Mitzi Bytes by Kerry Clare

Author:Kerry Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2017-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

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From the Archives: Mitzi Bytes The Trouble

I met M’s new boyfriend, G, a few weeks ago at her Christmas party. She knows him through work, I’ve heard all about him, and so it was exciting to finally see him in the flesh, to find out if he was everything she’d said he was. And he was everything, upon first glance. Dashingly handsome, and actually employed, which are the two main hurdles when you’re looking for love in your forties.

The new guy was really charming and funny, and he kept putting his hand on the small of her back in a way that wasn’t possessive, but instead just seemed like he wanted to be touching her always. I listened to him talking about her with another friend. “She’s phenomenal,” he was saying, so obviously besotted, and I thought, She really deserves that.

“Finally,” I thought as I drove home that night. A happy ending. There is something so comforting, so tidy, about the idea of people in pairs. They would get married, and it wasn’t even too late for kids.

But I got it all wrong. This week I ran into M at the mall. The school had sprung a Pyjama Day on us, and all the ones we had were obscenely small and ratty, so I was buying new pairs. M was out shopping for a shoe rack. So we sat down together in the food court for a quick cup of caffeine, and she appeared still to be glowing with something—happiness? The way she said his name was with such relish, as though it were the smoothest thing in the world.

I said, “So things are really happening.”

She said, “It’s pretty serious.”

I said, “You think there might be a ring on the horizon?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Well, no,” she said. “On account of his wife.”

“I thought I told you,” she said when she saw my expression. “And it’s not like that. They’re not really married. She has cancer.”

Even once M explained, it still didn’t make sense. The cancer was terminal, but the prognosis was good. She’d been living with it for six years already. The marriage had been over for even longer than she’d had cancer, but they stayed married because she needed his medical benefits. And because they had three kids. They still lived together. They were on vacation in Florida together, with the kids, for spring break.

“It sounds like they’re really married,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes. “You just don’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t take my ex on vacation.”

“Well, not everybody is as conventional as you are,” she told me, spitting out the word as though it were the worst kind of slur.

I had to defend myself. “I’m not,” I said.

She shrugged. “I call it as I see it, Mitzi,” she said.

“Well, so do I,” I told her, “and this guy is married.”

“G,” she said, “has an arrangement.”

“He certainly does,” I said, “and you’re going to get fucked over.”

“Couldn’t you just be supportive?” she asked.

I said, “I just want to be happy for you.

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