AFFIRMATIONS ARE JUST lies we wish we could believe. But that didn’t stop me from using them.
The drive from New Jersey to Sugar Land, Texas, was mere minutes less than twenty-four hours, so I’d had ample time to practice, mentally chanting positive thoughts as if they could conjure a sunnier future. I couldn’t say whether or not they would, but the words did fill the space in my head where regret and fear usually bloomed. They’d gotten me through the drive, through the delivery of our furniture, all the way to this, our first morning in the new house.
If I repeated them faithfully enough, maybe I could forget that these unpacked boxes were all that remained between me and actually starting over.
My therapist back in Jersey had prescribed antidepressants, but first he’d made me promise to embrace his ideas for cognitive behavior modification. The first one I’d tried was keeping a bullet journal of goals for each day, then updating it with a record of what I actually did. For weeks, bullets written in brightly colored ink promised that I would take a walk, try a new recipe, call a friend. Finally I’d given up, leaving the pages blank.
Because writing stayed in bed for over a month was even worse than actually doing it.
So affirmations were my new thing. Along with everything else. My whole life was new.
I started to slice open another moving box while positive mantras ran through my head instead of thoughts. I didn’t want to remember that tomorrow Michael would go off to his new job and I’d be alone, unemployed, with nothing but these affirmations to guide me.
I am excited about the new house. I am excited about Texas. I will find a job. I will make new friends. Buck up, Kacy. Everything will be good again.
And the box cutter nicked my thumb, cutting right through the stupid affirmations. Mentally chanting them never made me feel better anyway. But it did help keep the past at bay.
I popped my thumb into my mouth, but not before leaving a dark smudge across the label Tremaine: Kitchen. Somewhere we had Band-Aids, buried in a box along with antiseptic spray and ankle wraps. The movers who’d packed us up kept it tight. Every box labeled by room only, no Tremaine: Medicine Cabinet or Tremaine: Bedside Table. They could have saved time by labeling every single one Tremaine: Former Life.
Did I really need a Band-Aid? I pulled my thumb out and a dark bead formed immediately, swelling until it ran down the side of my hand. “Michael?” I called. “Do we have a first-aid kit somewhere?”
No answer. And that wasn’t like my engineer husband. Sometimes it seemed like an unanswered question caused him physical pain. Pressing my index finger against the wound, I stood and called out again. “Michael? Where’s our first-aid kit?”
This new house was one story, open floor plan, nowhere to hide, and only a handful of places where he wouldn’t hear me calling. I started searching. The hall bathroom door was open, no one in the room that “would make a great nursery,” according to our realtor—but I found him in the master bedroom closet.
He was running his hands over the seam of a box, and it took me a moment to realize he was pressing the tape back into place, resealing it. I didn’t need a closer look to guess the contents. I could read them in the way he rose to his feet with his hands out as if to ward me off. Michael had almost opened the only box without a label.
My finger skidded off my bloody thumb and I held it up in explanation. “Do we have a first-aid kit?”
“In the car.” He reached down and tore a bit of packing tape off the box. Then he pulled a tissue from his pocket and took my hand in his, inspecting it. “Not deep. Just sharp edged like a paper cut and in a bad place. We’ll close it up, and it’ll be fine.”
The whole time his hands kept moving, folding the clean tissue into a pad that he pressed against the cut, wrapping the tape firmly to apply pressure in just the right place, tucking under any loose edges so that my makeshift bandage was neat and orderly. When he was done, he raised my hand to his lips for a quick kiss. “All better.”
“Thanks.” Tomorrow he would go to work. Tomorrow. I’d be by myself in this house. Without a job, without a friend, without a plan. I am excited about the new house. I am excited about the move. I will find a job. I will make new friends. Everything will be fine.
The affirmations made my breathing weirdly rhythmic, and Michael noticed. He noticed everything about me now. His hands went to my shoulders, and he pulled me close against his chest. His old T-shirt smelled like cotton, cardboard, and the shaving cream he used. The safest smells in the world. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered into my hair. “You don’t have to decide anything now.”
“I need something to do. I want to work.”
“So you can start the job search. But there’s no pressure. You can take your time, explore your options.”
“But no one’s going to hire me, not in my field.”
“Maybe you could apply under your maiden name. Or try something different. They say the average person has dozens of job changes.” He rubbed my back, and I had to fight the urge to pound my fists on his chest. This wasn’t a problem he could engineer away.
He sensed the tension in my body and let me go. “What happened wasn’t fair. But we can’t change it. If you want to work, we’ll figure something out. Maybe start small, see what’s out there, make some contacts.”
The last thing I wanted to do was meet people, have them looking at me and judging me. And I was an art historian. That’s not a field with tons of openings to begin with. All those years, all that work, for nothing. But none of that was Michael’s fault. He had married someone optimistic and ambitious, not a lump who lived in a blanket fort for five weeks. Not someone who burst into tears at every trigger word like painting, art, or even friend.
He’d never doubted me, and he’d made this move to give me a fresh start. I had to get my shit together. I owed it to him. Not that he’d ever say so.
But then he added, oh-so-casually, “You know, the firm has a support group for spouses. Maybe there’s something like that in the neighborhood too.”
And there it was, the thing he’d been wanting to tell me. Just meet one person. Just one. Find a friend, a coworker, a boss. One person to trust. Of course, I knew it took only one person to lie, to smear your name, to blow up your life. I couldn’t imagine “making friends,” not anymore. Michael probably just wanted me to find someone to take the pressure off him. But that wasn’t fair either. That’s something else I’d learned—trauma could bring out the worst in the wounded. I wasn’t as nice as I used to be.
I am excited about the new house. I am excited about the move. I will find a job. I will make new friends. Everything will be fine. Michael loves me, and I love him.
Looking past Michael, I saw the box sitting on the closet floor like an anchor to our old life. “That’s one of mine. Leave it. I’ll deal with it later.”
His mouth tightened, and I knew how much he wanted to tape that box up and throw it out.
But the past couldn’t be sealed up so neatly. Not then, and not now.
Once Michael went to work the next morning, the house was quiet in a way our apartment in Jersey had never been. I could hear the air conditioner, but it only made the vaulted ceiling and open floor plan seem more cavernous.
I’d put the kitchen together—our small selection of pots and pans, our matching set of mugs, everything in the right place ready for our new life. Four chairs were arranged neatly around the kitchen table. I’d broken down the empty boxes and stacked their flat carcasses by the front door.
There was plenty to do, too much and not enough. Boxes of sophisticated professional clothes in the bedroom, pieces of the self-created uniform I’d worn at the museum, and boxes of books in the study, building blocks of my capsized career. And we had artwork, still flat-packed, ready to hang. Our bare walls were all painted the same silvery gray, made warmer by the greige undertones.
But I didn’t feel the warmth, not even when sunlight broke through the window treatments left by the previous owner. Someday I should replace the heavy double-layered fabric with something lighter, more contemporary, or at least more cheerful. Michael had draped a multicolored blanket crocheted by my grandmother over the back of our sleek gray sofa. Maybe he was trying to brighten things up too.
My phone buzzed. Mom calling to check in. I sat on the sofa and answered.
“How are you?” she asked. Just like Michael, everything she said had an undertone of pity.
“Great. Busy putting things in order.” The words came out of my mouth like I was reading from a script. I really just wanted to put my head on my mother’s shoulder and cry. But I didn’t want her to worry any more than she already was. I pulled the blanket down over my lap and twined my fingers through the crochet holes.
“And Michael, does he like his job?”
“It’s his first day, so I don’t know yet. He said the people at his interview were nice. How’s Dad?”
“Oh, you know. He’s in a state because of the weather. Too much rain and his tomatoes are rotting. He was supposed to go fishing with Bill, but normal people don’t like to sit out on the river in a rainstorm, even though I hear that’s when the fish get frisky. Anyhoo, that’s not why I called.”
Then she stopped, clearly waiting for me to ask, Why did you call, Mom? So I did, clutching one floral crochet square in my hand.
“I was talking to Theresa, you know, down by the florist? She says her sister runs an art gallery there in Sugar Land. I told her you had a PhD in art history and museum experience, and she said you should go right over and introduce yourself.”
My heart started pounding. “I can’t—”
“I know you’re scared, honey. But you can’t let one bad person keep you from going after your dreams. When Molly’s band broke up, she found a new one. And it’s been two years since Charlotte’s divorce, and she’s dating the nicest guy. You’ve got your whole life—”
“Mom, it’s not the same!”
I’d never raised my voice at my parents, not ever. And the shock of it was enough to shut us both up. I could picture my mother holding the phone to her ear, just as I was, while we listened to silence.
And then I was sorry, so sorry. Mom wasn’t wrong. My sisters had suffered setbacks, but they’d kept going. I knew she was trying to help, just like Michael. Everyone wanted to fix my life and make the pain go away. Or maybe, said a mean voice in my head, they just want you to shut up and suck it up.
I am excited about Texas. I will find a new job. I can make a new life.
“What’s the name of the gallery?” My question was an apology. A plea that she wouldn’t give up on me.
“Marville Fine Art Gallery.” And, in my mother’s subdued tone, I could hear that she wasn’t angered by my outburst; she was worried.
“Okay, Mom. Thanks.” I pushed the blanket off my lap and stood.
“Let me know how it works out. Love you, sweetie.”
“Love you too.”
A job in a gallery. Interesting. And I hadn’t found anything interesting in weeks. I used to work in a museum, designing exhibitions, but a gallery would be nice. There’d be art, maybe some acquisitions, maybe some shows. I could start building a new résumé, a new life. But my heart was still beating too quickly, and the little flame of hope flared into panic. Any job would want my references, my history.
I pulled out my phone, about to do something I’d promised everyone—my therapist, Michael, my mother—that I would stop doing. But I couldn’t resist the awful pain of picking a scab, so I typed Kacy Tremaine into Google, the same way any diligent employer would.
And the familiar words jumped out: disgraced employee, missing art, real-life Goldfinch?, declined to press charges, and gross misconduct. That was me, the art thief who’d had a change of heart, the girl who was lucky she wasn’t in jail. I didn’t have a conviction, but I did have an arrest warrant. Even dismissed charges were part of your permanent record. I looked guilty, even though I wasn’t. I will find a job. So much for that affirmation.
Could I just go back to my maiden name or pretend to be someone else? Sure, if I also wanted to drop evidence of my degree, my work history, any of the things necessary to actually get a job in my field. Either I was myself—with the skills and experience and baggage of my past—or I was no one. At least I wasn’t a liar. Not now, and not back then when it all went down.
I typed another name into the Google search, Aimee McFadden, my former best friend. And among the dozens of hits, I found her like I always did. New posts, new pictures; her life was clicking along right on track. She had everything she wanted.
She’d just had to ruin me to get it.
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