The F Word

by Liza Palmer

  We wind through the house and find ourselves back outside by the Italian café lights and baskets full of cashmere blankets that no one ever used.

  “The balls it takes to discipline me about causing a scene when you’re the one cheating. You’re the one—”

  “You said you knew about Nicola.”

  “I said I knew about her, not that I (a) knew what she looked like, or (b) would be comfortable sharing a meal with her,” I say. My breath is catching and I feel that tightness in my chest again. I sit down on a stone wall. It’s cold. Too cold. I pull a tartan blanket from the basket and wrap it around me.

  “I didn’t know she was going to be here.” He’s looking right at me. I need him, in that moment, to not be able to make eye contact with me. I want him to be ashamed. To look down. I want him to get that what he’s done is wrong.

  “Are you still seeing her?” I ask, the words getting caught in my throat as the breath clunks around my chest.

  “Yes.” It’s such a simple, unadorned word.

  “Yes,” I say, repeating it.

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “Expected? Wanted? Needed?” I offer.

  “Any of those,” he says, letting his hands slide into his pockets. I can see his breath in the night air.

  “I expected you to stop seeing her. I wanted you to love me. I needed you to be all in in this marriage.” I look up at him. Adam looks around. He stops a waiter.

  “Do you have bourbon?” Adam asks.

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter says.

  “Can you bring me a glass? Neat.”

  “Do you have a preference as to what kind, sir?”

  “Not tonight I don’t.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Adam sits down on the stone wall next to me. After a few seconds, he reaches over into the basket and pulls out a tartan blanket of his own. He puts it over his lap. We are silent. The waiter returns with a glass of bourbon. Adam thanks him. He downs it. And replaces the glass on the waiter’s tray.

  “Another, sir?”

  “What do you think?” Adam says with a beleaguered sigh. The waiter nods and retreats. Adam takes a deep breath. He takes my hand in his. “You are my wife. Nicola means nothing to me. She knows that.” The waiter reappears with another glass. Adam takes it. “Thank you. That’ll be all.” The waiter nods and disappears. Adam takes a sip of his bourbon and cradles the glass in his long fingers. The caramel liquid glints in the light. I lean into him and kiss him. Nothing. The bourbon on his lips tastes smoky and sweet like molasses. Another kiss. Nothing. He leans into me as I pull away. I rest my hand on his. My hands are shaking. From the cold. From what’s about to happen. From all of it.

  I always thought my rock bottom would be this extremely painful public spectacle. But that’s not how it happens. I simply close door after door and go on to live in the easier rooms of myself. Happily and voluntarily trapped in a cage I don’t even see. My rock bottom is private and comfortable. There’s no pain, because there are no feelings. It’s nice here. Turns out, it’s out there that’s hard. My mind is clear. The alcohol has evaporated and I find my voice.

  “I’m going to go.” I stand, unwrap myself from the tartan blanket, and set it on the stone wall next to Adam.

  “We were happy, we can be that again,” Adam says, taking my hand in his.

  “You’re right, but not together,” I say. I pull my hand away and stand tall.

  “So, that’s it?” Adam stands. I look up at him. He steps closer.

  “Did you ever love me?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Adam says. He’s telling the truth. We are quiet.

  “Did you ever love me?” Adam finally asks. A long moment.

  “I thought I did.”

  Confusion. A flare of anger. An arrogant flash. Adam tries to say something. His mouth opens and closes.

  “My best to Nicola.” I turn around and don’t look back.

  I walk out through the house and the valet calls the car that Adam set up to drive us here this evening. I don’t worry about how he’s going to get home. I climb in the back and tell the driver our address. Shit. No. We’re no longer an “our.”

  As we pull away from the house, I can’t help but think how boring the moments are just after such a huge decision is made. This is what change looks like. Sitting in the back of a town car listening to the driver talk to his dispatcher over the sounds of smooth jazz. I am getting a divorce. My marriage is finished. I didn’t play it cool. I didn’t come off as flinty and plucky. No, I just came off as wretched and snappy.

  But, it was all me. I let out a laugh. That was genuinely me being myself. That’s a small victory, at least. Those will be the kinds of greatest hits I can look forward to as I move through this life alone.

  “Oh, god,” I say aloud. The driver flicks a concerned glance in the rearview mirror.

  It all comes racing back. The whole life before. I was hard to like. Ben wasn’t the only person who found me difficult. I was prickly. Arrogant. Wait. It’s not was. It’s is. I kept acting like when I lost the weight I learned how to be a better human being, but that’s not true. I was terrible in the run-up to my wedding. To good people. The only thing I’ve been faking is that there was ever a time when I earned anyone’s goodwill. I’ve been kind of awful. I shift in the chair and the leather seats squeak and fart beneath me. The seatbelt is constricting. This dress is too tight.

  I was content with Adam because he never asked me to be a better person. He was kind of awful, too. God, we were terrible. In all these years of wanting to be envied and coveted, I never asked the simple fucking question of whether or not I was good. Just good. Am I a good person? Because, it was never about people liking me. I never gave a shit about that. That’s why I was so free. I never cared. I’ve been so wrong. About Adam. About me. About everything.

  I sit in stunned silence. My phone is buzzing in my purse. I blink back to life. I see that there are texts from Ellen, but instead I switch over and text Mom.

  “Can I stay with you tonight?” I text. As I wait for her reply, I look out the window. My mind is filled with everything and nothing. I’m not angry. I’m not sad. I’m not anything. I’m just stunned.

  “Sure,” Mom texts back.

  “Thanks,” I text.

  “Everything okay?”

  “I left Adam,” I type. I look at it. There it is. Three little words in an adorable blue text bubble. Is there an emoji for this, I wonder? Probably. The broken heart? The thumbs-down? Or is it just a series of poop emojis along with the little yellow sobbing happy face. How do you communicate that your marriage of ten years is over. Not even over, never started.

  Oh, good, there’s the anger. I press SEND and my text swoops out into the ether. I let out a scoff. And another. The anger’s building. Swelling and rolling through me like a series of tidal waves.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Mom texts back.

  “I know,” I text back. And before she can reply, I text, “My battery is almost dead, we can talk when I get there in about an hour. Is that okay?”

  “I’ll be here,” Mom texts. The anger bleeds into hurt. I can’t even reply to her text without tapping into what I’m certain is that same vast pain from earlier in the week at the pool and the lovely added guilt of how terrible I’ve been over the past several decades.

  I switch my phone off and put it back in my purse. Don’t think about anything, Olivia. How about that? Just look out the window. The houses. The other cars. People bundled up, walking along the streets. My breath fogs the window. I think for a minute that I’d like to draw something. I raise my finger and it just hangs there. Finally I draw a circle. Two eyes. And a smile. I sit back and close my eyes.

  “Ma’am? We’re here.”

  “Oh, thank you,” I say, completely sobered up now. I grab my purse and am opening the door, when the driver opens it from the outside. I step out into the cold night air and he closes the door behind me. I tip him and he
thanks me.

  “Do you need anything else?” he asks. How about don’t go back and pick up my husband and his pixie-cutted lover? Leave them stranded there to maybe stay the night in some terrible hot pink and zebra-print guest room of the host’s choosing.

  “No, thank you,” I say. I walk up the pathway and into the dark and empty house. In a haze, I throw clothes into a bag like I’m taking a business trip. And then I grab this wooden seal of my grandfather’s and a picture of Mom and me at my wedding. I throw that into the bag as well. I walk into the bathroom and grab whatever toiletries I’ll need for however long … forever? I take my pillow off the bed and the quilt my grandmother made. I zip up the luggage, heave the pillow and quilt under my arm, and shuffle down the hallway. At the front door, I look back into the house. The lamp with the broken spoke. Hm. Hitching the pillow and quilt up under my arm farther, I walk over to the lamp, unplug it, and take it with me.

  I load everything up in the car and drive over to Mom’s. The porch light is on as I pull into her driveway. I tug and pull the bizarre assortment of things I decided to pack out of my car and walk up to the front door of my childhood home. Mom opens the door in her pajamas, robe, and slippers. I walk in and she closes the door behind me, locking it. She doesn’t ask about the lamp.

  “I took the waffle iron when I left,” she says, walking up the stairs toward my room. “I hate waffles.” She opens the door to my room. I walk inside. “I bought you some jammies for Christmas. They’ve got pugs on them. Thought you might think they were funny. They’re on your bed.”

  “Thank you,” I say, my voice a grumbling mutter.

  “I love you, my little darling. And you’re going to be okay.” She hugs me. I’m still holding the damn lamp. I start crying. Of course.

  “Am I awful?” I ask.

  “No, honey.”

  “You have to say that,” I say.

  Mom smiles. Wipes my tears away. “Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning,” she says, finally loosing the lamp from my grip. I stand in my childhood bedroom, take off the too-tight dress, and try not to spiral down into a world where a week of eating chicken mole and sushi led to my gaining all the weight back in record time. I get into the pajamas Mom has laid out for me. I put my pillow on the bed and lay the quilt on over the covers that are already there. I switch out the light and crawl into bed. I fall asleep to the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.

  “Olivia? Honey? Olivia?” says Mom. Sunlight streams in. Oh, shit. Shit.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s just 6 a.m.”

  “Friday, right?”

  “Yes—honey, Ellen is here. Something happened with Caroline.” I burst out of bed and am at the door to my bedroom.

  “What? Is she okay?” I run down the stairs. Ellen is standing in Mom’s foyer with two coffees, wearing the same clothes from last night. My stomach drops.

  “You need to come with me. Now.” Ellen hands me a coffee and pulls my coat from the coatrack.

  “Can I at least get dressed?” I ask.

  “Caroline got away from Richard and me, so she could be in an elevator all by herself with that shitty reporter from that other Q and A. Once alone, she told him exactly what he could do with his article in a monologue that I look forward to being performed on all the late-night shows by anything from puppets to little kids. Naturally, not only the reporter himself, but also the elevator’s cameras caught this monologue on tape. You should have answered any one of my hundred texts from last night. But, you didn’t. So now we’re here. What do you think? Do you have time to at least get dressed?” Ellen asks, holding out my coat.

  “No. I don’t,” I say, grabbing my coat.

  YOU LOOK WAY DIFFERENT IS ALL

  “Hi. Yeah. Remember me? I have some questions for you. Oh, no, you are going to answer them because it’s my turn and I want you to feel what it’s like to have some annoying turd ask you hurtful, personal questions, you nameless ball bag. First: Is this what you dreamed you’d be doing when you were a child? Kid next to you says he wants to be a fireman. Another says she wants to go to the moon. And you raise your tiny baby hand—which hasn’t grown a fucking inch, if you know what I mean—and squeal that what you really want to do is shit on people’s dreams for a living and when you can’t do that, you aspire to hurt people you don’t even know by humiliating them in public. Do I have it right? Is that how it went down? Do you forget we’re people? Do you go into some zone when you’re asking about broken marriages and cheating spouses where you forget that I’m just a human being trying to get through the day? And if you say I signed up for this, you can go fuck yourself. I wanted to act because I had a shitty childhood and make-believing I could be anywhere else is how I got through it…”

  Ellen shuts the recording off as Caroline’s voice crumbles into sobs. She closes her laptop. We all just stand there.

  “What’s a ball bag?” Søren asks.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been watching a lot of British television,” Caroline says, walking over to her refrigerator and pulling out a carton of almond milk. She pours it into her coffee, offers us some; we all turn it down. She replaces the carton. She takes a sip of her coffee. “Why are you in your pajamas?”

  “Because it’s six thirty in the morning,” I say.

  “Where were you last night?” Caroline asks, her voice clipped. I take the last swig of the coffee Ellen brought me and try to formulate an answer. “Because—”

  “I’m going to stop you there. It sounds like you’re about to blame me for what happened last night. That’s not going to happen. You had an ex–Navy SEAL and Ellen there to watch over you, on top of the fact that you’re a grown-ass woman. So, let’s just not, okay?” Richard stands there acting like this is his fault. I walk over to the bin and toss in my empty coffee cup. On the way back, I pat him on the shoulder and he shakes his head. “This isn’t your fault.” He nods. Ellen gives me an impressed look.

  “Of course it’s not Richard’s fault. I just really want to blame someone,” Caroline says with a sigh.

  “I know,” I say.

  “It felt good, though. The look on that little shit’s face. God, did it feel good,” she says. I let my head fall into my hands.

  “Well, then that’s all that matters,” I say.

  “So, there’s already a Nameless Ball Bag Twitter handle. It’s currently tweeting about how misguided its childhood dreams were. It’s actually kind of hilarious.” We look up. Ellen clears her throat and continues. “Caroline Lang is trending on Twitter and Willa Lindholm has subtweeted something about how sad it is when old people lose their marbles or something … it’s in Swedish, so…” Ellen scrolls through her phone as she speaks.

  “Anything from Max?” I ask.

  “No,” Ellen says without looking up from her phone.

  “Looks like at least one of you is listening to their publicist,” I say, staring at Caroline.

  “Oh, come on. I’m just so sick of it. I’m so tired. Don’t I get to be tired?” Caroline asks, dramatically flopping her head down onto the counter.

  “We have offers to talk from all the late-night shows, as well as several reporters and, well, everyone,” Søren says, sipping his tea.

  “Are you worried about this?” I ask. Søren looks up from his tea. Caroline raises her head from the counter. “Honestly.”

  Søren is thoughtful. He puts his tea down on the kitchen island. The expensive china echoes against the marble of the counter. “Yes and no.” We all lean in. “I think Caroline should go on to one of these late-night shows. We should choose which one now, because if they film in the late afternoon, we have to … well, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Ellen starts typing furiously on her phone.

  “We can’t act like nothing happened. We can’t act…” Søren picks up his tea and sips. “I don’t know.” The kitchen falls silent.

  “Wait. You have to know. Søren? You have to know,” Caroline says. Søren t
akes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.

  “Leave me to it,” I say. Søren puts his glasses back on and looks over at me. I nod. “I’ve got this.”

  “Okay,” he says, getting up from his stool. Caroline looks from him to me.

  “Ellen, if you could finalize all the late-night stuff,” I say, walking her through which show we’ll be doing, contacting Caroline’s agent and manager as well as finalizing the arrival of Caroline’s stylist, hair, and makeup who should be here within the hour. Ellen is on it. She grabs her laptop and disappears into one of Caroline’s other rooms. Søren says his goodbyes and as I walk back into the kitchen, I ask Richard to give Caroline and me a few minutes alone.

  “You’re not going to kill her, are you?” Richard asks.

  “Is that a joke?” I ask.

  “Did you just make a joke?” Caroline asks.

  “I did,” Richard says, blushing.

  “Well, well, well,” Caroline says.

  “Will miracles never cease?” I ask. “And yes, I am going to kill her.” Richard laughs and walks down the hallway to where Ellen is set up. I walk around the kitchen for a bit and then hop onto one of the stools around the kitchen island.

  “Look, I know the drill. I’ll make a few jokes, fall on my sword, blah blah blah, just tell me what to say and I’ll say it. I memorize lines for a living, right?” Caroline says, running her hand through her hair. “I know I fucked up.”

  “I don’t know if you did,” I say.

  “What?” I am quiet. Thinking. About everything. “Olivia?”

  “What if you just told the truth?” I ask after a long moment.

  “About what?” Caroline asks.