Eleanor

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• Eleanor
• Caitlin McCormick

That first day, Margaret learned that Eleanor didn't actually like coffee and that her wife was dead.

"My wife spent a lot of time here," she said, gesturing to the café's outdoor seating and chalkboard menu.

"She died a couple years ago." Eleanor paused. "Actually, let's be specific. She died three years ago. In a car crash." Margaret had already known Eleanor was gay, in a theoretical way. Everyone knew Eleanor was gay.

It felt like a foolish thing to speculate about, but Margaret had been prone to what felt like foolishness about Eleanor for months now. Eleanor taught classes that Margaret took with names like "Sexuality and the Law" and "Queer Theory in Legal Studies." She casually sprinkled in the names of activists and lawyers and experts that Margaret had memorized in undergrad as colleagues she had dinner with sometimes. Even as Margaret's law school cohort spoke in class about life's most intimate matters—the right to have sex with the people you wanted, the right to marry, the right to raise [End Page 499] children—these were never topics put into the confines of their real existence.

And now Margaret realized Eleanor had been married, too, in a theoretical way but also a literal way. She had won the right to marry, had a wife whom she loved, watched that wife die, and then taught lectures to law students about these things in their least complicated meanings. Margaret felt breathless, to have this veil lifted in a way that felt carefully and exclusively for her.

"I'm so sorry," Margaret said. They were sitting on the café's patio, for anyone to see.

"It's okay," Eleanor said. "I know that there's really nothing for anyone to say besides sorry. Which is fine. I just wanted to get that out of the way."

Margaret tried to not to dwell on the end of Eleanor's sentence. Out of the way for what? She felt certain she was missing something here. That she was overthinking, to believe Eleanor had invited her to coffee for anything other than coffee. Instead, she said, "My mom died a year ago, so I know what you mean."

"I'm sorry," Eleanor said.

Margaret raised her eyebrow, and Eleanor gave a hard, surprised laugh. She rubbed her face. "I really am sorry," she said.

"Thank you," Margaret said.

"A year ago is recent."

"In a way it is," Margaret said. In a year, Margaret had not improved at all in talking about this. Sometimes, she could feel herself slipping into a performance of grief, behaving the way she presumed daughters were supposed to grieve the dead. She felt like she had in high school theater productions, except now she should have been uniquely qualified for the role of mourning her own mother. "It feels like a long time now," Margaret added.

"A year after Kris died, I was still useless," Eleanor said. She swirled a droplet of honey so small into her tea that it seemed negligible. [End Page 500] "I was a wreck. I wouldn't have been talking to you like this, honestly." Talking to me like what? Margaret wondered. She couldn't imagine a poorly functioning Eleanor. Close up now, she could see that Eleanor wore a thin silver chain under her collared shirt. Her leather watch was four minutes fast. Eleanor didn't glance away from Margaret once, even as a small child argued with his mother on the sidewalk and a group of teenagers yelled about nothing and a couple conspired in whispers as they left the café with a baguette. It was so flattering that Margaret felt frothy. She wondered what the two of them looked like to these strangers.

"I guess it was different. My mother was very ill," Margaret said finally, which wasn't a lie but felt like one, because she knew the kinds of assumptions this wording invited. "I had a long time to consider that one day she would die, so the mourning process began earlier," she said, but this was even less true.

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The coffee took place after the last class of...