Monday June 19th, 2023
Lyrou and Garin had been married for 13 years, and they had two children together. Garin toiled invaluably, or was it to her indispensably, from his well-earned corner office in downtown Jersey City. He spent his weekdays, some weeknights, and some weekends gaining and sustaining clientele for a powerhouse corporation one degree from the top. Dapper, lean, active, a touch knightly or chevalier-faced, and successful, he was heretofore loyal, committed at work and at home. Lyrou, a beautiful French immigrant who had originally come over on a student visa, was a busy denizen, housekeeper, errand runner, and attentive mom in exurban fringe Edgewater. She was a cheater. Garin hadn’t known a thing... until one day he did.
The curtain was pulled back on what he thought he knew about them. “Farce.” He’d said to himself listlessly in the shower, eyes closed, steaming water running over his face. “A farce.” On that day, Garin didn’t answer his phone or his texts, and he didn’t come home in the hour he normally did. Lyrou was more than a bit alarmed; she didn’t know what was wrong. She called his office before it closed, and a secretary confirmed that he’d left like usual. With nothing to go on, she waited.
Garin had left work and gone to his boyhood friend Joseph’s in Bayonne. They sat on his couch and had a can each. If Garin meant to come over, stare dumb at the tube, and say little to nothing, that was cool with Joey. Some hours in and after midnight, they had on a nature documentary, between ads for outdoorsmen, about baby animals and their survival; sea turtle hatchlings racing for the waves not to be eaten by seagulls, crocodiles carrying their babies in their mouths, a wildebeest desperately fending a pride of lions off from her calf to get eaten instead. The British narrator, “Harrowing.”
Joey, in tribute to the noble blue bovine, “Love is difficult to define or quantify, but if you would give your life up in substitute for another to live instead of you, then you love them.”
They watched the orphaned calf run along with its herd, turning back to see its mother’s throat crushed in the mouth of a lioness. Joseph thought more on the moral in it. “There are those one loves without having chosen to, but automatically. That’s how one loves their mom. Yet a mom loves having chosen to, and for that, it’s the highest love. A woman who chooses to love you like that, you can't impugn her. I throw up old shit my ma has done each day I have left with her, before she’s departed, and I can’t blame her to her face anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Your ma isn’t reeling under your ingratitude.” Garin stood to go, his face was weary. “She tells you to get bent and then shuts you up by stuffing your mouth with cannoli.”
Joey walked Garin out onto his porch in the quiet night. “Take it easy, Gare.”
Garin smiled, careful to find the steps in the dark not to misstep and tumble off into the front gate. “You have no porch light out here. You’re an electrician?”
Joey reached up and over, tapped the light housing once, and it blinked on. “You see that? One tap.”
Garin mimicking him, his car unlocking and turning on, engine and headlights, before he had put a hand on it. “You see that? One app.”
⚜
Morning Tuesday, June 20th, 2023
At 3am, Garin came through the front door. “Garin?” Lyrou came rushing down the stairs as she heard the front door unlock.
“Yeah?” he mumbled and stumbled.
She embraced him. “Where have you been?”
“Drinking.” And he kicked off his shoes.
Helping him in and closing the door, “Drinking?” It wasn’t his routine.
“I ran over to Joseph’s.” She knew Joey well enough.
He passed out on the couch. Lovingly, she covered him up. She didn’t ask about it the next day. His short explanation was enough for her this time: “I hope you’re OK.” She patted his foot.
Two weeks elapsed, and while Garin wasn’t himself, he wasn’t so observably far from himself as to prompt Lyrou further. In her eyes, he had le cafard, not normal, but as he’d been before. She’d been getting away with her liaisons undiscovered for so long and so well that it wasn’t near the top of her list of possible reasons he’d been acting strange. Gradually, she’d come closer to believing he’d never find out with each day, week, month, year that he didn’t.
Garin, meanwhile, was increasingly perturbed, and he suppressed his revulsion at every little thing she said and did. How could she cook and serve him food, how could she speak to and touch him, how could she sleep beside him in their bed, how could she ride next to him in their car, how could she do anything in his presence, how could she wear his ring... all the while having cheated on him... as if she hadn’t? For a moment, he thought he must be wrong somehow. But he wasn’t wrong; he had clear proof. The clearest proof.
He put on a documentary about Cleopatra, Octavia, and Antony. While it transported him away for a bit, an ad for a property management & tenant screening app threw him back into his life. Falling into a depressive nap on the living room couch, Garin dreamt that he was in a one-man orgy surrounded by women, their hands and mouths covering him, pulling off his clothes as he undressed them also; there was his first love from high school, a woman who worked in the same tower as him, women he might’ve seen on the bus, his kid’s unconventionally beautiful kindergarten teacher he hadn’t gotten an eyeful of in years, and it was as if in this timeless, spaceless interstitial fold, in this compartment he held no obligation to any Lyrou with which to honor or betray.
Just as one of these couple dozen houris docked down on him, he woke with his erection mashed tight between his thigh and the fabric of the pants he’d fallen asleep in. Alone in the dark there, he sat up to the chirping of crickets. His depression descended back on him as he became aware again of the recent real-life revelation he now wrestled with each day and night. Then it occurred to him, by process of his own overheated brain, that a lightbulb went on, while he saw some contradiction: for Lyrou, these two realities weren’t mutually exclusive. For Lyrou, they couldn’t be. Eureka, Garin thought, Lyrou had decided that she’d be both a married mother and have paramours.
⚜
Afternoon Saturday, July 1st, 2023
Lyrou and Garin had a son and daughter, Alan, whose voice had begun to crack, and his little sister Penny, who danced and moved more than she could sit still; indeed, she danced even when she sat. Lyrou took her little girl grocery shopping because she was a picky eater who’d better be present to object before purchase, and it gave them time to talk. Sometimes Lyrou’s mother would video-call from the other side of the planet, then Penny and Lyrou would swap phone for cart, and Penny would walk-talk, looking into the screen and up the nostrils of the old woman. Lyrou would listen in and chime in between perusing the shelves, displays, peg hooks, and freezers. And so in this way, three matrilineal generations were connected transatlantic to exchange personal updates and feel not so separated as they were.
Penny had just tossed away a toothpick and swallowed down a chewy, spicy soondae table sample as Lyrou pressed her phone into her hands. “My granddaughter! I’ve been hearing so much about how you’ve been learning French!”
“Really, from who?” Penny asked, enlarging the portion of the videocall screen that showed her own face to have a look at herself.
Gramie unloaded in mirth. “Ta mère me dit tout le temps que tu parles comme si tu avais grandi en France!”
The girl stood, unsure what to say. Lyrou huffed, “Pinny, parle! Speak!”
Penny said what was in her capacity to say, “Uh, we’re at the Asian market... uh... Nous achetons du bétail. Mom, help.” Lyrou looked at her daughter, embarrassed, poking her under the chin. Lyrou took the phone back from Penny and spoke into it as she shifted through cereal boxes, “Elle parle français, mais elle l'oublie quand on la met dans l'embarras.”
“Vorführeffekt.” Grandma declared, with an elderly chuckle, “Héhé-hmn-hmn!”
Penny held her palms out at her sides, shrugging low, “That’s not French... no fair!”
Gramie made it easier for all and turned the conversation Anglophone, “Penny, doll, your mother will send you to me in summer and you’ll pick up your langue maternelle, naturally and with ease. That’s the best way. Oui?”
Lyrou and Penny had a hand each on the cart, pushing it along to the cool dairy fridges, “Am I going this summer?!” Penny’s posture straightened in alarm.
Lyrou shook her head, “She’s too young. You’ll take Alan and Penny together either next summer or, if not, then the summer after at the latest.”
Through some lag in the connection, Gramie objected, “Ooooo-oo-oh! What’s next summer!? She’s been old enough. I can take care of them.”
Lyrou opened the milk fridge and Penny pulled out a jug by both hands, lifting it down and into the cart, with an exhale. “I can go! I can go next summer, for sure, Gramie!”
Gramie’s face was bright. “Naturellement! Lyrou?”
Lyrou’s eyes met her mother’s on the screen, and then Penny’s resting her chin on the cart handle, said, “Next summer break, Pin-pin. It should be so.”
⚜
Afternoon Saturday, July 1st, 2023
While Lyrou and Penny were out for groceries and Alan was out for laser tag with his buddies, Garin, churning, explored that house. He entered the guestroom, where Lyrou did yoga and read. He sat in the futon, took in the space, and wondered what it was to Lyrou, to have been so many places, and now, in this life she had, this was her private abode.
He looked to the bookshelf, packed with so many novels and ESL workbooks that some were wedged atop others, filling every available opening. Had she read all of these novels? Many of them were thick as bricks. She had told him, and he had overheard her advise others that reading novels was the key to mastering a second language.
Titles like ‘Grigori & the Celestial Ceremony’, ‘The Lunar Witch & the Warlock Conclave’, ‘The Pirate Prince of St. Rodrigo’, 'The Shaman Stowaway at Sea', and ‘A Priestess in the Captivity of the Knights Templar’, 'Belatu-Cadros & Merlin's Faery Envoy', 'The Perilous Mission to Release Pegasus'... and so on. Aha, a thinner rare historical work between these fictions, ‘Alexandre Dumas: Poèmes & Réflexions’. Garin recognized this one! He stood and, by his index finger, pried it out from the rest, standing there and cracking the pages. She’d gifted this book to him when they were first dating, in Boston, and though he was sure he had read it. Somehow, he had forgotten it existed. There in the opening pages, a “Foreword by Dr. Étienne Barès, Literary Historian, Université de Lyon From the 1981 reissue...”
Garin read this introduction... for the first time in all this time... how the celebrated author’s biracial heritage, his sojourns, his friendships, and his losses were conducted through his pen and into his written word.
Ah, yes, Ida. Dumas’ wife. She had mirrored his habit of meeting genitals with others. Dr. Barès detailed how this discomfiting life experience informed his work, quoting the infamous line from his play ‘Antony’ that “Adultery is the punishment for a marriage without understanding.” And then relating how Dumas couldn’t bring himself to leave this pretty actress he’d wed.
Garin closed the pages and let out a single laugh. How... how... how... what was the word for this? Was it Stockholm Syndrome? Was it self-deception? Was it being a big, pathetic cuckold? Was it wisdom? Was it true love? Was it the truth of any kind? Was it disgusting? Was it Garin? Who was Garin in this equation!? Was this where he was or who he was? Really then? A bad misunderstanding. A play.
He flip-fanned through the pages, airing his face with the scent of this old first gift of gifts. Thank you, Lyrou. And he slid it back between those many other volumes whence it came like a keystone.
⚜
Afternoon Tuesday, July 4th, 2023
July 4th was Garin’s birthday. With the windows open, the whistles, cracks, and colorful glow of fireworks lent the evening a supplemental festivity. Lyrou gathered the kids in the dining room, the three sang happy birthday, and then gave him his presents. Lyrou silently hoped he’d snap out of his lugubrious slump tonight.
Alan had several items for his dad: a phone holder that held onto the windshield by suction cup, a steering wheel cover to replace his worn-out one, and a vintage minor league baseball cap from an extinct Jersey City team, “Play for the fans!”
Garin tried it on. “You got it for me to wear because the name is funny.”
Alan laughed, nodding cartoonishly as Penny passed her present to dad, “And what’s this, Pen?”
Tapping her forehead, “You have to open it to find out!”
Garin tore off the paper to find a dark leather, personalized fly box with his name embossed, “Come here, Pen.” Garin reached forward to pull Penny in and kissed her on the crown. “This is better than Alan’s gift.”
Alan stood straight. “Hey!”
Penny giggled, Lyrou smiled with relief, Garin shook his head. “OK, they’re both kind of cool.”
Alan smirked. “My gift doubles as a fly box!”
Garin scratched his head, “Why, I’ll be. I hadn’t thought of the double functionality of this cap. I take it back, it’s just as good as Pen’s gift.” Looking at it inside and out as if he’d never seen such a hat. Alan looked to Penny with a thumbs-up.
They went out to their back deck, under the pergola, to watch the fireworks and eat cake together, talking and pointing off into the sky, until the darkness under Penny’s eyes prompted Lyrou to tell the two kids, “You can leave your plates, go brush your teeth, and into bed.” To which they took their last bites and complied, heading upstairs.
Alone on the deck, Lyrou produced her gift. A small box with a card. “Happy birthday, mon mari.”
Garin opened the present first, pulling open the lid, and he found inside a hand-signed coffee mug. Picking it up into the moonlight and flash of fireworks, he read the signature, and seeing whose it was, he raised an eyebrow, impressed, “Really? This is rare.” But he could not bring himself to be as excited as he’d have been when he repeatedly expressed his admiration for the signatory months ago.
Lyrou forced a smile in response to his, second-guessing her choice of gift. “Is it... good?” she asked, swallowing hard.
Garin forced a better smile, flashing red, green, and blue in the light of the explosions. “Yes. Yes. This is going on my desk to let everyone know I drink my coffee toasting to men of greatness, their astute lessons guiding my hand as I get caffeinated and get to work.”
Lyrou pushed past the deflated sense he gave her receiving her gift, and produced next a pink envelope. “My card.”
Garin opened it and read, leaning back and holding it high to catch as much moonlight on it as possible. It read: “Happy Birthday, Garin, you’ve given another year of your life to us, and I’m not merely grateful but in love with you for it. May you see another hundred years with me. And today, don’t worry how much cake you eat.”
Garin set the card down. “I’m going to eat the rest of this cake, you don’t need to tell me twice.”
Lyrou smiled, this time naturally. “My cake was made to be eaten; you have no choice.”
The two parted, Garin going inside to place his plate in the fridge and then to the couch to lie back with the television. He skipped through ads for a bookstore chain, a French tourist promotion for an Orlando hotel, and kids’ summer wear. Lyrou stayed out on the deck talking with her friend Reine on her phone and watching the fireworks. Garin could overhear what they were talking about, mostly Reine things; her special-needs students being afraid of the loud noises, her husband Philip lighting off his own bottle rockets, asking Lyrou if Garin had a nice birthday, Lyrou brushing off the question with a “Maybe,” and half a dozen other trivial topics. It was these trivial topics that caused Garin to think one last time if he wished to proceed tonight as he’d resolved to.
Would it be better to leave Lyrou as much in the dark as she’d left him, there in the dark where she could occupy herself with those trivialities in peace? She’d be happier not knowing; she could go on in the Garden of Eden with her sibilants, frolicking bare-assed and forever ignorant that Garin saw her nakedness. He was under no obligation to tell her what he intended to do, as she felt no such obligation to tell him; he might return on Lyrou her works, complete with her same opacity. And he’d then do it without let or hindrance. But this idea died before it might breathe. This was not Garin. Garin had agreed, whether she’d broken her agreement, he’d agreed. Going forward, whatever was done would be done in agreement.
⚜
