by Maria Semple
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: divorce papers
Just been filed. Let me know when you want them served.
David contemplated the grass bracelet that still clung to his wrist.
At the fire pit, the stoned kid had cautioned that the sweet grass must fall off naturally, otherwise the transformative power of the sweat lodge would be lost. Over the past months, David had grown increasingly preoccupied with the bracelet, never tugging on it, careful not to get it wet, even wearing his watch on his right hand so it wouldn’t rub against it. He hated himself for his superstition. What had happened there anyway, other than David and a bunch of strangers getting really, really hot together? Still, he hung on to the hope that something life-changing had actually taken place.
Indeed, compassion had flowed in the weeks after the yoga retreat. How couldn’t it have? David had returned home to find Violet a lying, distracted wretch. Pity was a cinch. Until Sally’s wedding.
David had been prepared to storm into the hotel room that night and announce he was leaving her. Heading down the palm-plastered corridor, Dot in his arms, thoughts ablaze with the invective he’d been rehearsing for the past five hours, he held the door open for a couple of women. “Awwww,” they both cooed, in such a maudlin way that David almost turned to see what it could be. But of course it was Dot. Bundled up in her quilt, clutching her froggie, her fancy dress stained with berries and chocolate, God, what could compare to the peacefulness of that sleeping face? And David thought: Violet had turned him into a chump and a cuckold, but there was no way she was going to turn him into a man who walked out on his child. He turned right around and checked into a bungalow.
And amazingly, this past month, Violet had seemed to find her way back. But with every wifely duty she performed, David’s rage grew. He could get his own lunch. He had an assistant for that. How about a fucking apology with his tofu and brown rice? Violet was perfectly plucky to go about her business as if nothing had ever happened! Which meant that David would be the one stuck suffering a lifetime of suspicion and betrayal.
The helicopter touched down on the empty polo field. All but one strand of the bracelet had frayed. He would serve the divorce papers when it finally fell off.
The pilot opened the door. David was met by a woman who worked for the promoter.
“David! Hi!” she said. Thirties, skinny, in jeans and tank top showing off great arms. “We’ve got the whole Ultra village set up. Five Airstreams, all with wireless and Scarface.”
“How about Guitar Hero?”
“Guitar Hero on big screens. I had to lock up the mini guitars because the crew won’t stop messing around with them.” She laughed and touched his shoulder and kept it there a second too long. He knew that word had leaked out that he was living apart from his wife. The promoter chick wore too much makeup but had full lips, the kind that never quite closed. “Are you staying through Saturday,” she asked, “or going back to LA tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends how it goes.”
SALLY sat across from Dr. Naeby at his cluttered desk.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I’d like to get an abortion,” she said. “Now.”
Dr. Naeby’s eyebrows jumped. The walls of his office were covered with framed pictures of his own children. The lyrics of “Teach Your Children Well” were handwritten and signed by David Crosby, with a personalized thanks to the OB/GYN.
“You’re not going to tell me why,” he said.
“No,” said Sally.
Dr. Naeby flipped through her chart and looked up. “You never called us back about the blood test.”
Sally now remembered receiving a message from him last week about needing to draw more blood for some routine tests. “I was out of town,” she said.
The doctor pushed a button on the intercom. “Diana? Could you get room four ready? And tell Marcella we’re going to need some blood.” Dr. Naeby paused at a flimsy ultrasound of Sally’s fetus that was stapled to her chart. He appeared lost in thought for a moment, then shook his head wistfully and looked up. “Okay.” He hit his hands on the desk. “See Marcella first and I’ll meet you in room four.”
Compared to her other two, this abortion was pure class. Dr. Naeby, Diana, Marcella, they all struck the perfect tone, not too solemn, not too cheery. Basketball was discussed as Sally got the IV of Valium, and the whole thing was over before she knew it had started.
“Stay as long as you like,” Diana said, removing the IV. “We don’t need the room. You have someone to drive you home?”
“Yes.” It was easier to lie.
“Here are some pads and some pills,” Diana said. Sally didn’t bother looking. “These are to help your uterus contract. And some painkillers for cramping. Give us a call if the bleeding doesn’t stop by tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” The door opened and shut. Sally lay there, comfycozy, drifting in and out. She thought it was funny when people talked about abortions as though they were so tragic. If only she could have one every day. Nothing could compare to the satisfaction of knowing a potentially ruinous situation had been averted.
On the wall was a photograph of a cheetah or a leopard, peering out over some green hills. It must have been a cheetah. Cheetahs were the ones that looked as if they were crying black tears. The picture was signed in the corner, Charles Naeby. Dr. Naeby probably took it when he was on safari with his family. Sally loved Dr. Naeby.
She would tell Jeremy that she had lost the baby due to diabetic complications. She could fly to Houston in time for tonight’s game. Wait — what was she thinking? — the secret was out — there was something wrong with Jeremy. She had no choice but to divorce him. A good lawyer could prove that Sally was the only reason he had gotten the ESPN job, which would entitle her to half of his contract. But that might get canceled once everybody found out he had . . . whatever that thing was he had. All she’d need was enough for her apartment — no — she had given up the apartment, and somebody else was set to move in on the first. And now she couldn’t get a new one because she’d declared bankruptcy. Plus, she’d given up all her classes and privates, so her career was dead. And she’d canceled her health insurance through David. The wedding presents! The presents must be worth thirty grand. She could return them for cash — no, probably not; most were engraved. God, did that mean she had to stay with Jeremy? How could she not have seen what was wrong with him? All the signs had been there on the very first night! Jeremy was so literal minded. He didn’t drive. He didn’t look her in the eye. He wore earplugs. She always knew there was something a little off about him, but she was happy to live with it. Now that it had a name, now that it was all over the internet, now that Nora Ross was having parties celebrating it — Sally sat up.
Weird hospital-issued maxi pads the size of bricks were stacked on the counter. She looked down. They had put one of those abortion garter belt things on her. Sally’s thighs were smeared with blood. Dr. Naeby and the nurses had just left her there, bottomless. The paper sheath she wore from the waist up had shadows of blood on it, too. She ripped it off. Here she was again. It didn’t matter what movie star was in the next room, an abortion was an abortion. A jumbo maxi pad was a jumbo maxi pad.
The first abortion Sally had, she was fifteen years old. Def Leppard had just played the first of four sold-out shows at McNichols arena. After flirting with Joe Elliott, the lead singer, at the Brown Palace bar, Sally went upstairs with him to his room. He was practically passed out on the bed, wearing the same ripped jeans and Mott the Hoople T-shirt from the show. She was a virgin and didn’t have a clue how to proceed when he unzipped his tight pants and peeled them down to his knees. He never took his eyes off the Top 10 Video Countdown on MTV. Sally locked her mouth around his uncircumcised thingy — it was the first and last time she’d seen one of those! — and blew, while he yelled instructions in a stupid Eliza Doolittle accent. “Suck! Slower. Softer. Watc
h your teeth. Suck. Deeper.” Deeper? Sally was already worried she might gag. Still, he kept barking at her, “Deeper, deeper.” Sally knew there were a dozen girls at the bar who would take her place in a second. So she slowed down, sucked, shielded her teeth with her lips, and pushed her mouth down as far as she could without gagging. “I’ll do it myself.” He pushed her out of the way and grabbed his pecker. The VJ had just announced the most requested video of the day, “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard. “It’s okay!” Sally said. “I’ll do it!” She stuck his dick as far down her throat as she could, and something came up. She couldn’t stop herself. She vomited on his stomach. Not too much, though. “What was all that?” He rose to his elbows. “Nothing!” Sally pushed him back and frantically licked up her vomit. He shoved her aside and passed out. The next day, the roadies made a big deal out of giving her a special laminated pass with her picture on it. She proudly flashed it to all the yellow jackets at that night’s show. At the after party, David marched over and ripped off her lanyard. “Give me that thing,” he said. The whole party went silent. “You fucking assholes,” David shouted to the crew members. “She’s just a child!” He spiked the pass onto the concrete floor and stormed out. Sally picked it up. Above her picture, it didn’t say DEF LEPPARD . In the same triangular letters as their logo, it said BAR FEEDER . Sally didn’t see anything wrong with being called that. “Bar feeder,” she said to herself. Then, the kick in the stomach: it read “Bar Feeder.” But spoken, it sounded like “Barf Eater.” The roadies burst into laughter. The only one who took pity on her was the one-armed drummer. An hour later, she lost her virginity to him and got pregnant. That’s how pathetic her one attempt as a groupie had been; she couldn’t even fuck somebody with two arms.
Her second abortion had been paid for by the travel agent who didn’t leave his wife for her. He drove Sally to and from some clinic by the airport and never spoke to her again.
Tears flowed down Sally’s cheeks and tickled the back of her neck. Drip, drop. They landed on the paper covering the exam table.
Throughout her childhood, all the other kids were frightened of her. She was the weirdo who couldn’t eat sweets and had to go to the nurse’s office to test her blood sugar. The isolation she felt only made her try harder, which only further repelled her classmates. The one person who understood her isolation was David, but he left home. So Sally marshaled her fear into ballet. The better she got, the more the teachers yelled at her, the bigger her smile. But then “3 mm X 3 mm” of her toe was taken. All she had to show for her years of grueling practice was the lying smile on her face. When she just wanted to tell someone, “I’m scared.”
Nobody could understand how much she hurt, how hard she tried, for how little she was asking. She’d have been happy to stay in the corps de ballet at a regional company. It would have been fine to marry a guy who worked in a boot shop. She knew her place.
Now, fresh from abortion number three, she had nowhere to go. “I’m scared,” she whimpered.
She had always ached for a baby, just so she could hold it and say, “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too.” And now that baby was dead in the wastebasket. Why had she run out and had another abortion? From now on, she’d be a girl who had gotten three abortions. Prostitutes and sluts had three abortions, not nice girls. Maybe this was her last chance to have a baby and she’d just murdered it. Maybe it wasn’t even a boy, and chances were there was nothing wrong with it. What if she’d murdered her daughter for no reason? God, she had to check to make sure it wasn’t a little ballerina — Sally jumped off the table and her legs gave out. She crawled to the trash can and smashed the pedal with her hand. It was full of white shiny paper. She reached in and touched something small, hard, and slimy — it stuck to her hand.
“Aaaah!” Sally shook her hand wildly. It was just a piece of gum, which went flying. “I’m scared,” she sobbed. “Now do you believe me?”
“She’s right in here.” The nurse’s voice grew louder from the hallway.
“Who?” said another voice.
The door swung open.
“Violet?” Sally said.
“Sally?” said Violet.
“Oh shit.” Diana, the nurse, turned white and ran to help Sally to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry,” said Diana. “I assumed she was here to take you home.”
“No,” said Violet, who had a cotton ball and white tape on the inside of her elbow.
“I’m so sorry,” said Diana. “This has never happened. I mean, I just assumed, since you’re family —”
“It’s okay,” Violet told her. “It’s okay.” Diana left. Violet stepped into the room and closed the door. “Are you okay?” she asked Sally.
“I’m fine. I’m great, really. I had no choice but to get a little abortion.” Sally grabbed her jeans and stepped into them. “Because of my diabetes.”
“I’m sorry — I —” Violet stammered. “I didn’t know. Here, let me help you.”
“I can manage.” Sally slipped her shirt over her head.
“Gestational diabetes?” Violet asked. “I thought they tested for that later.”
“Regular diabetes. My diabetes.”
“You’re diabetic? Since when?”
“Since I was three. Type one.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Violet. “I had no idea. David never told me.”
“He didn’t?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to make it about me. But I’m just kind of reeling here.” Violet gulped. “Let me drive you home.”
“I’m fine.” Sally grabbed the handful of pads.
“Where’s Jeremy?” asked Violet.
“He’s in Houston. He knows, and all. I’m just going home. I’ll be fine.” The stupid pads wouldn’t fit in her purse. No matter how hard she crammed them, they fell to the floor.
“Here.” Violet took Sally’s purse. “I’m going to drive you to our house. You can spend the night there.”
“I don’t want David to know,” Sally said.
“He won’t.”
They walked down the hall to Diana’s desk. “I am so sorry, you guys,” she said. “Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Violet. “How are we paying for this?”
“I’ll send a bill to the Crescent Heights address,” said Diana, off Sally’s chart.
Before Sally could protest, Violet handed Diana a black American Express card. “How about we put it on this?”
VIOLET drove up the canyon, Sally curled in the passenger seat, her back to Violet. Violet reached for the Tupperware container containing David’s lunch, pulled off the top, and offered it to Sally. “If you’re hungry, I made them.”
Sally took it.
“And for the tenth time, I can’t believe David never told me you were diabetic.” Then it struck her. “Oh, my God. I sent you chocolates on your birthday!”
“I thought that was pretty insensitive.” Sally bit into one of the fritters. “You made these?”
“Chard and quinoa. They’re better when they’re hot.”
Sally rolled onto her back and wolfed down another one. Violet felt Sally studying her face. Sally finally said, “I didn’t have an abortion because I was diabetic. I had an abortion because I found out there’s something wrong with Jeremy. It’s something called — I don’t even know how to pronounce it — it’s a syndrome or something.”
“Asperger’s?”
“You knew?” Sally looked stricken.
“Well, no. But now that you mention it, I’m not surprised.”
“I’m the only one who didn’t know he was retarded?”
“He’s not retarded!” Violet couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s a spectrum disorder. Our accountant definitely has it. People speculate that Bill Gates has it, and Albert Einstein probably did, too. Seriously, it’s no big deal.” Sally stared out the window. Violet continued, “Every
woman in America at some point must think her husband has it. You think I never wanted to throw myself off a cliff because David is so unemotional? I mean, not telling his own wife that his sister is diabetic. What is that?”
“Everyone knew but me!” Sally dropped the Tupperware.
“Nobody knows,” Violet said. “And if they did, they wouldn’t care. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, You wouldn’t care about what other people thought about you if you realized how seldom they actually did.”
There was silence. Then Sally said, “Why did you tell Jeremy to call off our wedding?”
For a moment, Violet was speechless. “I just happened upon him. There was no treachery on my part. He said you scared him.”
“That’s the best you can do?” Sally said.
Sally had been painfully honest with Violet. Now it was Violet’s turn. “I never really liked you,” she said.
“I never really liked you, either,” Sally shot back.
“Thank you!” Violet laughed. “That makes me feel so much better. From the first day I met you, I could tell something was off. And I thought I was crazy. I mean, this whole time, I thought it was me.”
“It was you,” said Sally. “I didn’t like you. I thought you were a snob masquerading as a nice person.”
Violet was impressed. “I’ve never heard it put that way before.” She drove past a eucalyptus grove on Mulholland. “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I remember driving by this exact spot with my father. He was shit-faced as usual, and he told me, If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s drive these canyon roads drunk.”
Sally forced a smile.
“From now on,” Violet said, “it will always be the spot where you said, I never really liked you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Geddy Lee / eBay / Bass What Bills?
Get It Done So That’s How You Wanna Play It? Poison into Medicine
The Number i The Story
KARA DROPPED HER PURSE ON HER DESK WHEN THE PHONE RANG. SHE WOULD have let it go to voice mail, but it was five after ten, and it might be David calling in for messages. She grabbed the phone, making sure she didn’t sound out of breath. “David Parry’s office.”
