by Erin Duffy
“What are you doing?” Antonia asked. “Claire, don’t post that on Instagram!”
“Why not? If he’s going to do this, then he should be able to own it. Everyone should have to know what kind of guy he is. No one should be allowed to do what he did and still keep his reputation.”
“What about your reputation?” Antonia asked. “What about Bo’s?”
“I don’t care about my reputation. I don’t even know anyone! Bo has nothing to do with it!”
“He has everything to do with it! Owen is his father. No matter what happens between you two, Owen is Bo’s dad and he loves him and how do you think it would ever make him feel to read those emails? You put them out there now, you have no way of ever knowing if they’ll come back and you won’t be able to protect Bo from it forever. He doesn’t need his parents’ dirty laundry aired in public. Don’t do this. You’ve made so much progress and you’re moving on and all this will do is let him know that you still aren’t over it. It makes you look silly more than anything. You’re better than that, Claire. This is bad crazy. Fred will run if he finds out about this.”
I knew she was right. I hated that she was right. I closed my eyes and counted backward from five and when I opened them I reluctantly deleted the photo. “You’re right. I don’t want anyone to see these. Thanks.”
“You’ll be happy you didn’t post that. I know you will,” Antonia said.
“I already am,” I admitted, which made me feel like maybe I was actually making more progress than I thought. My eye caught something tucked away on the lower shelf.
“See, then it was good you read his emails. Let her have him. He’s weak, and she’s crazy, and they deserve each other.”
“You’re so right, and do you know what you deserve, Lissy?” I asked.
“A drink?”
“Yes. We all deserve a drink, but I was thinking more along the lines of this!” I bent over and pulled out a massive roll of polka-dotted fabric, bright white cotton with red and pink polka dots that were small enough to look neat but big enough to catch your attention. They were classic and fun and modern and whimsical all at the same time, which I wouldn’t have even thought possible until now.
“Oh my God, I love. I love, love, love it!” Lissy said. She reached over and grabbed the bolt from my hand. “Don’t you think this will look amazing?” she asked again as she unrolled it and laid it out on the table in front of us.
“It’s really adorable,” Antonia said. “I think it’s perfect.”
“Are we crazy to buy this when we don’t even know what kind of chairs we are going to be upholstering? Why is it so difficult to find seating? It really shouldn’t be this difficult.”
“Maybe. We don’t know how much we need to buy,” I said. I quickly hurried over to the woman flipping through the day’s receipts at the front counter by the register. “Excuse me, we want to buy this polka-dot fabric, but we don’t know how much we need. Do you have this in stock or do we need to order it? How does it work?”
“That fabric is actually discontinued and I only have what’s left in stock. I can’t order it for you. I think we only have three bolts left so depending on what you need to cover it may or may not be enough.”
“We are going to upholster chair cushions in it. But we don’t know what kind of chair yet. We really love it, though.”
“Why don’t I put it on hold for you for a few days. If you decide that you want it, come back before the end of next week and I’ll have it for you. Just until the end of next week, though. I can’t hold it longer than that, I’m sorry.”
“We appreciate it. Thanks so much,” I said. “Okay, so that’s great! We have a week to find chairs that won’t need more than three rolls of fabric to cover and we will be all set.”
“I’m so excited!” Lissy said. “Do you think we’ll be able to find something?”
“I’m sure we will,” I said, and I absolutely knew that we would, because inspiration actually hit and I suddenly had a very good idea. “I’ll devote all of my free time to finding a table and chairs for you. But first, we need to go get a drink, and then, I need to get divorced.”
“That sounds like a great idea to me,” Antonia said. “Besides, it’s six forty-five. The store is closing soon anyway. Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere is fine with me,” Lissy said. “Thank you guys so much for helping me with this. It’s hard to do this kind of stuff if you don’t have a second opinion, you know?”
“Totally,” Antonia agreed.
“I’m so happy we found it. It’s perfect, and it’s going to look fabulous, and it’s another thing we can check off the list.”
“So where do you want to go?”
“Maybe the oyster bar,” I suggested. “I think that might be the perfect place to close out this chapter of my life.”
The saleswoman removed the roll of fabric from the table and tucked it into a closet at the back of the store, while Lissy, Antonia, and I went into town for a cocktail, to toast the end of Claire Mackenzie.
Chapter 16
IT WAS HAPPENING. I only signed the divorce papers two hours ago, but it was already happening. I needed a drink. I didn’t care that it was Monday, or the middle of the afternoon, or what kind of drink it was, but I needed one. I suddenly understood those women with their blue cheese olives and their animal-print shirts. They didn’t care what anyone else thought of them, because they signed a piece of paper that essentially erased a huge part of their lives, and that gave you a new perspective on things. They were drinking because they felt like it, and that was the only explanation they needed to give to anyone. Those divorcées were my people, and I was wrong to judge them.
The conference room where I gave up my “Mrs.” and picked up a “Ms.” wasn’t anything special. I thought there’d be a long rectangular table, that Owen and I would face each other, that we’d slide stapled documents back and forth between before signing them in triplicate. The room was small, but neat. It was sparse, and dark, and a little bit dusty, and the gray shades that covered the windows were sad, and depressing, but then so was the occasion. The air-conditioning unit underneath the window buzzed, and hummed, and caused the pages of the magazine on the windowsill, I think it was Golf Digest, to flutter and threaten to flip. I’d been staring at it since I took my seat, next to my lawyer, and across from Owen. Tara offered us water, which I declined, because I forgot how to swallow when I sat down at this table. Owen seemed uncomfortable, which I couldn’t understand. He was the reason we were here. He should at least own it with some confidence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, because even though it’d been over for four months, it wasn’t really over until today. Four months was all it took for us to pretend like nothing between us ever happened at all. Now we were just two people who shared a baby, and who would probably be used as the archetype for how to have an amicable divorce for all of Tara’s other clients, even though there was nothing friendly about it. We just agreed not to fight about money because Owen was willing to give it to me, and we agreed not to fight about Bo, because I believed that Owen should be involved in his life, and so what else was there to fight about, really? Once we signed these papers we’d be nothing more than two people who traded money and custody of a baby on a regular basis. That was it. That was all we’d ever be from here on out. Business partners and baby traders. Not exactly ’til death do we part.
“So, I guess that’s it,” Owen said when it was all over, and our blessed union was dissolved and we walked out of the office and onto the sidewalk. My eyes and nose itched thanks to the abundance of colorful flowers that lined the street outside my lawyer’s office. I ran the back of my hand over the tip of my nose and sniffed, trying to force the sneeze to disappear, and busied myself by staring at the paper flags still taped to the windows of the deli next door even though the Fourth of July was a week ago. My marriage ended on July 11, 2016. Would that be a date that I’d put on my tombstone? A part of me just died. An
ything that happened after today was some kind of afterlife—life after Owen. Life after happily ever after. Awesome.
“I guess so,” I agreed. “Except I’ll still see you multiple times a week, so let’s not make this some big Hollywood moment, okay?”
“Okay,” Owen said. I didn’t know if his eyes looked a little sullen, or if his face seemed a little pained, or if I imagined it all because I wanted him to look a little sullen and a little pained, and not happy that he was now legally free to be with his girlfriend. “I’ll see you on Thursday for Bo’s birthday,” he added.
“Yes. I’ll see you Thursday.”
“Then don’t forget I’m out of town next week, so you’ll have Bo. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Okay, then. It was a pleasure being married to you,” I said. “You know, until it wasn’t.”
“You too,” he said, and I swore I thought I saw him smile, just a hint of that crooked tooth, as if this was an inside joke the two of us would share twenty years from now when we were all just one big, modern, happy family. Maybe one day we’d all be able to laugh at the fact that our marriage ended in a heap of purple underwear and frozen waffles, but not today. And not tomorrow. And probably not for about a million days after that—give or take. “Thanks for all of the pork chops,” he said.
“Wow,” I replied. “You’re welcome.” And because I couldn’t possibly think of what else there was to say, I left.
I CALLED ANTONIA on my way to the store to let her know that everything was over and that I’d grab dinner on my way home, but first I was going to make a stop at the fabric store and pick up the fabric the saleswoman had placed on hold for us without telling Lissy that I was doing it. I wanted this to be a surprise in a good way, but there was a chance that it would be a surprise in a bad way, and I’d had enough surprises in a bad way for a lifetime and really didn’t want to be involved in any more.
“Are you so happy it’s over? Today is a great day,” Antonia said.
“Definitely. I’m happy to officially be back on the singles circuit with you.”
“I’m happy to have you,” Antonia said. “Are you heading over to buy the polka dots now?”
“Yes. You think this is a good idea, right? I’m not taking too many liberties by doing this without telling her?”
“No, I really don’t think so. I think it’s sweet and she’ll be very happy.”
“Okay, great. I’m going to run over there and then stop by the store and then I’ll be home. I’m going to buy a nice bottle of wine for us to have with dinner tonight.”
“Champagne. Get champagne because we’re celebrating.”
“Good point!”
“Congrats again on being divorced!” Antonia sang through my Bluetooth. “See you in a bit.”
I clicked off my phone and headed toward Fancy Fabrics so that I could take my mind off my divorce for a little while and work on surprising my friend with some new chairs for her stationery store.
“SO, IT’S OVER?” Lissy asked when I pushed through the door and went directly upstairs to her office. I climbed the spiral staircase in the corner to the loft upstairs, which was piled high with boxes, books, papers, and random knickknacks that Lissy had collected for reasons I couldn’t understand. There were no fewer than three bobbleheads on the shelves of the bookcase, multiple paperweights in various shapes and sizes: large three-dimensional hearts, a black onyx square, a diminutive crystal horse. I wasn’t sure if Lissy was an actual hoarder, but she was probably getting dangerously close. She needed to streamline, to get rid of the junk she’d been collecting over the years, to let go of the past, and focus on all of the good things that were ahead of her.
Those who cannot do, teach.
“It’s over. Just like that, it’s over. It’s a weird feeling.”
“You should go get drunk somewhere. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t want to get drunk. Getting drunk gives me bad hangovers and I’ve felt crappy enough for the last few months. Instead of looking at this like the end of something, I’m choosing to look at it as the beginning of something, primarily my life as a strong, independent woman who has a job, and a nice guy to spend time with, and a son who might be the greatest kid on earth. I don’t have cause for complaint.”
“Wow. That’s the most positive post-divorce attitude I’ve ever heard. Again, I really think you should start a blog.”
“No thanks. No blogs for me. You need to get on Facebook, though.”
“Funny you should mention that. I joined. And the first thing I did was look up Dee Dee.”
“Oh my God, you didn’t.”
“I did. I needed to see this chick. She’s not even pretty. I mean, what’s with the hair? Someone should tell her she’s not Gisele.”
“Oh God, I know. It’s totally ridiculous, isn’t it? Anyway, you don’t need to stalk her on Facebook for me. I like to think I’m more mature than that.”
“You cut Owen’s hair because he was having dinner with her.”
“I like to think I’m more mature now than I was then. See?”
“Okay. Good news, though, she’s apparently getting ready to go on a cruise to Alaska. There were all these stupid pictures of the scenery and stuff like she was trying to show off her vacation. Who does that?”
“Wait, what? Alaska?” I asked. “Alaska?” Without even realizing it, I slinked down on the floor, and was suddenly sitting underneath Lissy’s red desk, hugging a stapler that I couldn’t remember picking up. I doubted Dee Dee would be bragging about her trip if she knew that she was being offered a hand-me-down vacation. Owen and I had talked about that trip. We had talked about going. All she was doing was filling in for me on a vacation that Owen wanted to go on no matter who was with him. It didn’t make her special. I held the stapler close to my chest, my heart thumping, and the loud swooshing noise returning to my ears, and my throat still burning. Why was Dee Dee packing for an Alaskan cruise while I was forced to hug a stapler like a teddy bear on the floor of a stationery store? What kind of world was this? I thought I was doing better. I thought I was past the part of the healing process that required me to be on the floor, or horizontal in bed. The fact that I apparently wasn’t was extremely disappointing.
For some reason, I didn’t feel the need to pull myself up. I liked it under the desk. It was cozier than I expected. Lissy kneeled down next to me, and spoke gently, like I was a scared puppy she was trying to coax out from a doghouse with a sausage.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I have absolutely no idea. But I’m sitting under your desk, so it’s not looking good.”
“I’m really sorry, Claire. Why don’t you come out from under there?”
“She’s going to Alaska,” I muttered.
“That’s fantastic. Do you have any idea how many women want their ex-husband’s new girlfriend to go to Alaska?”
“She’s not going alone. She’s going with Owen. It’s our vacation. We talked about going when Bo was a little older, because I didn’t want to leave him so soon. I’m celebrating my divorce with moo shu chicken and a bottle of champagne, and he’s celebrating by going on an Alaskan cruise with his girlfriend, and she’s bragging about it on Facebook. Right. That sounds about right.”
“Who cares? She sucks. Alaska sucks. Facebook sucks, too.”
“Bo’s birthday is Thursday. What if he brings her? What if he brings her to my house? She can have Owen, I don’t care. She can have Owen and she can have my vacation and she can have the life that I was supposed to have, but she can’t have Bo. He’s mine.”
“She knows that. Owen knows that. She has no intention of trying to take him away from you,” Lissy said, trying to console someone who was totally inconsolable.
“She talked to him in the grocery store. I think she wants him, too,” I sobbed.
“No, Claire. No. She doesn’t. Oh my God, I’m so stupid for saying anything. It’s just a dumb trip. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I want to lie down,” I said. I leaned back on my elbows and flattened myself out on the floor. I laced my fingers together and covered my eyes, willing the stupid sunlight to fade to black.
“You can stay here on the floor all day if you want,” Lissy offered. She ran her hand through my hair, an intimate gesture I appreciated. This wasn’t a moment you wanted just anyone to witness. In a short period of time, Lissy and I had become very close friends.
“Thanks. I think I’d rather go home,” I said. I needed to see Bo. I needed to wrap him up, and kiss him, and hug him, and plant a tracking device on him so that I never had to worry about Dee Dee trying to take him away from me. It may have been irrational, but it didn’t feel that way. She already stole my vacation and my husband. Why wouldn’t she try and take my son away from me, too? What if nothing was off-limits? If she managed to get her hands on him, then every time Owen had Bo I’d have to stalk him to make sure that Dee Dee hadn’t left my sleeping infant in a stroller next to her Mercedes while she went inside to tame her flyaways with a toothbrush and a can of hairspray. That was the type of woman Owen wanted to go to Alaska with? The type who abandoned babies in driveways?
“Don’t let her get to you.”
“Too late for that. She has my husband. I’m pretty sure I’ve been gotten.”
“She doesn’t want to take Bo and even if she did, she couldn’t. Don’t let your mind go into those dark places. They’ll only drive you crazy.”
“It’s too late for that, too.”
“Go home. I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.”
“I can swing by on my way home if you want.”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you. I’m going to see Owen on Thursday for Bo’s birthday. What do I say to him?”
