Calendar of Regrets

December

January February March April May June July August September October November December   & & &359' ached for myself as Aleyt licked brownie off her thumb tip, rose, walked around the coffee table separating us, and gave me another hug, this one blunt and lingering. She smelled of cheap Allure, which for some reason struck me as very sad. For some reason everything struck me as very sad. The elderly man in the baby blue parka two sizes too big for him shuffling out the door. The last wintry lemon light silhouetting him. One of the cute college coeds, ponytail the color of a cardboard box, packing up her computer all by herself, chums departed. The way she had rubbed too much rouge on her right cheek without knowing it, thereby becoming lopsided, silly as a rag doll. I took deep breaths of Aleyt, held on to her too long, knew it was time to change the trajectory of our conversation, I had already rambled to the borders of embarrassment, although the last thing I wanted was to hear how she had become this reindeer-sweatered largeness across from me, and so, when she had resettled into her seat, I began asking after a number of old high-school classmates I couldn’t have cared less about, people I had until a week ago put out of my mind completely for more than half my life, their parents, their parents’ pals, their parents’ parents, their girlfriends and boyfriends, each of whom Aleyt knew almost as little about as I did, which made me feel at least minimally better. Jerry and she weren’t very sociable, she confessed. They tended to keep to themselves, and, when they did go out, it was usually without spouse because they didn’t particularly enjoy each other’s 360 b & LANCE OLSEN ' company anymore, an observation which might sound peculiar to a single person’s ears, Aleyt said almost lightheartedly, as if she were talking about a missed appointment with the dishwasher repairman, but isn’t, really, not as married couples go, given how many eternities they have to endure each other’s tics and noises and odors and pet anecdotes. Jerry was a one-time jock who liked to golf, tinker with things that didn’t need tinkering with around the house, sprawl formulaically in his recliner before the plasma screen, a bowl of nachos and an open jar of salsa in his lap, watching big boys in tight uniforms run up and down green fields and bumble into each other homoerotically. When Aleyt and he did occasionally get together, they found themselves talking about who was going to take their son Ryan to the next rugby match, their daughters Brooke and Brianna to the next ballet class, about how they were going to deal with the next bill from the dermatologist or drama coach—until, that is, their kids spun off to college, after which, more disconcerting still, Jerry and Aleyt found themselves with nothing important to confer about at all. They went out to dinner and a movie together once every week or two because Aleyt had read somewhere it was a good idea to apply a dose of dates to ailing relationships, but ended up eating in silence, having run out of things to say by the time their water glasses were tinking with ice. Gradually, amicably, they drifted away on different currents toward different islands in different oceans. She said she felt dumb to admit it, sounding as it did like the echo of a dramedy, but it may have had something to do with Jerry’s increasingly hairy shoulder blades, swelling belly, way he didn’t care enough about her to shave for whole weekends at a pop or take his eyes off the TV when asking her to nuke another meatballs-and-mozzarella Hot Pockets for him, okay, hon, how it turns out that one can often become undeserving of love, it happens every day, everywhere, who would have thought it, but may have had equally as much to do with the arrival of The Change, good grief, and wasn’t that a hoot, Aleyt said, pardon my French, and & calender of regrets ' b 361 why in the world didn’t it ever occur to our mothers to pull us aside and warn us about that inescapable squall...