ronit-friedman:
“I was just trying to make you a compliment without sounding mean, so thank you for helping me with that!” Ronit laughed. She gave an ostentatious sigh of relief when Jimmy stated that he liked the food. “I’m glad to hear that! I suppose Chinese it is next time, then.” It certainly made her happy that he had suggested they meet again (though admittedly, she had been fishing for that), but maybe even more happy did it make her that he was now sharing what he had previously alluded to.
Ronit nodded along, having interrupted her eating and sipping on her wine instead. It might have sounded complicated upon first hearing it, but wasn’t children with three different partners approaching average in America by now? “You know,” she began, swishing her wine around in its glass, “where I grew up, people usually get married at eighteen or nineteen to someone they often don’t even really know, then they have five or six children and stay together until one of them dies. And for some people, that works out really, really well. But other people- they try to follow that model, and it just makes them so miserable, but they stick it out, and every day you can see them become a little more broken inside. So it just makes you sound like someone for whom that model doesn’t work, and it obviously hasn’t worked for me either.”
When he got to the part about his latest partner though, Ronit did have to audibly swallow. “I can’t imagine your friend particularly liked that,” she first commented, rather flatly, dipping bread into tomato sauce. “Or your children?” Jimmy had accompanied the story with a more than generous dose of pre-emptive self-defense, which indicated that he must have had negative experiences sharing it. Why did she even feel like she was having a problem with this? Ronit had to realize she wasn’t exactly in a position to judge, seeing as Veda could have been her- well, maybe not daughter, but definitely niece. And if there was one thing she hated, it was people judging her life. Maybe it was her annoyance at all the ‘my dad left us’-stories she had encountered after she had left her little Mea Shearim bubble, and her anger at all the Western men who had seemed to assume she had one foot in her grave even though she, Ronit, was trying so hard with her salad-eating and running and botoxing. Was it possible that there was sometimes actual love, or something like it, behind those stories?
“Tell me about her,” Ronit prompted, forcing her features into an encouraging smile. “About Holland.”
.
“Well- I was planning on staying with Julia, my ex-wife. She was the one who divorced me and then I met Aubrey straight away… I was planning on staying with her forever, too but…” Jimmy trailed off, rubbing the back of his head. “I don’t make the best choices. I didn’t cheat on her.” He shook his head quickly. “But, I have some problems, some issues I’m working out in therapy right now and those things got in the way and I suppose she had enough.”
Jimmy didn’t blame her, looking back on his behaviour now. Hindsight was 20/20.
“I’ve not been on my own for over 30 years, so I’m getting used to it.” He sipped on his wine. “How do you find it? Being on your own?” Jimmy wondered if it was just him that feared loneliness, trapped with your own mind with nothing to distract you.
He let out a low laugh and nodded. “Yeah, my children weren’t happy. They still aren’t, really,” Jimmy admitted. “But my friend—Hank—he passed away last June, before we got together.”
Jimmy let out a low breath when Ronit asked him to talk to her about Holland. Where did he begin?
“She’s… I don’t know. Different, I guess. To other people I’ve dated,” he started. “She calls me out on a lot of my shit and no one has really done that before. She makes me think about things, rather than just acting first and thinking afterwards. And she was there for me when Hank passed away, her dad, and I was there for her too. Her mom passed away when she was younger, in her teens and… then she was there. A lot. And she was there when Aubrey ended our relationship. She understands a lot of what I’ve experienced. Loss. Addiction.” Jimmy rubbed the back of his head again, knowing that he was spilling far too much of himself to a friend but if Ronit wanted to get to know him, she needed to know him. Jimmy was no longer ashamed to talk about his addiction. It was a part of him. “I have a gambling addiction.”
He fiddled with the bottom of his wine glass, eyes darting behind his glasses to the table and then up to Ronit. “I bet you’re wondering who on Earth you’ve invited into your home now.” Jimmy joked. “I haven’t put a bet on in months, and I’m doing really well with that. I’m learning to be on my own.” He shrugged. “What else do you want to know about Holland?”
