“I heard he’s a woman and lives in San Francisco now.”
I sputtered a note of surprised laughter, and the bite of crumbly chocolate cake I’d finally managed to balance on my spork tumbled back onto the CD-sized plate I held in my other hand.
Sickly fluorescents threw a flickery light onto the folding pressboard table at the center of the room. It stood there on the drab carpet like a religious altar, though instead of an idol, it held a half-eaten birthday cake with two candles, a 3 and a 0.
This was the third or fourth time I’d lost my piece of cake from my spork. I kept trying, balancing it ever more carefully, going ever more slowly—but time and again, my mouth closed only over tasteless plastic.
If I was a poet, I’d probably have seen some kind of metaphor or symbolism in that. But I’ve never been a poet. I thought maybe I could be a painter—of art, not buildings—but, being honest, every time I even thought the word ‘painter,’ I felt like a poser.
I hardly ever finished paintings, and I definitely never sold any. Lately, though, it was worse; I couldn’t even have told you where my art supplies were. I had my fingers crossed they hadn’t all vanished when Rob cleaned his stuff out of the house and finally moved out for good. I hadn’t seen any of my supplies since.
It’s amazing how much goes missing when you and your ex-husband divide up your lives. Thank God we never had kids.
Note that I didn’t say, ‘Thank God I never had kids.’ I wanted kids. I loved kids. Melissa’s little Archer was by far my favorite person in town. I was just feeling grateful, here at my sad little birthday party in this sad little break room of the Hockeytown Credit Union—HTCU to us locals—that I’d never have to be a mother to Rob’s kids. If he ever somehow managed to have any, which wasn’t looking likely. High school was a long time ago; even the other thirty-year-old women in this town, who remember what he was like at his peak, when he was Eveleth, Minnesota’s apex predator, don’t look at him quite the way they once did.
Rob moved out of our—my—house maybe two weeks ago, and already everyone in town treats me differently. At least, I think so. Melissa swears I’m crazy... but Melissa is also a perfect angel-person who’s incapable of seeing the bad in anybody. And Melissa has Tucker. And she’s about to get married. She can afford not to worry.
I, on the other hand—while I’m grateful there’s now no chance of Rob crashing this party, half-drunk and smelling like beer and the rec center locker room—can’t stop staring at those two candles on top of the cake. The ones announcing my age.
What incredible irony, how my dreams of giving birth got dimmer with each passing birthday. I didn’t want any cake. I was grateful for my shitty ineffectual spork. That cake would just taste like failure, like a divorce that everybody in town blamed me for... like growing old alone.
I guess if I was a woman living in San Francisco right now, none of this would be a big deal. But this was Eveleth, Minnesota—not coastal California. In Eveleth, thirty years old is what they called too late.
“Ya got that all wrong, Marge,” Ruth said. I looked up from my tiny plate of failure-cake and over to the other side of the room at Ruth and Marge. Knobby-knuckled and white-haired, both of a height, Ruth and Marge could almost have been mistaken for twins, and definitely at least for sisters. They’d been ‘friends’ since high school, had both buried their husbands, and lived in houses that were next door to each other.
But for as long as anyone could remember, no one had ever heard Ruth and Marge agree on anything. The official town opinion was that the two of them had bickered their husbands into early graves—and indeed, both had died young, and both had seemed to grow old long before their time.
“He’s not in San Francisco,” Ruth went on, taking off the cat-eye glasses she kept on a gold chain around her neck. “I hear he’s down in Mexico, hidin’ out there from the federal government!” It’s hard to imagine anyone with that distinct Minnesooota accent saying anything mean. But I was pretty sure I’d heard Ruth and Marge manage it.
I found myself moving towards their little debate. It was a heckuva lot better than sitting there in a staring contest with the candles on my birthday cake.
As I edged closer to the two old women, pausing to set my cake down on the folding table, I noted that I was not the only one leaning in for a closer listen. The table was covered in little white paper discs, all supporting mostly untouched pieces of birthday cake.
Yeah, you see, my brain said as I set down my cake, nobody likes the taste of ‘thirty and newly divorced’ any more than you do.
“Now where’d you hear a darn fool thing like that?” Marge smirked, one hand on her hip, the other supporting her paper plate with her untouched cake, gesticulating with it like it was a teacup.
“Who are you two talking about?” Steve Wollinsky, the HTCU security guy, wanted to know. Twenty years prior, he’d been Rock Ridge High School’s biggest and baddest ice-rink bruiser. Not the most skilled hockey player ever—but by far the meanest and most brutal, always raring for a fight.
Off the ice, though, and out of his pads, he was a big giant puppy. A puppy who was short a few teeth, but still a puppy nonetheless.
“You’re off your rocker!” Marge cried, throwing up her hands in pure exasperation.
“Least I can still make it out of my chair!” Ruth shot back.
Everyone at the ‘party’ had gathered around Ruth and Marge like kids in high school gathered around a fight—everybody enjoying the spectacle, egging on the fighters, thirsty for blood.
“Who are you talking about?” Steve said again. He stood at the edge of the little circle of people, towering over everyone, especially the two old women, who started out small enough and only shrank as the years went on.
No one paid any attention to Steve, though, despite his immense size and the little-boy petulance that was creeping into his voice. Poor Steve. That always happened to him.
“He’s coming back to town, y’know,” Marge said smugly. “We can settle this then.”
My heart skipped a beat. Coming... back...?
There was only one person I knew of who was capable of coming back to Eveleth. Because he was the only one I knew who ever left. But that couldn’t be who they were talking about. A woman in San Francisco? Hiding from the government in Mexico? No way would he do any of those things.
“No, he’s not,” Ruth countered.
“It’s his sister’s wedding,” Marge snapped.
My heart skipped another beat. Whew—maybe three or four, actually. Okay, there’s only one person they could possibly be talking about. It has to be—
“Who are you talkin’ about?” Steve all but yelled. And still no one paid him any attention.
“Who’s this, now?” said Dan, the credit union manager, coming into the room unexpectedly.
The two old women turned. “Blake Johansson,” they both said at once—with equal annoyance at the interruption.
“How come you’ll tell him, but not me?” Steve whined.
But I had no time to feel sorry for him. My heart was on the floor. Every nerve buzzed with—was that anxiety, or excitement? Something intense, and probably a little of both. I took a step back, then another, searching behind me with my hand for the table, the hospital-green wall, anything to support me.
Blake Johansson. I felt like I’d been shot (not that I knew what that felt like—but seriously, the name knocked me over, or almost did). His face floated in front of my eyes—his face as it was that last day before he left for college. But I don’t like remembering him that way; he had tears in his eyes that day, not quiet tears, angry hurt boyish tears of frustration and impotent rage.
“It’s not like he ever came back for his sister’s birthday,” Ruth was saying.
“... last five birthdays,” Dan added, in his snarky little way.
“A wedding’s a far bigger deal than a birthday,” Marge said. “And besides, how would you know if he did come back? Not like he’d come knockin’ on your door, anyway! What with that awful pink lemonade...”
“There’s nothing wrong with my lemonade,” Ruth all but yelled.
“So nobody knows what happened to Johansson after he went off to college? Not even his parents, his sister?” Dan asked the whole crowd.
“Yeah, how would Melissa even invite him if nobody knew where he was?” Steve reasoned.
“Of course his family probably knows,” Ruth explained, as if we were all slightly challenged children. “But it’s not like ya can just walk up and ask ‘em, ‘hey, did your son really get a sex change and move to San Francisco?’”
“Well, not if you ask them like that, you can’t!” Marge interjected. “You gotta ask about Mexico. Mexico, that’s where he is.”
My attention was starting to drift. I was already standing a little apart from the knot of people, but then I left the room. I just hoped nobody put together why I was leaving.
I don’t know why they would. It was Blake. He was the one who...
Ugh, I didn’t want to think about this. I wanted to remember Blake. Of course I did—in fact, just then I ached for the sort of company he once gave me.
But I wanted to forget just that one tiny little part at the very end of the friendship, that one last interaction fourteen years ago, that lasted no more than a few minutes but had somehow wormed its way backward through time to poison my earlier, happier memories of Blake Johansson.
That was the last time I’d spoken to him. For those two years in high school, we were best friends — today, I know no more about where he is or what he’s like than Ruth, Marge, Dan or poor ignored Steve. As far as I or anyone else knew, he ran off to Seattle and never came back.
Surely his life must have gone well, if he was coming back—if he was coming back. I can’t imagine him showing his face around here otherwise. He would never give the people of Eveleth that kind of satisfaction.
I stood in my booth, looking out towards the glass front doors of the credit union. I tried to act busy around my little area, though we closed an hour ago, and I don’t know who I was trying to act busy for.
If Blake really was coming back, I was definitely going to have to see him—and yeah, probably to talk to him, as well. I needed to... what? Get my hair done? I didn’t really have any reason to impress him... did I? What were we now? Ex-friends? What was expected of an ex-friend?
I let out a long sigh. I was actually starting to get excited about Melissa’s weird hippie wedding. But this was just going to make the whole thing awkward.
Cordial and polite. That’s all anybody can expect of me, and that’s all I have to be. Cordial and polite.
