Coffee Shop Heartbreak

In the crowded coffee shop, I’m happy to find an empty easy chair. I sit with coffee in one hand and phone in the other. At the table next to me, a grey-haired woman and a grey-haired man. I’m 60 and greying but they’re older than me. At least 70, I guess. Longterm marriage, I assume, especially since they’re sitting in a comfortable silence.

“I can’t believe you’re telling me this,” he says.

Okay, maybe they’re not so comfortable.

“How long has this been going on?” he asks.

“Since the wedding,” she said.

“Becky’s wedding?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Is Becky their daughter? Their granddaughter?

“That was six years ago,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“So you’ve been sleeping with your ex-husband for six years?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Okay, as a person, I’m embarrassed for both of them. This is not a conversation they should be having in a crowded coffee shop. As a writer, I’m delighted by their immodesty. I type surreptitious notes into my phone so I can remember the details.

“You’ve been divorced for how long?” he asks.

“Twenty-seven years,” she says.

“And you’ve been in love with him this whole time?”

“No,” she says. “I hated him for the first seventeen years.”

They both laugh. Okay, that laughter didn’t feel pained. Maybe this couple isn’t a couple at all. Maybe they’re just longterm friends. I take quick glances at their faces. Their noses seem quite similar. Are they siblings?

“So what do you want me to say?” he asks. “Do you want to divorce me now?”

Ah, they are married.

“I don’t know what I want,” she says.

“You do remember you’re a grandmother, right?”

Ouch, his voice is calm but he’s pissed.

“You’re old, too,” she says.

“I know, I know, I know,” he says. “I just mean—aren’t we both too old for this?”

“I didn’t plan on it happening,” she says.

“It’s been going on six years,” he says. “That takes a lot of planning.”

“Yeah,” she says and sighs.

She knows that he just made a great point.

“Do you still love me?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says.

She reaches across the table and takes his hand. He looks out the window at the Catholic school across the street. Then he looks at their hands wrapped together.

Into my phone, I type write poem about elderly lovers and their age-spotted hands.

Then, without glancing up, I can tell that he’s looking at me. Does he recognize me? Has he read any of my books? Does he understand that every writer is a cannibal of the soul?

But then he turns his attention back to his wife.

“Have you told Becky?” he asks.

“Not yet,” she says.

“She’ll be happy,” he says. “She’s always hated me.”

“You’re her father, too,” she says.

Oh, shit, Becky is this man’s stepdaughter.

“And I’m pretty sure she hates Jim, too,” she says.

They both laugh again.

So the biological father—the ex-husband—is named Jim.

“I don’t want a divorce,” he says.

“I don’t want to stop seeing Jim,” she says.

Goddamn, I flinch as if I’ve been punched in the eye. Then I fake a sneeze to cover my obvious reaction to that twist in their conversation.

Then I make accidental eye contact with the stranger sitting across from me. She slightly shakes her head and raises her eyebrows to silently communicate that she’s also shocked by this public conversation.

I look around the crowded coffee shop and wonder who else might be having the worst day of their lives. Who among us coffee drinkers is silently devastated?

“Well, okay,” the man says. “There’s nothing to be decided now.”

He stands and then helps her stand.

She uses a cane.

I don’t want to be ageist but, holy smokes, the elderly woman with the cane is having an affair with her ex-husband.

As a man, as a husband, I feel great empathy for him as he helps his unfaithful wife to the door. But I’m also impressed by her vitality.

Then I notice that they’ve left their empty coffee cups and used napkins on the table.

They haven’t bussed themselves.

Usually, I would’ve muttered insults at that type of discourtesy. But I instantly forgive them.

I wish them well as I pick up their mess and wipe the table dry with my unused napkin.

Then I walk outside.

People think it rains all the time in Seattle. But that’s mostly a myth. In terms of quantity, it rains more every year in Atlanta and Nashville.

It rains more in New York City.

Seattle isn’t a rainy city. It’s just grey as fuck.

And, golly, golly, golly, we Seattle residents get so lonely for the sun.

Then, as I walk to my car, as I open the door and take my place behind the wheel, I think, “Goddamn it, Becky, can you be nice to your stepfather just this one time?”