The Cruelest Month | Part II

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The parking lot of the coffee shop was completely empty and the windows appeared dark. Ginny released a frustrated sigh. Lee said, "What's wrong?"

"They're closed. The parking lot is empty and the windows are dark…"

"They're not. The windows are just tinted. I can see someone moving just inside at the cash register."

Ginny squinted at the front door. She could vaguely make out a figure there. She reappraised her passenger's appearance and decided that Lee must be at least ten years younger…maybe more. Maybe she could find a tactful way to ask over coffee, not that it mattered.

The heavy clouds were bringing with them an early nightfall. The effect was so convincing that Ginny automatically checked her watch to make certain of the time. Lee noticed. "Did you change your mind? Do you have somewhere you need to go?"

"Oh, no, not at all. It's just a habit really. I wanted to make sure it wasn't later than I thought. My husband is a bear about having his dinner served on time. 7:00 pm sharp every day without fail," she explained.

As she slipped into the booth, Lee grunted, "Sounds like an asshole to me." She looked up quickly, face flushed. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. It just slipped out–but then she'd be preoccupied with assholes like him all day…

"I was going to be angry about that, just crossed my mind for a second really. You're right. He is an ass at least some of the time. He can be very kind and considerate too though. I don't know. Our relationship is complicated. Always has been complicated. See…I haven't been able to have children and he's been incredibly tolerant and kind about it…" Ginny found that she was choked up now, talking to a stranger about her chief failing as a wife, and a pregnant stranger at that, had brought up feelings she'd been beating down for years.

"Not being able to get pregnant is not something to be tolerated," Lee wisely observed. "Did he convince you that he was being 'tolerant' about that?"

Ginny thought for a moment as the waitress set down their coffees. This was a real coffee shop, the kind where they served you coffee as soon as you parked yourself. She gave an unconvincing smile at the woman. The idea of such a small quaint hospitality surviving had made her want to smile but she found she couldn't mean it.

The woman hastily jotted down Lee's order for a bowl of chicken noodle soup and toast then just as hastily departed when Ginny waved her off. Must remember to tip her well, minds her own business and knows when to hustle off to the kitchen, she thought. "You're right, Lee, he did convince me that my condition was something to be tolerated. You see, I was a party girl before I married…the doctors told us that I'd had one too many abortions back in the eighties…" She paused again to study Lee's face. If she'd seen one trace of disapproval there then the conversation would have been over, but the girl looked on her with sad empathetic eyes. "So Peter just flipped. He hadn't really known how I had been before. He didn't know about all the boyfriends. I had changed so completely, grown up, found a personal philosophy even…I just didn't see the need to share my past. I wanted to forget it, so why should I tell someone who would undoubtedly remember it for me?"

Lee gave her an encouraging nod. "So your husband's name is Peter?"

"Yes. Like the apostle as he's fond of saying." She snorted reflexively. "I know, it's more than a bit pompous and well sort of right-wing Christian in a way but then he is a right-wing Christian." Ginny continued to study Lee's face for signs of an opinion. What she saw there at that moment was confusing. The girl looked almost as though she might faint. "Are you okay?"

Lee made no response. Not even a nod. Nothing.

"Hon, are you all right? Do we need to get you to a hospital? Should I ask them to call an ambulance?"

Still nothing. Ginny began to move out of the booth but resettled herself when she heard Lee's weak voice whisper, "Stop. Listen. I have to tell you something."

Ginny waited breathlessly. She knew that she was about to hear 'the voice of Doom' as Peter liked to call anyone who was trying to tell him anything serious. That's what he'd said about her physician after he told them they could not have children. He didn't listen to what he didn't like. He'd pressed her to keep trying anyway. Told her never to listen to the voice of Doom.

Lee said, "I'm a Buddhist. I don't know anything about right-wing Christianity. I grew up in a rural part of South Korea. My parents decided to move here just in case…my father was a very cautious man. He passed away not long after we got here. I got a job as fast as I could. Not a great job but I didn't mind. I work for a laundry not far from here…"

"Peter owns a laundry not far from here…" Ginny said, her eyes widening as her voice trailed off.

"Yes, I knew you would tell me that…Let me say most importantly, I want to say, I'm deeply sorry. I never meant to cause anyone harm. I honestly did not know he was married," Lee said as tears began to well in her eyes again. "He never wore a wedding band when he was with me. He told me he was widowed. He said his wife had died in a tragic car accident. He told me he'd marry me as soon as he'd done well enough in the business. He was getting very nervous about the pregnancy. He wanted the baby but he didn't want it born out of wedlock." The story was spilling out of her between tears and sniffs while their coffees went stone cold. "The lying bastard!" she said almost inaudibly over the sobs.

Ginny simply couldn't respond. She was desperately trying to understand, but it wasn't making sense no matter how she retold the facts to herself.

Both women automatically began to sip the cold coffees when the waitress returned with the soup and toast. "Warm those up?" she asked. They nodded automatically. She quietly disappeared again.

Ginny finally found her voice. "He told you his wife was dead? You didn't know he had a wife? I presume you meant a living wife? So you didn't know he had a living wife but yet you knew at once that I was his living wife?" Ginny wasn't being sarcastic, not entirely. She was genuinely trying to make sense of this young woman's story and also discern what made this stranger so certain that her Peter was an unfaithful lying bastard.

"Okay. I can explain this. I can explain it so you'll know that I'm telling the truth. Just please, a little patience with me? I'm having heavy emotion right now, not just from the hormones, or from Peter’s terrible lies… but from other things…Just please, a little patience with me?"

Ginny recognized genuine desperation. She empathized with it, perhaps at that moment more than ever before. She nodded her head.

"I knew I should have pampered myself as Peter suggested this morning and just stayed in bed…" she shivered. "My date is only a week and a half away now…he seemed genuinely concerned for me and for our child…so I had agreed with him, but then I got restless. I don't know why exactly. I just felt the need for company, I think. I was all alone in the apartment and I just didn't want to be alone."

She paused to take some healthy swallows of her soup as if searching for courage among the noodles.

"So I went over to the restaurant. I thought I'd surprise him for lunch, maybe even make his lunch."

"The restaurant? You meant St. Pete's?" Ginny asked.

"Yes, that's the one. I should have known from the way he named his restaurant that he couldn't be trusted. He was just so charming. He seemed sincere to me. He seemed a man of principle, like one of the good guys in those old westerns my dad loved so much. So I fell for him. Never questioned anything he said even slightly. I was a fool. I know that now." Lee hung her head as if mortally disgraced.

A spark of genuine empathy seared Ginny's heart. She understood all too well the impression this young woman had of her husband. She'd felt exactly the same about him when she'd met him so many years before. She was applying as a waitress in that very same restaurant when he was only the manager. She reached out and patted Lee's hand. "I know exactly what you mean. Truly."

"See, I just barged in on him. That's why it all happened." She paused again, she knew she needed to fill in the details no matter how painful. She started again. "It was the way I found out about him, the whole truth about him all at once. I just walked into his office, not even a knock on the door. I guess he was distracted because he obviously hadn't heard me open the door." She took a deep breath like a diver then headed for the cliff. "He was giving her the tickets to some island in the Caribbean, I can't remember which one, not that it matters. He was telling her that he'd gotten the price he was looking for on the restaurant and that all the money was safely tucked away in some bank there." Lee waited for Ginny to catch up.

"Wait, who is she? He sold our restaurant?!" Ginny began to feel like she was in slow motion while the world was racing ahead. She found herself thinking that it was exactly like coming out of that cloud bank earlier. Maybe she had a warning about all this, she thought. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. I should just relax, she told herself…then so this is what it's like to have a nervous breakdown...

Lee waited patiently. While she waited, she studied her companion's face. She was surprised and maybe just a little troubled by Ginny's lack of emotion, no tears, not even a visible frown. The calm before the storm, that must be it, but which way will this storm blow?

Ginny could see that Lee was worried, but the girl’s face had passed through worry and was headed for severe anxiety. She willed herself to respond.

“Please don’t worry. If I get homicidal, it won’t be you who needs to hide. I haven’t got the slightest reason to wish you harm. Honest.”

“I’m sorry, truly sorry,” Lee’s tears came hard again. She was reduced to stammering inaudibly. Ginny suggested, “Have your soup, hon. Breathe. You’ve done nothing wrong, I’m sure of that. I believe your story. Sounds exactly like Peter actually. It’s okay, really.”

“I didn’t know until this very afternoon, this conversation in fact, why it was that my life seemed headed for oblivion. I was convinced that somehow it was my fault. Or that somehow, this feeling was all wrong. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the two notions for months. I’ve been late to work repeatedly, haven’t cared about anything, not even him, not even myself…just swimming in the most overwhelming depression without a single clue.