* * *
She and Elsie sit in the kitchen and eat. The other woman pours herself a second glass of wine before Paris is even halfway through her first. It’s not until they finish the tacos that she notices Elsie is crying, though it’s not a full-body thunderstorm like Paris had when she first got home. Elsie’s cry is like a steady rain that will last a little while.
But grief is grief, however it’s expressed.
“Did Jimmy ever tell you about our senior prom?” Elsie’s voice is thick.
“All he said was you were boyfriend and girlfriend in high school.” Paris hands her an extra napkin. “I assumed you went to prom together.”
“Actually, we didn’t.” Elsie dabs her eyes. “The week before, we got into a huge fight and broke up. Someone told me he was seen flirting with Maggie Ryerson. She was a cheerleader, big boobs, perky, you know the type. He denied it, but I didn’t believe him. So he dumped me. I was devastated.”
Paris sits back in her chair and listens.
“There was no way I was missing my senior prom,” Elsie continues. “So I asked a boy named Fred, who I knew had a crush on me, to take me. When we get to the gymnasium, who do I see? Jimmy, with Maggie Ryerson.”
Paris shakes her head. “Well, that’s a dick move.”
“I managed to ignore him, tried to have a good time. But later, I found him skulking in the hallway. Maggie had ditched him, and he’d found her in the parking lot making out with Angelo DeLuca, a boy her parents hated. Maggie had used Jimmy as a cover so she could be with Angelo at the prom without her parents finding out. He deserved it, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. We left prom together, and ended up grabbing burgers and milkshakes at Dick’s. Then we came here to Kerry Park and sat on the benches to look at the city lights.”
“What about Fred?”
“Guess that makes me a dick, too.” Elsie looks away. “Kerry Park was always our favorite place. We’d come here to talk, make plans, dream. It was chilly that night, and Jimmy put his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders. Powder blue, to match my dress, but we never got a prom photo.” She smiles, her eyes distant. “He asked if I would take him back. Of course I said yes.”
Paris feels a small stab of jealousy. Not because Elsie was Jimmy’s old girlfriend, which she already knew, but because she had something with him that Paris never did: history. She’d only known her husband for three years. Elsie had known Jimmy for five decades. They had fifty years of friendship and laughter and stories and inside jokes that only two people who’ve shared that kind of time together can have. Elsie had seen Jimmy in all his incarnations, had stood by him through all his ups and downs. Paris had been Jimmy’s wife, but Elsie may well have been his soul mate.
The loss … it must be unbearable. Paris has been so busy thinking about herself that she had never stopped to think how this must be affecting Elsie, who had loved her best friend Jimmy so much that she’d stepped up to defend his wife when she had every goddamned right to throw Paris to the wolves.
“It’s not the end of the story,” Elsie says with a sad smile. “The day after graduation, Jimmy calls, says he’s going to come by. He wanted to ‘talk.’” She crooks her fingers into air quotes. “I thought to myself, ‘This is it. He’s going to propose.’ In those days, it was pretty common to get married right after high school. So I wait for him on the porch, and I’m wearing a nice dress and my hair is curled and I’m ready. I was accepted to Brown in the fall, and I thought if we got married, Jimmy could come with me to Rhode Island, since he wasn’t planning to go to college.
“He pulls up in his father’s old pickup truck, and I see that the back is filled with all his belongings. He gets out of the car, walks over to me, and says, ‘Babe, I’m heading to Los Angeles.’ Just like that. At first, I misunderstood, and I asked him when he was coming back. He said he wasn’t. He had come to say goodbye. ‘The next time you see me,’ he said, ‘I’ll be on the Tonight Show.’ The bastard broke my heart.”
“Oh, Elsie,” Paris says.
“And wouldn’t you know, ten years later, there he was, riffing with Johnny Carson, just like he said he would be. The sonofabitch.” A small laugh. “Yeah, Jimmy could be a real asshole. He had this tunnel vision for what he wanted his life to be, and if anything ever got in the way of that, he could be so cruel. He was incredibly self-centered, which is why none of his marriages ever lasted, and why all of his ex-wives hated him. It’s why I sometimes hated him. But I can’t blame him for all of it. I willingly fixed his problems. I flew wherever he needed me to be so I could clean up his messes, made apologies on his behalf. I knew there were times he was just using me, like a gap filler, something to do while working toward the next great thing that wouldn’t include me.”