Hearsay

The older Romanian lady told me about her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, some years younger and extremely gestural in his treatment of her, yet prone to manipulation and subversion. Once at the dinner table in front of his girlfriend’s parents, he sternly informed Nicole after an interruption that he was talking.

The relationship was doomed to end, and Nicole was inconsolable. The mother was from a generation that was told to splash cold water on her face when she was heartbroken; could she bear to repeat that lesson to her own daughter?

Over coffee and cigarettes, she revealed her enjoyment of a smoke here and there, after her husband quit cold turkey. As she put it, what’s the harm, really? It was all a waiting game, and every life speaks to the numbers in one’s date, the creases on one’s face.