Their third date was at a nicer restaurant. They slipped easily into telling funny stories from when their children were young. Jeremy was dead, but Suzanne chattered about his childhood as if he was still alive. Foy instinctively followed her lead in avoiding the present time and only told stories from when his daughters were small. The stories lasted until the meal was over and continued while they walked together in the park across the street. It was a well-lit park with walking paths. It was nice outside. Not too hot. They sat on a bench across from a complex of soccer fields and baseball diamonds. Suzanne put her left foot up on the bench. She draped her arms across her knee and laid her chin on them. It was such a casual way to sit and very innocent. It reminded Foy of a puppy draping its head over your knee to look at you, and it put him at ease. He turned toward her and put his right elbow on the back of the bench. He grasped his right wrist with his left hand.

The stories about their children led to an inevitable question. It was Suzanne who asked it.

“So what happened with your marriage…to your marriage?”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to talk about, you know, your marriage on dates. Your previous…the marriage that failed or whatever. The divorce.”

“That’s what they say, but I think it’s just when you bring it up and keep talking about it, so it looks like you’re really not over it. We were both married, right? We know that. That’s part of our lives. It made us who we are. I learned a lot about myself going through all that. It was horrible, but I learned a lot, I think. So no, I think it’s okay. If you don’t want to that’s fine.”

Foy inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly through his nose. He let the exhale make a loud noise so she would know he was considering the question carefully.

“What happened? How many times have I asked myself that? And how many different ways have I answered it? In the end it’s just the classic male story. I sort of have this feeling that I should have some unique story, but it’s the same one you hear all the time. I wasn’t there.”

Suzanne nodded solemnly.

“That’s the deal. I can’t even remember what I was thinking in those days. We were in love, obviously. I was crazy about her. Then we got busy with life. Children came. I put a lot of myself into my job, which pretty much exhausted my energy for dealing with people. You know, there were times that I got home and was irritated that my kids wanted to talk to me because I was so sick of talking to people. I was there for the kids because with kids you can fake it, and they don’t know. People talk like kids have these mystical powers of perception, but you can fool them. So I just, you know, made myself do stuff with them even if I didn’t want to. We flew kites. That was our thing for awhile. That and hiking. Well, really more just wandering around and digging things up and dragging them home. Just, you know, weird rocks and stuff. We liked it.”

Foy tilted his head and stretched his face like he was shaving. He stroked his left cheek a few times, feeling the resistance of the stubble. Then he became very animated and leaned toward her. He spoke quickly and with passion.

“See, but when I was with them I LOVED it. I just really did. I’m a good father. I adore them. But there was this period where I didn’t want to do anything with anyone. Even things I knew I was going to like, things I enjoyed doing. It’s almost like…like the church was taking every bit of my emotional energy just to keep showing up and pretending like I had my life together the way a minister should. No, not pretending. Really trying to have it all together and be the minister guy, person, pastor, whatever. But you can’t fool your wife like that. Look, I felt nothing. I didn’t even remember what love felt like. And I would disappear into a book or a movie or the computer. I’m good at escaping. I can definitely do that. But Jenny, she was really needing this connection with me, and I just starved her. Emotionally just gave her nothing. I hate saying it, and now I look back and say, ‘What the hell were you doing, you idiot?’ They say I was depressed and maybe I was, but those labels don’t mean anything to people who love someone. You’re either there or you aren’t.”

Foy pulled at his left eyebrow with his thumb and forefinger for a few seconds. His hand fell into his lap and the word “Oh” came out of him like a long groan.

“I tried to fix things, you know? I sort of woke up and realized. And I started watching her and then I felt in love again. It was still there. So I tried to fix it. I wrote her all these love notes. Really sappy stuff. No, good. I mean I worked hard on them. Put them on little cards that I made myself. But it was too late. Sometimes you can’t fix things. And then it was like the roles were reversed. I needed her. Wanted her, but she didn’t feel anything. And if you think about it, what was I doing? It was the same stuff. I was alone writing down how much I loved her. Writing it down. I probably spent several weeks doing that. It’s the same thing. You’re not there.”

Foy came out of the story like he had been in a trance. It seemed amazing that he was sitting on a bench with a woman. Suzanne still had her chin on her arms and was looking at him intently. He looked at her and for a moment it felt like she had appeared out of nowhere and was a complete stranger. It was like he was back in his old life and had traveled forward in time. He couldn’t look at her, so he turned and looked out over the baseball field.

“I don’t want to…I don’t want to talk about that or go back there. That was too long. My talking. See how much I talked? I’m just running on, talking away. There was just a very bad…badness after that. I felt bad and she felt bad. And we lived with the badness until it was like bad was normal. And see this is what I meant by you shouldn’t do this on a date. Not that I have much experience…any really…about being with someone new and talking about the old stuff.”

Then he lost the words. The threads of meaning that hold sentences together were gone and he couldn’t even remember what he had said. And the sadness was coming.

“Oh God, I must sound like a completely broken person.”

Foy turned back to Suzanne, desperate to reconnect with her. “I promise you that I’m not lost in the past, okay? I’m beyond that. Totally into my new life and ready to be in THIS life. HERE. But yeah, if you get me talking I can get a little lost in the old story. And I hate that. I’m sure it sounds like I’m completely not ready to move forward but I am.”

Suzanne scooted over on the bench until she was right next to him and their thighs were touching. She put a hand on his shoulder.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. It’s okay. I’m there too. If you get me started talking, I can go right back to the old life and feel all of that. It doesn’t mean you’re not moving on. Believe me, I’m thrilled to hear any man talk about that kind of stuff with any real feeling and understanding. You don’t even know. That’s not something you see. It doesn’t mean anything about you not being ready.”

“It really doesn’t,” he said.

“I know.”

They sat quietly. She chewed on her lower lip and looked up at him. He was staring forward and breathing deeply.

“We could talk about something else. If you look at me I could…”

There was a pause and Suzanne swallowed.

“I could tell you some things. Not the important things or anything like the big stuff cause it’s way too... But some little things. I could tell you. If you looked at me.”

Foy looked at her. She was scared and trembling a little. He had a sudden desire to put his arms around her and comfort her, like she was a scared child. Just to take away her fear. He hated the thought of her afraid. It was like he was in the middle of story, and it was so incredibly romantic that he wanted to give it a happy ending. The power of the moment and the story washed over him. He put his right elbow over the back of the bench again and laid his cheek in his palm, leaning on it.

“Yeah?”

“Just little stuff. Nothing big.” She looked at him appraisingly and pursed her lips. Foy chuckled, looked away, embarrassed, then back at her.

“Your voice is nice.”

“My voice?”

“Yeah, I like it a lot. I like hearing it.”

Foy spoke in a silly voice. “Well, they said I had a career in radio if I hadn’t gone to seminary.”

Suzanne was not buying into the silliness. She didn’t react to what he said. She reached up slowly and held his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.

“I like your ears. This part.” She squeezed his earlobe and then dropped her hand away.

“It’s squishy. Kind of squeezy. Kind of nice.”

Foy’s biggest smile burst onto his face. He had one smile he couldn’t control. One smile that he could not summon or deny. It came out when it wanted to come out. And sometimes it was gone for a long time.

“Aren’t all earlobes…what was it you said? Squeezy?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but yours is the one I’m squeezing.”

It felt like someone pushed on his stomach and some air came escaped from his mouth. It made a quiet sound. And then a whisper came out of his mouth. He could not stop it. “Oh my God.”

The intimacy was too much, so Suzanne retreated a little a behind a mock seriousness. She looked at him with a smiley frown.

“Your hands.”

Foy’s left hand was resting on his right thigh. She laid her hand on it very softly, not putting too much weight on it. She turned it over. Letting her turn his palm upward felt very vulnerable, like putting his head in her lap and falling asleep. She touched the lines of his palm, peering at them like a palm reader. She slipped her hand under his and held his hand with her thumb in the middle of his palm for a brief moment. Then she let go and pulled her hand back into her lap.

She looked away because it was too much. She spoke without looking at him.

“Your eyes I like. Blue and sad. Crinkly on the outsides. And there is something behind them, I think. Something…I don’t know. But it’s something nice. I also think.”

Foy was amazed at her bravery. But she couldn’t look at him now. He tried to think of what he should say. He couldn’t list things he liked about her because that was what she did. He didn’t like it that she was embarrassed and looking away. He gently reached over and pulled her chin around so she was facing him. She looked down at first, and then she pulled her eyes up to look at him. And he could tell it was just as vulnerable for her as it was when he let her turn his palm up.

“Hey,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her. Her lips were very soft, and he realized that it had been a long time since he had kissed a woman like this. A very long time because there were no good kisses at the end of his marriage.

It was a soft kiss. An innocent kiss. A first kiss. And in the short time that their lips were together, there was nothing else in the world and no time other than the present. All the old stories lost their power. Their lips parted, and Suzanne laid her head on his shoulder. They both stared ahead, lost in thought.

Foy searched for something inside of himself. Some feeling of longing or his own list of things he liked about her. And he did like things about her, but somehow they would not come to him as sweetly as her list. He looked inside of himself, taking a frantic emotional inventory, but the more he looked the more he felt numb and withdrawn, as though he was watching all of this from outside his body. Like it was a story that he was writing. But it was such a good story, wasn’t it?

With her head still on his shoulder, Suzanne reached over and held his hand as if it was a bird or a small creature that might run away if she startled it.

And Foy thought, “What have I done?”

rlp