Transition

CW: Mental health

It was a wet, windy Boston day. Charlie was on his way to meet an old friend at a twenty-four hour diner, the kind with the fresh smell of coffee percolating and a long row of freshly baked pastries under glass. When he told his wife he was going out, she had no obvious reaction. She was watching an episode of Bluey with two kids as she fidgeted on her phone. He took a last glance at her ample cleavage revealed by a tight blue dress and walked out the door without kissing her goodbye.

Luisa was sitting in a faux-velvet booth at the back of the eatery observing a tower of pancakes that had been slathered with strawberries and maple syrup. Charlie recognized the combination at once. It was the one that his mother had cooked for him and Luisa the morning after sleepovers (before puberty) and then, once more, after their high school graduation where they jointly celebrated their valedictorian awards. Charlie kissed Luisa for the first time that night. He knew he was taking a chance kissing his best friend. There was no sexual chemistry, but after a few awkward days, she took him back as a friend. A few months later, she came out as bi and decided that she would exclusively date women.

The only other patrons in the diner looked to be in their seventies. A busboy was diligently using a rag to clean the pastry glass of any fingerprints that children might have made. Charlie’s own children would have been pressed against that glass until their mother would bribe them away with her phone. His mother had managed with five kids and no technology. But when did they ever have enough money to go out to eat?

“I ordered a double portion in memory of good times,” said Luisa. “Dig in.”

Charlie grabbed a fork and plunged it into the uppermost pancake leaving jagged marks on its edges. His stomach was growling with hunger. Drained from the week, he had stayed in bed too long, and Sienna and the children had already finished with breakfast by the time he got up. The stock market had been crashing all week, and his clients’ investments in AI software companies were crashing with it. AI was not turning out to be the panacea everyone expected, but what was? Maybe he should have his clients invest in comic books. They held their value better over time, at least the major keys.

Charlie made a sizable dent in the pancakes before stopping abruptly. He realized finally that Luisa wasn’t eating. She was staring at him as if she had never seen him before. They had been inseparable as children. He was the first one she came out to. He still had the friendship ring she had given him when he turned nine; it was made of paper and decorated with diamonds. But they hadn’t seen each other in years.

“Why am I here?” he asked above the whirr of a blender.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

“That you couldn’t call or text about?”

“You ever thought I just wanted to see your pretty face?”

Charlie smiled. At 28, he retained the baby face of his youth, carefully shaving off the few whiskers that appeared each day. It was the face that Sienna had fallen for. He knew that no other body part of his was worth a damn.

“Is it about Sienna?”

Luisa squirmed in the velvet booth as if she suddenly had an unreachable itch.

Before she could say anything, the bus boy came over to ask to refill their water glasses. “Muchas gracias señor,” said Luisa. Charlie had always adored the lilt of her voice in her native tongue.

When the busboy departed, she said, “Well, I’ll just go ahead and say it. I saw Sienna’s profile on the gay dating app. It said “picture upon request”, but I know her almost as well as I know you. Her educational history, her interests, her birthday. It was all there.”

“You just happened to see her profile on the site?

“Charlie, I was matched with her.”

“So you’re saying my wife’s a lesbian?”

“On her profile, she says she’s bisexual. I’m sorry. I debated whether to tell you, but you’re my best friend and I figured that you ought to know about your wife. Don’t worry. I deleted my profile before she could reach out to me. But honey, are you really surprised she’s looking elsewhere? You’ve always been more focused on your work and your books. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Charlie picked up his fork which still had remnants of the strawberries and maple syrup and threw it on the floor. The busboy raced to pick it up. Charlie got up from the table before he could give him another one. He opened his wallet and threw two twenties on the table.

Luisa said, “Listen, I don’t want you to go away like this.”

“Congratulations. You spoiled my favorite meal for me. I’m never going to want to look at this again.”

“Sorry. I thought it might put you in a better frame of mind. Just don’t do anything stupid,” she warned.

In the car Charlie told himself he’d send Luisa flowers to make up for his bad behavior. He knew he should be grateful to her for telling him. In their twenty years of friendship, that was the first time they’d fought. He drove slowly through his neighborhood, not caring that people were honking their horns behind him. His convertible top was closed with the heavy rain and wind. He could barely see through his windshield despite the wipers going at full blast. He thought for a moment he should end it all right now, but then he remembered the children. God forbid Sienna gets full custody. They’d be tech addicts before kindergarten.

He arrived at home, but stewed for some minutes in the car. Then the irony of the situation hit him. He often jerked off to fantasies of a threesome. What would have happened if he had actually suggested it to Sienna? Would she have jumped at the opportunity? Who was he kidding? Since Dorothy, the younger child, was born, they had barely had sex at all, even without an invitation to a third party. And now she was going behind his back. Still, he preferred his dream to this developing nightmare of life.

Charlie entered the house and took off his shoes. That had been his wife’s custom from when she was young. Sienna and the kids were now watching a movie with what looked like talking pigs in peaceful oblivion. Charlie went into the office and logged onto his computer. He wanted to see her profile for himself. He created a fake account complete with their next door neighbor’s address, and created a profile of a woman whose interests exactly mirrored Sienna’s own: snowboarding in the winter, travelling in Asia, crocheting. He entered Luisa’s measurements, as near as he could figure them. Soon enough, Sienna’s profile turned up as a match. She was wearing a tight red shimmery dress, boobs half-showing, a wide smile on her face. Though the background was indiscernible, Charlie recognized the photograph; it was taken on their honeymoon in Paris.

Charlie forced himself to read his wife’s paragraph on hopes and dreams. “I’m exploring this new terrain for the very first time. I would like to meet a woman and have a hook-up, maybe more. I’m married with two kids.” That was the woman he had fallen in love with: brave, adventurous, audacious. He pressed print. The printer extruded his wife’s profile on bright pink cardstock. He would have to remind her to replace her fancy paper with white next time when she was done using it.

Holding the damning evidence, he stepped out of his office and into the living room with the three mesmerized humans. He wondered if he should arouse her from her stupor when the show finally ended.

Not noticing him, she went to the kitchen to cut up some apples for the kids. The children turned away from the TV and saw Charlie. They swarmed him and shouted, “Papa.” Noel, the four-year old, proceeded to tell him every detail of the movie they had just watched, and Justine mimicked her brother.

Eventually he extracted the children from his person, and despite his better angels, put on another show for them. He walked into the kitchen and placed the paper with the profile in front of her.

She shrieked. “Dammit. You could have told me you were here. You almost made me cut my finger open.”

‘I don’t give a fuck about your finger right now. Sorry. I just wish you would have told me about this.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything, Charlie. I don’t think that it’s a major news story that we haven’t been in love for a long time.”

“But women?”

“I had a fling once, long before I met you. At this time of my life, I don’t want to foreclose on any possibilities.” Charlie tried to imagine Sienna and another equally hot woman with him, but even in his vision Sienna was wielding a knife. He closed his eyes to end the dream.

A moment later he felt something warm against his lips. Sienna’s lips were warm and soft on his own. He opened his eyes, and she stepped back.

“That was the final one I imagine,” she said. “I’m not a witch. I didn’t want you to go away angry.”

“What about the kids?”

“I’m sure we can manage something amicably. You might not have been much of a husband but you’re one hell of a father. I envied you for sitting by their side without your phone and playing games with them. I could never do that without dying of boredom.”

She went back to cutting up the apples, and Charlie returned to his office. The kids didn’t notice him passing them. He opened up a file on his computer that contained a manuscript he was working on in his spare time. It was about a boy coming out of the closet to a world that refused to accept him. He didn’t imagine that his wife would have that trouble.