A chapter from the novel, Coffee at Midnight
By Colleen Komishock

“Marriage forms a bond that stretches but never breaks, and giving up on it belittles the whole institution!” wrote my friend, Gwen, after I announced I’d left my husband.

Though I’d rarely held myself accountable for bringing an entire institution to its knees, I had, however, also equated my particular husband-wife foray to an analogy of elasticity. It was similar to that old pair of worn, comfortable panties, the ones with the cotton so thin it is practically transparent. One day you pull it from the drawer (as it is the last clean pair), and in a surprising twist, it betrays your trust, denounces its laundry-day reliability, and the elastic snaps and slaps you on the ass with a stinging dose of reality. And that reality is this: you should have said goodbye to it years ago.

Since meeting as college roommates our freshman year, Gwen and I had our differences. She was fresh-baked apple pie, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, and Seventeen magazine. I was late-night coffee, blood-red lipstick, and a disciple of Sassy. But the universe (or at least the college housing department) had slated our lives to intersect, and with all the distorted enthrallment of a fun-house mirror, we remained roommates for four years.

Even at eighteen, Gwen had her future mapped out within the confines of The Path, that formulaic, follow-these-steps-and-your-life-as-a-woman-will-be-perfect path. It wasn’t her fault, necessarily, that she had such faith in it. All women have a certain amount of societal encouragement toward taking this path of least resistance. Her world revolved around it, around the idealistic promise of that picture of happiness, of life, of what we’re all supposed to do. She met her guy in high school, fell in love, went to college, got married, got a job, bought a house, bought a dog, and made three contributions to the already astounding global population.

I, on the other hand, with no better prospects, chose The Path (or part of it, anyway) as a last resort. But somewhere along the way, I tripped, hit my head, and regained consciousness only to discover that there’d been other paths all along – hidden, rocky, unpaved paths that were there only for me.

* * *

Time, distance, and circumstance relegated our adult relationship to one of written updates: front-page, New York Times-grade, banner headlines from Gwen; below-the-fold, buried on page five, community blotter fluff from me.

So about two years ago, when I finally had something big to report, something of “Dewey Defeats Truman” proportion, I sent it off to Gwen: “Elena Weston is Getting Divorced!”

I had no idea it would lead Gwen on a one-woman crusade of marital propaganda, which, at various times, included magazine articles with titles like “Home Improvements: Rebuilding Broken Vows” and “Calling it Splits: One Woman’s True Story of Regret”, a list of relationship Dos and Don’ts (as in Do ask your spouse when he would like to discuss a sensitive topic and Don’t attack him with petty issues the minute he arrives home from a long day at work), and a schedule of weekly support groups for separated and divorced women in my area that, according to Gwen, “might just change your mind about this terribly misguided decision.”

I knew I had no choice but to respond to Gwen’s scrawled lashings, so one Saturday morning, I walked downstairs from my apartment to my used bookstore, prepared to do just that. Respond to Gwen.

With my coffee and bagel in reach, I settled onto the stool behind my desk, grabbed a brand new yellow legal pad, and wrote “Dear Gwen” in the customary spot on the first page. Then nothing. I stared and stared, patiently waiting for the most brilliant first sentence to spill from my head. It would have been so easy to write what I was actually thinking – LEAVE ME ALONE! WORRY ABOUT YOUR OWN DAMN MARRIAGE! – but I was determined to compose a letter that struck an ideal balance between strength and empowerment, maturity and conviction. I needed to tell her, once and for all, that she hadn’t lived my marriage, that she shouldn’t concern herself with my path.

Unfortunately, defending myself against Gwen, who fancied herself perfect and good and – oh, yeah – still married, proved more daunting a task than I’d ever expected. I went about my day, glancing at the mostly blank page whenever I could, but before I knew it, the day had ended, and I had written nothing.

I repeated this futile routine for what turned out to be ninety-nine consecutive Saturdays. Ninety-nine unfinished beginnings, each one smeared with the stain of failure. I’d never intended to keep track of every ill-fated Dear Gwen, but on this most recent Saturday morning when I turned to find the next available sheet in the now-haggard notebook, only one blank page remained. Just one page out of one hundred. Without warning, the stakes had reached a do-or-die pinnacle. Fate was telling me that I had just one more chance to get it right or surrender to Gwen forever.

Oddly invigorated by the prospect of putting an end to her epistolary judgments, I poured a fresh cup of coffee to match my fresh sense of optimism and looked at the last blank page with a renewed strategy and introspection. What had been holding me back for so long? Had I been taking the wrong approach all this time? What kind of letter was this, after all? I started to brainstorm.

This was no friendly letter of the I’m-fine-how-are-you variety, yet it couldn’t be the most difficult. There had to be harder letters to write, letters that required forethought and planning, letters that needed to convey a wide spectrum of emotion in only a few lines. I came up with a few examples.

The letter of resignation, for one, had to be extremely vindicating. Although I’d never personally penned one myself, I imagined it would say something like…

Dear Corporate Bloodsucker,

I have decided that the paycheck you give me is no longer worth the ulcer that’s growing in my gut. Therefore, I am giving my two weeks’ notice, which should provide you sufficient time to replace me with someone who has no other choice than to be a whore for your cash.

Sincerely, Disgruntled Ex-Employee

Or something to that effect. And in a way, that’s what I’d done – resigned from a life that was not just going in the wrong direction, but in no direction.

Then, of course, there was the Break-Up Letter. The I don’t love you anymore but don’t have the guts to tell you to your face letter. Sure, it had a certain cowardly quality to it, and it was probably harder to receive one than to write one, but, technically, I was breaking up with Gwen. Or, at the very least, breaking away from her.

Then I came to what I believed would be the most challenging of all. The first letter one writes home. From prison. This letter required a delicate mixture of brevity and subtext to exude an acceptance of…oh, how had Gwen put it?… a terribly misguided decision.

Greetings from the clink!

I like my new life. A balanced diet, limited access to free weights, and finding God – what could be better! Plus, it turns out orange is my color, my cellmate is innocent, and the forcible sodomy breaks up the day. Kisses to all!

I began stealing subtle elements from each of the letters to create my own little recipe – a dash of resignation, a pinch of gutlessness, and a whole bushel of exaggerated-yet-hopefully-genuine contentment. Add water. And write.

Dear Gwen,

I like my new life, and I’m very happy with my decision. For the first time, I know exactly where I’m supposed to be…

Two sentences in two years. I leaned back for a moment and admired the words on the page. Hopeful? Certain? True? Yeah, sure, why not. Vague? Distant? Guarded? Absolutely. As I started to write again, I stopped just as quickly when the bell over the door jingled with interruption. I peered up to see Julia, my only part-time employee, crawling in for her shift. With bloodshot eyes and sheet-white skin, she looked as though work were merely a pit stop on her way to the nearest bridge. (Pittsburgh can be a dangerous city for women on the verge.)

“Todd dumped me,” Julia said in a scratchy whisper, as if saying it softly would make it less true. “I can’t believe it. He told me I’m too needy, and,” she cleared her throat, “after a whole year together, he doesn’t think he should waste anymore time with me.” Now in a fit of full-body crying – the kind with choking, heaving, and snot dripping from her nose – Julia asked me the one question that might be more impossible to answer than the whole chicken-egg debacle. “Why, Elena? Why would he do this to me?”

Young Julia looked to me as someone who had loved and lost and survived. She believed in her heart that I could be a voice of reason, of hope, of experience. I rested my hands on her trembling shoulders and gave a thoughtful sigh as I prepared to speak the words of wisdom she so desperately wanted to hear.

“I don’t know.”

She broke down again, and in her mind, I tumbled and smashed off the pedestal on which she’d placed me. I sought redemption. “But, you’re going to be fine,” I said in the least patronizing voice I could conjure. “I promise. Just go home and rest.”

“I couldn’t do that to you, Elena,” she said between sobs. “Not on a Saturday. We’re always so busy on Saturday.”

“Go,” I insisted. “Take a long hot bath, pour yourself some wine, and do not, I repeat, do not do any of the following: call Todd, call your mother, listen to anything by Sarah McLachlan, read anything by Virginia Woolf, watch anything on Lifetime, run with sharp objects, or call Todd.”

“You said that already.”

Silly girl. “Calling Todd is the most tempting; that’s why I said it twice. Just take the night and indulge in a bit of well-deserved self-pity. By tomorrow, you’ll be ready to slash his car tires or something. If you want to talk, call me whenever you want. Okay?” I finished with a big-sisterly hug.

Reluctantly, Julia agreed. I closed the door behind her and watched as she crossed the street to her car, knowing she would drive straight home to assume the fetal position, convulse with sadness and doubt, and mentally perform an autopsy on what was once her relationship.

I returned to the letter with diminished vigor. The words I’d written had landed on the page like rocks, immovable considering the strength it took to get them there in the first place. Even worse, they seemed boring. Or maybe I seemed boring. Seeing Julia all teary and drained reminded me of how exhilarating those youthful complications could be. How either devastation or exaltation was always looming, hovering, secretly waiting to creep into your life when you’d least expect it. But once those experiences were gone, I missed them. A fondness for distance, I guess.

With the distraction of early-bird browsers, I shoved the yellow paper aside and wondered if, in some horrible way, I was…ready for this?…jealous of Julia. Was I jealous of Julia’s broken heart, her pain, her tears? Was I wishing to be the one heading for my bed, taking refuge under a sea of blankets, and asking the answerless question of “Why? Why would he do this to me?” How could anyone who called herself a friend be envious of another friend’s broken heart? I offered her the stock advice of “You’re going to be fine” and condoned the indulgence in self-pity. Maybe I longed to wallow in a bit of my own.

I tried to be rational about it. Perhaps I was jealous of her youth. She was only twenty-one, after all, compared to my thirty-three. But that wasn’t it. I would never want to go back and do all that work again. Still, this dreadful realization of envy ate at me and made me afraid that I’d been no better a friend to Julia than Gwen had been me.

* * *

The day moved along in its usual fashion – people asking me for titles that I knew I didn’t have and groups of teenagers in the erotica section reading explicit passages with phrases like milky thighs and throbbing manhood. And then, of course, there was that one eccentric shopper who enjoyed talking about her long love affair with the book.

“I love your store,” she said as she placed her books on my desk. “Margin Notes. Great name.” I thanked her, but she was far from finished. “There’s something so special about a book that’s been read before.” I knew that feeling; that feeling was the very reason I’d opened the store.

“It looks like you’ve had a good day,” I said.

“Oh, I’ve read all of them already. I even own most of them. Isn’t that silly?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

In awe of the pile on the counter, she touched each of their covers, as if admiring the softness of silk. “To me, buying a book I’ve read and loved is like possessing something I already know, yet I can always learn something new about it. Even though I might know it word for word, I can always find something to surprise me, and passages that once meant very little now mean everything.” She punctuated each movement with a flourish of her hand or a tilt of her head. As she searched through her bag for her wallet, she looked up at me and said, “Kind of like an old lover.”

This oughta be good, I thought. “How so?”

A devilish smile emerged from her face. “After he breaks your heart, you’re thinking, ‘What did I ever see in that guy?’ Then months, even years, later, you bump into him. You look in his eyes, you examine his hands, you hear that voice you once prayed to forget, and you say, ‘Oh, now I remember.’” For a second I thought she’d light up a cigarette. “Hmm…memories… rediscovery…they can do wonders for the soul. And books that have been owned by one person, only to be passed along to another, are like…a congregation of broken hearts, looking for someone to keep them safe.”

Her one-woman show floored me. “Well, it sounds to me like you’ll give them a good home,” I said, as if I were adopting out abused pets.

“Oh, I will, because I can do one thing for them that the people who bought them all shiny and new couldn’t do.”

Dare I ask? “What’s that?”

“I could appreciate them for all their torn covers, dog-eared pages, broken spines. All the reasons someone didn’t want them anymore are the very imperfections that make them unique.”

I stared at her for a protracted moment, digesting her extreme intensity. It felt terribly inappropriate to ask if she’d be paying by cash or charge.

“It comes to twenty-two,” I said quietly. As she counted her money, I asked, “Are you an English professor?”

“Theatre.”

As Lady MacBeth exited stage left, I thought, Drama queens need love, too.

* * *

Julia was right: Saturdays were busy. And they were long. When I first opened my doors, I’d decided that on Friday and Saturday nights I would extend the hours to two a.m., just like the bars. Being situated near three college neighborhoods, I figured it wise, considering the many under-twenty-ones who didn’t have fake IDs could still have somewhere to go, somewhere to relax, and, rather selfishly, somewhere to spend their money. That was where my entrepreneurial savvy ended.

What I wanted most of all was a job that felt like a home, a place where I would never complain about having spent my day. The inspiration boiled down to a concise business plan: books and coffee – the words we savor and something to wash them down. And in turn, I created a shrine to those two things. They deserved it, after all.

With the help of my best friend in Pittsburgh, Darcy Branch, and her artist husband, Luke, we painted and decorated the old shoe store in a motif later described by Darcy as “Nineteenth Century New Orleans Brothel.”

Deep scarlet walls bled into an aging white tin ceiling, and mismatched wall sconces and crystal chandeliers cast a champagne glow through the narrow stretch of space. Existing wooden shelves lined the left-hand wall, while the center shelves stood like three maple dominoes, one after the next. On the right, two salvaged church pews sat arm-to-arm along the wall with six café tables and chairs in front.

In what was once the stock room, bargain books made their final plea for ownership –“Five Books, Five Bucks”. It was a veritable den of last chances but hopeful in its desperation. With the heavy pocket doors now permanently tucked away, I framed the archway in purple velvet drapes with fringed green tiebacks and outfitted each corner with a thrift store armchair and reading lamp.

As for the coffee part, I decided I would serve it as a bonus, not a business. I had three pots – two regular for the hopeless addicts, one decaf for the methadone-type customers. No flavors, no foam, no frills. Cups were available in one size only; travel mugs from the outside were appreciated. Embellishments of cream, sugar, and sugar-substitute completed the coffee bar. One dollar a cup, free refills, self-serve. Truly a take-it-or-leave-it venture.

As I fixed my fourth cup of the day, I considered another go at the letter to Gwen, but with everything swimming through my head about being a bad friend and aching for the ache of a shattered heart, I couldn’t do it. Instead my focus became the day’s mail, which seemed more voluminous than usual.

Light bill, phone bill, You’ve been approved for…, Lose 30 pounds in 30 days…, Time for your eye exam…, Jane, The Nation, a card. A card? Was it time again for Gwen’s abuse? The calligraphic writing of Ms. Elena Weston tipped me off. This was no card; this was a wedding invitation. I grabbed my letter opener and nearly gagged.

Mr. & Mrs. Peter Thomas

Request the honor of your presence

at the wedding of their daughter,

Sherri Lynn,

to

Mr. Andrew J. Connelly, IV

WHAT? Andrew J. Connelly? The fourth? Was this for real? If there was one person who knew the answer, she was only a phone call away.

* * *

“Mother?”

“Hello, dear, how are you? Working, I assume.” Oh, that tone. Working. Like I was a ten-dollar hooker wearing gold lame` and faux fur and leaning into car windows.

“Mother, is there something you forgot to tell me?”

She remained silent for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

Liar! “Got any plans for say, Saturday, the twelfth of June?”

“Oh, the wedding,” she said with a forgetful innocence. “That’s right. You just received your invitation today? We got ours last week.”

“Maybe I was on the b-list.”

“Don’t be silly, Elena. Sherri is your first cousin. People don’t start cutting the guest list until second cousins. I hope you’ll be able to make it.”

I ignored her. “So, just how much do you know about this blessed event?”

“Well, not much, really.” I found that hard to believe, because when Sherri’s oldest sister, Terri, got married, we heard about the wedding in excruciating detail. “Although, I did see the ring.” Here we go. “It’s at least two carats, set in platinum, emerald cut. Or is it princess? No, I think it’s emerald. Well, I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s quite ostentatious, really. Damn thing could choke a horse. Of course, the reception will be at the Bentley Club, just like Terri’s. Aunt Martha would rather die than miss an opportunity to host an affair at their club, as she refers to it. And don’t think they neglected to tell anyone with ears that Sherri’s dress is by that Asian woman.”

“Vera Wang?”

“Yes, that’s it. Thousands of dollars for a wedding gown. What a waste! But I suppose since the groom’s family is paying for part of it, Martha could stand to be a little less thrifty.”

My mother’s contention with Aunt Martha’s flagrant extravagances seeped into every conversation we had regarding the Thomases. “Quite honestly, Elena, after seeing what’s gone into planning Terri’s and Sherri’s weddings, I’m kind of happy you sneaked away and got married. Maybe you could have at least told me, but–”

“MOTHER!” I yelled as a long-distance version of slapping a hysterical person across the face and back to reality. “Doesn’t the groom’s name ring any sort of bell with you?”

Immediately, she rolled out her lengthy list of why it shouldn’t bother me. “Now, really, Elena, you dated Drew Connelly in high school. Surely, that’s no reason not to go to the wedding. You were kids, high school sweethearts. Old boyfriends do get married, you know.”

During my mother’s endless harangue, I took care of a few customers and tried to ignore her voice, which droned incessantly. I put my ear back the phone somewhere around the comment of “…If you’re still thinking about boys you liked when you were a girl…” and realized I hadn’t missed much.

Revisiting my memories of hometown Atherton was hardly the plan I had for my day, but like a sketchy Super 8 home movie, they all returned. My head swirled with the brand of hometown panic I hadn’t felt it years. I wanted to tell her that I hated the mere thought of Atherton, why I never wanted to come back, not even for a visit. Luckily, with the intervention of good judgment overriding a bout of temporary insanity, I bit my lip, swallowed my words, and allowed her to think that I was, in fact, behaving childishly. I let her believe she was right: we were kids, and old boyfriends do get married.

As she continued to cite the most intricate details of a wedding she had, only moments before, claimed to have known so little about – the bridesmaid color palette, the cost per head, the name of their yet-to-be-conceived first born – I resumed my spot on the stool behind the counter and looked at my letter.

Dear Gwen,

I like my new life, and I’m very happy with my decision. For the first time,

I know exactly where I’m supposed to be...