Frank had no repair for that except time he might not have much of. Seventy is not a boy. Thirty years is not a weekend.
Margaret went to church and sat in a different pew. People were kind in the way that itches. She started telling the short version when she had to: Frank had another family. I found out at his birthday. I am not taking questions. The short version saved her from the photograph’s hands.
Louise came from Columbus and cooked for a week and left soup in the freezer. Margaret ate the soup. She did not talk while eating. Louise said, “You can be angry and still finish the noodles.” Margaret finished the noodles.
A year later the divorce was done. Margaret kept the house. Frank kept the shop and a pension split that Judith called fair enough. Christine did not come to court. She was not married to him. Her thirty years had no pew and no gold balloons. They had a duplex and two sons and a man who had told her paper was slow.
Patrick saw Matthew twice more that year. Jenna met Matthew once and said afterward, “He laughs like you. That’s rude of the genes.” Patrick said he knew.
Josh sent Patrick a message on a birthday that was not Frank’s: this is weird. Patrick wrote back: yes. They left it there.
On what would have been Frank’s seventy-first, Margaret went to a movie alone and did not tell anyone. Frank sat in the one-bedroom and did not buy a cake. Patrick and Jenna had pizza with their kids and did not mention gold lettering.
The dining room in the old house was just a dining room. Margaret put mail on the table. She put a plant where the cake had been. She did not light candles for men.
If she thought of the night, she thought of her own mouth saying do not sing.
She was glad she had said it while the room still had coats to pick up.
She was glad the candles had stayed cold.
She was done celebrating a man she had never fully met.
The meeting, when it came, was paperwork and Tuesdays and a son who had opened a garage.
That was the rest of the life after gold balloons.
For thirty years the weekends had a script.
Frank left Friday after lunch with a duffel Margaret packed without thinking about it: shirts, the good soap, a charger. He kissed her at the door. He said the name of a city that was sometimes true and sometimes a neighbor of Dayton. He drove the highway and changed the radio from her station to nothing. He pulled up to the duplex before dark when traffic allowed. Matthew learned to watch the window. Josh learned not to watch the window because watching made Sunday worse.
Christine cooked on those Fridays as if cooking could make a man stay through Monday. Sometimes he did stay through Monday and called Margaret with a story about a unit that failed inspection. Margaret saved him a plate those nights too. Two plates in two cities. Frank ate both kinds of leftover.