The Name That Was Not Mine

I first saw the tattoo while Petar rolled up his sleeves to wash the dishes. It said Elena, in small letters on the inside of his arm. We had been together for only a month. For a moment I thought something so embarrassing that my face became hot. Then he saw where I was looking and said the name was older than our acquaintance. Of course it was. Still, I had to sit down, as though both possibilities had startled me equally.

He said he had got the tattoo at twenty-two. The woman it belonged to now lived far away, and they were not in contact. He said nothing unkind about her, which I respected and simultaneously, quite unfairly, resented. It would have been easier if he had immediately declared her a mistake. Instead he said they had loved each other, then parted badly, and his arm did not have to remain his enemy for the rest of his life.

Over the following days I noticed the name everywhere. While he held a cup, held a door for me, laughed and moved his hands. It was no more visible than before; I was simply searching for it now. A friend said I had acquired a man with a ready-made dedication. I laughed and felt worse afterward. I did not want to be a convenient replacement for an old girlfriend, a woman for whom even the ink need not change.

I told Petar one evening. He asked whether I thought he had chosen me because of my name. I said I did not think so, but sometimes felt that way. He did not try to prove his love by promising to erase his skin. He asked what happened between us when I stopped looking at the tattoo. The question initially angered me. Then I thought of our long conversations, the different things we remembered, and how often I had been happy before I started checking his arm.

It did not vanish overnight. Once I asked him to wear long sleeves to dinner with my friends and immediately heard what I was asking. I withdrew the request. He said he understood why it was difficult, but did not want to spend a new relationship concealing evidence of an old one. That was a harder answer than a promise. I could accept it or leave; I could not turn the other Elena into someone who had never existed.

At summer's end we went swimming. He held my things while I tied my hair, the name turned toward the sun. For the first time I did not read it to the end. I watched him balance two bags and my sandals, muttering that I had brought half the house. I took one bag. I was the Elena standing there with wet shoulders, and that day I did not need another place on his skin.