And Yet They Were Happy by Helen Phillips

Author:Helen Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Leapfrog Press
Published: 2011-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

wife #6

Two friends meet in a café. One is recently and secretly divorced. One is recently and secretly married. They choose to sit in the courtyard behind the café. An uncertain warmth curls around the chilly wind. Spring is arriving. They wish to liberate their bodies from the cold, strange winter. Each has been feeling apocalyptic lately, and brave. By the time they’ve determined—egging each other on—to sit outside, by the time they’ve overmastered the waiter’s cocked eyebrow and warning about the cold metal chairs, by the time they’ve gotten settled at the wrought-iron table in the deserted courtyard, they’ve gone too far to retract their decision, to return to the interior where lamps glow yellow on chocolate walls. Each has come to tell the other her secret. They talk politely, then fall silent.

One of the women stares into her white mug. She taps her cold feet on the flagstone. She glances at her friend and looks away. She grips the mug. She stares at the barren branches. She notices birdsong; is her attention to such details heightened due to the recent circumstances of her life? She glances at her friend again. She observes certain tiny effects of age in her friend’s face. “So,” she says.

The other woman glances at her friend and looks away. She stares at the barren branches. She grips her white mug. She glances at her friend again. She observes certain tiny effects of age in her friend’s face. She taps her cold feet on the flagstone. She stares into the mug. She notices birdsong; is her attention to such details heightened due to the recent circumstances of her life? “So,” she says, just as her friend says, “So.”

They talk politely. “So,” each sometimes begins, but nothing comes of it. Eventually, they both say they must be going. Shivering, they come in from the courtyard. The waiter grins triumphantly. He was right. They were wrong. The friends part in the vestibule of the café; it will be decades before they see each other again.

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