Manny Ruiz, 62, retired air traffic controller, has spent the last eight years perfecting the art of disappearing. After his wife Elaina passed from ovarian cancer, he stopped showing up to FAA retiree mixers, turned down every neighborhood block party invite, and only left his south Phoenix house to pick up groceries, work on his 1972 Camaro, or drop off smoked brisket for his granddaughter’s high school bake sales. He knows he’s being stubborn, that Elaina would chew him out for wasting the good years she didn’t get, but he’s comfortable in his quiet routine, no small talk, no pitying looks, no reminders of all the things they’ll never do together. He only agreed to come to this year’s summer block party because his 17-year-old granddaughter begged, said no one else’s brisket could beat his for the neighborhood food contest.
The sun beats down hard enough to make the asphalt shimmer, and Manny’s faded ASU hoodie is sticking to his back even as he stands over the charcoal grill, prodding the edge of the brisket with a meat thermometer. He’s been ignoring the neighbors who wave him over to their picnic tables, pretending he’s too focused on the meat to chat, when a shadow falls over the grill. He looks up, and his breath catches for half a second. Sunglasses pushed up into dark, wavy hair streaked with silver, cutoff denim shorts showing a tattoo of a sunflower on her left calf, holding a can of mango hard seltzer, she leans in a little, and her bare forearm brushes his bicep when she sniffs the air. “That smells better than any barbecue I’ve had in the last five years,” she says, grinning, and Manny recognizes her immediately. Clara Marquez, ex-wife of his old shift lead Tom, the woman he’d stolen three glances at across the room at every FAA holiday party between 2007 and 2018, the woman he’d felt guilty for even noticing back when he was married, when Tom would drone on about their home renovations like he didn’t know how lucky he was.
He’s still standing there frozen, thermometer in hand, when she laughs, soft and warm, and holds out a hand. “You’re Manny, right? Tom talked about you all the time. Said you could land 20 planes in a thunderstorm without breaking a sweat. I just moved into the blue house two blocks over, after the divorce finalized three years ago.” Manny shakes her hand, her palm is calloused at the fingertips from gardening, he notices, and the guilt twists in his chest sharp and fast. He shouldn’t be noticing how her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes, shouldn’t be thinking about how good she smells, like lavender laundry detergent and sweet mango. This is Tom’s ex-wife, he’d been married when he first thought she was pretty, Elaina’s only been gone eight years, it’s wrong, he should make an excuse to leave, go home, eat brisket alone in front of the TV like he always does.
Instead, he finds himself saying, “Got a couple pounds left once the contest judges are done. If you’ve got something to trade.” Clara’s grin widens, and she gestures to the cooler sitting by her feet, where a glass Tupperware of peach cobbler peeks out from under a bag of ice. “Homemade, peaches from the tree in my backyard. Fair trade.” They carry the food over to a rickety picnic table tucked under a palo verde tree, away from the noise of the bounce house and the group of retirees arguing about baseball. Their knees brush under the table when Clara leans forward to tell him the story of Tom burning their 2015 Thanksgiving turkey so bad the smoke alarm went off for three hours, and Manny snorts so hard he snorts brisket juice out his nose. He hasn’t laughed that hard in years, he realizes. When she passes him a forkful of cobbler, their fingers brush, and he feels a zing up his arm that he hasn’t felt since he was 19, taking Elaina to her first drive-in movie.
The guilt’s still there, niggling at the back of his head, telling him he’s being disrespectful, that he doesn’t get to be happy after Elaina’s gone, that dating your old coworker’s ex is some high school level drama he’s too old for. But when Clara says she saw him working on his Camaro in the driveway last week, that she’s always wanted to learn how to work on classic cars but Tom always said it was “man’s work” and wouldn’t teach her, Manny doesn’t say no. He hesitates, his thumb rubbing over the faded wedding band he still wears on his left hand, and looks at her. She’s not leaning in, not pushing, just sitting there sipping her seltzer, waiting for his answer, no pity, no expectation, just curiosity. “I’m free next Saturday,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it. “If you bring more of that cobbler. No store bought peaches, either.”
Clara whoops, loud enough that a couple of the neighbors turn to look, and she squeezes his shoulder lightly, her hand warm through the thin fabric of his hoodie. “Deal. I’ll even bring extra napkins, for when you snort food again.” She stands up, grabs her cooler, and waves as she heads off to say hi to a group of teachers who live down the street. Manny sits there, picking at the last of the cobbler, the sweat on his neck cooling off in the light breeze, and he doesn’t even mind the sound of the kids screaming on the bounce house anymore. He pulls out his phone, sees a text from his granddaughter asking if he’s stopped being a hermit yet, and he types back a snarky reply about her owing him 20 bucks for winning the brisket contest. He tucks his phone back in his pocket, looks down at his wedding band, and twists it around his finger once, slow. The guilt isn’t gone, not entirely, but for the first time in eight years, he’s not dreading the next day. He picks up the meat thermometer, wipes it off on his jeans, and goes to grab another slice of brisket.
