The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

by Kelly Harms

  Talia sighs. “I wish I was as sure about that as you are.”

  I shake my head. “You know about Marika. The credit card. The waxing, the lingerie.”

  She nods. “Yes, but still. I’m worried, Ames. I’m worried that after all the good times with the great kids you made for him, he’ll start sniffing around for you too. I think he wants his old life back, even if he doesn’t yet know it himself.”

  Completely out of nowhere, tears prick at my eyes. I sniffle. My eyes prickle. I hold my breath.

  “Are you crying?” she asks.

  “No! I’m not crying,” I exclaim. Then I start crying.

  What starts small and sniffly begins to build on itself. “I’m sorry,” I whimper. “I don’t know why I’m crying.” But the minute I say that, I know it’s not true. I am crying at the very thought of John wanting me back. I am thinking about how much I’ve been through since he left us. I start thinking about how his coming home could make that all better. Then I think of how I shouldn’t want that. I think of the credit card charges from Hong Kong. I think, I’m a doormat. I’m an idiot. I’m stuck. And I cry more.

  Talia looks at me out of the corner of her eye like I’m a solar eclipse. Then she starts typing on her computer.

  “Hi,” she says, and I look up. She’s staring into her screen. She’s taking a call while I sit here weeping in her office?

  “Hey, how’s it going? What’s up?” says a familiar voice. I lower the volume of my sobs to listen in.

  “She’s crying. What do I do?”

  “She’s what now? She doesn’t cry. What did you do? Amy? Amy, are you there?”

  It’s Lena. Talia tells her to hang on and then moves to sit next to me on the sofa, laptop positioned where we both can see.

  “Hi, Lena,” I wail when she gets into the sight line.

  “Whoa. You look amazing,” she says. “Close your mouth and look up. Ew, blow your nose too. Yes, that’s better. Amazing! I love your hair. You look so much like yourself, like the self I know. Beautiful, clear hearted, loyal, determined. I’m dazzled how I’m getting all that from a haircut.”

  I am about to thank her when she adds, “Where did all the rest of your eyebrows go?”

  I shake my head because I don’t know. “They were there one second, gone the next.”

  “Is that why you’re crying? Because really, you look terrific. And your eyebrows will grow back, if you’re missing the shade from the sun they were doubtless providing. Talia, you did good.”

  I stop crying. “So you two are in cahoots. I guess you knew about the magazine article?”

  Lena’s eyes dart over to Talia, giving them both away.

  “I feel a little used,” I tell them. “I thought I was coming here to reconnect with an old friend. Instead I’m being tarted up to sell magazines.”

  “You feel used because you got a free haircut and color?” Talia asks.

  “Without warning.”

  Talia shrugs. “In the future I will give you due warning before giving you anything nice.”

  “I would appreciate it,” I sniffle out.

  “Are you ok, Amy?” asks Lena. “I’ve never seen you cry before. Maybe when John first left. But not since then.”

  I tell Lena about what Talia said about John. Then I fill her in on the credit card charges. Then I snivel and tell her I think I’m not over John.

  Talia does not hide her disgust. “Ew,” she says. “He’s gross.”

  Lena just tilts her head at me. “Why do you think that?”

  “Guilt. I feel terrible for sleeping with the hot librarian. I feel like I broke my wedding vows.”

  Lena looks at me with obvious pity. “Hon, your wedding vows have been broken for a long time.”

  I nod my head and flop back into the sofa. “So why am I crying about this now?” I ask the room.

  Talia shrugs, her hands outstretched in frustration. “I have no idea! You and your new hair should be having sex with that hot librarian. You’re doing this wrong.”

  Lena chimes in. “She says he was a one-night stand.”

  “Well, then, they can lie down the next time,” quips Talia, without missing a beat. Despite myself, I choke out a laugh.

  I take a drink of my wine and clear my throat. “You guys, I thought . . . I guess deep down I hoped . . . with John coming back like this, trying to make amends . . .” I shrug. “What can I say? We had half a lifetime together. He was there when I got my master’s. When we first found out we were pregnant. When Cori tried to pierce her own ears. When Joe lost his first baby tooth in the midway of that disgusting carnival. John took me to Paris for the first time and cried with me when our kids were born and saved the wedding album when the basement flooded. That kind of love doesn’t turn off like a light switch.”

  Lena sighs deeply, and Talia puts her arm around me. “Oh, Amy. You gorgeous idiot.”

  I shake my head woefully. “I know.”

  “Thank god for that credit card,” says Lena.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I think it’s the wake-up call you need. You’ve been disabused of the notion that you and John could get your old life back. Those charges show who he really is and what he really wants. It’s better to find this out now and not at the end of the summer, when he’s heading home to the naked labia of a woman fifteen years younger than you.”

  Talia winces. “That is an amazing visual, Lena. Please never say that phrase again.”

  I bury my face in my hands. “I can’t believe I have to face him in three days.”

  “What do we need to do to get you ready for that?” asks Lena. “What would make you feel strong and confident around John, instead of hurt and vulnerable?”

  I shake my head, because it all sounds so impossible.

  Lena and Talia look at each other across the computer screen. As one they say, “Momspringa.”

  “Momspringa,” Talia says again, this time solo. “For real. Not just for the article. Maybe the whole summer off. A summer class, a second language, a new passion, a fresh outlook . . .”

  I shake my head in dismissal. “That’s not happening, and anyway, I don’t know if there’s anything that’s going to really make me feel better except good old-fashioned time and tears.”

  Talia says, “You’ve tried time and tears already,” but Lena waves her away.

  “Leave it all to your friends,” Lena says. “I bet we can help you get your groove back.”

  I shake my head. “I never had a groove. I had a boyfriend, and then I had a husband, and then I had a pair of kids, a job, no husband, and a huge mortgage. No groove in there anywhere.”

  Lena turns her face toward Talia’s side of the room. “We can do this, but it is not going to be easy. She is groove resistant.”

  “Tell me about it,” says Talia. “She wanted to spend this week watching movies and eating pizza in yoga pants.”

  “I love yoga pants!” I cry.

  “Can this mom be saved?” asks Talia.

  “This mom is right here,” I remind them.

  “We have to try,” says Lena. “She’s too young to be put out to pasture.”

  “To graze on pizza . . .”

  “To low in the fields of cable television . . .”

  I groan loud enough to break up their little chat. “I’m sorry, guys. I know you’re trying to help, but I don’t want a momspringa. I want to go home. I like pizza. I like movies and yoga pants. If I’m going to feel miserable over my ex-husband, I want to do it as God intended, on the couch with a box of tissues and another box of wine and nonstop Hugh Grant movies. I don’t want to be miles from my family in slimming jeans having sex with strangers.”

  The two of them sigh.

  “It’s up to her,” says Talia. “We tried.”

  Lena nods. “We just want you to be happy, Amy.”

  I smile. “I know. And it’s been fun here. But my life is back home. That’s where I need to be.”

  “Then co
me on home,” Lena says. “I’ll have the wine box ready for you.”

  Talia reaches over and puts her arms around me. “Grooving isn’t for everyone,” she says sadly. “But just for tonight, since you’re here anyway, how about A Little Night Music?”

  —

  Before Marie’s Crisis was a Broadway showtunes singalong bar, it used to be a brothel. So we know, at some point in history, there were straight men inside these walls. On a Tuesday night, though, when it’s not too full of tourists and the pianist is one of the best Broadway hacks in town, we can be fairly certain not to run into one. It’s the perfect place for a moody postmakeover me, as well as my hostess, who never needs a makeover to attract attention from the opposite of the species. We can be sure to be ignored at Marie’s.

  Talia puts me near the left side of the piano, where we can see what’s next with a subtle crane of the neck. “Fantasticks,” she says quietly to me.

  “Good time to hit the bar, then. No one can resist ‘Try to Remember.’”

  The pianist finishes the last bars of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and Talia disappears. I look around me at the basement room we’re in. Dim lighting, dirty walls, a slow bar, terrible acoustics. Everything is exactly as I left it. The patrons look better, younger, than I remember. And we aren’t the only women, like we used to be when we came here decades earlier. That means Talia may not get to do her killer “Defying Gravity” solo, which somehow gets requested every time we come in (I suspect a plant).

  After “Try to Remember,” it’s a William Finn medley. I don’t know any of the words. I step back from the piano, find an old worn velvet bench, and drape myself across it to listen to the beautiful voices. Talia finds me there, slips a martini into my waiting hand, and slides into the crowd of singers again. I watch them laugh and sing and bumble the words. I think of everything I’ve lived since I’ve been here last. The person I was before was a shapeless shell, waiting for my life to start. Biding my time. I had nothing but time.

  I drink my martini. I miss my kids.

  After a half hour, I finally hear chords I know. I pull my face up just as Talia turns around and faces me. “Dreamgirls,” she mouths and waves me over.

  I climb to my feet. Talia and I sang this score endlessly in college, and we both know it front to back. By the time we come to “One Night Only,” I have forgotten all my woes entirely. I’ve forgotten I’m not twenty-one. We sing for an hour, then two, then climb to the stairs to street level and find it brighter in the nighttime lights of the Village than it was inside the bar. Talia opens her Lyft app. I am so tired it hurts.

  “See, that was fun,” she tells me. She is a little hoarse.

  “I haven’t stayed up this late in fifteen years,” I respond, and my voice is creaking too.

  “Look at all you’ve been missing living under a rock in the sticks.”

  I shake my head. “Yes. But it’s not the same now.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Talia. “Marie’s is frozen in time.”

  I nod. “But we’re not.”

  Talia sighs, and it is the first time I have seen her face fall since I’ve been back. She shakes her head. “Sometimes I think I am,” she says mysteriously. I quirk my brow at her.

  “Do you ever wish . . . ,” I ask her. “You know. When Simon proposed way back when . . .”

  “Never once,” she says. “Kids, houses, that whole thing—they never had the same appeal for me as they did for you. You wanted all that from the start. More than anything. I wanted a corner office.” Talia sighs. “And as for ‘having it all . . . ’” She shrugs, and her voice trails away. “It looks like a huge pain in the butt.”

  “It is.”

  “But I like knowing you have those things. The great kids and the cozy house. I feel proud seeing you handle all these things I could never do.”

  “Me too,” I tell her. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I just write about clothes. You’ve made humans,” she says.

  I take her by the hands. “Do you have any idea how many people you touch? How good it feels to get your magazine in the mail? How many times an empowering article, or a couple plus-size models looking great in swimwear, and a glass of wine have propped me up at the end of a long, hard day?”

  Talia looks at me, and her expression is a little sad. “Oh, Amy. I’ve missed you so much. Stay for the week, at least. Just the rest of the week.”

  A cab goes by, lights on, but neither of us flag it down. “Is everything ok with you?” I ask.

  Talia shakes her head, pressing her lips together tightly. “I love that magazine, but I don’t know how much longer it can last.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Never mind,” she replies. I look at her hard. She shrugs her shoulders. “It’s just that I’ve got so many more empowering articles to publish before it’s all said and done,” she says, and when she looks back at me again, her normal light, carefree expression is back. “Like maybe . . . one about your momspringa,” she adds with a tilt of the head.

  I roll my eyes. “I’ll stay a few more days,” I tell her. “Just let me do it my way.”

  “Yoga pants and a book?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I yam what I yam,” I tell her.

  Talia pulls me into a half hug. “I yam too,” she says. We stand there on the sidewalk in a neighborhood we have navigated together since we were teenagers, and yet I’m sure both of us feel a little lost.

  “Let’s go get Mamoun’s. Two a.m. falafel fixes everything.”

  She’s not entirely wrong.

  —

  The next morning Talia and I both sleep in. She straggles out the door around nine, which for her is wildly late, and I pity her poor staff after she announces to me that they should be grateful to get “almost the entire morning off.” I go out and get a real New York bagel with a thick slab of cream cheese, a fresh-squeezed OJ, and a giant cup of coffee and return to Talia’s to sit around nursing my sore throat and feeling sorry for myself. I am at sea without my kids and my work. I know going home has to be the right move—being here just feels so awkward and strange. But going home while John is there feels treacherous. I can survive him not wanting me back. But I’m not sure how to get over wanting what he represents—my old life—back.

  The phone rings, and I see it’s the Pure Beautiful offices, so I don’t pick up. It’s either Talia calling to check on me or Matt calling to beg for his momspringa article. I don’t have it in me to argue with either bulldog at the moment, so I sink into a new book from one of my favorite thriller authors and let the real world fall away.

  But at some point after the first body drops, my phone rings the different ring, the one I set for John. My heart automatically surges. The kids. “What is it?” I answer, instead of just saying hello like a normal person. “Are the kids ok?”

  “Good morning to you too,” he says. “The kids are just fine.” My cardiac rhythm restarts. “Better than fine, actually. As I’m sure you know, Cori’s got this boy dangling from her line, and she’s trying to decide if she should reel him in or cut bait, so I’m getting a daily lesson on the workings of the feminine mind. And then there’s Joe. He’s, like, the best person I’ve ever known. He’s such a good little dude. Did you know how good he is with a UAS?”

  “A what now?”

  “A drone, basically. I got us each one and put a waterproof GoPro on his, and we’ve been charting weather patterns and cloud consistency, and we’re talking about how to attach spectrometers so that he can . . . well, anyway, we’re geeking out big-time.”

  “That’s amazing.” I am immediately jealous. I know nothing about geeking out or drones or . . . spectrometers? Whoa. Joe and his dad have so much natural engineer in them. I could never compete with that. Every time I try to science around with Joe, he ends up giving me a lesson in physics and sending me on my way. “What do you think of Brian?”

  “Cori’s dude? He’s dumb as a box of rocks. I keep them i
n eyesight at all times. I am doing that ‘Who wants a platter of Ritz Crackers’ interrupting thing whenever they so much as sit on the same sofa.”

  “Oh, good,” I say. “She can handle herself, but her frontal lobe is still fifteen-year-old goo.”

  “Right? And so is his. So how are you? Enjoying New York?”

  I grimace. I guess now we have to make small talk. “New York is great. How is PA? Ready for me on Sunday?”

  “Well, actually, that’s why I’m calling.”

  I frown into the phone. “Oh?”

  “This week is just going by so fast, Amy. I know I have no right to ask, but I need more time with these kids.”

  “No,” I say flat out. “You have no right to ask.”

  “I just said that,” he says.

  “And I’m agreeing with you.”

  “But I’m asking anyway. You’ve had them to yourself for three years. I’m just starting to get to know them again. I can’t—I mean, I’m not ready . . .”

  “You could have had them for three years too,” I tell him.

  There is silence for a moment, and I feel mean and righteous at once. “Right,” he says eventually. “I know. Yes, this is all my fault, and I owe you endless contrition and unceasing flagellation and all that. Groveling. I’ve done all that. I will never stop apologizing. I screwed up, and I’m sorry. But I can’t undo it.”

  “I don’t think you would even if you could,” I snap. I think of Marika Shew.

  He is quiet. Is he thinking of her too? “You’re wrong,” he says at last, and my chest contracts, too vulnerable to inhale, too hopeful to exhale. “You don’t know how wrong you are.”

  I shake my head and think of what Talia said last night. How he might “come after me.” It’s nothing but muscle memory, I remind myself. “Never mind. Just tell me what you’re asking for.”

  “The rest of the summer.”

  I cough. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Think of how good it could be for everyone. Lena told me about your reading thing you’re trying at Country Day; you could work on that. Maybe write some grant requests? Do some work on the house? Or maybe just have some downtime after everything you’ve done for the kids these last three years. You could spend a week in Philly, or take a road trip to a national park, or—”