My Sweet Dark Cherry

My head hung low as I watched my feet move themselves one foot in front of the other down the hall. I had never given much thought to the automatic movement my body followed on my brain's command. I was surrounded by walls I had never seen before. Almost a decade in rooms like these and I wonder if I could have done something different to keep her. Every day I see her, I think of her, our life together, her sweet Italian skin and black hair. The tattoos that covered her wrists as she would lift a wooden spoon to taste her homemade pasta sauce. A bright tomato red. Red. Red walls, red hands, red knife, red sink.

The table had been set when I sat down and served to me was a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in a tomato basil sauce. It didn’t look like hers, I knew that this had come from someone else with no care, no stories of watching their nana can tomatoes for hours, no love. I made eye contact with the server as he pronounced what lay in the bowl before me. I was more disappointed looking at the dry noodles with a pale sauce than I had been since the day I lost her forever. The image of her smile burned in the back of my mind more prevalent than ever. Almost as though she had done this to me herself.

I had thought when the moment came for another chance to eat spaghetti and meatballs, I would feel relieved, connected, whole again. Put back momentarily into the house we shared since the day we wed. I had thought I would taste her again, her light, her fire. The way we danced in our green living room with the windows open to mixes of Gershwin, James Taylor, Beegees, and some of our own CD mix tapes kept from our earlier years of runner and chaser. All the music that accompanied the best nights of our lives.

I never gave myself the chance to understand why she wanted to leave. I remember the paranoia seeping in that summer, the questioning glances, the judgement from her eyes. They had lost this softness I had seen in her time and time again. Circles of sea green spun around in my head and again I found myself on the altar saying “I do.” In my twenty three years of marriage to her, I never questioned our love. At some point, I noticed a drift of coldness in her, a gut feeling I willingly ignored for months until unbearable. I found the spark between us had not burnt out, it had found its way down the street relit by another man. Time unaccounted for and lies too easy to see through became more and more common. How could she do this to me? I have made mistakes before, even slept with someone before our wedding, but that was a mistake. Something I can never take back but would never do again. Hers could not be a mistake.

Before anything was confirmed we were invited to a dinner with more than a few couples we knew well and saw often. In an attempt to remind her of the romance we once had, I turned the volume up on the CD’s we love so much. I put on a nice button up, gelled my hair back, and cleaned up the nick on my neck left from shaving. Making sure I felt like the man I wanted to be. Someone she still wanted, the husband she once loved.

Walking in together, we found our seats at a white clothed circular table in the middle of a dim light dining room. Dark blue walls lined the room with balcony openings looking over the ocean. As the rest of the couples took their seats, I could already sense her eyes on someone else across the table. That was the moment I knew who it was, right in front of my face. Not an ounce of shame came off her body as she sat beside me looking beautiful as ever. The diamonds I bought her lay around her neck reflecting the smirk of a man enjoying the ruin of my life.

The waitress took our drink orders, one Rye Manhattan and a Sauvignon Blanc for my wife. Words were exchanged and liquor was housed, entrees were ordered and served, though I can’t seem to remember what I had that night. I do know that the man across the table ordered the seared scallops and a light mash. He dug into the scallops and like a shark chewed up every last bite. His pinot noir-stained smile grew bigger as the night went on, excusing himself at some point for a cigarette. A filthy habit that I had quit twenty years back.

After the next round of drinks came, my wife kissed my cheek and let me know she was going to use the restroom. I remained at the table laughing with the others about what would come of our lives in the current state of the world. It was the time of the night where everyone’s senses slipped up. Language had blurred, guards were down, the room around us became gradually louder. Another sip of my fourth Manhattan and I realized I was at the cherry. I swirled the maraschino cherry in my glass and had noted to myself that it was the wrong cherry garnish. Where was my dark sweet Luxardo?

Scanning the room for the entrance to the bathroom, a light on the balcony had caught my eye. Another man’s lighter burning a cigarette my wife had between her lips. No one else at the table had seemed to turn their head at the mockery the two of them were making. I bit the maraschino cherry with the missing pit locked in my stomach.

The rest of the night seemed to slip away from me until we were walking into the house we owned together. The usual conversation of how nice it was to see everyone and how good the dinner was ensued while walking in the door. Troubled by the sight of the cigarette she had at dinner, I remember asking her when she started smoking again. I hadn’t seen her smoke since she had quit years ago. She didn’t answer. I asked again. After a deep sigh, she turned to me and said, “I want a divorce.”

Decades of memories shared through music, food, stories, passions, all over with because she wanted to leave. My life as I knew, as I loved, over with. No longer a husband, not a provider, not a lover; a loser. My only thought being I will not lose. I will not lose my life to the man across the dining table. Before I came to any sense at all, I was a kitchen knife deep in my beautiful wife's stomach. Her face, surprised in the moment of betrayal, something she may have seen in mine as well. Flashes of red walls, red hands, and a red knife. A demolished beauty lay under me covered in what looked like Luxardo cherry syrup. I kissed her lifeless body and could not believe who I had become over the course of one dinner.

I sit here now looking at this inedible pasta and cannot believe this is my life. This is the rest of my life, this is my last meal. I took a bite and for the first time, I had cried for what I had lost. So long I had shut her out as much as possible, but the absence of her love has seeped through in these final hours more than ever before. The things I would do to taste a rye Manhattan with a dark sweet Luxardo cherry one last time. At least the dose of lethal injection that awaits beyond these cell walls will end my memory of her and of the man I once was.