Muscle Memory

Muscle Memory

It was the kind of quiet you only notice in high-end department stores on weekday afternoons, with its low lighting, plush carpeted floors, and overhead speakers playing a song you used to love. Most of the items were well out of Madelyn’s price range, but this was the store the engaged couple had chosen for their gift registry. The wedding invite was from an old college friend who was seven months pregnant and marrying her longtime boyfriend.

Madelyn was excited for her friend but only agreed to attend if she didn’t have to be in the wedding party. Her friend, like anyone with a heart, of course understood. She just seemed thrilled that Madelyn would be joining them on their special day.

In front of a display of porcelain serving bowls, Madelyn hovered one hand absently over the edge of a cream-colored dish with delicate silver trim. It was elegant and timeless. Neutral. Just like the card she’d picked out along with her ambivalence about attending. She’d not been to a wedding or any other formal event in forever. She selected the bowl and was about to turn down the next aisle when she saw him.

Mark.

It took her longer than it should have to recognize him. For starters, the beard was new. Or maybe not new—maybe just unfamiliar after so much time. His hair was shorter than she remembered with the debut of gray at his temples. Mark was studying a box of wine glasses, brow furrowed like he was trying to solve something way more complicated than stemware.

Madelyn froze, heart stumbling. She ducked slightly, as if crouching by a display of silver candle holders could not only hide her but somehow erase the last decade of her life. But even before she could pivot the other way, she knew. Mark had seen her, too.

There was a moment, suspended and electric, where she waited to see if he would walk away.

He didn’t.

What the hell was Mark doing shopping in this store anyway? Mark hated shopping with a passion. A gift for a woman? Shit - she quickly reversed her stance, returned the serving bowl to where she found it; the gift could wait until another day. Her legs moved on instinct, wild and unthinking, like a newly born fawn, until she stood outside beneath the waning October sun. Her hands were trembling.

Madelyn knew she was being ridiculous. She didn’t want to see him. Not really. But she knew she had to otherwise she’d regret being so juvenile. Last she’d heard he was in Lisbon. They'd been married and she had enough regrets when it came to Mark. So, she stood by her car, pretending to search for her car keys in her purse, knowing they were in her jacket pocket. She played a guessing game with the items she fingered and waited for the sliding doors to open like parting stage curtains.

When he came out, he carried a small rectangle box wrapped in gold paper and adorned with a white bow. He didn’t look surprised to find her waiting there. Mark was still so handsome in his suit with those broad shoulders and naturally tanned skin. As he approached, he loosened his tie the way he’d done so often over their time together. She found it sexy, even just then.

“Hey, Mads.” he said, stopping a few feet away.

The way he said her nickname, it stirred something. She didn’t hate it. He was the only one who ever called her that and it rolled off his tongue just as it had 16 years ago, when they first started dating. His voice was quieter than she remembered. Or maybe it was just tired; not unlike her own.

“Hi.” Instinctively, her arms folded across her chest. A shield across her heart, she supposed.

They stood like that for a beat too long. Two people stitched together by years of unraveling.

“You look great. How have you been?” he said.

Madelyn laughed uncomfortably, adjusting her yoga outfit, aware she’d put on a few pounds over the years. She knew he was being nice. She had just come from the gym, her hair in a tousled mess atop her head and she wasn’t wearing a stitch of make-up.

“Oh stop, I look terrible but, all in all, I’ve been doing pretty good.” She looked into his blue eyes for the first time since they’d first spotted each other. “How about you is the question? I heard you moved to Portugal.”

“Spain, and it was just a year sabbatical teaching a Polytech course at University of Barcelona. I really loved it there, would consider retiring there, maybe someday. But I missed my motherland, mother-togue and my mother. She’s not doing well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, she was always so sweet. Please tell her I said hello.” Perhaps the wrapped gift was for his mother. It wasn't. Why did she care?

“Mom always loved you, but you know that. It was tough on her too, although not even near as…”

“Bailey died.” Madelyn was stymied when that escaped her mouth. Why had she just blurted it out like that?

“Oh Mads, I’m so sorry, I know how much you loved Bailey. I loved him too. I was so angry at first but I missed him ya’ know, after I’d left. Always thought, well at least Mads has Bailey.”

She cut him off. “He was up there, almost 14 and Labs are known for hip issues.” Her estranged husband was two feet away, close enough that she caught a faint scent of his same familiar aftershave, yet he may as well have still been in Spain. She wanted to run away as fast as she could, and run to him at the same time.

He must have read her expression, as always. “Hey, I have a little time to kill. There’s a new coffee shop just a block from here, want to join me? For old times?”

“Well, um, I don’t…I don’t drink coffee, remember?” She smiled and rolled her eyes.

“Damn, that’s right, of course, I remember.” He held up his hands as if she was pointing a gun at him. “Tea, two tea bags, two sugars, and a drop of honey.” He held up the gift and for a split second she thought he was going to hand it to her. “C’mon, I’ll just put this in my car and we can walk.”

“I can’t …” But he was already headed towards his vehicle a few spaces away. What can it hurt? After thinking that, she realized, a whole lot. It could open old wounds that hadn’t even scarred yet, even after so many long, lonely years.

“Ready?” And just like they’d never been apart, he took her arm in his and together they walked side by side. She’d always heard “parallel talk” was the best way to converse in awkward situations, because you weren’t forced to have eye-contact: like parent and teen driving together side by side, or couples sitting side by side on a therapy couch. They fell in stride as always, his long legs slowing just a bit for her to keep up at a comfortable pace.

“Are you still teaching at Princeton?” She had no idea what he’d been doing since the last time they’d seen each other. She didn’t really want to know. It was too painful. But maybe they could have the sort of relationship when in the rare event they ran into each other again, it would be far less uncomfortable. They could be acquaintances, people who knew some of the same people, that was good enough.

“Yep, I actually just made department chair. Dr. Manzy finally retired.”

“You mean Handsy Manzy? I had him when I was a student there. He has to be 110 by now! How he survived the #MeToo movement is beyond me.”

“Private ivy league institution, I guess. His Parkinsons got pretty bad and he actually became more pleasant to be around, so, as academia does have those bumpy rugs hard to walk on with so much shoved under them, they left him alone. Not so easy to get away with nonsense like that these days, better yet get tenure.”

They continued their superficial banter until they reached the coffee shop. A bell rang when they entered. This made Madelyn smile nostalgically for some reason. The place was empty aside from a well-dressed woman on a laptop by the window, and a reedy teenager scrolling through his phone at the counter. Mark chose a corner booth, and he went to the counter to order their drinks.

Steaming mugs between them, Mark said, “So, are you still painting?”

Madelyn gave a small, polite smile. “I still dabble, but I, well...there are so many unfinished canvases I'll never be able to return to, better yet even look at again. It’s hard to find inspiration.” Her voice trailed off.

Madelyn was beginning to believe this interlude was a mistake. It was like a slow simmer for years was trying to boil its way to the surface and she was doing everything in her power to tamp it down, but she'd just made crack in the veneer.

“How ‘bout your science fiction novel, ever finish that?” Madelyn tucked a loose tendril of escaping curl, behind her ear.

“No, that fell by the wayside like a lot of my dreams.” He looked away momentarily.

She studied his angled profile for a moment. He looked sad but trying hard to hold it together. She knew it was her turn to break the ice. “Has anyone ever told you your face would look good on a coin.”

They both laughed and it came so naturally.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

After a pause, Madelyn said, “You do look... different.”

“Different how?”

She shrugged. “Bearded, older.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, well. That’ll happen.”

“No, I mean in a good way. Like you’ve grown, matured. Very professorial. Let’s face it, we met as college seniors and married a few years later. We’re now, what? Going on thirty-seven? We’re both older, but I guess you seem better, more settled.”

Madelyn knew he was clearly much more stable than she was, but she’d resigned herself long ago that she would never be completely happy again. She was careful to keep her tone light. If her mind went to that day six years ago, she’d never get out of that booth.

Mark broke the silence. “I try every day to be the best I can be, I was selfish, and hurtful and I have never been brave enough to apologize to you. I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t ask what he was sorry for, she didn’t need to. “I’m sorry, too. I have had time to process at least some of our mistakes, our losses. I’ve had more therapy than a serial killer, for fuck-sake. And I come to the same conclusion every time, too. I was selfish, even greedy. There’s this part of me that feels like it’s the devil’s version of Gift of the Magi.”

Looking at him just then, Madelyn could see the years in him. The weight of them. The scar tissue that didn’t show.

“I get it, I sometimes wake up from a sweat-drenched nightmare calling out, clutching the air.” Mark raked his fingers through his dark thick hair. “I keep coming back to that same question, what would we have done differently?”

“We did what all upwardly mobile couples did, we wanted a bigger house, a better neighborhood and schools to raise kids. We followed the rules of society. Would something else have befallen us, had you not gotten that professorship? Or I’d gotten the art apprenticeship in France? Every day I ask myself - if we’d stayed in that tiny apartment in Trenton with the cheap rent and the cock-roaches smarter than we were. Even after you got pregnant. Just lived simpler lives in our late twenties, and stayed right there, just the three of us? Why couldn’t I be satisfied with that? Nope, I needed that god-damn house on Country Club Lane with its built-in pool.”

“Hey, hey, stop beating yourself up. That month of house shopping, we’d made a deal. I’d give anything in the world to change my end of that deal. I barely had time to enjoy the damn pool anyway. Too busy making money so we could have a life that afforded us everything. And in the end, it got us nothing.” Mark’s hand slammed the table and it rattled their cups and the barista glanced in their direction, concerned. Mark waved it off with an apology. Then to her surprise, he started to weep. Tears rolled down his face and he used the sleeve of his Italian linen dress shirt. “I am so sorry I just left. I ran because I was a coward. I couldn’t deal with your pain because I was hurting so badly. The guilt was unbearable.

Madelyn felt a lump in her throat but swallowed it back down. She hadn’t seen Mark cry once throughout that whole ordeal. Not a tear shed. She was tears on tap for nearly a year. And, interestingly, here was Mark blaming himself, when in reality it was more on her.

She took her estranged husband’s hands in hers. “Listen, Mark, I was the one who insisted on getting a puppy. As much as I wanted to blame Bailey, he was a Lab, a water dog, how could we have known. We lived near the ninth hole of a golf course, remember the first night in the new home when we’d christened that hole.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds so very romantic.” She couldn’t help but laugh and roll her eyes again. All these same movements and machinations as if they’d never been apart.

“Well, it was that same ninth-hole that sent that damn golf ball into the pool that Bailey had no choice but to bound in after and well, it was inevitable he’d be followed by…” And she almost said it. She almost said his little name. Just his name.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she watched the way Mark held his cup, the way his thumb circled the rim absently—just like he used to when he was trying not to say something. Their mutual grief that never aged. Madelyn wondered why the moments we want to keep, to hold dear, dwindle; yet those memories we want to forget, stay with us forever. Sometimes daily.

They’d sat there for over an hour. Their conversation eventually meandering back to safety. Mark paid and as always he walked her from the coffee shop, opening the door for her and then placing his arm along the small of her back as they made their walk back to the store parking lot, both of them moving in silence and momentarily, they were just Madelyn and Mark again.

At her car, her curiosity got the better of her.” So what’s with the wrapped gift? Are you seeing someone?” She really wanted him to be happy, so why did she pray he said no?

Seemingly relieved at the change of subject, Mark said, “No, still single. You remember Jack from Delta Fi? He’s marrying Jenny, you may remember her from your art classes. Well, they’re getting married next Saturday and I was invited.”

Madelyn leaned against her car door, “Well, isn’t that a fine plot twist. I’m invited to that wedding, too. That’s why I was in store. I didn’t even know they knew each other.”

“They met in grad school years later. What a coincidence?” He shook his head and smiled. “Well, I hope you’ll save me a dance?”

Madelyn couldn’t help but giggle, “You hate dancing!”

To her shock. He grabbed her around the waist and pretended to reenact a tango, clumsy but adorable. “Because I suck at it, but I did pick up a few smooth moves in Spain.”

Still laughing, she took out her car keys, and he opened her door. Her hand moved without thinking, resting lightly on his shoulder. She could feel the tremble in him.

Madelyn desperately needed to remember who they once were before that day, the joy, the laughter, the dancing, a time before the greed, the country club, the pool, before their shining light went out at just 5 years old. The day they believed the world had swallowed them whole. Maybe this was the only path to healing. Like everything else in life completely out of any one's control, they found each other again because of someone else’s love.