ANNA
More out of old habit than anything else, I watched Rick in the kitchen this morning, debating the precise moment to remind him. Too early and he’d wind up back in bed; too late and he’d still be a mess when I left the house. Some calculations you couldn’t keep yourself from doing.
When I finally dropped the bomb—Don’t forget dinner tonight at Jen and Amir’s—he was halfway through his coffee, pacing back and forth behind the kitchen island. “Oh, god,” he groaned, sinking onto a barstool, rubbing his face like he was trying to scrub away that reaction.
I waited.
“Oof, okay,” he said finally, through his hands. “I just need to prepare myself.” He looked up, his face childlike with worry. “You don’t think Samantha will be there, do you?”
I resisted the reflex to reassure him, fearing some sarcasm would creep through, and told him, truthfully, that I didn’t know. Then, to change the subject, I asked him how he was going to spend his day today. Four months into Rick’s “indefinite hiatus,” and both of us were running out of ideas.
I watched as he crossed his legs, one pale hairy flank appearing and disappearing from beneath his green robe. “First, I’m gonna answer some of those old sympathy notes, the ones we never got around to—”
“No one cares if you respond to those, Rick,” I said gently.
He waved me off, sipping his coffee. “I know. Then I think I’ll go running early, before it gets too hot. I did it yesterday. It felt really good, so I’m going to keep doing it. After that, I’ll probably come back here and shower, then read for a few hours.” He beheld me with distant amusement. “I guess that’s it.”
“Sounds good!” I said, trying to make my voice sound encouraging. “Maybe try and figure out a way to leave the house one more time before dinner. Oh, your book’s upstairs on the dresser if you want it, by the way, and I saw your wallet. It’s in the laundry room.”
“Ah, thanks. The breadcrumb trail.”
Rick got up and began making his haphazard rounds. I stayed in my chair. You had to be careful around him—his movements were so erratic and expansive that at any moment he was likely to wheel around and crash into you. I knew he was going to want his red shirt, which was in the dryer. I got up, fished it out, and waggled it at him. He did a little two-finger salute, pulled his old one off, and tossed it to me.
I put the dirty one to my face—another reflex—and was immediately rewarded with the impression of his chest hairs tickling my nose, the fruity musk of his armpit. It was such a potent memory that I teared up and threw the shirt roughly into the washing machine. Today was going to be long. I didn’t have the luxury of getting emotional over laundry.
I watched as Rick sat on our entryway bench and worked one heel into a distressed sneaker with the thumb of the opposite hand, pausing in this ritual somehow to sip precariously from his coffee mug, which he then left behind on the bench en route to the door.
He paused, his hand on the knob. “Some days,” he said, “I just want to die. Today is one of those days. I just want to die today. You know? Not coincidentally, I had three beers last night. I shouldn’t tonight. Anyway, it’s always good to see you in the morning.”
“I love you. See you for dinner.”
As soon as he was safely out the door, I got up to get dressed for my meeting. He hadn’t asked what I was doing today, which meant I hadn’t had to lie.
Small blessings.
—
Jen was the one who referred me to the lawyer. She’d taken pains to clarify, in an offhand way, that of course she’d never needed his services, but unspecified friends of hers in what she delicately referred to as my “situation” had apparently liked him very much. His demeanor was comforting. He didn’t lay on any guilt trips. And of course, most important—a meaningful look here from Jen I tried to ignore—he had a reputation for getting his clients everything they wanted.
Despite all the sickening cloak-and-dagger involved in scheduling the meeting, I’d somehow forgotten it was this morning. When I remembered—around 4:00 a.m.—I’d almost bolted out of bed. Now I sat alone in the kitchen, calculating the route on my phone. The app said the drive would take about half an hour. I decided to give myself an hour. Ever since I disabled the car’s AI, I’ve had to build extra time into every journey, to allow for getting lost and to give myself a few minutes to calm back down.
The streets around our house were quiet enough, mostly empty, so I felt pretty good starting out. I have to say, it really is like riding a bike—even after a decade-long break, the old instincts remain. I know I’ll never be as good as the self-driving cars, which never drift or forget to signal. But I take some pride in muscle memory returning—stopping, leaning forward to check the intersection, turning hand over hand. It feels good, like Rick said, so I’ve kept doing it. I could just imagine his face if he knew, though: eyes bugged, arms waving, voice rising—something about a death wish, maybe.
I merged onto the highway and felt death encroaching. Cars shrieked past on both sides, the exit ramps peeling away and closing back in. Forty harrowing minutes later, I took my exit, parking hundreds of feet away from the other four cars. I fed myself a few dry almonds from the bag in the driver’s-side door with shaky hands. I stared at the slice of my eyes in the rearview mirror for about five minutes until I was reasonably certain that no stranger could read distress into them.
Then I got out of the car.
—
The lawyer’s building wasn’t nice—whitewashed cinder block, swinging bulbs, stale air. There was something perfect about it, I decided. Where better, really, to find yourself sneaking around like this?
When I opened the office door, a youngish guy surprised me, striding from his desk with one hand extended, brushing his pants with the other. He apologized for the building—“ ‘Rathole’ wouldn’t be inaccurate,” he said, laughing—and chattered on about new leases and upcoming renovations. I clocked his purple dress shirt, so creased and shiny he might’ve ripped the packaging open on it this morning. His haircut looked almost as new—Mormon? I found myself picturing his mother: Firm but kind. Crow’s-feet from a lifetime’s worth of indulgent smiles. She would’ve emphasized the importance of showing courtesy to middle-aged women.
Just as Jen promised, the lawyer was unfailingly, relentlessly pleasant. I wished he was meaner. Maybe, after all of my skulking around, I’d wanted a movie lawyer—sleazy, humiliating—to match my shame. This guy didn’t even lose his warmth when confirming basic facts: “I’ve always wanted to live there myself, but my wife’s work keeps us closer downtown,” he remarked when I mentioned our neighborhood. I wondered what his wife did. The phrase “downtown” sounded exotic, like a relic from some earlier era.
He assured me that the first steps were always the most overwhelming. First of all, he had to know if I was “really committed” or not. “It’s hard to get that ball rolling backward,” he said, frowning with concern so pure I promised I wouldn’t waste his time. I couldn’t bear to watch that round face fall.
“No, no,” he protested, genuinely alarmed at my uncharitable interpretation. As he cheerfully ran down the grim separation logistics, I found myself wondering how he’d gotten himself into this business. He wasn’t some shark or a cold-blooded mercenary. He was a softy. I wanted to
throw a blanket over his desk and hide under it with him, shining flashlights in each other’s faces. I wanted to hurt him. I clenched my fists so hard I lost feeling in my fingertips.
Mercifully, the whole affair was over within an hour. Right before I left, he slid a fat pad and fearsome-looking silver pen across the desk and found my eyes. “Oh, and write everything down. All case notes on paper. Nothing digital.”
When I asked him what he meant by “nothing digital,” he just repeated himself, drawing the words out. My heart sank. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t pictured this scenario involving homework.
“These things are personal,” he added. “Assume everything is relevant. Often, the simplest and least significant thing a client imagines, something you didn’t even really realize you’d written down, winds up making all the difference in negotiations.”
“Negotiations.” I hadn’t really prepared myself for that word. What was I doing here? My head got swimmy, but I mastered it. I would not have a panic attack in front of this friendly kid in his brand-new purple dress shirt.
Instead, I smiled wide, thanked him profusely, took his hand with both of mine, made a self-deprecating joke about my degraded writing skills, and teased him about watering his plants. Then I made my slow way down the hall, listening with my whole body as the door handle latched behind me. Out in the parking lot, the configuration of the cars hadn’t changed. Mine was farthest away. When I sat down at the steering wheel, I checked my eyes in the mirror again. They looked opaque, untroubled.
Out of curiosity, I tried crying. I hadn’t been able to for three weeks now. As if in grudging response, my nervous system sent one tear, then two, sliding down, then no more. I held my outstretched palm in front of my face, then turned to pound the steering wheel—once, twice. Nothing, just a numbing jolt up my forearms. I gave up and stared at the blank legal pad on the passenger seat.
considering how many times a day Rick asked me, hopefully, how I was feeling. I’m not what people call an open book. Even Alex used to pester me about it.
He confronted me directly once, when he was fourteen. We were on the couch together, and he was showing me something he’d made in UnWorld. I was doing my best to pay attention as he moved some peculiar dog-faced beast around what seemed like a whimsically colored simulacrum of a farm, inviting me to appreciate the way the beast’s jaws hinged open like a cartoon boa constrictor’s to devour the pink rounded bits of cartoon fruit.
I couldn’t find anything about the game that wasn’t either ugly or bewildering, but I reminded myself that the school counselor had seen no issue with Alex’s fixation: “It’s a creative outlet for him, and it gets him out of that head,” she’d said. Spending time in UnWorld seemed to help with his anxiety, so I said something encouraging: How clever that he’d managed to design it that way. Was it hard to do? Very, he’d said.
I was doing my best to feign interest when suddenly he looked up.
“Mom, why do you laugh like that?”
“Laugh like what?” I hadn’t been aware of laughing.
“Like this,” he said. Then he pantomimed my laugh—a silent, single hee, a gust of air like a sigh or a blown bike tire.
“I don’t know,” I answered, shifting slightly away on the couch. “I laugh like I laugh. I don’t think you can choose something like that.”
“I think you can,” Alex had objected. “I like your laugh. But I think it’s because of how you were raised.”
“And what do you know about how I was raised?” I’d responded, trying to keep my voice light. I’d been subjected to a lot of psychoanalysis like this from him recently. Depending on the day and my mood, it felt either sweet or invasive, and we were in the latter territory.
“You were raised to be quiet, I think,” he said. “I watch you with the other parents at school. Ellen’s dad walked into you that one time, like you weren’t even standing there. Remember?”
I didn’t, I’d admitted. I guessed it was the kind of thing a son remembered seeing happen to his mother. I’d tried to brush him off, but his eyes were serious, intent.
“I want to hear what it sounds like when you laugh really loud,” he’d said. “Like, throwing your head back. Here.” He surged upward, abandoning the UnWorld screen, and proceeded to manipulate me like a department-store mannequin, kicking lightly at my feet to widen my stance and positioning my fists on my hips, superhero-style. Then he stepped back, examined his work for a minute, a grin on his face. “Okay, now give me your biggest belly laugh.”
That was enough. ...
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