Have you ever remembered someone you once knew and wondered where that person was? You might have loved or hated this person, might just be a childhood friend … and you just wonder. The Internet exists, so you do a search, see what comes up. Modify the search, try again.

Or if you’re like me, you might still have the phone number. (Actually, if you’re like me, you don’t have the phone number—or the email—because both your important electronic devices have crapped out in the last four years, and your contact lists have gone with the wind.) But let’s say you remember the phone number, and you send a text message.

A few weeks ago, the Irishman got a text message from a number not known to him. This is not so unusual. When he moved here from Ireland a couple years ago, our first order of business was to get him a phone, and we did, and they gave him a very freshly recycled number. We knew this because for weeks, for months, he got a lot of wrong number calls, most of them looking for some gal named Michelle (though not always—there were a lot of random calls, and a bank trying to track down a delinquent student loan account too). We laughed about all the lives his was intersecting by virtue of his brand new phone number.

But then a few weeks ago, he received this text from an unknown number:

Can we get a divorce? It’s been twenty years of separation.

He didn’t respond,* but we were both just struck by it, by the utter sadness of it. The defeatedness of it.

The next day he received another text from the same number:

Charles?

OMG. The Irishman brought the phone to me right away. “It’s the same number,” he said. And I said, “You have to respond, honey. You just have to.” So he did:

Sorry, you have the wrong number.

Right away, there was a response:

I apologize.

And that was it. We imagined all sorts of things. Think of her sending that first message, and waiting. Hoping. Was she on pins and needles? Or was she resigned, fatalistic? Then, since it was clear the number was in service, deciding perhaps she should try again.

I posted the exchange on Facebook and called it a Greek tragedy in twenty words. To a person, my friends laughed at me. 🙂 They thought it was hilarious, not sad. Maybe a little far-fetched. But me, I thought it sounded Irish, both in content and in syntax.

In the Republic of Ireland, divorce was made illegal in the Irish constitution (of 1937) until it was amended in 1996 to allow it. I know these dates because I looked them up but I’d read enough sad Irish novels and enough (sad) Irish history to know about the people who lived apart from spouses for decades. Apart—but never free to remarry. And that It’s been twenty years of separation doesn’t sound like American English to me, either. I would have said, perhaps, We’ve been separated for twenty years.

The coincidences were unsettling. But with my next breath, I started imaging the novel that opened with Can we get a divorce? It’s been twenty years of separation. Let me know if you decide to write it. 🙂

* Not getting involved in something that doesn’t concern him is his default. But I would have jumped right in with a response. Which makes me really glad this call came to his phone, not mine.

Tweet: A few weeks ago, the Irishman got a text message from a number not known to him.
Tweet: A Greek tragedy in twenty words.
Tweet: I started imaging a novel that opened with Can we get a divorce? It’s been twenty years of separation.