consummated. Matt was Catholic, and Paula was very Catholic, and so they were waiting until he got out of his marriage.
The reason Matt had given Carmen for discarding his marriage was that Paula was “more traditional, more religious.” She went to daily Mass and wore her hair long and straight, parted down the center. She wore a lot of clothes patterned with small flower prints; she sewed a lot of these out-of-date garments herself. She told Carmen she loved helping her mother at home, both with the housekeeping and with the younger kids. When Carmen tried to make conversation with her beyond what Gabe ate for lunch or did the guy come to service thefurnace, she quickly found herself drowning in long anecdotes about Paula’s large, ailment-ridden family and their miraculous cures as the result of prayers, particularly the family rosary. Or an installment of Paula’s school life, or her latest failure with one or another of her complicated knitting projects. How could she be the person Carmen was being left for?
Now Matt was waiting for their divorce to come through, also for an annulment so he could remarry within the Church. This was apparently a tricky business and Carmen had no idea how long all this would take. She was letting him stay so they could have Christmas as a family. If all the legal rigmarole lingered past January, she would ask him to move out. But for the time being, she just stood in the kitchen at the back storm door at night, watching Matt sit on the steps hunched inside his pea coat, his exhalations creating small clouds of condensation, his heart sunk with the gravity of his love.
Gabe would probably be fine with the rearrangement. Paula had been part of his life for half its length, and if his father moved in with her, it might not be all that disruptive. His people would still be in place for him. In reality, Carmen was the only one being left.
She was beginning to see the depth and breadth of her misunderstanding. She thought, in spite of their differences, that their partnership was complicated and interesting. Marriage and parenthood seemed so fascinating to her right from the start. Matt had come into the picture already assembled, a full complement of personality aspects with which she had to acquaint herself. Gabe was a total surprise. Until his arrival she had only considered him hypothetically, as someone small who would need to be fed and changed and kept from harm and illness. One or another of the generic babies on the covers of the books she read in preparation. From the moment of his birth, though, he had been such a specific person. So particularly kind, and reflective. As soon as he discovered that meat came from animals, he would no longer eat it. So she and Matt became vegetarians by default and sympathy. Once everyone wore out on grilled cheese sandwichesand scrambled eggs, Carmen tapped into cookbooks from nostalgic non-places like Greenwood Hollow, or volumes like The Bountiful Bean that came at the challenge from a particular angle. All of this minutiae was so interesting, life spilling into the blanks without her having much to do with it. And she thought that this was what family comprised, the creation of little dilemmas and challenges, which then had to be figured out, or met, and that both she and Matt were equally engaged in this enterprise. She let herself be lulled by a companionship that seemed to blossom and prosper, a day-to-day built on small conversations, endless amazement at their child, hilariously awful camping trips, messages left on a kitchen marker board for ingredients that needed to be picked up for dinner. The only problem with this calm assessment was that she was, as it turned out, completely wrong.
When Matt took Carmen to dinner one night last week at her favorite restaurant, the Paradise Café (while Paula stayed home with Gabe; that was the truly noxious part), to talk about “something important,” she thought he was going to say he’d
The reason Matt had given Carmen for discarding his marriage was that Paula was “more traditional, more religious.” She went to daily Mass and wore her hair long and straight, parted down the center. She wore a lot of clothes patterned with small flower prints; she sewed a lot of these out-of-date garments herself. She told Carmen she loved helping her mother at home, both with the housekeeping and with the younger kids. When Carmen tried to make conversation with her beyond what Gabe ate for lunch or did the guy come to service thefurnace, she quickly found herself drowning in long anecdotes about Paula’s large, ailment-ridden family and their miraculous cures as the result of prayers, particularly the family rosary. Or an installment of Paula’s school life, or her latest failure with one or another of her complicated knitting projects. How could she be the person Carmen was being left for?
Now Matt was waiting for their divorce to come through, also for an annulment so he could remarry within the Church. This was apparently a tricky business and Carmen had no idea how long all this would take. She was letting him stay so they could have Christmas as a family. If all the legal rigmarole lingered past January, she would ask him to move out. But for the time being, she just stood in the kitchen at the back storm door at night, watching Matt sit on the steps hunched inside his pea coat, his exhalations creating small clouds of condensation, his heart sunk with the gravity of his love.
Gabe would probably be fine with the rearrangement. Paula had been part of his life for half its length, and if his father moved in with her, it might not be all that disruptive. His people would still be in place for him. In reality, Carmen was the only one being left.
She was beginning to see the depth and breadth of her misunderstanding. She thought, in spite of their differences, that their partnership was complicated and interesting. Marriage and parenthood seemed so fascinating to her right from the start. Matt had come into the picture already assembled, a full complement of personality aspects with which she had to acquaint herself. Gabe was a total surprise. Until his arrival she had only considered him hypothetically, as someone small who would need to be fed and changed and kept from harm and illness. One or another of the generic babies on the covers of the books she read in preparation. From the moment of his birth, though, he had been such a specific person. So particularly kind, and reflective. As soon as he discovered that meat came from animals, he would no longer eat it. So she and Matt became vegetarians by default and sympathy. Once everyone wore out on grilled cheese sandwichesand scrambled eggs, Carmen tapped into cookbooks from nostalgic non-places like Greenwood Hollow, or volumes like The Bountiful Bean that came at the challenge from a particular angle. All of this minutiae was so interesting, life spilling into the blanks without her having much to do with it. And she thought that this was what family comprised, the creation of little dilemmas and challenges, which then had to be figured out, or met, and that both she and Matt were equally engaged in this enterprise. She let herself be lulled by a companionship that seemed to blossom and prosper, a day-to-day built on small conversations, endless amazement at their child, hilariously awful camping trips, messages left on a kitchen marker board for ingredients that needed to be picked up for dinner. The only problem with this calm assessment was that she was, as it turned out, completely wrong.
When Matt took Carmen to dinner one night last week at her favorite restaurant, the Paradise Café (while Paula stayed home with Gabe; that was the truly noxious part), to talk about “something important,” she thought he was going to say he’d
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