“My Morning Coffee”

by Timothy Caldwell

I was having coffee this morning as I scanned the obituary section of our local paper.

“Beth,” I said. 

She looked up from the day’s crossword puzzle. “Yes?”

“I just remembered that I forgot to tell you about something I heard yesterday.”

“What?”

“I was about halfway through my walk, just crossing Clark Street when… No, it was Hudson Street. Oh, hell.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why I get those two names mixed up—I’ve been walking that route for, um, since I retired five years ago.”

“You retired six years ago; I retired five years ago.”

“Six? I thought you retired in—”

“It doesn’t matter. What were you going to tell me?” 

“It was Dexter Street. The one that runs north-south. That was the street I just crossed.” 

“I don’t care about what street you were crossing. What had you forgotten to tell me?”

“You sound exasperated,” I said. 

“I’m not. Well, yes, I am a little bit. You always do that,” she said.

“What?”

“You start to tell me something, then meander around before you finally, finally get to the point.”

“I don’t always do that, do I?” I asked. Her answer was a raised eyebrow.

As I took a long, noisy sip of coffee, she picked up her pen and returned to the puzzle. I leave holes in the paper with my pencil’s eraser when I do crosswords. I watched as she filled in two or three words without hesitation. In ink, damn it. 

Clearing my throat, I said, “Well, in the future I will attempt to be more succinct in my efforts to convey information.” I punctuated this with a sniff. 

Beth shook her head, smiled, laid the paper and pen on the table, then said, “Okay. Please get to the point.” 

“I don’t remember where I was. I think I’ll just subside into a passive-aggressive silence,” I said. 

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, stop pouting. You were crossing, had crossed, or were about to cross Clark Street, or Hudson Street, or Whatever Street, when…” She made a gesture for me to continue. 

“Okay. So a car pulls over to the curb, and it’s…shit!”

“Shit?”

“I can’t think of his name. I knew it yesterday when he stopped.”

She sighed her here-we-go-again sigh. “Keep going and maybe it’ll come to you. I’ll not interrupt you.”

“All right. So What’s-His-Name told me that his ex-wife… Damn, there goes another one! She’s one of your friends, went to school with you. Dennis.”

“Her name is Dennis?” 

“No. It was her ex-husband. Dennis, Dennis Wilson—I knew his name would come to me.”

“Marguerite is his ex-wife’s name. I knew her as Maxine Feldersitzen when we were in high school. She changed her name while she was in college because she wanted a more British-sounding name.” 

“What did she change it to?”

“Marguerite Giroux.”

“Sounds French.”

“She was a history major and wanted to memorialize the Norman invasion.”

“Ah, yes. 1066—seems like only yesterday when the French invaded England,” I said.

“Feels to me like that was when we started this conversation. What did Marguerite tell Dennis to tell you?”

I stared into my coffee cup as if the answer were there. From somewhere in the maze of my neuro-entanglements, it appeared. “I remember now,” I said. 

“Good for you. Please put me out of my misery. What did Dennis say?”

“Marguerite told Dennis something about a high school classmate that you both knew.”

“And her name is…”

“Shirley? Susan? Maybe Doris? He’s getting senile, I think; he couldn’t remember her name.”

“Doris Sloan?”

“Was there more than one Doris in your class?”

“No. What about Doris?”

“Her funeral is tomorrow.” 

THE END