RED 2: A Trick of Mirrors [#Wattys2017]

2. A Toast to the Present

The girl, Zoe Evans, was a physical education teacher from New York. She was spending the week in Miami after breaking up with her boyfriend. During her absence, he would move out of the apartment they shared.

"It will be weird going back to an empty home," Marisa observed.

"He wasn't the right man for me. I'm used to getting by on my own. Besides, there are plenty of fish in the sea." Zoe shrugged. "Now that I'm here, I want to make the most of it. What about you, do you have a boyfriend?"

Marisa told her about Marco. It felt like she had known Zoe forever and the two chatted like old friends. They ordered a full bottle of Cinsault, their glasses emptied and filled up again. Marisa played with hers, moving it around and contemplating the tears that formed on the glass.

"I've never had such an affinity with anyone like I do with Marco. But lately our relationship grew cold."

She had the feeling they lived miles apart under the same roof. At each fight the air between them thickened with a sticky patina that reconciliations no longer managed to clear. The fight one month prior to their departure from Toronto, which led her to seek Madame Lefèvre, had been the worst in a series. Marco exhausted himself organizing work before his leave from school and came home even later than usual, while Marisa took care of the move by herself. She understood the circumstances. What she couldn't understand was why everything needed to be perfect at work but not in his personal life, not in their relationship.

That day Marco told her he would be home early. She was happy, prepared his favorite dish and waited. And waited. She waited three hours with the table all set and the food growing cold. Marco showed up at last. Marisa tried to restrain herself. And, restraining herself, she asked why he didn't warn her he'd be late. She had called him several times and only got voicemail. An apology linked to an impatient explanation ensued: an emergency that Marco was unable to solve, the dead battery of the cell phone, and every minute he would think he was going home and papers piling up on his desk and requests coming his way without a truce. He claimed it was a question of ethics to settle certain pending issues before moving back to Brazil. Marisa inquired where his ethics were in regard to her. Marco replied if she wasn't so self-centered she wouldn't ask that.

Self-centered, her? And what about him?

Marisa only realized the extent of her resentment when, announced by the first bubble from a slow boiling, all surfaced at once. All that was stifled inside her chest in the name of understanding, repressed by her insecurities, fermented by frustration. The evening she had gone alone to the theater because Marco was held in a meeting. How often his dinner consisted of a plate of food kept in the oven. The countless DVDs she watched with no one to exchange impressions. Marco's unavailability to accompany her to places with her college friends and everybody mocking her for having an imaginary boyfriend. The damn work that, besides consuming weekdays, sometimes devoured Saturdays or even Sunday evenings in the form of late reports. And the distractions and the forgetfulness and the absence that now not only possessed the body but also the mind, heart, soul.

All of that surfaced. When he sat in the armchair and said he wasn't hungry, the bubble burst. Marisa threw the platter of rice on the floor, the grains sprinkling the laminate boards and the dark stain of Madeira sauce and the shards of plates and the broken glasses and the utensils clinking as they crashed against the wall, against the baseboard, against Marco. That night they exchanged insults like they'd never done before and Marco slept on the couch. Marisa hated him. The next day, she hated herself. She fell ill for the first time since her arrival to the city. A fever provoking hallucinations and debilitating her in such a way that it left her bedridden for days. Her body, which until then stood strong, which until then wouldn't allow itself to fail like the rest did, finally succumbed to an implacable internal pressure, breaking apart like the shattered glass the previous evening, ready to be discarded along with the shards in the trash.