She has to stop calling me Bob, but she can’t see me as anyone else.. The name on my birth certificate is Robert, I remind her. I’m Robbie. I’m even fine with Roberto. Please, Mary. Don’t. She says the failures of Bobs have been haunting her for too long. Really, since grade school, she says. It all started with Bob Brockmire in third grade, who gave me a dented Micky Mouse ring. Then she storms around the house. She’s ready for an Ian, a Trevor, a Steve. Maybe an Isabelle. Hell, why not, she says. Give me an Izzy. Then she sobs. Tonight, things hit a pitch. She sits in the back yard with a shawl around her shoulders talking to the garden gnome as I listen from behind the astilbe bushes. She confesses that every Bob she has loved is a wee bit of honey at first. Not sweet enough for anything long term, mind you, she says. And sticky in the end. Perhaps this is so. I walk quietly back into the kitchen feeling frazzled, clutching a green potholder like an olive branch, thinking that perhaps all Mary really wants from me is a ring, not dented. Okay, I tell myself. So. Maybe it’s time to consider our future. But it is late, and I have been drinking rum. Marys have always distrusted me. She’s leaning against the house and the kitchen window is open. I can hear Mary talking about her childhood, how all of her mother’s boyfriends were Bobs. The garden gnome looks defeated. A bell goes off and I jump but it is merely the kitchen timer. I am making fresh scones, but we are out of honey.
