Ka-Ching!

No Home-Wrecker

51 No Home-Wrecker When I was twenty, I kissed a man much older than I was. My drunk hand found a strange indent and lump of flesh on the back of his waist, an extra little potbelly. I quickly moved my fingers away and grabbed onto his shoulder instead. After the kiss, the man immediately told me he was married. For years my memory told me that I slapped him and left the party, a friend’s cramped Beacon Hill apartment. But now I think I remember what happened— he began to cry, just slightly, so that at first I thought his wet eyes had something to do with an allergy. Then he said he really loved his wife and needed air. We took baby steps, holding hands, through the slippery cobblestone streets, snow settling on my eyelashes, in his beard. We slipped into a diner where our coats and scarves dripped puddles onto the floor. He told me a long story about married life— her chemotherapy, how he’d just lost his job. I sobered up and looked at my plate of pale scrambled eggs, what I imagined cancer looked like, what I imagined fat looked like under the skin. I poked my fork around, curious now to see that spare tire, that love handle of his. He kept blowing his nose, his cheeks fat and pink like the soles of a newborn’s feet. The rest of him looked lean in his woolly sweater, then he seemed to shrink even smaller as he put back on his oversized overcoat to walk me home. I felt rejected when he left me at my door and disappeared into a flurry, thanking me for listening. The story I told my friends who were at the party was that OK, he was kind of cute, but I was no home-wrecker. The story I told myself was that I’d have never done anything like that— duhamelKtext.indd 51 12/1/08 11:15:21 AM 52 his wife had cancer for god’s sake. Now that I look back, the man was probably only in his late thirties, about the age I am now. He had no money so I wound up covering our diner check, emptying the last of my change on the table for too small a tip. duhamelKtext.indd 52 12/1/08 11:15:21 AM ...