They sit on the patio, sipping their wine in the early evening.
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‘He’s a composer, Erin said.’
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On the other side of the table, Mel nods his head, his steady gaze angled out over the sea where a shell-pink moon has begun to slip from behind the veil of waning light.
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‘For cinema,’ Monica continues. ‘A composer is not a million miles from a poet, you know.’ She turns the page of her book without seeing the words. ‘He co-wrote the score for that film that came out last year. Remember the one about the architect who loses his mind?’
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‘Ah, yes,’ Mel says. ‘I don’t think we liked that film.’
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‘You didn’t,’ Monica says. ‘I did.’
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Mel nods again, but says nothing.
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‘Well—oh look, Erin’s texted. Okay, they’re stuck in traffic.’
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This will be their first time meeting their daughter’s new boyfriend, Alec. Erin says they’ve been dating about six months, and that it’s serious, that she thinks he’s the one. The one. Monica glances at Mel, who is still looking pensively out at the sky. Whenever she reads one of her husband’s poems, she wonders when it was that he came up with it, if maybe she unwittingly bore witness to the seed of the inspiration, to the first coming together of words in his mind, but had been unaware because all she had seen was Mel washing the dishes, Mel tying his laces, Mel looking out to sea. His poems, she knows, are brilliant, but when she reads them, whether they are his gentlest or his most arresting, she is inevitably reminded of the intrinsic loneliness of individual consciousness. This only serves to stir the silt of memory in ways she would rather avoid, so she does not read his work often, anymore.
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At this moment, though, she is relatively confident that he must be thinking along the same lines as she is. This is a shared experience, after all; the looming of possibility before a child brings home a new partner. However, on such occasions, of which there have been only a few—indeed Alec is the third partner Erin has ever brought home  and they have no other children—Monica and Mel have different ways of busying themselves. Monica fusses, tidies, primps and distracts; Mel contemplates. Monica has been moving all day, and the house is gleaming, her hair is perfect. She lays her book on the table and lifts her glass, taking a deep breath. The taste of the wine puts her in mind of flowers, the way the crisp flavour meanders over her tongue like the yellow peak of an orchid.
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Alec is a little older than Erin, already in his thirties, and from London, though his mother is Spanish. Monica imagines him now, maybe a little like Mel when they were first married, thirty years ago later this week. They honeymooned only about ten minutes from where they are now. When they first met—Mel, four years her senior, had been her tutor in college—he told her all about a favourite poet of his who had grown up in this Spanish, seaside village.
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On the second day of their honeymoon in the town of the poet’s birth, Mel had been stung by a jellyfish. Monica had bathed the welts in boiling water as he flinched and laughed at himself. She can still see the dark curling hairs of his leg raised and separated over the swollen red skin, and how she loved him, how she focussed on each follicle and been grateful for their small existences, for the miracle of his being, and grateful too, to the jellyfish, for the lash of its tentacles which had gifted her this moment with him in which she was of use, in which he needed her; how he ran his hands through her hair. With the exception of moments like this, few and far between, she has seen herself always at distance from Mel, as if he resides in a world she cannot get to, their love remaining on the surface of his deeper life.
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Erin moved to Madrid last year to work as a graphic designer after stretches in Australia and South America. In addition to being where they had honeymooned, Monica and Mel chose  the seaside town near Cartagena as the location for their anniversary holiday so that Erin could meet them. The sun is setting behind the lighthouse by the time Erin and Alec arrive. Mel is up and on the front step before the car doors have slammed, Erin in his arms before Alec can extend his hand.
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Alec greets Monica with a kiss on both cheeks, presents her with a bottle of champagne and thanks her and Mel for having him. He is dark like she imagined, but taller and broader, his loose shirt open a little way, and his trousers cuffed. Monica shows them to their room with its airy curtains and plush white pillows, listens to their soft laughter as she shuts the door.
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Once they’ve showered and unpacked, they join Monica and Mel to walk down to the seafront for dinner. As they pass the boats resting in the harbour, Monica is reminded of lines from one of the poems in the collection Mel published the year after they were married:
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‘Evening still, the boats in the harbour lilt / side by side, their soft rhythm comes to me / as though it is the very earth who breathes’
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It had upset her when first she read it, because she too had watched those boats and envisaged the act of breathing, but to her, it seemed like the breathing of lovers sleeping side by side; an intimate interpretation, her mind on love, on coupling. His, on the other hand, was broad, focused on bigger things, on the whole world. He walks a little ahead of her now, having fallen into step with Alec.
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‘It’s so gorgeous here, Mum,’ Erin says, stepping back and linking her arm. She smells of the lavender perfume Monica gave her for Christmas. She has new freckles, and looks pretty in her blue dress.
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‘Has it changed much?’ she asks. ‘Since you were here last?’
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‘Hardly at all. The postcards on the racks outside the little shops are so old and sunbleached I think they must be the same ones we sent home to our parents.’
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The outdoor restaurant overlooks the harbour and is decorated with fairy lights. A waiter seats them around a square table adorned with flowers and candles.
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‘Well,’ says Mel, as the waiter pours their wine. ‘A toast is in order, I think.’ He raises his glass. ‘To Erin, we’re so glad you could come, my dear, it’s wonderful to see you. To Alec, it’s great to have you, too, and to meet you at last. And, of course, to Monica,’ he turns and looks at her, for perhaps, she thinks, the first time that evening. ‘Thank you, for everything. That was a triple whammy, forgive me,’ he laughs and raises his glass.
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As the four glasses clink above the flowers, Monica notices a pale indentation around the ring finger of Alec’s tanned hand. She stares at him as he brings the glass to his lips, draping his other arm over the back of Erin’s chair. She puts her glass down clumsily on her knife and a little wine spills out on the tablecloth.
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Monica feels her heart faltering slightly. Mel asks Alec how he became a composer.
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‘You know,’ Alec says, ‘Erin told me that when she was little, she didn’t like colouring books because she didn’t care to colour in other people’s work, she preferred to draw her own. I was a little like that with music. I didn’t want to play other people’s pieces, I wanted to compose my own. So I studied music in college, began scoring student films—’
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‘And how long have you lived in Madrid?’ Monica cuts in.
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‘At the moment I actually live between Madrid and Stockholm. I plan on moving to Madrid full time though, in the next year or so.’ He looks at Erin as he says this and she smiles.
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‘We’ll be moving in together once he does,’ she says. ‘We’re looking at places already.’
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‘So what’s keeping you?’ Monica asks, trying to keep her tone even. ‘What’s in Stockholm?’
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‘Half my life’ Alec laughs. So do Erin and Mel. ‘I have a whole…’ he takes a sip of his wine. ‘A whole…’
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A whole what? Monica wants to say.
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‘Network,’ he finishes. ‘I’ve worked on quite a few films there. I have a studio, leases, you know, all the rest. Friends, as well. Friends as close as family.’
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Erin has not, at any stage, mentioned Stockholm, certainly hasn’t been there with him, which begs the question: is his life halved or is it doubled? She looks again at the place where his ring should be.
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‘And how did you two meet?’ Mel asks. He is calm, unsuspicious. Erin begins describing how she and Alec matched on a dating app; the first time either of them had used one, apparently. Monica cannot concentrate. Two lovers or the whole world? Halved or doubled? She reaches for Erin’s hand, running her thumb over the warm, firm reality of her daughter’s skin. They are not so far apart, even if there are things Erin will never know about her. Beneath the table in stylish leather sandals are the feet that once pressed her from within, chatting now is the voice that used to call her in the night. It’s alright, she told her then, and herself, now. It’s alright.
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Their food arrives on beautiful steaming plates and the conversation moves on. Monica drinks her wine and tries to tune in. Alec tells amusing anecdotes from touring and awards ceremonies. Mel is obviously charmed, Erin delighted and the waiter pours more wine and after, they order desserts— crème brulés and chocolate-coated strawberries. In her lap, Monica twists her wedding ring, almost unconsciously, working the little band up to the joint, then sliding it over and off; the old, familiar sensation. It is loose in her napkin before she realises.
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‘You must speak some Swedish then?’ Mel asks Alec.
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‘I speak a good bit of Swedish, but it’s never good enough,’ Alec nods. ‘Scandinavians are so highly skilled at bloody everything! Everyone there speaks better English than me.’ They all laugh.
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‘I always regret not learning more languages when I was young,’ says Mel. ‘Whenever I catch a glimpse into another language, it’s like another world. I can never help but think of the possibilities that would be afforded to me had I access to this new lexicon. What work would I produce if I had, for example, single words to encapsulate experiences for which we use entire phrases, sentences of explanation, in English. Words like schadenfreude and lagom— that’s Swedish, I believe, isn’t it?’
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‘Yes!’ Alec says. He turns to Erin and Monica. ‘Lagom is the Swedish word for when something is just the right amount. It kind of means getting the balance right in your own life. Actually, one of my favourites, which is quite relevant at this particular moment, is mångata.’ Alec gestures towards the sea over which the moon has fully risen. ‘It refers to the path of light cast by the moon across water. It means moon street.’
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Shortly after Erin was born, Monica returned to work at her administration job in the head office of a charity. Mel had just received a large grant to work on his new manuscript and was happy to look after the baby, with whom he was besotted. In the evening, Monica was in the habit of skimming through her husband’s pages from that day, complimenting him on a line here or there, as he ooh’d and ahh’d at Erin, whom the new poems, Monica found, were entirely about. A love akin to higher power, he wrote, deeper than any other.
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It was around this time that Monica began coming home late. Mel ever demanded an excuse for her absence, welcoming her each night with breathless summations of everything Erin had achieved that day. Each encounter elsewhere was just a fleeting intimacy— anyone who would give Monica what she craved for an hour or so. Men willing to hint that she might be extraordinary, to listen to what she might think about any given topic. These interactions became so methodical that she referred to them internally as over-the-counters, and every time, she would think of Mel, at home in their house, at home in his head, and wish it was him making her feel like this.
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One evening, as she rebuttoned her shirt in a dark hotel room with stains on the curtains, she felt her own tights suddenly wrapped tightly around her neck from behind. She shrieked and elbowed the man in the ribs, loosening his grip enough to rip the fabric from her throat. Turning quickly, she punched him in the face, he yelled and made a lunge for her, but missed and she grabbed her skirt and shoes from the floor and raced out into the corridor, pulling the pieces on as flew down the stairs and jumped through the doors of a bus which had pulled up just outside. Through the window, as the bus pulled away, she watched the man with the bloodied nose burst out the hotel’s front door. Even from a distance he looked wild. When she got home, Mel didn’t notice her bare legs. That night, she slept sitting up, holding Erin’s hand through the bars of her cot. She came home late again.
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‘Is he married?’ Monica whispers. Erin slows her pace and looks at her.
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‘No! I mean, he was. He has been married, but they’re divorcing.’
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‘How do you know?’
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‘That they’re divorcing? Because I’ve met her, her name’s Kristina. She’s nice.’
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‘You went to Stockholm?’
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‘No, she came to Madrid. They’ve been separated for two years. They’re friends now. How did you—what even made you ask?’ Erin is almost laughing.
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‘He has a tan around where the ring used to be.’
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‘God, how could I forget nothing gets past you, Mum. I’m sorry, I should have warned you. It just has been such a non-issue for us that it didn’t even occur to me. And I guess he didn’t think it would be appropriate to bring it up the first time he met you guys.’
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‘Do you know why it ended?’
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Erin says she does.
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‘But you’re not going to tell me?’
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‘It’s not really my business to tell,’ Erin says gently. ‘But he’s good, Mum. He’s a good person. Not all marriages can be as perfect as yours and dad’s. They don’t always work out, and that’s not necessarily anybody’s fault.’
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Erin hugs her, and it is only when Monica’s hands touch one another behind her daughter’s back that she realises she is not wearing her wedding ring.
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Laura-Blaise McDowell holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCD. Her work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, BBC Radio Four, The Irish Times, Banshee, and Still Worlds Turning, an anthology of new Irish writing from No Alibis Press. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Writing.ie Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. In 2021, she came second in the Costa Short Story Award. In 2023, she was a recipient of the Cill Rialaig bursary from Listowel Writers Week.