After I Do (8 page)

I
go home on Sunday night at seven o’clock, the time that Ryan and I agreed on. I knew he would be gone. That was the whole point. But as I open the door to my empty house, the fact that he is gone really hits me. I am alone.

My house looks as if I was robbed. Ryan didn’t take anything that we hadn’t discussed ahead of time, and yet it feels as if he has taken everything we owned. Sure, the major furniture is there, but where are the DVDs? Where is the bookshelf ? Where is the map of Los Angeles that we had mounted and framed? It is all gone.

Thumper runs toward me, his floppy tan ears bouncing on his head, and I fall down when his paws hit me right on my hips, knocking me off balance. I hit the hardwood with a thud, but I barely feel it. All I can feel is this dog loving me, licking my face, jumping all over me. He nudges my ears with his nose. He looks so happy to see me. I am home. It doesn’t look the way it used to. But it is my home.

I walk to the back of the house and feed Thumper. He stands there, looking up at me for a moment, and then chows down.

I turn on the light in the dining room, and I see a note that Ryan has left. I wasn’t anticipating that he would leave anything. But seeing the note there, I want to run to it and tear it open. What is there left to say? I want to know what there is left to say. My hands rip apart the envelope before my brain has even told them to.

His handwriting is so childish. Men’s handwriting is rarely identifiable by any sense of masculinity. It’s only identifiable by the lack of sophistication. They must decide in sixth grade to start worrying about other things.

Dear Lauren,

Make no mistake: I do love you. Just because I don’t feel the love in my heart doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s there. I know it’s there. I’m leaving because I’m going to find it. I promise you that.

Please do not call or text me. I need to be alone. So do you. I am serious about this time away. Even if it’s hard, we have to do it. It’s the only way we can get to a better place. If you call me, I will not answer. I don’t want to back down from this. I will not go back to what we had.

In that spirit, I wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday now, even though I’m a few weeks in advance. I know thirty is going to be a hard year, but it will be a good year, and since I won’t be talking to you on the day, I wanted to let you know I’ll be thinking of you.

Be good to my boy, Thumper. I’ll call you in two months to discuss the handoff. Maybe we can meet at a rest stop like a pair of divorced parents—even though we are neither.

Love,

Ryan

P.S. I fed the beast dinner before I left.

I look down at Thumper, who is now standing at my feet, looking up at me.

“You little trickster,” I say to him. “You already ate.”

I read the letter again and again. I break apart the words. They hurt me and fill me with hope. They make me cry, and they make me angry. Eventually, I fold the letter back up and throw it in the trash. I stare at it in there on the top of the pile. It feels wrong to throw it away. As if I should keep it. As if it should be kept in a scrapbook of our relationship.

I go into the bedroom and look for the shoebox I keep on the very top shelf. I can’t reach it on my own. I go into the hallway closet and get the step stool. I go back into the bedroom closet and strain my fingers to reach the edge of the box. It falls down onto the closet floor, busting open. Papers fan across the carpet. Ticket stubs. Old Post-it notes. Faded photos. And then I see what I’m looking for.

The first letter Ryan ever wrote me. It was a few weeks after we met in the college dining hall. He wrote it on notebook paper. The page has been folded over so many times it now strains to stay flat enough to read.

Things I Like About You:

1. When I say something funny, you laugh so loud that you start to cackle.

2. How, the other day, you actually used the phrase “Shiver Me Timbers.”

3. Your butt. (Sorry, these are the facts.)

4. That you thought chili con carne meant chili with corn.

5. That you’re smarter, and funnier, and prettier, and greater than any girl I know.

A few weeks after I got the letter, he noticed that I had kept it. He found it in my desk in my dorm room. And when I wasn’t looking, he crossed out
Like
and replaced it with
Love
.
Things I Love About You
.

He added a sixth reason underneath in a different-colored pen.

6. That you believe in me. And that you feel so good. And that you see the world as a beautiful place.

It was the reason I started a shoebox. But . . . I can’t put the letter he left for me tonight in this shoebox. I just can’t. It has to stay in the trash.

I put everything back in the box. I put the box away. I brush my teeth. I put on pajamas. I get into bed.

I call for Thumper. He comes running and lies right down next to me. I turn off the light and lie there in the darkness with my eyes wide open. I’m awake so long my eyes adjust to the night. The darkness seems to fade; what was opaque blackness turns to a translucent gray, and I can see that while I have a warm body next to me, I am alone in this house.

I’m not sad. I’m not even melancholy. I’m actually scared. For the first time in my life, I am alone. I am the single woman home alone in the middle of the night. If someone tries to break in, it’s up to a friendly Labrador and me. If I hear a strange noise, I’m the one who has to investigate. I feel the same way I felt as a kid at campfires hearing ghost stories.

I know I’m OK. But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

I
go back to work on Monday morning, and I’m surprised at how much I don’t have to talk about all of this. People know I’m married, but really, it rarely comes up. Questions like “How was your weekend?” or “Do anything fun?” are easily answered honestly while keeping the important facts to myself. “It was good. How about yours?” and “Oh, I got to spend a lot of time with my sister. What about you?” seem to get the job done. By noon, I’ve already learned that you can stop almost all questions about your personal life by being the person who asks the most questions.

But Mila knows me. Actually knows me. She’s been my sounding board for months. She knows it all. So as we get into the car to go get lunch, her voice drops low, and she gets real.

“So,” she says as she puts the car into drive, “how are you doing?”

“I am . . . fine,” I say. “I really am. This weekend sucked, and I cried a lot. I spent all of Saturday night in my sister’s bed, crying, while she watched some show about zombies. But then I got home last night, and . . . I’m OK.”

“Uh-huh,” Mila says. “Did you stretch out in bed? Pour some wine and take a bath without anyone bothering you?”

Mila’s been with her partner, Christina, for five years. They have three-year-old twin boys. Something tells me these are her fantasies.

“Not exactly,” I say. “I just . . . got home and went to bed, mostly.”

She pulls into a spot close to the entrance, and we head in.

“If it was me,” she says, “I would be relishing this. A year seems like a long time, but it’s going to go so fast. You have your freedom now! You have a life to live. You can make everything smell good. You can have a floral bedspread.”

“Christina won’t let you have a floral bedspread?”

“She hates floral anything. Loves flowers. Hates florals.”

It seems silly, but the floral bedspread feels, suddenly, like something I have to have. I have never lived alone as an adult. I have always shared a bedroom with this man. But now I can buy a blanket with huge flowers across it. Or a bow. Or, I don’t know, what’s girlie that men don’t like? I want it. I want to relish my girliness. I want to buy something pale pink just because I can. I don’t have to justify the expense to anyone. I don’t have to advocate for why I need a new duvet. I can just go buy one.

“What the hell have I been doing?” I say to Mila, as we stand in line to order. “Why on earth didn’t I redecorate the minute he left?”

“I know!” Mila says. “You have to go shopping straight after work. Buy all the crap you always wanted that he thought was stupid.”

“I’m gonna do it!” I say.

Mila high-fives me. We eat our sandwiches, and we manage to talk about other things. We don’t bring Ryan up again until Mila is parking the car back on campus.

“I am so jealous,” she says. “If Christina was gone, I would light a vanilla candle in every room in the house. I would walk into each room and go”—she sniffs and releases—“ahhhh.” And then, as if it had just occurred to her, “You don’t have to wear sexy uncomfortable panties anymore. You can live in big, comfy underwear.”

I laugh. “You don’t wear comfortable underwear?”

“I wear a lace bra and panty set every day,” Mila says. “I keep my woman
happy
.” She then backpedals. “I didn’t mean that you didn’t keep . . . Sorry. I was just making a joke.”

I laugh again. “It’s fine. I’m still reeling from the surprise that you wear sexy underwear every day.”

Mila shrugs. “She likes it. I like that she likes it. But man, I am so jealous that you can wear granny panties now.”

“I don’t even know if I own granny panties,” I tell her. “I mean, I just wear normal-people underwear every day. Oh, wait,” I say, remembering. “I do have this one pair that I never wear anymore because Ryan used to always make fun of them. He used to call them my parachute panties.”

“Super huge? Full coverage? Feels like wearing a cloud?”

“I loved them!”

“Well, go home and put them on, girl! This is your time.”

My time. Yeah, this is my time.

After work, I go shopping and buy a big, fluffy white pillow, two striped throws, and a rose-colored bedspread with the outline of an oversized poppy flower on it. I look at the bed, and I think it looks as if it’s straight out of a magazine. It looks so pretty.

I take a shower, using all the hot water, singing my heart out because no one can hear me. After I get out, I dry myself off with a towel and head into the bedroom. I dig into the back of my top drawer, past the bikini briefs and the occasionally necessary thongs, and I find them. My parachute panties.

I put them on and stand there in the middle of my bedroom. They aren’t quite as magical as I remember them. They feel like normal underwear. Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I can see what Ryan was talking about. They sag in the butt and the crotch. Between that and the thick waistband just below my navel, I might as well be wearing a diaper.

I look at the bed with fresh eyes. I don’t even like floral patterns. What am I doing? I like blue. I like yellow. I like green. I don’t like pink. I have never, in my life, liked pink. This “freedom” quickly starts to feel like such a small thing. This is what I was excited about? Buying a floral blanket? Wearing saggy underwear?

Mila can’t light a candle in the house because Christina doesn’t like candles and keeping Christina happy is more important than lighting the goddamn candles. That’s the truth of it. She’s not handcuffed to her. She wants to be with her. She’d rather be with her than light the candles. She’d be heartbroken without her, and the candles would be nothing more than a silver lining. That’s all this is. It’s a silver lining.

It’s just a small, good thing in a situation that totally fucking sucks.

C
harlie calls late one night. It’s just late enough that it seems unusual for someone to call. I jump for the phone, my heart racing. My mind is convinced that it’s Ryan. I am in a T-shirt and my underwear. There’s a coffee stain on my shirt. It’s been there for days. When you don’t have anyone to witness how dirty you are, you find out how truly dirty you are willing to be.

When I look at the phone and realize it’s Charlie and not Ryan, I am surprised at how sad it makes me. It makes me really sad. And then I instantly get worried. Because Charlie never calls. He’s not even in our time zone.

Charlie left L.A. the minute he had a chance. He went north to Washington for school. He went east to Colorado after that. Somehow in the past year, he’s found himself in Chicago. I’m sure soon he’ll tell us he’s moving to the farthest tip of Maine.

“Charlie?” I answer.

“Hey,” he says. Charlie’s voice is gruff and gravelly. He spent his teenage years hiding cigarettes from us. When Rachel and I figured it out, sometime around when he was seventeen, we couldn’t believe it. Not only that he was smoking but that he didn’t tell us. We understood not telling Mom, but us? He wouldn’t even tell us? He stopped a few years ago. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” I say. “I’m awake. What’s going on? How are you?”

“I’m good,” he says. “I’m good. How about you?”

“Oh,” I say, breathing in deeply as I decide what I want to say and how I want to say it. “I’m fine,” I say. I guess I don’t want to say it at all.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Well, that’s not what I heard. I heard you’re getting a ­D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

Fucking Rachel.

“Rachel told you?”

“No,” Charlie says, starting to explain.

“Rachel had to have told you. No one else knows.”

“Chill out, Lo. Ryan told me.”

“You talked to Ryan?”

“He
is
my brother-in-law. I assumed it was OK to talk to him.”

“No, I just—”

“I called him, and he told me that you guys are getting D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D.”

“Why do you keep spelling it? And we’re not getting divorced. Did Ryan say that? Did he say we were getting a divorce?” I can hear that my voice sounds panicked and frantic.

“He said that you are taking a break. And when I asked if it was a trial separation, he said, ‘Sure.’”

“Well, it’s a bit more nuanced that that, you know? It’s not, like, a formal separation.”

“Lauren, do you know a single couple that has been separated and then got back together? They all get divorced.”

“What do you want, Charlie? Or are you just calling to make me want to die?”

“Well, two things. I wanted to call and see if you were OK. If there was anything I could do.”

“I’m fine. Thank you,” I say. “What was the second thing?”

“Well, this is where things get more complicated.”

“That sounds promising,” I say. I am now back in bed.

“Part of the reason I called Ryan in the first place was because Mom has decided to throw you a surprise party.”

This is just a weird joke he’s playing. “Hilarious,” I say.

“No, dude. I’m serious.”

“Why would she do that?” I’m now up and out of bed again. I pace the floor when I’m nervous.

“She feels like we don’t do enough traditional stuff, I guess. And she wanted to host a party.”

“At her house?”

“At her house.”

“And where do you come into all of this?”

“Well, she’s flying me in.”

“You’re flying in from Chicago just to go to my thirtieth birthday party?”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t do it if I was paying for the ticket.”

“You’re so sweet.”

“No, I mean, you hate birthdays. I know that. I tried to tell Mom. She won’t listen. And you’re lucky I caught her before she called Ryan herself. She told me she was going to call him tomorrow, so I told her I’d do it since I had been meaning to call him anyway. Which, it turns out, was a good thing, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want Mom to find out about this the way I just did.”

“Does Rachel know yet?”

“About the party?”

“Yeah.”

“I doubt it. Mom just told me a few hours ago. She said it all hinged on whether I could fly in and Ryan could get you to her place without you finding out, hence why I brought it up with him.”

“That must have been such an awkward conversation,” I say, something in me finally calming down. “With Ryan, I mean.”

“It wasn’t the best, no. He did ask about you, though.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, he asked how you were doing. And I had to be, like, ‘Bro, I didn’t even know you two broke up. How would I know?’”

We laugh for a bit, and then I feel the need to clarify. “We didn’t break up,” I say.

“Yeah, all right,” Charlie says. “Just listen. You gotta tell Mom before the party. She’s gonna wonder where Ryan is, and it’s gonna be all weird, and anyway, I wanted to give you the heads-up. I mean, you’ve got three weeks to do it. So that gives you some time.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, hey, that’s exciting that you’re coming home.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It will be nice to see you guys.” It’s quiet for a moment before he adds, “Also, Lauren, I get that you have Rachel and everything, but . . . you have me, too. I’m here for you, too. I love you, you know.”

The fact that my brother can be such a dick is part of the reason he’s able to make you feel so much better. When he says he loves you, he means it. When he says he’ll always be there for you, he means it.

“Thanks,” I say to him. “Thank you. I’ll be OK.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re gonna be fine,” he says, and it feels better than all the other times I’ve heard it.

We get off the phone, and I get back into bed. I turn off the light and grab a hold of Thumper and start to doze off, but my phone rings again. I know who it is before I even look at the screen.

“Hey, Rach,” I say.

“Mom is throwing you a surprise party,” she says. Her voice is not just laced with schadenfreude, it is made of it. Schadenfreude is all there is.

“I know,” I say. “I just talked to Charlie.”

“She’s flying Charlie home so he can be there.”

“I know,” I say. “I just talked to him.”

“She’s flying Grandma Lois out, too. And Uncle Fletcher.”

“Now, that I didn’t know.”

“Apparently, she wants everyone to meet her new boyfriend.”

“She has a new boyfriend?”

“Do you even call Mom anymore?”

Admittedly, I have not spoken to my mom in weeks. She lives thirty minutes away, but it’s very easy to avoid talking to someone if you never answer the phone.

“His name is Bill. He’s apparently a mechanic.”

“Is he her mechanic?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel says. “Why does that matter?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just can’t see Mom, like, picking up her mechanic.”

“She says he’s hot.”

“Hot?”

“Yeah, she says he’s hot.”

“This is all very weird.”

“Oh, it’s totally, amazingly, delightfully weird.”

“I’m going to bed,” I say. “I need to let my dreams sort out all of this.”

“OK,” Rachel says. “But you gotta tell Mom you’re separated, right? I mean, you have to before the party. Otherwise, this is going to be a disaster.”

“When was the last time Mom threw a party?” I ask Rachel.

“I have no idea. It was definitely the early nineties, though.”

“Precisely. So this is going to be a disaster no matter what I do.”

“Do you think she’ll have a punch bowl?”

“What?”

“Isn’t it just like Mom to have punch bowl?”

And for some reason, this is the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. My mother will totally have a punch bowl.

“OK, I’m really going to sleep this time.”

“Streamers. I bet you there will be streamers.”

“I’m going to bed.”

“You want over/under on streamers?”

“I don’t think that makes sense. You have to have numbers in order for the over/under thing to work.”

“Oh, right. OK, five bucks says there are streamers.”

“I’m going to bed,” I remind her one last time.

“Yeah, fine. I’m just saying . . . five bucks says there are streamers. Are you in or out?”

“What is the matter with you?”

“In or out?”

“In,” I say. “I’m in. Good night.”

“Good night!” Rachel finally says, and gets off the phone. I lay my head down and smell Thumper. He smells awful. Dogs smell so awful, and yet smelling Thumper is wonderful. He smells heavenly to me. I close my eyes, and I drift off to sleep, where my brain tries to make sense of all this news. I dream that I get to my birthday party and everyone yells, “Surprise!” I see Mom making out with a guy dressed as a race-car driver. Rachel and Charlie are there. And then, just as the yelling dies down, I look through the crowd, and I see Ryan. He makes his way to me. He kisses me. He says, “I could never miss your birthday.”

When I wake up, I know it’s a dream. But I can’t help but hope, maybe, just maybe, it’s a premonition.