Regrets Only

by Erin Duffy

  “I’d love a glass of lemon water. Thank you!”

  “Feel free to use our steam facilities. They’re located in the back next to the showers. We have a steam room and a sauna.”

  “A steam sounds fantastic!” I said. When I lived in Chicago, Antonia and I would often steam after spin and before lunch, but I hadn’t done it since I’d moved here. It wasn’t as fun when you were alone, plus I hadn’t gotten around to joining a gym yet.

  Maya escorted me to a large bamboo door next to the showers, and handed me a cold towel from a small bowl next to the door before she opened it for me and I was immediately welcomed with hot steam and the scent of eucalyptus. I laid my towel on the tile seat, sat down, and inhaled the mist. Okay, Claire, I said to myself. Things didn’t work out as planned. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you can’t make a new plan. I lay down and placed the cool towel across my eyes, enjoying the steam as it breathed new life into a body that had spent most of the last year in a state of new mommy exhaustion. I was tired of being numb and exhausted. I was ready to move forward, finally understanding that the end of my marriage didn’t have to be the end of my story.

  When I’d finished with the steam I took a long shower, slathered lotion all over my body, dressed in jeans and a soft blue cotton shirt, and blow-dried my hair for the first time in ages. Regretfully, I dropped the robe and the flip-flops into a bin before leaving the locker room. Spa day was over. It was time to go back to real life with better skin and a new appreciation for eucalyptus.

  I stopped at the desk to check out, feeling so sad to leave such a wonderful place, and promised myself that I’d book Antonia and me appointments together before she moved back to Chicago to say thank you for everything she’d done for me. A tall vase of white flowers graced the desk next to the computer, the slim woman in blue nurse’s scrubs barely visible behind them.

  “How were your services today? Was everything satisfactory?” she asked.

  “It was absolutely wonderful.”

  “That’s what we like to hear. How would you like to pay for that today? Cash or charge?” she asked. It was a perfectly normal question to ask, but also one that sparked a brilliant thought.

  “Actually, I wanted to ask you a question about that. I had an appointment in March that I wasn’t able to keep. Do you still have the credit card on file that was used to book that appointment?”

  “I can check on that for you, no problem. What’s the name on the appointment?”

  “Claire . . . Mackenzie,” I said. That hurt so very, very much.

  I waited through a few seconds of frantic keyboard typing before she looked up and told me exactly what I’d hoped she would. “Yes, we do. Would you like to charge this appointment to the card?”

  “I would love to use that card. And the service was really so lovely, I’d like to add a thirty-percent gratuity for Maya on that, too. Thank you so much.” I smiled. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel guilty about doing what I was doing, but I didn’t. I felt relaxed, and refreshed, and rejuvenated, but guilty? Nope. Not one bit.

  “That’s no problem, Mrs. Mackenzie. I’ll take care of it. Is there anything else we can do for you today?”

  “Nope. You’ve done more than enough.” I signed my name, Claire Mackenzie, because legally it still was, with a black felt-tipped pen, and waved as I walked out the door. If that was the last time I ever signed my married name on anything, it would be the perfect farewell.

  I ENTERED GRAND Central Terminal and once again was struck by how it was never empty. It was 3:00 in the afternoon and the terminal was still swarming with people—one part tourists with cameras, one part National Guard with Uzis, and one part extremely busy people who didn’t notice either the tourists or the Uzis. I decided that I was going to get a drink while I waited for my train, because I couldn’t think of anything better to top off my afternoon of relaxation than a nice big glass of wine. I popped into Michael Jordan’s The Steak House, a nice little kiosk of sorts at the top of a marble staircase that didn’t seem to attract too busy a crowd at 3:00 on a Monday.

  “I’d like a glass of Chianti, please,” I said to the bartender, a nice-looking man with hairy hands and a tightly cuffed shirt and a tie that probably had a clip. He smiled, a tight stretch of his lips under a stubbled mustache, as he poured my drink. I placed my bag on the chair next to me, and stared at the napkin holder while I took a sip. It burned my throat in the best of ways and I remembered how Owen and I used to share bottles of red in cold weather while we watched Netflix on the couch. Now it was like none of that ever happened.

  “Do you mind moving your purse?” a man asked. I turned to look at him. He was bald, and had a Tom Cruise nose without the rest of Tom Cruise’s face to make up for it. He carried a stack of papers under his arm that were bound with black binder clips and rubber bands, and he threw them down on the bar next to me before I had a chance to answer. I involuntarily reached back and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, all of a sudden conscious of the fact that I hadn’t highlighted it in months, and said hair was frizzy from humidity despite the industrial air-conditioning that the city of New York pumped through its landmarks.

  “I’ll have a Bud draft, please,” he said to the bartender. He turned to me. “Long day?” I examined the shape of his head, round and smooth, his angular cheekbones, his soft lips, and the way the outline of his beard was obvious despite the fact that he was clean shaven, and realized he was handsome. Not classically handsome, but handsome.

  “I’m just killing time before my train.”

  “Me too. I don’t usually get out of work this early, but it’s slow, and it’s summer, so I figured, why not?” he said. The waiter returned with a cold beer, foam running down the side of a frosted glass, and placed it on a white paper napkin. I looked at my wine, too warm and too fruity for my taste, and decided his beer looked infinitely better.

  “I’ll have one of those, too,” I said to the bartender. I pushed my drink away from me, just in case the man wondered for a second if I was going to slug both. “I haven’t had a beer in a long time, but that one looks really good,” I said.

  “They call it the king of beers for a reason,” he replied. The bartender placed the beer in front of me and I took a long sip. My eyes watered. I was suddenly brought back to the bar where Owen and I met, where Antonia and I met for beers after work on a semiregular basis. I was such a long way from being that girl in that bar, but I wondered if maybe I liked the woman I’d become even more. “I’m Fred,” he said, and I immediately thought that he totally looked like a Fred.

  “Claire,” I responded. I took another sip of beer, saw another flash of Owen in my mind, felt another pang of nostalgia for my life in Chicago, and then got over it.

  “Nice to meet you. Are you leaving work a little early today, too?”

  “Not exactly. I live in Connecticut.”

  “Me too. Rowayton,” he offered. I didn’t know anything about Rowayton, or even where it was. Just that it was a stop on the train north of mine.

  “Darien.”

  “That’s a nice town. Great school system.”

  “That’s one of the reasons we moved there,” I said, falling back into the “we” talk a little too easily. But how else was I supposed to talk about my life before my separation? It was a decision made by both of us. Wasn’t it still okay to use “we” in that situation? Or did I sound like someone who didn’t accept that she was now just an “I”? Was I regressing and becoming the woman in Tara Redmond’s office with the wedding ring on a chain around her neck?

  “Oh, you’re married with kids?” he asked, and I could swear he sounded marginally disappointed.

  “No. I was married. I’m divorcing, but I have a son. His name is Bo. He’s almost one.” This was the part of the program where I expected Fred to slug his beer and head for the tracks.

  “I’ve been there,” he said. “I got divorced three years ago. No kids, though. I can’t imagine how much harder it i
s to deal with if there are kids involved.”

  “Divorce isn’t easy for anyone,” I said. “Are you and your wife still friendly?”

  “We don’t speak anymore,” he said quickly. “What about you?”

  “We speak a good amount because of our son. It doesn’t matter. He’s moved on.”

  “Onward and downward, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you. That’s a nice thing to say.” Fred was sweet, and understanding, and sympathetic; when he asked the bartender for the check a fleck of disappointment bounced around my rib cage before disappearing somewhere inside. I should’ve realized that talking about our respective divorces wasn’t a really good way of prolonging a conversation. He stood, and picked up his papers from the bar next to him. “Shall we?” he asked. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Shall we what?” I asked.

  “They just announced our track. Are you getting this train home?”

  “I was planning on it, yes,” I said, relieved that the “shall we” referred to a train car and not a hotel room. Was I being asked on a train date? Was it too soon for that?

  “Great. Want to head down there?”

  “Together?”

  “I thought you were getting on the next train. It’s going to leave in ten minutes.”

  “Oh, yeah. I didn’t realize it was so late. I guess the time got away from me,” I admitted.

  “Time flies when you’re having beers in a train station bar.”

  “It really does.” I slid off my stool and picked up the tattered leather bag at my feet. I envied the other women heading to the train, all of them leaving their important jobs, carrying important papers, going home to their husbands and their kids and the pot roasts that they put in slow cookers before their morning commutes. These women had full lives, and all I had was Antonia and a son who was happy as long as there was Similac and Orajel in the house.

  The train was crazy crowded and it wasn’t even rush hour yet. For a minute, I worried that we wouldn’t be able to find two seats together, which would make for a really awkward good-bye in the aisle while we went in opposite directions. We walked through an entire car before finally spotting two seats tucked away in the corner, right next to the bathroom. How romantic.

  Our legs touched when we sat, not in a creepy “I like you, and I want to be flirty” kind of way, but in a “these seats are way too small for normal-sized people” kind of way. I tried to squish my thighs together as much as I possibly could without looking like I was trying to avoid him because I was worried he had cooties or something. Once we were seated we had to restart the conversation, and I struggled to come up with something to talk about. Asking if he came here often seemed a little dumb. I needed something better.

  “What do you do for a living, Fred?” I asked.

  “I’m a corporate accountant,” he answered.

  “Nice,” I said, even though I had no idea what that meant. “What does that mean exactly?” I figured there was no harm in asking.

  “I do the accounting for some of the ad agencies in the city. It’s not exactly glamorous, but I enjoy it.”

  “It’s good that you like what you do. I always found accounting to be complicated. You lose me at accounts receivable.”

  “So you remember Accounting 101?” he asked.

  “Only because I never made it to Accounting 102.”

  “You didn’t miss much.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “What do you do, Claire? Are you a full-time mom?”

  “Funny you should ask, I’m a most-of-the-time mom. I used to be a social media consultant back in Chicago. I’m about to start helping a friend rework her business, so I have my toe back in the working world.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “It is,” I said. I couldn’t believe how empowering it was just to say that I did something, anything, for myself. I needed some kind of job in order to reclaim a part of myself that I gave away when I got married. Lissy had no idea what her internship had done for me.

  “Would you like to have dinner sometime?”

  “At Michael Jordan’s?”

  “No, maybe at a restaurant closer to home. I spend enough time in the city for work. I like to stay in the suburbs if I don’t have to be here. We could go to a train station, though, if you want.”

  “Thanks for offering. I appreciate it, but a restaurant will be fine.”

  “Great. How about the first week in June?”

  “As in two weeks from now?” I asked. I hadn’t been asked on a date in a long time, but still felt that it was just a tiny bit weird to ask someone out for that far in advance. I didn’t expect him to clear his calendar or anything, but he seriously didn’t have a single night free until June? Something about that seemed odd.

  “Yes. No pressure, but next week is Memorial Day and I’m heading up to the Cape for a few days and I’m pretty busy until then. I’ll call you when I get back and maybe we can just grab a quick bite. What do you say?”

  This was an awkward moment. I wanted to go on the date, because I hadn’t been on a date in forever. But I didn’t want to go on the date, because I hadn’t been on a date in forever, and because I wasn’t even divorced yet, and because it didn’t make me feel all that special to know that he wanted to put me on ice for two weeks. Oprah would call this a defining moment in my life, one where I could choose to either move forward, and actually see what life was like with another man, or I could choose to stay alone, and wallow in what I’d lost. I knew what Oprah would tell me to do, but I didn’t know if I was ready. I also knew that I needed to decide, right now, because I was getting off at the next stop.

  “I’m only recently separated. I’d like to have dinner, but it might be a little soon,” I said, because if he was going to put me off until June, I wasn’t going to just chomp at the opportunity.

  “Okay, I understand,” he said. “If you’re not ready, that’s fine. I have a quick question, though: How do you know you’re not ready if you don’t try?”

  “Educated guess?” I said, even though there was nothing educated about it.

  “I think you’re ready. And anyway, I’m giving you two weeks to prepare. Don’t say you can’t do it.”

  “When you put it that way,” I said. “Okay. I’d like that.” I thought I would like that, because somehow Fred had just made me feel like I’d be making a mistake by not going out with him, and I wasn’t at all sure how he did that.

  “What time works for you?”

  “Bo goes to bed around seven. Any time after that would be fine.”

  “Great. Why don’t you give me your phone number. We can confirm the details later.”

  “Okay.” He handed me his iPhone and I added my name to his contacts. It felt so amazingly weird. Was this how people dated now? Did they meet guys in bars and program numbers into cell phones? What if he did this all the time? What if a different woman programmed her name in his phone every week? Then I was just one of many sad, sad women he picked up in a bar and promised to call but never would. I immediately regretted my decision. I should’ve just told him I wasn’t ready. I really didn’t think that I was, but I couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing Oprah. “If you change your mind and don’t want to go, don’t worry about it,” I said, hedging myself so that the rejection, if it came, would sting a little less. I was never good at dating. The hiatus hadn’t helped me any.

  “Okay,” he answered. “Thanks.”

  “Wait, what?” I said. The train slowed as it approached my station.

  “I hope you have a good night. It was nice meeting you, Claire.”

  “You too.”

  “I’ll see you soon. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Great. That sounds . . . great.” That’s awesome, Claire. Flex that impressive vocabulary. “Shoot me a text.”

  “I don’t text,” Fred said flatly, like it was no big deal, when really it was a very big deal, because that was my predominant form of commu
nication.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not a teenage girl. I don’t like it. No one even uses real words anymore. Everything is abbreviated and it makes no sense. ‘LOL.’ What does that even mean?”

  “Laugh out loud,” I said. I was starting to reconsider this date. What kind of guy didn’t text? He might as well have admitted to not brushing his teeth. I would find that less weird.

  “Well, it’s not for me. I’d rather just call you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s fine.”

  “Bye,” he said. I waved quickly as I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed for the door, making sure to watch the gap between the train car and the platform as the automated conductor instructed. I thought about calling my parents in the car on the way home and telling them that I had a date, but I didn’t because I was pretty sure they’d never believe me, and I didn’t want them to become skeptical of everything I’d been telling them since Owen and I separated. This morning I woke up and decided to stop wallowing and move on with my life. Because of that, I now had my first post-Owen date with an accountant named Fred who lived in Rowayton and who was going to call me—not text—sometime in the near future.

  So, that happened.

  Chapter 8

  EARLY SATURDAY AFTERNOON I met Owen at an oyster bar, which was where you met your almost ex-husband in the suburbs if you lived in the kind of suburb that had an oyster bar in town. The restaurant was going for that brasserie kind of look, small wooden tables with even smaller wooden chairs, brass sconces, bloodred walls, and lots of craft beers on tap because that was apparently the new trendy drink to have with oysters if you wanted to have oysters and beer for lunch. The air smelled of hops, and salt, and grease from the French fries they served with their croque-monsieurs. We’d only been here once since we moved in, not long after we arrived, and I had picked at a green salad, and stared at the lights in the lampposts that lined Main Street, and tried to drink in the fact that I was a Connecticut housewife. It didn’t fit comfortably then. It fit not at all now.