Javier Ruiz, 62, spent 31 years yelling over radar static as an air traffic controller at John Glenn Columbus International, and these days he only raises his voice when a vintage CB radio he’s restoring has a fried capacitor. He’d dragged himself to the county fair alone that Saturday after his 17-year-old grandson bailed to catch a punk show in Cleveland, and he was halfway through a plate of fried green tomatoes when he heard it: a low, smoky voice he hadn’t heard in person since his wife Marisol’s funeral, calling his name. The cornmeal crusted on his upper lip tasted salty all of a sudden, and the buzz of the fair’s tractor pull announcer faded to background noise when he turned.
It was Lena, Marisol’s second cousin, 58, just back in the state after 22 years in Fort Myers where she’d run a beachside taco stand until her ex-husband ran off with a bartender half their age. She was holding a dented glass jar of pickled okra she’d just won at the ring toss, her white linen shirt unbuttoned one button past what most people would call proper for a small-town fair, sun streaks bleaching the ends of her dark wavy hair. She smelled like jasmine perfume and cotton candy, and when she stepped closer to hug him, her shoulder pressed into his chest for three full beats longer than a polite greeting should last. Javier’s hands hovered over her back for a second before he patted her awkwardly, already kicking himself for noticing how soft her shirt was, how the gold hoop in her left ear glinted when she pulled back to smile at him.
He’d spent 8 years actively avoiding any situation that might lead to this. After Marisol died of ovarian cancer, he’d boarded up the back porch where they used to drink iced tea on summer nights, stopped going to family reunions, didn’t even answer the door unless it was the mailman dropping off CB parts. He’d told himself any hint of interest in another woman was a betrayal, that the life he’d built with Marisol was the only one he ever got to have, and any deviation meant he didn’t love her enough. But Lena was leaning against the splintered wooden counter of the fried food stand now, her elbow brushing his every time she shifted her weight, asking him about the CB radio hobby she’d heard about through his daughter, and he couldn’t make himself walk away.
She told him she’d stopped by his house three times in the last month, dropping off tamales her mom had made, but he’d never answered the door. Javier’s face heated up, and he mumbled an excuse about being hunched over a workbench in the garage with the radio playing too loud. She laughed, a low throaty sound that made the back of his neck tingle, and said she figured that was the case, so she’d left the tamales on his porch step next to the stack of old radio catalogs. They talked for 20 minutes, stepping out of the way of screaming kids chasing each other with snow cones, listening to the fair announcer call out the winners of the hog show, the rough gravel of the fairground crunching under their work boots.
When the sun started dipping low over the cornfields on the edge of the fairgrounds, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine, Lena nodded toward the old wooden grandstand halfway across the property, the same one they’d all sat on back in 1997 when Marisol had won first place for her peach jam at the fair’s canning contest. “You wanna go sit for a minute?” she asked, and Javier nodded before he could overthink it. The bleachers were half empty, most of the crowd having migrated to the demolition derby on the other side of the fair, and when she sat down next to him, her thigh pressed full against his through the worn denim of their jeans. He didn’t move away.
She told him Marisol used to call her when he was working late, gushing about how he’d bring her flowers home for no reason, how he’d fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom even when he was exhausted after a 12 hour shift. “She always said you were the best man she ever knew,” Lena said, her voice soft, and when Javier turned to look at her, she was already looking at him, no pity in her eyes, just something warm and open he hadn’t seen in almost a decade. She lifted her hand, brushed a fleck of cornmeal off his chin, her fingers lingering on the stubble of his jaw for two long seconds, and the little voice in his head that had been screaming betrayal for 8 years went quiet all at once.
He didn’t make some big speech, didn’t overexplain the guilt he’d been carrying, didn’t overcomplicate it. He just asked her if she wanted to come back to his place later, that he had a 1976 Johnson CB radio he’d just finished restoring that picked up a classic country station out of Nashville clear as a bell, and he still had half a jar of Marisol’s 2014 peach jam in the back of his pantry, the one she’d always raved about. Lena smiled, the corner of her mouth tugging up the same way Marisol’s used to when she was amused, and she squeezed his knee through his jeans, nodding.
The Ferris wheel bell rang soft behind them, the distant roar of the demolition derby crashes carrying over the fairgrounds, and Javier reached over, his calloused fingers rough from 8 years of twisting radio dials and soldering circuit boards, and laced his hand through hers.
