BUT FIRST, LET ME TELL YOU WHAT WE ATE
(excerpt)

Katie Crouch

She’s not (chop)sticking with him.

When I lied to the only man I ever loved, his face became that of a corpse’s—white, stiff, devoid of expression. We were in his parents’ kitchen on the east side of New York City. It was cold out. I was wearing a green turtleneck sweater. The day was November 7, 2001.

I watched as he gripped the counter. Listened as he blew out air.

“You can’t blame yourself,” I said. “I just don’t love you anymore.”

I was listening to myself also. I was somewhat surprised. Because this wasn’t my voice; the person I knew as myself wouldn’t say these things. And if she did, she wouldn’t say them using flat, daytimedrama clichés.

“Why?” he asked. Such a simple question, and when I didn’t reply, he repeated it as if it were a mantra. I remember that he said it seven times exactly. For some reason I found it important to count.

“Why why why why why why why?”

It was a good question. Why would the woman reject a man who still caused her veins to slightly throb, say, when before biking to work, he’d lean over to roll up his right pant cuff, showing a bit of strong ankle covered in down?

It has been seven years since he asked me this. I am only beginning to be able to reply. It’s the middle of July. The year is 2008. I am sitting alone in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon.

He wouldn’t like it here. He wouldn’t like the sleepy way people drive or the pale, tattooed children smoking on the sidewalk. He wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here. We would both be somewhere different, together.

Why why why why why why why.

There are answers. I’ll get to those. But first, let me tell you what we ate.