to jerk the steering wheel hard to the right and plow into the
pine trees lining the highway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to die as
much as go to sleep for a while, perhaps long enough to make it
through the grieving process, however long that might be, maybe wake
up on the other side, ready for life again.
She’d reserved a room at the Ocean Shore Suites. The front of the
motel faced US 1 and the back faced the beach. While her first floor
room didn’t offer a view of the ocean, only sand dunes, she could smell
and taste the salt in the air.
Hungry from the drive, Fay walked across the street to Sonny’s Pit
Bar-B-Q. She ordered a pulled pork sandwich and watched a baby boy,
maybe a year old, at the table across from her, gobble up a plateful of
baked beans. His face and hands were covered in the red-brown
sauce. The parents, a scruffy looking pair of nineteen or twenty year
olds, didn’t seem to notice when the baby started running his dirty
hands through his blonde hair. Fay had to fight the desire to reach
over and stop him, to fling one of her French fries into the back of that
worthless father’s head.
She could not help but think of Dale and her son Owen, who was a
high school senior and still living with his father. Dale had come to her
that Sunday morning on his way out the door to go fishing. He had on
that stupid hat with the hooks and lures fastened to the brim. She
was reading the paper without much concentration, thinking that what
she really needed to do was get out there and tidy up the garden, get
it ready for winter.
“With Owen graduating this year I think we should consider splitting
up,” Dale said as easy as could be, as if it were something he’d
practiced hundreds of times before and were no bigger deal than
suggesting they plant a new crepe myrtle in the front yard.
At first she didn’t quite understand what he’d said; she didn’t listen
to half of what he said. He was always talking. Plans for expanding his
landscaping business, plans for buying a new work truck. Talk, talk,
talk. Always something she didn’t really care about. Lowering the
newspaper, she noticed a cartoon was on the TV behind him. This
seemed strange to her, because weren’t cartoons for Saturday
mornings?
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Split up, divorce.”
“But why?” Other questions occurred to her: Is it another woman?
Have you felt this way a long time? Is it me? Am I fat? Am I not
attractive? But the words to these questions, thankfully, she would
think later, didn’t come out of her mouth.
“You know neither of us are happy,” he said.
And it was true. She hadn’t been particularly happy with the
marriage for years. But half the people she knew weren’t happy with
their marriages. Were you even supposed to be married and happy?
She didn’t know. They had a decent life—minus romance and
excitement and shared secrets—but it hadn’t been awful. He had never
slapped her around or come home drunk wanting rough second-hand
sex after a night at the strip clubs like some of her friend’s husbands.
He had never, as far as she knew, cheated on her.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m already late.” And then he walked out
the door.
Fay spent the rest of day shopping, buying flowers and a new
blouse, some shoes. Anything at all but to think about the fact she
would have to start living alone. What upset her most was that she
would probably have to move out. Dale hadn’t yet said he wanted to
stay in the house, but he’d built a three-car garage out back the year
before so he could store his lawn equipment and they’d converted the
back bedroom into his office.
*
She leaned back in the motel bed, her head and neck up against the
strange headboard. The old, green comforter was on the floor at the
foot of the bed. Julie, Dr. Hasell’s wife and the other hygienist in the
office, had told her to never touch those things. She said they were
only washed once a month and you never know what type of bodily
fluids might be on them.
This weekend trip had actually been Julie’s idea: get away, she’d said,
it’ll help you clear your mind and make plans for your future. To Fay,
this sounded like a good idea at the time.
Fay took two big mouthfuls of the beer she’d bought at 7-Eleven on
the way back from the restaurant, then pulled the papers out of the
manila envelope. His name Dale Ray Brown was above hers, Fay Alice
Brown. The details of the divorce were what they’d already discussed
and decided: he’d get the house and pay her half its value over the
next ten years. They would split the cost of Owen’s college education
and she’d cover his insurance. There were no surprises here.
All she had to do was sign, slide her pen across those three lines
with the red X beside them and the marriage would officially be over.
But she couldn’t sign them just yet. While she knew the marriage was
over and that she didn’t love Dale, the movement from one person, a
married woman, to the next, a divorcee, was more difficult than she’d
imagined. She slid the pen back into her purse and turned the bedside
light off. The beer and her breathing exercises helped ease her toward
sleep in only a matter of minutes.
*
Fay was at the beach by ten the next morning. She’d bought the
bathing suit Tuesday night, after work, at Target. It was a little loose
in the hips. Without trying, she had lost fifteen pounds since moving
out. The only time she bothered cooking dinner was when Owen came
over on the weekends. Most nights she was in bed by eight, a half-
eaten bowl of cereal on her bedside table.
The beach was not crowded yet, but it was April and a Saturday—
temperatures in the mid-80’s—so Fay was sure it would fill up
eventually. She found a spot twenty yards from the water, set her
towel down and her bag with the change of clothes, her lotion and
sunglasses, and the romance novel, To Love Again, Julie had given her
for the trip.
Fay had woken an hour ago, but the water and sun and sand made
her sleepy again, so she closed her eyes and drifted off. The crashing
of the waves against the beach was calming and easy.
*
She had met Dale twenty-two years ago. He’d come in to have a
tooth pulled. He was well-built and attractive, but she was not
available. Two days before, a man she’d been dating for over a year,
and whom she didn’t truly love, had asked her to marry him.
As she prepped Dale’s tooth for the extraction, she began telling him
about this other man—a man whose name she could no longer pull
from her memory—and about how he was a nice enough guy. He wore
suits and argyle socks to work and had a yellow canary named Finch.
“Sounds like a fag,” Dale said.
“He’s a good man.”
“You know what you need?”
“No,” she said. “What?”
“You need to go out to dinner with me, tonight. I’ll show you a good
time.” Dale reached over and ran his hand against her naked calf. And
while she knew she should have been offended, she was not. She
slapped his hand away, but took him up on his offer for dinner. Four
months later they were married.
It was the sound of children that pulled her back to the beach. Two
boys, no older than ten or eleven, were running in and out of the
water, screaming. Fay sat up and pulled To Love Again from her bag.
On the cover, a couple stood arm-in-arm facing the sea. In the right
corner of the book was a round sticker with 25 cents scribbled in black
pen. It was not a new book. Julie had told her to read it, said it would
show her there were more men out there.
The first chapter introduced the reader to Marie, a woman whose
husband was leaving her for another woman after twelve years of
marriage. Chapter two and three went through the next couple
months of Marie trying to understand what to do with her life now that
she was alone. A woman in her forties who had not worked in years.
There were obvious similarities to Fay’s life and she knew Julie had
given it to her for that reason. She could imagine what was going to
happen; Marie would meet a man and they would fall in love and she’d
be happier than she’d ever been with that old cow of a husband.
Fay had read forty pages of the three-hundred page book when she
felt the need to pee. Her motel room was only fifty yards behind her
but she didn’t want to leave her things out here unattended and she
didn’t want to lose this prime spot, so she headed to the water. It was
cooler than she thought it would be. It was only April.
In waist-deep water, she could see the crowd of people on the
beach. White-fleshed tourists from places she’d never been:
Minnesota, New York, and Iowa. She squatted and felt the warm rush
against her thigh, swimming around her knees, her ankles, and then it
was gone. She was embarrassed as she walked out of the water, sure
that everyone knew exactly what she’d done. But she told herself it
didn’t matter. She would never see these people again. Anything she
did this weekend would stay here, away from her other life back in
Orlando.
On her stomach now, propped up on her elbows, Fay continued to
read the novel. Marie had started working the counter at a flower shop
where a customer named John came in every Friday and bought a
dozen tulips. He didn’t wear a ring, so Marie assumed they must be for
his girlfriend. After his fourth visit, she asked him who the flowers
were for and he’d smiled and said shyly that they were for his mother’s
room at a nearby nursing home.
When she told him how sweet that was, John invited her to come
with him and meet his mother and to have dinner afterwards. Marie
accepted his offer. What harm, she wondered, could happen to her in
a nursing home? Or from a man who was kind enough to bring his
mother fresh flowers every week?
Fay smiled and shook her head. Of course, it was ridiculous and
predictable, but still she read on, turning to on one side when she felt
her back starting to burn. Over the course of the next few weeks,
Marie learned that John was an investment banker. His wife had died a
dozen years earlier in a boating accident.
Through the next hundred pages, the couple began kissing, holding
hands, taking long walks on an unnamed, empty beach. There were
long passages where they gave each other massages, would not have
sex, but would lie side by side, running their hands across each other’s
excited, naked bodies. Marie would ask John to make love to her, but
he said he didn’t think he could move on to that stage of the
relationship while his mother was still alive. She had loved his ex-wife
as if she were her own daughter.
In the parts of the book which detailed these massages, and oiled
hands gliding over foreign flesh, Fay could feel a stirring inside of
herself. She ignored it, pushing forward, wanting to know what was
going to happen and how they would finally consummate their love.
But for the next fifty pages, they continued to visit John’s ailing
mother and to explore each other’s bodies with their hands and to tell
secrets of their previous lives: the time John kissed a man in college,
Marie’s admitting she once watered her backyard naked.
With thirty-five pages left to go, Fay’s back and shoulders felt
officially sunburned. She walked back to her room. She’d been out
here long enough. She closed the curtains and took a cool shower and
instead of putting her clothes back on climbed into bed naked. Her skin
tickled. The fan swirled overhead.
Fay leaned against the headboard and continued to read. John’s
mother died. Her heart simply gave out. The night of the funeral, after
all the guests had left, Marie stripped John naked and made love to
him. The book ended with them waking up the next morning with sun
streaming through tall, white curtains.
By the time Fay turned the final page, and dropped the book, her
right hand was stroking herself, pressing and pushing, and that was all
it took. The force of the orgasm surprised her. All alone in this
strange motel room with her hand moist, resting on her stomach, Fay
felt a little dirty, a little embarrassed and sore, but, all in all, she felt
pretty damn good.
After a nap, she took another quick shower and got dressed for
dinner. A mile up US 1, there was a bar named Conchy Joe’s. She’d
eaten there years ago with Dale. She decided to go there tonight, have
a beer or two, some oysters and a plate of conch fritters. Then she
would come back and sign those damn divorce papers, be done with it
once and for all.
next page
On the seat next to her was her purse and an overnight bag stuffed
with a couple days worth of clean clothes, suntan lotion, a romance
novel, and a manila envelope with the divorce papers. She was going
to Cocoa Beach for the weekend, just long enough to clear her mind
and sign the divorce papers Dale, her soon to be ex, had the nerve to
send certified mail to Dr. Hasell’s office where she worked as a dental
hygienist
Fay concentrated on staying between the white lines of the highway.
Driving had gotten somewhat easier in the last month. More than
once, in those first few weeks after the separation, she’d had to fight
the urge to jerk the steering wheel hard to the right and plow into the
pine trees lining the highway. She wasn’t sure she wanted to die as
much as go to sleep for a while, perhaps long enough to make it
through the grieving process, however long that might be, maybe wake
up on the other side, ready for life again.
She’d reserved a room at the Ocean Shore Suites. The front of the
motel faced US 1 and the back faced the beach. While her first floor
room didn’t offer a view of the ocean, only sand dunes, she could smell
and taste the salt in the air.
Hungry from the drive, Fay walked across the street to Sonny’s Pit
Bar-B-Q. She ordered a pulled pork sandwich and watched a baby boy,
maybe a year old, at the table across from her, gobble up a plateful of
baked beans. His face and hands were covered in the red-brown
sauce. The parents, a scruffy looking pair of nineteen or twenty year
olds, didn’t seem to notice when the baby started running his dirty
hands through his blonde hair. Fay had to fight the desire to reach
over and stop him, to fling one of her French fries into the back of that
worthless father’s head.
She could not help but think of Dale and her son Owen, who was a
high school senior and still living with his father. Dale had come to her
that Sunday morning on his way out the door to go fishing. He had on
that stupid hat with the hooks and lures fastened to the brim. She
was reading the paper without much concentration, thinking that what
she really needed to do was get out there and tidy up the garden, get
it ready for winter.
“With Owen graduating this year I think we should consider splitting
up,” Dale said as easy as could be, as if it were something he’d
practiced hundreds of times before and were no bigger deal than
suggesting they plant a new crepe myrtle in the front yard.
At first she didn’t quite understand what he’d said; she didn’t listen
to half of what he said. He was always talking. Plans for expanding his
landscaping business, plans for buying a new work truck. Talk, talk,
talk. Always something she didn’t really care about. Lowering the
newspaper, she noticed a cartoon was on the TV behind him. This
seemed strange to her, because weren’t cartoons for Saturday
mornings?
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Split up, divorce.”
“But why?” Other questions occurred to her: Is it another woman?
Have you felt this way a long time? Is it me? Am I fat? Am I not
attractive? But the words to these questions, thankfully, she would
think later, didn’t come out of her mouth.
“You know neither of us are happy,” he said.
And it was true. She hadn’t been particularly happy with the
marriage for years. But half the people she knew weren’t happy with
their marriages. Were you even supposed to be married and happy?
She didn’t know. They had a decent life—minus romance and
excitement and shared secrets—but it hadn’t been awful. He had never
slapped her around or come home drunk wanting rough second-hand
sex after a night at the strip clubs like some of her friend’s husbands.
He had never, as far as she knew, cheated on her.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m already late.” And then he walked out
the door.
Fay spent the rest of day shopping, buying flowers and a new
blouse, some shoes. Anything at all but to think about the fact she
would have to start living alone. What upset her most was that she
would probably have to move out. Dale hadn’t yet said he wanted to
stay in the house, but he’d built a three-car garage out back the year
before so he could store his lawn equipment and they’d converted the
back bedroom into his office.
*
She leaned back in the motel bed, her head and neck up against the
strange headboard. The old, green comforter was on the floor at the
foot of the bed. Julie, Dr. Hasell’s wife and the other hygienist in the
office, had told her to never touch those things. She said they were
only washed once a month and you never know what type of bodily
fluids might be on them.
This weekend trip had actually been Julie’s idea: get away, she’d said,
it’ll help you clear your mind and make plans for your future. To Fay,
this sounded like a good idea at the time.
Fay took two big mouthfuls of the beer she’d bought at 7-Eleven on
the way back from the restaurant, then pulled the papers out of the
manila envelope. His name Dale Ray Brown was above hers, Fay Alice
Brown. The details of the divorce were what they’d already discussed
and decided: he’d get the house and pay her half its value over the
next ten years. They would split the cost of Owen’s college education
and she’d cover his insurance. There were no surprises here.
All she had to do was sign, slide her pen across those three lines
with the red X beside them and the marriage would officially be over.
But she couldn’t sign them just yet. While she knew the marriage was
over and that she didn’t love Dale, the movement from one person, a
married woman, to the next, a divorcee, was more difficult than she’d
imagined. She slid the pen back into her purse and turned the bedside
light off. The beer and her breathing exercises helped ease her toward
sleep in only a matter of minutes.
*
Fay was at the beach by ten the next morning. She’d bought the
bathing suit Tuesday night, after work, at Target. It was a little loose
in the hips. Without trying, she had lost fifteen pounds since moving
out. The only time she bothered cooking dinner was when Owen came
over on the weekends. Most nights she was in bed by eight, a half-
eaten bowl of cereal on her bedside table.
The beach was not crowded yet, but it was April and a Saturday—
temperatures in the mid-80’s—so Fay was sure it would fill up
eventually. She found a spot twenty yards from the water, set her
towel down and her bag with the change of clothes, her lotion and
sunglasses, and the romance novel, To Love Again, Julie had given her
for the trip.
Fay had woken an hour ago, but the water and sun and sand made
her sleepy again, so she closed her eyes and drifted off. The crashing
of the waves against the beach was calming and easy.
*
She had met Dale twenty-two years ago. He’d come in to have a
tooth pulled. He was well-built and attractive, but she was not
available. Two days before, a man she’d been dating for over a year,
and whom she didn’t truly love, had asked her to marry him.
As she prepped Dale’s tooth for the extraction, she began telling him
about this other man—a man whose name she could no longer pull
from her memory—and about how he was a nice enough guy. He wore
suits and argyle socks to work and had a yellow canary named Finch.
“Sounds like a fag,” Dale said.
“He’s a good man.”
“You know what you need?”
“No,” she said. “What?”
“You need to go out to dinner with me, tonight. I’ll show you a good
time.” Dale reached over and ran his hand against her naked calf. And
while she knew she should have been offended, she was not. She
slapped his hand away, but took him up on his offer for dinner. Four
months later they were married.
It was the sound of children that pulled her back to the beach. Two
boys, no older than ten or eleven, were running in and out of the
water, screaming. Fay sat up and pulled To Love Again from her bag.
On the cover, a couple stood arm-in-arm facing the sea. In the right
corner of the book was a round sticker with 25 cents scribbled in black
pen. It was not a new book. Julie had told her to read it, said it would
show her there were more men out there.
The first chapter introduced the reader to Marie, a woman whose
husband was leaving her for another woman after twelve years of
marriage. Chapter two and three went through the next couple
months of Marie trying to understand what to do with her life now that
she was alone. A woman in her forties who had not worked in years.
There were obvious similarities to Fay’s life and she knew Julie had
given it to her for that reason. She could imagine what was going to
happen; Marie would meet a man and they would fall in love and she’d
be happier than she’d ever been with that old cow of a husband.
Fay had read forty pages of the three-hundred page book when she
felt the need to pee. Her motel room was only fifty yards behind her
but she didn’t want to leave her things out here unattended and she
didn’t want to lose this prime spot, so she headed to the water. It was
cooler than she thought it would be. It was only April.
In waist-deep water, she could see the crowd of people on the
beach. White-fleshed tourists from places she’d never been:
Minnesota, New York, and Iowa. She squatted and felt the warm rush
against her thigh, swimming around her knees, her ankles, and then it
was gone. She was embarrassed as she walked out of the water, sure
that everyone knew exactly what she’d done. But she told herself it
didn’t matter. She would never see these people again. Anything she
did this weekend would stay here, away from her other life back in
Orlando.
On her stomach now, propped up on her elbows, Fay continued to
read the novel. Marie had started working the counter at a flower shop
where a customer named John came in every Friday and bought a
dozen tulips. He didn’t wear a ring, so Marie assumed they must be for
his girlfriend. After his fourth visit, she asked him who the flowers
were for and he’d smiled and said shyly that they were for his mother’s
room at a nearby nursing home.
When she told him how sweet that was, John invited her to come
with him and meet his mother and to have dinner afterwards. Marie
accepted his offer. What harm, she wondered, could happen to her in
a nursing home? Or from a man who was kind enough to bring his
mother fresh flowers every week?
Fay smiled and shook her head. Of course, it was ridiculous and
predictable, but still she read on, turning to on one side when she felt
her back starting to burn. Over the course of the next few weeks,
Marie learned that John was an investment banker. His wife had died a
dozen years earlier in a boating accident.
Through the next hundred pages, the couple began kissing, holding
hands, taking long walks on an unnamed, empty beach. There were
long passages where they gave each other massages, would not have
sex, but would lie side by side, running their hands across each other’s
excited, naked bodies. Marie would ask John to make love to her, but
he said he didn’t think he could move on to that stage of the
relationship while his mother was still alive. She had loved his ex-wife
as if she were her own daughter.
In the parts of the book which detailed these massages, and oiled
hands gliding over foreign flesh, Fay could feel a stirring inside of
herself. She ignored it, pushing forward, wanting to know what was
going to happen and how they would finally consummate their love.
But for the next fifty pages, they continued to visit John’s ailing
mother and to explore each other’s bodies with their hands and to tell
secrets of their previous lives: the time John kissed a man in college,
Marie’s admitting she once watered her backyard naked.
With thirty-five pages left to go, Fay’s back and shoulders felt
officially sunburned. She walked back to her room. She’d been out
here long enough. She closed the curtains and took a cool shower and
instead of putting her clothes back on climbed into bed naked. Her skin
tickled. The fan swirled overhead.
Fay leaned against the headboard and continued to read. John’s
mother died. Her heart simply gave out. The night of the funeral, after
all the guests had left, Marie stripped John naked and made love to
him. The book ended with them waking up the next morning with sun
streaming through tall, white curtains.
By the time Fay turned the final page, and dropped the book, her
right hand was stroking herself, pressing and pushing, and that was all
it took. The force of the orgasm surprised her. All alone in this
strange motel room with her hand moist, resting on her stomach, Fay
felt a little dirty, a little embarrassed and sore, but, all in all, she felt
pretty damn good.
After a nap, she took another quick shower and got dressed for
dinner. A mile up US 1, there was a bar named Conchy Joe’s. She’d
eaten there years ago with Dale. She decided to go there tonight, have
a beer or two, some oysters and a plate of conch fritters. Then she
would come back and sign those damn divorce papers, be done with it
once and for all.
next page
To Love Again by Steve Cushman summer fiction 2008 r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal