Kate Could Go Anywhere

After the divorce was finalized, Kate told Henry that she hoped he would meet someone wonderful. She had really meant it when she said this, but what she hadn’t expected was that Henry would meet her, twenty years ago.

It wasn’t actually Kate, of course, that would be impossible. It was McKenzie, thirty-years old to Kate’s fifty, with the thick, dark lustrous hair that Kate had had in her youth, the unlined skin and rosy lips, the piercing green eyes free from crow’s feet.

“Jack and I bumped into Henry and his new GF last night out at dinner,” texted Kate’s friend Leah. “Have you met her yet?”

“No, what’s she like?” Kate texted back.

“She’s your twin.”

Kate was home alone that evening, in the new apartment she had rented not far from the house that she and Henry had lived in for almost two decades.

“You can stay in the house with the boys, I’ll move out,” Henry had said, once he finally accepted that the marriage really was over.

“Not on your life,” thought Kate. She wanted no part of staying in that house with her twin boys, Braeden and Micah, who were about to graduate high school. Her home consisted of three grown men who were always hungry, always thirsty, always sweaty and unwashed, always shedding their heinous workout clothes and jock straps and cups and cleats caked with dirt. Kate was very ready to move out.

Only the cat, Fiona, was allowed to leave with her.

“It makes more sense,” she told the boys. “I make more money than dad does and so it’s easier for me to get my own place.”

“Whatever,” Braeden replied amicably, as though she had asked him if he wanted pizza or tacos for dinner.

Now, in her beautiful studio apartment, all exposed brick and white furniture and light gray rugs and fresh flowers, Kate put her glass of wine down, moved Fiona gently to the side, picked up her phone and tapped on the Facebook app.

She had been trying to stay off Facebook because she found it made her hate people too much, perfectly fine people who were lovely in real life but on Facebook either espoused heinous political beliefs or bragged about their children in a nauseating way. God, these kids were all going to turn out to be such assholes, Kate would think as she read their parents’ glowing reviews of them and then of course, she’d feel bad, because it wasn’t the kids' fault that their parents were dramatizing their childhoods for attention. So, yes, normally she stayed off Facebook – especially while having a glass of wine – but now she had a reason to go on.

Sure enough, right there at the top of her feed was a picture posted by McKenzie McBride (was that a real name?) in which Henry was tagged: “Amazing dinner out with my person” followed by three heart emojis.

My person? Ugh.

Henry looked happy and proud and McKenzie, well, McKenzie looked just like Kate had when she and Henry started dating. She was even dressed like Kate dressed back then: high-waisted light blue jeans with what appeared to be a scoop-necked white bodysuit, did they still make those? They must. A shirt that snapped under your crotch, what a world, thought Kate, taking a long sip of her wine.

She spent the rest of the night combing McKenzie’s Facebook account and Googling her with Fiona nestled up beside her.

Kate and Henry had been married for nineteen years, and some of them, the early ones, were happy. Then they stayed together, the way people do, for the kids. Kate never regretted this decision because the idea of spending a Christmas morning without her boys when they were little or not getting to trick-or-treat with them that year, she dressed them like a lobster in a pot and a chef, well, Kate couldn’t even think about that. She would have stayed married to just about anyone so as not to miss a moment.

But, once the boys became teenagers and started high school and were busy with school and sports and activities and friends, Kate knew she had to leave. The reason was that, over time, the very things that had drawn her to Henry, his unwavering confidence, his steady sense of self, his simple world view, had become the things she despised about him. He always thought he was right, he was incapable of change, he saw everything in black and white, never ever gray. She simply couldn’t take it anymore.

Henry didn’t want to split up. He wanted to try therapy and “work on things” and go away on marriage retreats. These were all things Kate had wanted to do ten years ago, but Henry was not interested in trying these things then. And Kate was not interested in trying them now.  

After that first text from Leah, her night of Facebook stalking and Googling, Kate started to hear more about McKenzie from Henry and the boys.

“She’s cool,” said Micah.

“So was I,” thought Kate, “back before you guys came along.”

Then Henry mentioned one day that he’d like Kate to meet McKenzie.

“Why?” asked Kate.

“What do you mean ‘why',” said Henry, wounded. “Because she’s important to me.”

“Great, but does she need to be important to me too?”

Henry was quiet for a long moment. Thinking. Kate could almost hear the gears turning inside his head.

“That’s so like you. Can’t you just be happy for us?”

“I am!” lied Kate. It wasn’t that she was unhappy for them, but couldn’t he have chosen someone who didn’t look just like her, like she used to? Couldn’t he have chosen someone their age?

“I actually really think you would like her,” Henry said. “You two have a lot in common.”

“No shit!” thought Kate.

She wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that everyone knew he was dating her doppelganger. The boys may not have realized, they hadn’t probably ever really looked at Kate before, they just saw their mother, but any other person that Kate knew who had known she and Henry in their younger years commented on it. She didn’t know if anyone said anything to Henry about it or not. What man gets a divorce after nineteen years of marriage and chooses the same choice all over again? Kate certainly did not want to date another Henry. When – and if, really – if she ever dated again, she was going to try to find someone totally different – the anti-Herny. She’d had enough over the years of compromise and icy silences and dark clouds of disappointment.

Months passed, Kate did not meet McKenzie, went out of her way not to, in fact, because why.

And then one morning, she walked over to a coffee shop a few blocks from her apartment and saw her, saw them. The whole family. Henry and Braeden and Micah and McKenzie, sitting around a table, drinking coffee and eating bagels. They were laughing and smiling a lot, talking intently about something. Henry had his arm around the back of McKenzie’s chair and McKenzie rested her hand briefly on Micah’s shoulder at one point to emphasize some point she was making. Henry looked years younger than he had when they were together, Kate realized. He must be eating better, working out. He must be happy. And McKenzie glowed with happiness, like this man, these boys, they were all she had ever wanted. They were her persons.

Kate stood in the street, watching, forgetting herself for a moment. She left before they saw her.

Home, to her apartment, where she scooped up Fiona, held the cat’s warm, silky body to her cheek. Felt a surge of pure love for her.

Fiona enjoyed car rides and so it took no time at all to get her in the car and over to the house, Kate and Richard’s house, now Richard’s house or maybe Richard and McKenzie’s house. It still smelled the same inside. It wasn’t as messy as Kate thought it would be. Fiona knew where she was right away and padded down the hallway to her favorite sunny patch in the kitchen.   

“Goodbye, girl,” Kate said softly.

She got back in her car and glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, crow’s feet, salt-and-pepper hair, same piecing green eyes. Those would never change.

She started the car and drove away. Kate was glad she’d signed only a month-to-month lease, it meant she could leave anytime, even this afternoon or this evening. She didn’t need to be here anymore, because she already was here. Kate could go anywhere.