Inside by Alix Ohlin

Author:Alix Ohlin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Literary
ISBN: 9780307958549
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

MITCH HAD BEEN back in Montreal for two weeks when he saw his ex-wife for the first time in years. It was September, and fall was coming on strong. The Labor Day weekend passed stormy and breezy, warning everyone to put the follies of summer behind them. Kids walked the streets with their heads down, bent under backpacks, listless in their new school clothes. September had always been Martine’s favorite time of year: she said it felt like promises. Whenever the phone rang, he thought it might be her. Even knowing it wasn’t, he’d pick up on the first ring, alert and vulnerable to the telemarketers on the other end or his brother calling from Mississauga.

He didn’t call her himself, because he didn’t know what to say.

He was crossing the hospital parking lot late one afternoon when a middle-aged woman called his name. He stared at her blankly, a half smile frozen on his face. She put her hand on her chest and said, “Azra.”

“My God,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and gave her a hug. She was Grace’s best friend, or had been back when they were married. She had gained weight and her hair was different—now sleek and straight, with a red tint, not long and black and curly—but her eyes were still wry and kind, reflecting the same surprise at how he had aged as his must have about her. She had always been vibrant and wiry, a churn of energy fired by some personal electricity. She and Grace used to talk in the kitchen for hours, exchanging confidences about their futures, husbands, jobs, sex lives, problems with their parents. It always amazed him how quickly they would plunge into the depths of conversation, as if the surface held no tension at all.

“How are you?” he said now.

“Oh, you know,” she said, and they both laughed. She held on to his elbows briefly—they’d always liked each other—before letting go. “Have you seen her?”

He followed her quick glance at the building behind him. “Is Grace here?” he said. “What happened?”

Azra grimaced, as if weighing whether or not to tell him whatever it was, but surely there was no reason not to. He and Grace had worked hard to forgive each other, and if the process was necessarily incomplete, it had been undertaken in what they both acknowledged was good faith. They’d kept in touch for the first years after the divorce, then gradually moved on with their lives.

“She was in a car accident last week,” Azra said. “I thought maybe you’d heard. She was stopped at a light on Jean-Talon when a car rammed straight into her. She has a broken leg and a broken pelvis and I don’t even know what else.”

“That’s awful,” Mitch said. “Are you heading in now? I’ll go with you.”

She hesitated for a second, then shrugged and nodded, and they walked inside together, catching up on each other’s news. Azra and Mike had two children, and Mitch heard their names and ages with the usual small pang of having let a stage of life pass him by.

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