by Erin Duffy
“Please don’t cry,” Owen said. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to keep you from making a decision you’ll regret.”
“That’s not your job anymore.”
“It is where Bo is concerned.”
“I’m going to talk to my lawyer.”
“Waste your time if you want. I promise you, you need me to sign off on any sale of the house and I’m not looking to sell it right now. Let’s see what happens in a year or two and go from there.”
“A year or two? Do you have any idea what will happen to us in the next year or two? It will destroy me, Owen. Do you care about that?”
“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You’ll be fine,” he said.
There was no point in fighting with him. I’d call Tara and ask her, but I had no doubt she’d tell me that everything he said was true. “I loved you so much,” I whispered. I blotted my napkin along my lower lash line, trying to keep the mascara from spreading across my skin and leaving streaks on my face. “I left my home, my family, my friends, my job, everything, because I loved you more than I would’ve thought possible. I look at you now and what hurts more than anything is that I can’t understand how I had you so wrong. We have a son, so I can’t say I wish I never met you. But if I do one thing in this world, one single thing from here on out to be proud of, it will be to make sure that he grows up to become nothing like you.”
I wanted to make some kind of dramatic exit, one where I slammed a door, or flipped a table, or spewed obscenities until the bartender had to stop pouring his fancy draft beers into frosted mugs, and escort the jilted, middle-aged mess out of the restaurant, but I didn’t. I stood quietly, placed my napkin on the table, pulled Bo out of his highchair, and ambled slowly toward the exit. Part of me very easily could’ve made a scene, but I wouldn’t allow myself to do it. Bo snuggled into the crook of my neck and I ran my hand over the back of his head, kissing his temple as we exited the restaurant. I might have been a jilted, middle-aged mess, but I was still Bo’s mother—and that was not how his mother left an oyster bar.
Chapter 9
LEARNING THAT I couldn’t sell the house threw me back into the depression I thought I’d worked my way out of over a month ago. I felt like I didn’t exist. There was Bo’s mom, and there was Owen’s soon-to-be ex, but there was no Claire. It was an absolutely horrendous feeling that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and one that I didn’t know how to fix.
“I can’t believe he won’t let me move,” I said to Antonia when she came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed later that afternoon. “I was counting on it, Antonia. When I decided not to let this divorce swallow me it was largely because I thought I’d be able to start fresh on my own. How am I supposed to let the murder of my marriage go if I have to live in the crime scene?”
“I get that staying in this house isn’t what you wanted, but you really did love the house when you bought it. You’ll be able to feel good here again.”
“I seriously doubt that. I can’t believe what happened today. I was optimistic. I really believed that I’d found a small way to take back some control of my own life, and he took it from me again. I threw an oyster at him.”
“So what?” Antonia said, which I appreciated.
“I made a scene. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Send him an email then and tell him you’re sorry. Ask him to reconsider.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I have no idea. But it’s worth a shot. Apologize. At the very least it will let him know he’s dealing with a more rational Claire.”
“Okay,” I sighed, even though the thought of apologizing to Owen made me nauseous. I reached for my iPhone and opened my email. I was about to type him a very brief and very insincere apology, when my breath caught in my chest. There, right at the top of my email, was a message from Facebook, reminding me of where I was this week last year. And where I was, was my baby shower, with Owen lovingly rubbing my stomach, and my friends and family celebrating the exciting changes that were happening in my life, and it was a special kind of horror when your own pictures were thrown in your face by an algorithm that doesn’t know jack shit about your current state of mind. The last thing I needed today, the absolute last thing, was to have to relive that special time in my life, when I stupidly believed that I had a perfect husband and a perfect life and was making all the right decisions.
“Oh my God,” I said. I handed Antonia my phone. “Look at this.”
Antonia glanced at my phone and immediately turned it facedown on the floor. “Pretend you didn’t see that.”
“Seriously? This is happening now? Owen used my trust against me. Dee Dee used my house against me. And now Facebook is using my own memories against me. These are weapons of mass emotional destruction! Can’t I even control which memories I choose to keep and which ones I choose to forget? Or do I not even have a right to that anymore either? Is it really necessary for my email to pop up and say, ‘Hey, Claire! Remember a year ago this week when you were really, really happy? Just in case you forgot, take a look! Sorry everything sucks now!’”
“This is absurdly bad timing.”
“You think? I was just handed a cinder block in the form of photos while trying not to drown in a moat made of my own tears, Antonia. Is there a good time for that to happen?”
“Admittedly, probably not.”
“I need to make some changes,” I said. An eerie calm descended over my body. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t good. “I will not be the victim for one more minute. I will not live like this.”
“Good. Do whatever you need to do to stay positive and focused. Burn incense, light candles, chant, meditate, I don’t know what. There are a lot of things you can do to change the association you have with this house,” she said, trying so hard to find the bright side of a situation that didn’t have one. “We’ll figure it out. Maybe you could redecorate?”
I’d stopped listening, because what she said made so much sense I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. She was right. All I had to do was make this house my own. It was brilliant. Seriously, fucking, brilliant. If I couldn’t move out of this house then I was going to have to do some serious redecorating. Anything that reminded me of Owen and our time together had to go. Also, anything that now reminded me of Owen and Dee Dee having sex had to go, too. I wondered how hard it would be to rip the bathtub out of the wall. Then I realized that was ridiculous. There was no way I could rip the Jacuzzi out of the wall—I’d have to just smash it to bits instead.
“I need a hammer,” I said, as I hopped up and ran into the hall closet where I kept the ironing board (hadn’t used it in months), the clean sheets for my bed (hadn’t used them lately), and Owen’s tool kit (never used it, period).
“I have no idea what you’re doing,” Antonia said, as she trailed a reasonable distance behind me in case I made any sudden movements that would somehow injure her. “But you don’t need a hammer. I promise, you don’t.”
“You’re right. I probably need a sledgehammer, but I know for a fact we don’t have one of those. I’ll have to see what I can do with the hammer. I have rage. I think that’ll help.” I found the small toolbox on the shelf next to the sheets, and popped the lid. I haphazardly grabbed tools I didn’t need and threw them on the floor in the hallway outside the bathroom: Allen wrench, regular pliers, needle-nose pliers, Phillips head screwdriver, the other kind of screwdriver, bags of bolts, and screws, and nails, and finally, on the bottom, the hammer. Jackpot.
“You need a sledgehammer to do what, exactly?” Antonia asked. She stepped into Bo’s room and sat him in his crib, turning on his mobile so that the circus animals began to dance in front of him. “Claire, you need to calm down,” she ordered, which might have mattered if she was speaking to a sane person and not someone teetering on the edge of lunacy. Calming down wasn’t an option. I tried calm at lunch. It didn’t work. Now I wanted to see
what crazy could do for me instead.
“To smash the bathtub to bits.” Antonia’s inane questions were really starting to bug me. What did she care what I was doing? It wasn’t her Jacuzzi. I climbed up off the floor and left the other tools where they were. It was a safe bet they’d come in handy later, so I might as well leave them where I’d have easy access. I stormed back toward the bedroom, the hammer smooth and heavy in my hand.
“What?” she asked, even though I knew she heard me. “Stop it, Claire. Put the hammer down. You are not smashing anything. Can you please just sit down and take a few deep breaths?” she pleaded.
“Why?” I asked. “Why should I take a few deep breaths? I’m happy that yoga works for you, but I don’t think vinyasa is what I need right now, okay? I don’t want to be calm, and I don’t want to find my fucking center, and I don’t want to take deep breaths, or do headstands, or imagine myself in a happy place. I want to smash shit. That’s what I want to do. Are you with me?” I held the hammer over my head. Antonia seemed scared. Wimp.
Antonia grabbed the hammer firmly in her hand. “Let it go, Claire.”
“Let what go? Owen, or the hammer? You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Both. For right now, let’s start with the hammer. The bathtub stays. Go smash a vase if you want to break something.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “But smashing one of my vases isn’t going to do anything. I don’t think Dee Dee decided to do any spontaneous floral arranging while she was here to screw my husband, you know? The vases still feel like mine.”
“Okay. I think maybe we should just sit down and talk—”
“Forget the vase,” I interrupted, not sure why Antonia kept trying to break my concentration. “Forget the tub. I’ll deal with the things in the house that aren’t bolted into the floor. There are plenty of them.”
“That sounds like a much better idea,” Antonia admitted. “What are you talking about, exactly?”
I didn’t answer her. We had done enough talking. It was time to let my actions speak for themselves.
First I’d start with the pictures. I needed to get rid of the pictures. A quick room by room accounting informed me that we had only one picture of the two of us in the house, which, now that I thought about it, was kind of strange. Most people had pictures of themselves with their husbands all over the place. I knew a girl back home in Chicago who actually made a collage of the stages of her relationship, and plastered it all over the back of her closet door. Why did I only have one picture—the shot I asked the photographer to take of us while we stood apart from the crowd at the wedding. My eyes burned as I thought about my wedding day, and how I couldn’t have imagined it devolving into this. I glanced down at the photo, the memory so vivid and painful and hard.
“You’re beautiful,” Owen had said as he came up beside me and slid his arm around my satin-cinched waist.
“You know, I always imagined that it got old hearing that you’re the most beautiful bride ever, but it doesn’t. I don’t care how many people tell me that today. I will never, ever be tired of it.”
“Good. Because I’ll never be tired of saying it.”
“Hold on a second,” I said. I surveyed the room and found the photographer taking a picture of the cake and waved him over.
“Can you take this picture, please?” I asked. “I want this exact shot, at this exact moment.”
“No problem!” he answered as he began to click away.
That memory used to make me feel all warm and fuzzy and now it made me feel all cold and icky, so I removed the frame from its place on the bookshelf in the den, nestled between a stack of books that Owen liked to pretend he was going to read someday and candlesticks that lacked candles. I raised it above my head, and slammed it into the floor with every ounce of anger and rage that was coursing through my body. I exhaled. I felt slightly better, at least for a second, until I looked down and realized that it hadn’t even cracked. Apparently inexpensive picture frames were harder to break than my marriage. Go figure.
It didn’t matter. I had other pictures I needed to destroy—pictures that I was planning on actually gluing in an album that I could tuck under my bed, and show my grandkids one day when they wouldn’t believe that Nana and Pop Pop had been young and beautiful once upon a time, before they started throwing oysters in restaurants and banging Realtors in kitchens.
They were under my bed.
I sprinted up the stairs two at a time, slipping on the landing and falling down on one knee. When I got to my room, I dropped to the floor and crawled toward the bed, because for some reason army crawling seemed faster than actually walking. My heart was racing and my blood was pumping loudly through my body—I could hear the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh of it running through my ventricles, and into my veins, and it was invigorating. I found the rectangular bin from the Container Store that held all my pictures, and pulled it toward me. It was heavy—heavier than I remember it being, but so were the memories now, so maybe that was appropriate. I tugged on the plastic clips securing the lid, and heard them click as they released. There they were. Evidence that my whole relationship wasn’t some weird fantasy I conjured up because I was afraid of being alone: pictures of us happy in Chicago; pictures of us in Manhattan the weekend we got engaged; pictures from our trip to wine country in the Pacific Northwest; pictures of us on the beach in Miami. All of them bullshit. For some reason, all I could hear in my head was one of those bad used car commercials where the salesman tried to convince everyone they just had to come see the cars with the tagline “everything must go!” He was right. Everything. Must. Go.
The bin was heavy, but not too heavy for me to lift. At least, that was what I thought until I dropped it trying to carry it down the stairs, and pictures floated through the slats in between the spindles, raining down on the wooden floor below. That was fine. They were closer to the door now and that was where they were going anyway. I dragged the container down to the main floor and threw the pictures back in it, then headed for the front door.
“What are you doing?” Antonia asked as I hurried past her with the container.
“I found pictures,” I said. I left out the “duh” that seemed necessary at the end of that sentence, because I didn’t want to be unnecessarily rude.
“I see that. Where are you going with them?” she asked as she placed the baby on his play mat.
“The driveway. Grab the other side,” I instructed, as I lifted one end up off the floor.
“Um, okay. Can I ask why?” Her tone of voice was the same one I used when I tried to get Bo to stop eating puzzle pieces. Bo, honey, I don’t think we want to chew on that now, do we? No, we don’t!
“Yard sale. We’re having a yard sale,” I said. My quivering voice was a little too high, a little too squeaky, my words a little too rushed, to pass myself off as normal.
“In the driveway?”
“Yes, because I don’t want people walking around the yard. That’s creepy—but if they walk by the front of the house and see something they like, they can take it. If I can’t move out of the house, I’m moving the contents of this house out to the sidewalk. Then, I’ll just clean the place within an inch of its life and I’ll be able to live here. Right? Why did it take me so long to think of this?”
Antonia hadn’t moved but that didn’t bother me. Forget the pictures. I’d deal with them later. I’d decided to focus my energy on the garage. Owen had boxes in there that as far as I knew, he hadn’t moved out. I wasn’t entirely sure what was in them, but I was pretty sure it was just a lot of sentimental stuff from his past that he didn’t need, but also didn’t want to throw away—you know, like Dee Dee. I decided, in his absence, that it was time to toss them. I glanced into the kitchen as I headed for the basement stairs, caught a quick glimpse of Bo sitting on his play mat trying to pick up a giant stuffed zebra, and smiled. He’d like his school. I knew he would. He could take that zebra with him if he wanted, and place him safely inside one of the cubbies,
and when the day was over I would stand outside and wait for him to find me in line with all of the other mothers, and we would come home and have applesauce with cinnamon, and by then everything would be okay. By then, we would be okay in this house because there’d be nothing left that reminded me of Owen and Dee Dee. There was a small button somewhere on the wall next to the door in the basement that would open the garage door, but I was having a hard time finding it because I never went into the garage. There wasn’t any need to—until today.
Finally, I located the button and pressed, the rusty chain raising the door slowly and painfully, every squeak, and scrape, and clank a reminder that we were told to replace the garage door, but never did. Dee Dee was supposed to get us the name of some places in the area that we could call for estimates. At least, that was what I thought we were talking about when we all had the conversation about replacing the prehistoric chain that threatened to snap and turn my garage door into a guillotine at any given moment. Maybe when Owen asked, “Do you know who can fix my garage door?” he really meant, “Do you want to get freaky in the kitchen when my wife’s out?” It was possible. This was Connecticut, the so-called Nutmeg State, where people came to buy spices for pies and have their marriages wrecked by their real estate agents. Anything was possible.
Once the door opened the sunlight helped me locate the boxes, and I reached up and dragged them down off the shelves, hearing things clang, and bang, and break, and it felt like skydiving and speedboating and skinny-dipping and I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of doing this until today. Before I dealt with the boxes, I decided I needed to clean up the trail of random pictures that lay behind me leading all the way back up the stairs to the kitchen. I grabbed the broom hanging on the hook on the wall and began to sweep anything I could reach into the garage. I formed a neat, tidy pile and brushed them all into the plastic dust pan. I carried it down to the bottom of the driveway and dropped the pictures on a patch of grass next to the blacktop. It wasn’t a particularly windy day, so I didn’t think they were going to get blown away, but I didn’t want to risk it. I walked across the street and decided the woman who lived there wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one of the large rocks lining her lawn. I brushed off a few ants clinging to the underside, and placed it on top of the pile.
