by Sarah Fuller
This salt business is not news to the Europeans, who have been relying on the therapy for centuries. It’s only that LA has popularized it with all these pop-up salt caves. Visiting a salt bath is supposed to be good for relaxation, allergies, asthma, as well as many other conditions. Unprocessed Himalayan salt is apparently rich in many minerals, and breathing salt-infused air delivers a straight shot to the nervous system.
I’m not sure what possessed me to take Eleanor to play in a salt cave when I think back. The Hindu temple was probably closed.
Being hip in LA is a lost cause. My friends have resorted to buying me clothes, which actually works.
“Do you see how wearing tailored shirts can really work for you?” Samar asked me, having bought me a silk blouse with ruffles.
I did like the pattern and feel of the fabric. However, after I wore the blouse day after day, Eleanor called me out.
“You can’t wear the same thing every day, Mommy.”
“Well then, I’m going to need my friends to dress me, because I’m at a loss.”
It could be worse. Jane was giving me hand-me-ups from her stepchildren, clothes that they had outgrown. But hey, I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And we all know I’m cheap enough to take clothes that a fifteen-year-old outgrew. I’m not too good for that. And that’s how I ensure I’m staying up on the latest trends.
I will take credit for the bedhead movement, though. That trend is all me. When I was seven, I woke up and thought my hair looked amazing without even having to brush it. I asked my mother if I could go to school like that, ,and since she was still half-asleep, she waved me off. It turned out that day was picture day. I’d not only not brushed my hair, but I’d dressed myself and looked like a colorblind homeless person.
However, since then, I’ve tried to master this beach wave business. I know girls who go to the beach, and the salty winds wave past their hair, creating the perfect look. That shit doesn’t work for me. But according to my stylist, I can look like Kate Hudson if I get a few products and carefully apply them to my strands.
“So let me get this straight, I’m doing my hair to make it look like I didn’t do my hair?” I asked my stylist.
“Yeah, like you just got finished surfing,” she replied.
“I would never go surfing, though,” I admitted. “I’m too afraid of getting hit in the face with the board.”
“Not to mention the sharks,” she added.
Weird fact: This year, the Pacific Ocean has been unusually warm. I’ve lived on the West Coast for over a decade and have never, ever been in the Pacific. That shit is like fucking cryogenics but without the calorie burn. However, this year, I went into the ocean. Of course, some strange sea life took a bite out of my toe, so it looks like it will be another decade before I grace the ocean with my presence.
A guy did ask me on a surfing date. I don’t know how to tell him that I have zero interest in surfing, but have no problem watching him coast those waves topless.
If I do go on the date, I’ll ironically spend an hour putting tons of product in my hair so I have beach waves. I don’t want to be Kate Hudson, but I’ll totally settle for being her shorter cousin, twice removed.
I’ll totally be ready for this date after I have my elective surgery. The damn sand always gets in my eyes when I’m at the beach, fucking with my contacts. I’ve worn contacts for over twenty years, and the task of putting them in and getting them to behave has gotten fucking degrading.
“All you ever do is complain about your contacts,” Eleanor observed one day.
I realized she was right. I have been putting off getting LASIK surgery for many reasons, not one of them being that I am worried about the surgery. Let’s be honest, it’s mostly because I’m cheap and would rather keep shelling out the hundred dollars for contacts than pony up for the several-thousand-dollar surgery.
However, I’m changing. You’ll continue to witness this evolution going forward.
When I was at the surgeon’s office for the consultation, the nice people kept asking me, “Do you have any concerns?”, “Do you have questions?”, “Are you worried about anything?”
“I really don’t,” I stated. “Lay me down and fix my eyes, I don’t really care how.”
Apparently, people don’t usually just nod through a consultation when someone is talking about taking a laser to their eyes.
“I’ve performed this surgery thousands of times,” the surgeon began giving me his spiel. “And I can safely say—”
“Sounds good. Sign me up. I can’t take another day in contacts,” I said, cutting him off.
“So you don’t have any more questions? You want to do the surgery?” he asked behind his spectacles.
“Yeah, the surgery is fine,” I stated.
I did have a burning question, but I was too nervous to ask. I wanted to know why it was that my LASIK surgeon was wearing glasses.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Please Stop Sending Me Flowers
George and I actually have a romantic story of how we got together. It will make people puke.
We met when we were teenagers at a summer camp. Unlike most kids that went to normal camps where they swam and rode horses, George and I went to debate camp. No, there was no roasting marshmallows over the fire. Instead, we were huddled in the libraries, crafting briefs to strengthen our cases on global warming or renewable technology.
Hey, you’ve known from the beginning I’m a nerd. This debate business should come as no surprise.
My friend Jane tells me that I date the nerdiest guys.
“And you only care what they look like with their shirts off,” I countered.
“What else really matters?” she replied.
Brains.
I’m like a fucking zombie, craving a good brain. And is it really too much to ask for a man to be smart and have abs? I work out, and I can discuss string theory. Brains and fitness aren’t mutually exclusive.
Anyway, George and I fell in lust at debate camp. Then he went back to middle America and me to the backwoods of Texas. We lost touch. Stayed apart. But apparently, he never forgot me.
When I was twenty-two years old, a full seven years later, George emailed me.
“Do you remember me? From debate camp?” he said.
After I picked myself up off the ground, I responded.
Four months later, he moved across the country for me. For us to start something real.
Talk about pressure, though. I did love George, and I think I’d have married him even if he hadn’t given up his life in Chicago to be with me.
I firmly believe I rebelled against my mother’s teachings and married George out of love. He wasn’t uber-successful, but he was smart and funny, and that’s more important to me. We always won trivia night at our friend’s house, which totally pissed them off. Two debaters are destined to know all the answers when paired up. However, I fell back into old ways of thinking when things started to fall apart.
It was right after we moved to LA. I’d given up my career to care for Eleanor, and George had started a new gig that he hated. Things got hard. And years went by.
Acclimating to LA wasn’t difficult, though. I’d felt like a zombie for years in Oregon, not knowing how I fit in. In LA, things were different. I made friends at the grocery store, and soon had a routine that felt right. I appreciated the oddities, like that people didn’t go outside when it rained. And I loved the fact that I could rotate flip-flops and Ugg boots as my only shoes.
Best of all, no one took themselves overly seriously. When I called people assholes, everyone nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, we’re real jerks here,” someone would remark when I’d comment on a typical LA behavior.
In a brand new city, pulsing with energy, caring for an infant and nursing a dying marriage is when I began to write.
I firmly believe it was the energy of the city that fed my creativity. I’d written before, in Oregon and since I was a child in Texas, but I was driven in C
alifornia. I felt this drive to complete my first novel, like I might die before its completion, leaving my story untold. And then I wrote another book, and another.
I had the child I adored. I had the budding career I’d longed for. And I had the city, raw and yearning for discovery, lying at my feet.
And then there was George…
He still loved me; he’s much more loyal than I am. But I’d already broken up with him in my head.
And before you start judging me with that ‘marriage is forever’ bullshit, try and keep an open mind. The twenty-four-year-old Sarah who married George wasn’t the same girl at thirty-five. I’d fallen for this spontaneous man who would abandon his life to start a new one across the country.
Despite the fact that my mother had taught me that men provided stability, that wasn’t my experience for much of my marriage. I was always worried that George might get a wild hair and quit his job. He’d often pick up hobbies and then bore of them. Finances were tough. We fought because our interests were competing.
I’m not trashing the guy. I love him to this day. But we just weren’t right for each other, and we were making each other miserable.
But I stayed…for years.
Why? Because I didn’t know how I’d survive on my own. I used to know, but had apparently forgotten. I had taken care of myself before. I had been a strong career woman. And then everything changed.
I was my mother, yet again.
This is not a unique issue. I recently heard an astronomical percentage regarding how many women stay in unhealthy relationships because of the rise in housing prices. It seems so silly, and yet having a home is important. Many times, women become the caregivers and, in doing so, limit their financial freedom. It’s supposed to be about equality, but money is power. I’d given up a great job, losing five years in the workplace, all the while supporting George’s career. I’m not complaining. I’m talking about a real issue that real women can relate to.
I have always worked. I took off four days after having Eleanor before firing up the laptop and checking emails. However, in the outrageously expensive city of LA, my part-time gigs and YA books weren’t going to pay the bills. I was going to have to do something huge if I wanted to support myself and Eleanor.
And George couldn’t afford to divorce me either. We were stuck.
I’d promised myself, back when I left Skyler, that I’d never stay if I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t force myself into a situation where I couldn’t make my own decision for freedom.
I wished I could say that I woke up one morning and decided I was taking my happiness back. It would be nice to say I stood up for what I wanted in one deliberate act of courage. The truth is that I was scared, and George didn’t want to let me go.
So I just became an asshole…well, more of an asshole. I started working all the time that I wasn’t with Eleanor. I produced books like I was on meth, but the kind that doesn’t rot your teeth—I like my smile. I threw everything I had into creating a business that would soon support my daughter and me. And in the meantime, I pushed George away.
I wasn’t mean to him… Well, besides mentioning that he talked too loudly and his breathing sort of got on my nerves. But really, I just retreated, working furiously. Planning.
In the end, he wanted out as much as I did. I have a knack for being a bitch.
If you’ve read this far, you know how the story progresses. I did stand up for my and my family’s happiness, because at the end of the day, it wasn’t just about my freedom. It was about Eleanor’s. It was about George’s.
I moved my daughter and me into the same neighborhood we’d originally lived in when we first moved to LA. However, this time, I woke up alone… unless Elle had crawled into my bed during the night. It was the exact same floor model that we’d lived in before, but this time, I had the entire master closet to myself.
You know what else I had all to myself? The bills.
But it didn’t matter, because I’d gotten out of something that didn’t work, even though surviving on my own was hard. I’d taken a risk. And I’d work every hour that I didn’t have Eleanor in order to make this new life work.
But thankfully, I didn’t have to.
George moved into his own home, not far from mine. His is a cave with all the horrid artwork I’d never allowed him to display. Mine is airy and bright with clean lines, and it’s quiet. I live inside my head a lot, so I prefer my surroundings to shut the fuck up so I can hear the voices.
I’ve protected this new life with a fierceness, fearing that with one slip-up of the heart, my life would be tethered to another person’s again. Then we’d be sharing insurance and a Spotify account, and their preferences would be fucking up my suggestions from Netflix.
That’s why when I had my first serious relationship after the divorce, I chose someone who lived on the other side of the country.
“I wished we could see each other more often,” Connor said over the phone.
“Do you?” I asked, challenging him like I doubted his judgment.
“Yeah, I miss you,” he’d say.
“Thank you,” I’d reply, because my momma taught me right.
“You know you’re the love of my life?”
“Am I?” I asked, playing the devil’s advocate.
We all know that I’m bad at breakups. It should come as no surprise that when George and I divorced, I gave Eleanor the completed paperwork and asked her to do a craft project with it. Don’t worry! She couldn’t read then. She had no idea she was doodling on a custody agreement that involved her.
I didn’t think I’d ever have a need for that four-hundred-page bundle of California bullshit. Recently, though, I went to get Eleanor’s passport, and it turned out that I needed the divorce paperwork.
“Can I get your copy of the divorce?” I asked George over the phone.
“What happened to your copy?” he asked.
Damn him.
It was just like when we were married and he would always ask me a ton of questions: “What kind of meat is this in the sauce?” “Did you wash my white shirt with the colors again?” “Why is there a scratch on your car?”
There was never any meat in the sauce. For some reason, George never figured out I couldn’t cook. And of course I’d washed his whites with the colors; laundry is the bane of my existence. And for fuck’s sake! I scratched my car at Trader Joe’s, parking too close to someone! That’s why I lease. In twenty-four months, that car and all its dents aren’t going to be my problem.
“I guess I lost my copy of the divorce papers,” I stated, looking at the beautiful drawing Eleanor had done on the back of Section 414.
When I popped over to George’s house a few minutes later to get his copy, he said, “Hold on. Let me grab it.”
Then he turned around and plucked it from a stack of papers on the countertop.
“Do you keep it out for evening reading?” I asked.
He gave me one of his trademark punishing stares.
I know George has never gotten over the fact that I was a bitch to him in order to push him away so he could see that we weren’t right for each other. He came from a family who didn’t divorce, so although we were awful together, he wouldn’t admit it. Not until I was such an asshole that he was begging for a separation.
If it wasn’t so awkward, I bet my exes could commiserate on how much of a bitch I am.
When I was trying to break up with Connor, I went back into asshole mode. He was sweet, and better than that, he was a nerd. I didn’t mind the fact that he lived on the other side of the country, but he did.
“What do you think about, in a few months, me looking into moving to California?” he asked over the phone.
Without missing a beat, I said, “Too bad. California is closed.”
“Sarah, I’m serious,” he urged. “We can’t live apart forever.”
“Can’t we?” I asked, employing my skeptical tone once again.
The truth was, I wasn’t
ready for some man to move into my territory. No, we wouldn’t live together, but I’d feel obliged to him for moving across the country for us. Just like with George.
I spent many a quiet night in my home, relishing the solitude. The ownership. The ability to control the environment. Yes, it’s nice to share a home with someone. Buddha knows I love sharing my home with Eleanor. However, I’m not ready to tell someone who isn’t a minor that I’m tired of looking at their dishes or that their video game music is distracting me from the voices in my head. Home is where the heart is and, for a while, I needed mine to be alone.
I’ve since decided that dates and long conversations on the phone with prospective men are okay. But I’ve only gotten to that point because I know that, no matter what, my home is always mine. I can’t ever lose that again, because, to me, that’s real freedom.
However, when I was with Connor, I kept pushing him away. He knew it too. To his credit, he saw potential in the relationship.
To earn my favor, he started sending me flowers. Regularly.
I knew he wanted to move closer, but that was just too much pressure.
And the more he did nice things for me, the more I felt like he was trying to buy my affection.
My friend Sue made an acute observation one day. “He’s not buying you things because you want them. He’s buying them because it creates a sense of obligation to him.”
Oh fuck no, I thought.
Connor wanted a long-term relationship. He spoke of me like I was his Zelda. That was wonderful, but I wasn’t in that place yet. I needed time. I’m still not in that place, and it’s taken me a long time to be okay with that. Truthfully, I haven’t been single for more than a month since I was fifteen years old. Not since I met George at debate camp, and my heart was swept away. And then Skyler asked me to move to the city with him, and the rest of my adulthood has been spent in a series of long-term relationships.
“You’re the kind of girl that does relationships,” my friend Jane said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
