Hybrids

“Colm,” Mary said again, “I think it’s time that we…that we wrapped up unfinished business.”

Colm knit his brow. “Yes? I thought we’d settled all the accounts…”

“I mean,” said Mary, “it’s time for us to make our…the separation permanent.”

The server took that inopportune moment to arrive with salads: Caesar for Colm, mixed field greens with raspberry vinaigrette for Mary. Colm shooed the server away when she offered ground pepper, and he said, in a low volume, “You mean an a

“I…I think I’d prefer a divorce,” Mary said, her voice soft.

“Well,” said Colm. He looked away, at the fireplace on the far side of the dining room, the hearth stone cold. “Well, well.”

“It just seems time, that’s all,” said Mary.

“Does it?” said Colm. “Why now?”

Mary frowned ruefully. If there was one thing that studying Shakespeare inculcated in you, it was that there were always undercurrents and hidden agendas; nothing ever just happened. But she wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it.

No—no, that wasn’t true. She’d rehearsed the wording over and over in her head on the way here. It was his reaction she was unsure of.

“I’ve met somebody new,” Mary said. “We’re going to try to make a life together.”

Colm lifted his glass, took another sip of wine, then picked up a small piece of bread from the basket the waitress had brought with the salads. A mock communion; it said all that needed to be said. But Colm underscored the message with words anyway: “Divorce means excommunication.”

“I know,” replied Mary, her heart heavy. “But an a

“I don’t want to leave the Church, Mary. I’ve lost enough stability in my life as it is.”

Mary frowned at the dig; she was the one who had left him, after all. Still, maybe he was right. Maybe she owed him that much. “But I don’t want to claim that our marriage never existed.”

That mollified Colm and for a moment Mary thought he was going to reach across the linen tablecloth and take her hand. “Is it anyone I know—this new guy of yours?”

Mary shook her head.

“Some American, I suppose,” Colm continued. “Swept you off your feet, did he?”

“He’s not American,” said Mary, defensively. “He’s a Canadian citizen.” Then, surprised by her own cruelty, she added, “But, yes, he quite literally swept me off my feet.”

“What’s his name?”

Mary knew why Colm was asking: not because he expected to recognize it, but because a surname could reveal much, in his view. If Colm had a failing, it was that he was his father’s son, a plain-talking, thickheaded man who compartmentalized the world based on ethnic groups. Doubtless Colm was already mentally thumbing through his lexicon of responses. If Mary were to mention an Italian name, Colm would dismiss him as a gigolo. If it were a Jewish name, Colm would assume he must have lots of money, and would say something about how Mary never really was happy with a humble academic as a husband.

“You don’t know him,” said Mary.

“You already said that. But I’d like to know his name.”

Mary closed her eyes. She’d hoped, naïvely, to avoid this issue altogether, but of course it was bound to come out eventually. She took a forkful of salad, buying time, then, looking down at her plate, unable to meet Colm’s eyes, she said, “Ponter Boddit.”

She heard his fork bang against his salad plate as he put it down sharply. “Oh, Christ, Mary. The Neanderthal? ”

Mary found herself defending Ponter, a reflex she immediately wished that she’d been able to suppress. “He’s a good man, Colm. Gentle, intelligent, loving.”

“So how does this work?” Colm asked, his tone not as mocking as his words. “Do you play Musical Names again? What’s it going to be this time, ‘Mary Boddit’? And are you going to live here, or are the two of you going to set up house in his world, and—”

Suddenly Colm fell silent, and his eyebrows shot up. “No—no, you can’t do that, can you? I’ve read some of the newspaper articles. Males and females don’t live together on his world. Jesus, Mary, what sort of bizarre midlife crisis is this?”

Responses warred in Mary’s head. She was only thirty-nine, for God’s sake—perhaps “midlife” mathematically, but certainly not emotionally. And it had been Colm, not her, who had first acquired a significant other after they’d stopped living together, although his relationship with Lynda had been over for more than a year. Mary settled on the refrain she’d used so often during their marriage. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re damn right I don’t understand,” said Colm, clearly fighting to keep his voice down so that the few other patrons wouldn’t hear. “This—this is sick. He’s not even human.”

“Yes, he is,” said Mary, firmly.

“I saw the piece on CTV about your great breakthrough,” said Colm. “Neanderthals don’t even have the same number of chromosomes we do.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Mary.

“The hell it doesn’t. I may only be an English professor, but I know that means they’re a separate species from us. And I know that that means you and he couldn’t have children.”

Children, thought Mary, her heart jumping. Sure, when she’d been younger, she’d wanted to be a mother. But by the time grad school was finished, and she and Colm finally had some money, the marriage had begun to look rocky. Mary had done some foolish things in her life, but she at least had known better than to have a child just to shore up a faltering relationship.

And now the big four-oh was looming; Christ, she’d be menopausal before she knew it. And, besides, Ponter already had two kids of his own.

Still…

Still, until this moment, until Colm had spelled it out, Mary hadn’t even thought about having a child with Ponter. But what Colm said was right. Romeo and Juliet were simply a Montague and a Capulet; the barriers between them were nothing compared with those between a Boddit and a Vaughan, a Neanderthal and a Gliksin. Star-crossed, indeed! She and he were universe -crossed, timeline-crossed.

“We haven’t talked about having children,” said Mary. “Ponter already has two daughters—in fact, year after next, he’ll be a grandfather.”

Mary saw Colm narrow his gray eyes, perhaps wondering how anyone could possibly predict such a thing. “A marriage is supposed to produce children,” he said.

Mary closed her eyes. It had been her insistence that they wait until she’d finished her Ph.D.—that had been the reason she’d gone on the Pill, and to hell with the Pope’s injunction. Colm had never really understood that she needed to wait, that her studies would have suffered if she’d had to be mother and grad student simultaneously. But she knew him well enough even that early in their marriage to understand that the bulk of the work raising a child would have fallen to her.

“Neanderthals don’t have marriages like ours,” Mary said.

But that didn’t appease Colm. “Of course you want to marry him. You wouldn’t need a divorce from me unless you were going to do that.” But then his tone softened, and for a moment Mary remembered why she’d been drawn to Colm in the first place. “You must love him very much,” he said, “to contemplate excommunication just to be with him.”

“I do,” said Mary, and then, as if those two words had been an unfortunate echo of their own now-distant past, she rephrased the sentiment. “Yes, I love him very much.”

The server came and deposited their entrées. Mary looked at her fish, quite possibly the last meal she would ever have with the man who had been her husband. And suddenly she found herself wanting to give some amount of happiness to Colm. She’d intended to hold firm on her desire for a divorce, but he’d been right—it would mean excommunication. “I’ll agree to an a

“It is,” said Colm. “Thank you.” After a moment, he sliced into his steak. “I suppose there’s no point in delaying matters. We might as well get the ball rolling.”