Manny Ruiz, 62, stacks three pieces of fried catfish on his paper plate at the Moose Lodge Friday fish fry, follows them with a heaping scoop of vinegar-heavy coleslaw and four hushpuppies still crisp at the edges. The March cold snap has central Florida in a weird hold, the air sharp enough that his flannel shirt stays buttoned all the way to the collar, and rain lashes the metal siding of the building so hard the overhead fluorescents flicker every few seconds. He scans the crowded room for an empty seat, spots one at the back table next to the jukebox blaring Merle Haggard, and makes a beeline for it before a group of retired linemen can claim it. He drops into the plastic chair, looks up, and his throat goes tight.
Across the table, Lila Marlow, his late wife Elaina’s younger half-sister, lifts a sweet tea to her lips and smirks like she knew he’d sit there. He’d avoided her for 40 years, ever since his wedding day, when he’d woken up to a face full of shaving cream and a note taped to his forehead that said “Enjoy married life, sucker” in handwriting he’d sworn was hers. Elaina had cried when she’d found him covered in goop, late to the church, and Manny had written Lila off entirely, even skipping family gatherings for decades even after Elaina got sick, even after she’d begged him to make nice. He shifts in his seat, already halfway to standing to leave, when she snorts. “You still hold that grudge, huh? Told you a hundred times that wasn’t me.”
He freezes, his calloused hands—roughened from 30 years trimming citrus branches, now from fixing riding mowers for elderly neighbors for free—still curled around the edge of the table. The smell of fried grease and cut grass drifts through the open back door, and he can hear a group of guys laughing at the bar about a bass tournament that got rained out that morning. “Wasn’t you?” he says, his voice gruffer than he means it to be. She pulls a crumpled polaroid out of her wallet, slides it across the table. It’s him, 22 years old, face covered in shaving cream, holding his wedding tux over one shoulder, and his old best man Jimmie is in the background, cackling so hard he’s bent over double. “Jimmie confessed to me at Elaina’s 50th birthday party,” she says, her voice softer now. “Said he thought it’d be funny. I tried to tell you back then, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Manny stares at the photo, heat creeping up his neck. He’d spent 40 years mad at the wrong person, spent 40 years missing out on half of Elaina’s family because he was too stubborn to admit he might be wrong. That was his flaw, always had been: he held grudges so tight they left indentations in his palms. They talk for the next hour, the rain slowing to a soft drizzle against the windows. She tells him she’s a traveling nurse, just moved back to town to take care of her mom who’s got early stage dementia, has been single 8 years after her ex husband left her for a girl half his age he met at a truck stop. He tells her about closing the grove after Elaina died, about fixing mowers, about how he hasn’t been fishing in almost two years because it felt wrong to go without her, like he was cheating on the memory of the woman he’d loved for 34 years.
When they both reach for the bottle of Tabasco sitting in the middle of the table at the same time, their knuckles brush. His are rough, crisscrossed with tiny scars from thorns and wrench slips, hers are soft, a tiny orange blossom tattoo wrapped around her wrist, the same flower he’d planted the first year he and Elaina opened the grove. The contact sends a jolt up his arm, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, his face red. He’s disgusted with himself, at first—this is Elaina’s sister, for Christ’s sake, the woman he’d hated for half his life, and here he is feeling a spark he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed Elaina at a high school football game. But when she smiles at him, not teasing, not pitying, just warm, the disgust fades a little, replaced by a quiet, unfamiliar excitement he’d thought he’d never feel again.
The lodge clears out around 9, the rain still light enough that they can walk to his old beat up 2008 Ford F150 without getting soaked. He offers to drive her home, since her Honda Civic is in the shop getting a new transmission, and she agrees. The drive to her small bungalow on the edge of town is quiet, the radio playing old 90s country, the windows cracked enough that the smell of wet citrus blossoms drifts into the cab. When he pulls into her driveway, she doesn’t get out right away. She turns to him, her eyes glinting in the glow of the streetlight, and says “I’ve been coming to those fish fries for a month just hoping I’d run into you. I wanted to clear the air.”
He leans across the center console, hesitates for half a second, then pulls her into a hug. She smells like coconut shampoo and fried catfish, a little like the lemon drops Elaina used to carry in her purse, but different, lighter, like she doesn’t carry the same weight of grief he does. He doesn’t kiss her, not yet, knows they both have too much baggage to rush that, but when he pulls back he asks her if she wants to go bass fishing with him Saturday, if the weather holds. She laughs, nods, says she’s never caught a bass in her life, so he better be a good teacher.
He drives home, his windows all the way down now, the cool air stinging his cheeks. He doesn’t feel guilty, not like he thought he would. Elaina always told him he was too stubborn for his own good, always told him he’d be fine after she was gone, that he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life alone. He pulls into his own driveway, cuts the engine, and stares at the polaroid Lila gave him, still tucked into the pocket of his flannel shirt. He tucks the crumpled photo into the sun visor of his truck, and makes a mental note to pick up extra live bait on his way to her house Saturday.
