Casey felt ashamed—by her crying, by talking to Mary Ellen about the breakup before Jay had told his own mother, for being so inarticulate. And she looped back again to that night. How could she have stopped that? Was there a way to keep a lover from ever wanting someone else? All the smart answers she had didn’t seem to make that question go away.
“You’re heartbroken.” Mary Ellen felt angry at Jay. He’d given her no grief over the years, but she knew Casey was protecting him out of some stupid sense of loyalty or propriety. If it had been Casey’s fault, she would’ve just confessed it. “You look so thin. Did you eat today? I hope you’re not dieting again.”
“I’m not dieting.” She laughed at the thought of it now. Casey wiped her eyes. “I’m always hungry lately.” She was starving, actually.
“Can I get you something?” Mary Ellen asked. She had no appetite herself.
“No, it’s all right. I ate, actually,” Casey stammered, lying poorly. The moment before Mary Ellen had walked into the shop, Casey had been debating whether or not she should spend the last of her money on a roast beef sandwich and a bag of kettle-fried chips. The sight of these things behind the glass case had made her mouth water.
“I have to go,” Casey said. She wrote down Ella’s number on the pad. “Promise me you won’t give it to Jay.” Mary Ellen nodded, then put her hand lightly on Casey’s forearm.
Casey stood there, looking at the tiled floor.
“I’m just trying to understand,” Mary Ellen said. The worry made her appear older than her age of fifty-one. “I know you’re the one who should be upset. I should be comforting you.” She blurted this out, not knowing the full story. But it was the not knowing that was making her so nuts. What could be worth this? she thought. What Jay and Casey did not know was that love was this rare thing. A connection between two people like them—Mary Ellen had marveled at the way they laughed, talked, and saved stories for each other—wasn’t something to take lightly. Can’t you work this out? she wanted to say. Looking at Casey’s suffering, Mary Ellen thought, the loss was real because the love was real. She wanted to shake Jay. And Casey, too. “I’d somehow imagined us growing up together,” she said. “Do you know that? I love you very much, Casey.”
Casey swallowed, unable to speak. Her parents had never said anything like that in her entire life. Korean people like her mother and father didn’t talk about love, about feelings—at least this was how Casey and Tina had explained it to themselves for not getting these words they wanted to hear.
“Would you take him back?” asked Mary Ellen. The heart is so full of hope, she thought.
Casey looked over Mary Ellen’s shoulder and read the labeled thermoses of milk set out on the counter near the door: cream, half and half, whole, 2%, skim. Why were there so many choices? It didn’t seem to make life any richer, she thought. All these things made you feel less grateful. Casey couldn’t imagine talking to him ever again, yet all she yearned for was to be near him, to be held by him, to listen to the pulse of his heart—it was as pathetic as that. Why would she want the person who had carelessly humiliated her to hold her? That made no fucking sense. She wanted things to be the same—to love someone like that again, with a kind of endless trust. Then she saw that she had loved him fully. But judging from how awful she felt now, she decided that she couldn’t let herself love like that again, not even him. Especially not him.
“Did he cheat?” Mary Ellen asked.
Casey found herself nodding yes.
Mary Ellen nodded sadly herself. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t think about Carl, about her marriage, and how on the day he left, it seemed her life was over, with no money, no job, and two little boys who had no understanding; yet in a way, there was relief, for it had been awful to live with a man who made you feel so lacking in femininity. “Mary Ellen, I just don’t want to anymore,” Carl had said to her one night after five years of marriage. “I don’t need to,” he’d said. Then a few weeks later, he took the car and left them. Nine hundred dollars in the bank account. Through Carl’s parents, she’d heard that he’d moved to Oregon and that he was living with a male cousin whom he had loved since he was a child.
Her husband’s departure had made her older boy, Ethan, give himself over to whatever cause angry boys took up. Jay had been different. He had worked so hard to please everyone, including her, and she had let that happen, because it had made her life so much easier.