You’re married to someone named Conrad Betancourt. But no kids.
And you don’t live in Chicago per se. You live in Grace Village, just west of the city. In the next town over from where I live, Grace Park.
You’ve come home, Lauren.
Deep breath. Calm, Simon. Use language games. Something. Deep breath.
Why don’t “monkey” and “donkey” rhyme?
Deep breath.
Why is it an unwritten but ironclad rule that we put opinion adjectives before size adjectives? Why must it always be “dirty little secret” and never “little dirty secret”?
And why size adjectives always before age? Why not “old little lady”?
Why can’t I say “an old little lovely lady”?
Deep breath.
It’s all coming back, washing over me again. It’s growing like a tumor inside me, poison flowing through my veins. I should stop right now. I should forget I saw you. I’ve put you behind me. You need to stay right where you’ve been, in my rearview mirror. I’m better now. I know I’m better. Vicky says I’m better. I can’t go back there. Everything’s fine.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put you behind me. I’ve put you behind me, Lauren. You are officially yesterday’s news, or nineteen years ago’s news.
Okay, that’s that. I’m going to forget I ever saw you today.
SEVEN WEEKS LATER
July
3
Monday, July 4, 2022
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” I whispered. Even though the whole reason I came to the club today, my first time in several years, was that I thought you might be at the Fourth of July festivities. Even though I’d been thinking about you since that day in May—who am I kidding with “that day in May,” it was Friday, May 13, at 2:04 p.m.—when I saw you on Michigan Avenue. Even though I’d tried to conjure up ways to “accidentally” run into you. Even though I’d literally rehearsed lines in a mirror like a nervous schoolboy.
Still, seeing you, Lauren, standing on the club’s outdoor patio, a view of the golf course behind you. It felt like something fresh and clean and right, as if I were seeing you for the first time.
I opened my hands, palms up, like I’d conjured something from magic. Because magic was a good word to describe it. “It’s . . . you.”
You were wearing a white sundress. Your skin was tanned. You were once again wearing those Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. Your hair was pulled up in back. You’d been laughing with friends, but I must have caught your peripheral vision and you turned, for some reason. I’d like to think it was the gods smiling down on us, some mystical inspiration that made you turn your head.
“It’s you,” you replied, removing your shades, squinting into the sun. You seemed less surprised than me. “Simon,” you said, like you enjoyed saying my name.
You broke away from your group, which did not appear to include your husband, Conrad. I appreciated that you thought our first meeting (our first one in nineteen years, at least) deserved some privacy, even if we were surrounded by a couple hundred people at the club’s Fourth of July BBQ and fireworks.
“What are . . . what are you . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence.
“Oh, I—I moved back into town,” you said. “Well, the Village.”
“You live in Grace Village?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m married. I’ve been here a few years. You’re still in Grace Park?”
“Same house,” I said.
You nodded. “I thought you might be. I thought I might run into you here at the club. I remember your family were members here. I . . . thought about calling, just to maybe break the ice—”
I waved a hand. “Oh, no worries. That was . . . a long time ago.”
You seemed relieved, a real weight lifted, at those words. You smiled at me as if grateful.
I was supposed to be so nervous. I’d built this hypothetical reunion up in my head so much that I figured I’d be sweaty and jumpy, stuttering and stammering. But my nerves instantly fluttered away when I saw you, whatever lines I’d rehearsed vanished. It was just you and me again.
“You’re married?” you asked me, seeing the ring on my finger.
“Almost ten years,” I said. “Her name is Vicky.”
“Is Vicky here?”
No. Vicky wasn’t at the club. Vicky wouldn’t be caught dead at a country club.
“She couldn’t make it,” I said. I think my face showed something, because yours did in reaction, like you realized you’d touched a nerve.
You weren’t as beautiful as you were nineteen years ago, Lauren; you were more beautiful. You looked experienced, tested, wiser. You weren’t the hot, blond twenty-year-old paralegal burning a path through my father’s law firm but someone who had ripened into a poised, confident woman, who had lived and learned, who knew where she was and who she was.
It bothered me that I didn’t tell you that I’d seen you back in May on Michigan Avenue, that the only reason I’d come to this stupid event at the Grace Country Club was that I’d looked up the membership roster and saw that you and your husband, Conrad, were members, and I thought I might run into you at this Fourth of July party. That my “surprise” at seeing you was not completely sincere. It bothered me that something that could be so real between us was starting under false pretenses.
So I told myself, Okay, one white lie, but that’s it. I will never lie to you again, Lauren.
On my way home from the club, I stopped and bought this spiral notebook, just some ordinary notebook with a green cover. (Green for fresh and new, I suppose.) It’s been years, Lauren, years since I kept a journal. I’d given up writing my daily thoughts. Maybe because I no longer had anything interesting to say. I have a blog and law review articles and class to talk about the law, and the law has basically become my blood and oxygen and nourishment. What else is there to talk about?
So it’s back to a journal—hello, Green Journal—because now I have something to write about, Lauren. Or someone, that is.
Someone who agreed to meet me next week for coffee!
No harm in having some coffee, is there?