Page 130 of Perfect Mess

We both pulled our carts back and continued the staring showdown.

“Why do you wear that shirt, anyway?” I asked. “You didn’t go to Yale.” Gary looked down at his shirt, then back up at me. “Did you?”

“Just for undergraduate,” said Gary. “I got my masters in architecture at Harvard.” It was one more truck load of salt rubbed into the gaping wound that was my life. All that time I thought Jack was Mr. Perfect, but the truth was, Mr. Perfect had been staring me in the face all along.

Not that where Gary went to school really made any difference. It was the fact that he went to an Ivy League school and never even mentioned it. Whereas someone like Jack bragged about everything, all the time, every chance he got.

It was also another example of how smart Gary was, and how hard he worked to get where he was in life. It was also another example of how I was so focused on what I thought was important, the things that were on the outside, that I completely neglected what really mattered.

Speaking of what was on the outside, Gary’s polished presence made me acutely aware of my own sorry state. My hair looked like my head got electrocuted. My pale blotchy face was devoid of any makeup, and I wore the same baggy sweat pants I’d had on for days. If my bad behavior and poor decisions didn’t drive Gary away, my B.O. would for sure.

The uncomfortable silence was mounting. I don’t think either of us had any clue what to do or say next.

Luckily, Kyle did. “Can Mary eat dinner with us?”

At first, I thought the voice came from the heavens. A good samaritan angel, taking pity on the damned and the wretched. Then I realized the voice was Kyle’s. Then I realized Gary hadn’t immediately said no and sentenced Kyle to twelve years of time-out for even suggesting it.

Sparing Gary from having to tell Kyle no, I said, “I’d love to Kyle, but I can’t. I have to get back home to finish painting.”

“My dad can help you paint.”

“You’ve been painting?” Gary’s face transformed from a look of horror to concern. “What were you painting? And why?”

My poker face must have been broken because I could tell that he could tell something was wrong immediately. The look of concern on his face grew more concerning. “What exactly did you do?”

“Funny thing,” I said. “And you probably know this already, since you’re a professional painter and all, but did you know that when you attempt to paint a wall red, after putting on a coat of not quite dry white primer, your wall ends up pink?”

“You didn’t.” Gary looked at me like I had just defaced the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.

I shrugged. “I sort of did. But don’t worry, I’m fixing it.”

“Fixing it how? And what wall were you painting red?”

“Long story,” I said.

Gary looked around the grocery store. Down the aisle, an old lady individually inspected the nutrition label on every brand of canned prunes. In the other direction, a bored stock boy affixed price tags to jars of apple sauce while jamming out to whatever he was listening to through his headphones. Gary said, “We’ve got time.”

“You can help Mary fix her paint, right, Dad?” Kyle looked up at his father. Gary looked over at me. I looked over at the woman with the prunes, who had since moved on to analyzing raisin boxes. I figured maybe if I just ignored the situation, eventually everyone else would just go away.

But that’s not what happened.

“We can make dinner at your house, Mary,” said Kyle. “And then while dad fixes your paint, I can play with Purrfect.”

Gary and I looked at each other again, each of us waiting for the other one to shut Kyle down. Clearly, it was a bad idea. Spending any more time together would only end up hurting us both.

It had taken me weeks to convince myself that Gary and I were permanently over. Weeks for me to process that any meaningful chance for us to be together was long gone. But now that he was there, standing right in front of me, all the old thoughts and feelings returned. And not just the old thoughts and feelings. New thoughts, new feelings too. Thoughts and feelings I had been able to conveniently deny and push back deep into my subconscious, burying them, never to see the light of day. Until that moment. In that grocery store. Pushing a cart full of extra strength toilet paper and extra strength tampons.God damn it Universe. Damn you to hell!

“Why were you repainting the wall red?” Gary asked again.

I dropped my eyes back on my cart in order to avoid eye contact. “Actually, I sort of realized that you may have, possibly, theoretically, been right about all the greige. It was a little … much. In fact, Aunt Catherine’s house kind of looked like a mausoleum. I figured the red would play nicely off the reflection of the sunset in the Gustave Caillebott painting.

Gary nodded, but not in an ‘I told you so’ kind of way. It was more of a ‘I knew you’d get there eventually’ kind of nod.

“My open house is Saturday, and I wanted everything to be perfect.”

“You should have called me,” said Gary.

“I did call you. A lot.”

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