Nonfiction by Alice Lowe
“You’re going to Hawaii with your ex-wife?” It wasn’t a question, despite the upspeak. The question mark underscored my befuddlement as I woodenly repeated what he’d just told me. A statement of fact, offered up nonchalantly like a gesundheit after a sneeze.
“Yeah,” he said. “Cool, huh?”
Garrett wasn’t my boyfriend, but that’s where we seemed to be heading. We’d worked for the same organization for two years, but in different locations. We didn’t see each other frequently, but we became friends. I met his wife, Willie (can you imagine naming a child Wilhelmina?), on various occasions. We can’t know what any relationship is really like, but they seemed like a happy and compatible couple, so I was mildly surprised when he told me they’d separated.
He and Willie had drifted apart, he said, saw different directions for their lives. I liked that he spoke respectfully and fondly of her, that they remained friends. Over the following months we started spending more time together, hiking in the nearby San Diego mountains, exploring quirky rural towns with musty shops full of bric-a-brac, driving to Rosarito Beach for margaritas and shrimp burritos. We shied from the label, but we were pretty much a couple.
Willie was a flight attendant, and as her husband, Garrett could fly with her at no cost when opportunities arose. She suggested the trip, his last chance, since their divorce would be final soon. “Couples go on honeymoons—this can be our sunset.”
I shrugged off my apprehension. Worse case, they’d get back together, and if so, good for them. My ego might be a little bruised, but I wouldn’t be broken-hearted.
He sent me a postcard from the Kona Coast, “thinking of you.” It made me recall a story my boss at one of my first jobs told me when I made a terrible typo in a letter, one that could have cost us an important client. He tried to assuage my guilt and chagrin by telling me about the man who went to a tropical resort on a business trip and sent a postcard home to his wife: “Wish you were her.”
He brought me a puka shell necklace and showed me pictures of palm-lined beaches and ominous-looking volcanos, himself and Willie sipping rum drinks with orchid blossoms floating on top from shaded decks with ocean vistas. He told me how they were fussed over by amused and possibly envious passengers and crew on the trip over after telling a flight attendant about their “sunset” voyage.
Never very fiery, our relationship gradually cooled. Still friends, we formalized its closure over beers and popcorn at a beach dive. As I recall, it was an overcast day, the sunset barely visible through the clouds.
Alice Lowe writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego, CA. Recent work has been published in The Bluebird Word, Change Seven, ManifestStation, South 85 Journal, Eunoia, Tangled Locks, MORIA, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She’s been cited twice in Best American Essays. Read and reach her at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.
