by Melissa Ford
Rob Zuckerman. Overworked lawyer. Brockman and Young. My name is plastered all over my blog.
I almost run down the hallway, Lisa be damned, to give Rob Zuckerman a piece of my mind for making me think he is Adam, even though that isn’t his fault, but I am too broken-hearted. I skip both the subway ride and the cab to walk the entire way home, dumping the uneaten sandwich in a cigarette ashtray in the lobby of the building.
Adam doesn’t read my blog. Adam has made no effort to keep up with my life. Adam doesn’t love me.
He doesn’t think about me or pine for me or want me back at all. He is dating Laura and probably blissfully stroking her cats right now.
Since this is New York, where people barely notice the torments of others—they’ll even step over a mugging victim who is bleeding to death in the intersection—I walk and cry at the same time, not even bothering to duck my head, but allowing all my grief to hang out around me, like an entourage of friends. People walk around me like blobs of oil floating through my vinegar. I promise myself that having two twenty-four-hour mopes in a single month does not make it a habit.
When I get back to my apartment, I spend a good ten minutes allowing myself to truly wail, a scary sort of cry that even keeps my neighbor at bay though I am certainly waking her child from one of his numerous naps. I cry in that way that gives you a headache and makes your eyes puffy for days and sends you into a deep, headachy sleep.
And then I stop.
It isn’t a conscious decision, and I am certainly still just as sad as I have been since I stepped over the threshold into my apartment, but the crying stops, and I sit down at the computer to check my blog. Over seven-hundred people have posted since last night, thanking me for my honesty and admitting their fear of failure too. It seems to be a popular cause of low self-esteem. Seven-hundred-plus people, and none of them named Adam. Though, scrolling down through the four hundreds, I pause at Rob Zuckerman’s comment.
He probably thought that I had read it this morning and ran straight to his office to declare how much I wanted a second date. If only it could be as easy as “You get who you get and you don’t get upset.”
But I really am still in love with Adam.
And I wanted Adam to want me back, wanted Adam to not be over me or our marriage. I know that you can’t believe everything you see on a computer, that you should ask the source, but I thought it was so clear, so unquestionable.
I go to the Brockman and Young website, search for Adam’s name, and the search window comes up empty. I try again with just his last name, and it pulls up a nebbishy sixty-something with light shining off his bald spot. Marc Goldman. I Google Adam’s name, and it shows me a host of articles by a writer named Adam Goldman, a LinkedIn profile for an engineer, a teacher at a private school, an Amazon wish list. I click down the list, bypassing a rock singer, a Facebook page, and a doctor of cardiology. My Adam has seemingly disappeared, which is not a difficult feat when you have a common enough name. The name Adam Goldman is the “John Smith” of the Jewish set.
For old time sake, I go back onto Sitestalker, and there is Rob Zuckerman, still hitting refresh, somewhat more frequently than usual, perhaps because he has just seen me. But all of that is sort of beside the point.
I don’t really know what to do with myself. I am not in the mood to write a blog post, especially not after last night’s. I’m not in the mood to peck at the book manuscript or eat a meal. I’m not even in the mood for Arianna, and I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t game for a good, old-fashioned pity party with her as host. I wander around the apartment, picking up objects and setting them down, mostly in the same place, until it occurs to me that if I don’t scratch this itch, it will just continue to surface indefinitely.
This isn’t pathetic, I convince myself. This is the emotional equivalent to calamine lotion. This is about fighting for what I want and not caring about the possibility of failure.
I grab my purse and head back towards my old apartment. Soon I am walking past Hunan Chow’s slightly sketchy storefront and the new cupcake bakery and my old subway stop and Morty’s (which at one point was our favorite diner). I walk past the Christian Science Reading Room and the restaurant where I once got food poisoning. When I round the corner and can see my old apartment building, I dial my old telephone number and listen to the phone ring and ring until the answering machine kicks in. My stomach clenches as I hear my own voice informing me that we’re not home right now.
Fine, I may have never changed my name back, but he never changed the answering machine. Instead of leaving a message, I settle myself on the bottom step after ringing the buzzer to ensure that he’s not home. It is a brisk February afternoon, and my jeans immediately feel soaked through with cold. I consider doubling back to the diner and waiting for him there, but part of me thinks that sitting on the step as penance sends a stronger message to how much I want to speak with him.
I am either deeply committed or deeply crazy, and I hope he thinks the former rather than the latter despite the closeness the word “committed” negatively shares with mental health. People walk around me into the building. It’s less than a year later, yet there is no one I recognize. It is strange how much can change in under twelve months.
I rest my head against my knees and keep my eyes focused down the street. And finally, some time after it is starting to get dark, probably two hours since I planted myself on his doorstep, I see Adam returning home, in jeans and a sweater and a new brown coat. He’s wearing a baseball cap that makes him look ten years younger and carrying a paperback book in his hand. He pauses when he sees me and furrows his brow.
“Rachel? What are you doing here?”
It’s not quite the welcome I was seeking, and it makes me promptly forget all of the opening speeches I practiced inside my head. It’s like those terrible movies where time starts moving in slow motion and your heart just breaks for the main character’s humiliation. How could she ever have thought it was a good idea to put herself out here? I am literally cringing for myself.
“I can make a whole roasted chicken,” I blurt out. It just like how I used to daydream in math class, asking myself crazy “What ifs.” What if I jumped on top of my desk right now and started singing “The Star Spangled Banner?” What would happen? Would it scar me forever socially, mark me as brave or label me the nut job who burst into song while Mrs. Alba tried to teach theorems? What if I pulled down my pants and turned a cartwheel in the aisle? What would happen to me?
What if I show up at my ex-husband’s apartment—which used to also be my apartment—and sit on the step outside for several hours until he comes home and then tell him that I know how to roast a chicken? What would happen? I twist my Me&Ro ring on my finger to gather up strength to say what I need to say.
“That’s great,” he tells me. He shifts the book he’s holding from one hand to the other.
I try again. Reboot.
“Could we go get coffee?” I ask.
“Where?” he questions suspiciously, as if I’ve just asked him to enter a pit of snakes.
“I don’t know. Morty’s?”
“The diner? I don’t think so, Rach.”
We continue to stare at each other, and I mentally will him to give me a chance. Perhaps I am more skilled in ESP than I think, because I see his shoulders relax a bit.
“I wanted to talk to you at that party, but you disappeared,” he points out.
“I know,” I say simply. There really isn’t an acceptable excuse. I never thought when I ditched the party that I would be seeking him out a few weeks later. “I want to explain and tell you some things. We can go somewhere else. Really, Adam, I need to talk to you. Please?”
Adam’s brow visibly unfurrows, and he shrugs his shoulders. “Fine, let’s go to Morty’s. I’m not in the mood for Angelo’s.”
This is our shorthand; every relationship has abbreviations and code. Angelo’s is too crowded, too loud, non-conducive to privacy or even hearing o
ne another. Throwing me Morty’s is a step in the right direction. I have been forgiven, I decide, for the party slipaway.
We walk the few blocks to the diner not really talking. I picked the diner, of course, because it reminded me of our marriage—of the early days in our marriage—where we would get coffee and pancakes at Morty’s on a Sunday morning. We lost that tradition when Adam started putting in Sunday hours at the office, but the weekends used to be about reading the newspaper and bitching about the Style section and drinking endless refills of coffee. I’m hoping that sitting in this familiar space will somehow transport us emotionally back to those early days of the marriage, when things were worth saving.
But as we double back the way I came, I wonder if the ulterior motive was to get him to take a few steps away from our old place and towards my new apartment. While I can’t see it tucked behind all of the other buildings in the way, I know it is out there. Our old life and our new life and then this space in between.
I know in that moment that I’ll be fine—that whatever happens at Morty’s, I’ll live through it. That I’ll still have so much, even if I don’t have Adam—the blog, the book, Arianna, my siblings. Tiny Penelope and her whole wheat pancakes. If I can’t be a mother, I’ll be the best damn aunt in the world. I internally promise Penelope that I’ll do better with this aunthood thing. Whatever happens, I’ll live through this, and that fact is comforting, like a small loaf of bread newly tucked into the oven, slowly expanding.
Morty’s is the type of place that no one ever thinks to enter, and for the first few months of living in the neighborhood, I walked past it without noticing the sign on the door. It was Adam who first suggested that we go in to get out of the rain when the skies opened up on our way home from the subway. And somehow, it became ours—sticky tabletops and chipped coffee cups and all—like an ugly dog from the pound that only the two of us could ever love. But because it is the receptacle of our joint love, and our joint love alone, it becomes more special, more enticing, like the ring from Portobello Road that was discarded by its first owners. I hope he feels the same energy that is coursing through my body as we step into the restaurant and are greeted by the smell of French fries under heat lamps and tart coffee spills.
The place is almost empty, so we slip into the booth of our choosing—a middle ground, one that we’ve never used before. The waitress tries to hand us menus, but Adam doesn’t even open his menu to be polite. He asks for a chocolate shake, extra thick. He says it emphatically, as if this is the only choice he could possibly make, and I wonder how well it bodes in changing his mind about us. I examine him closer, without the jacket in the way. He has lost weight.
“A milkshake,” I comment, after the waitress leaves with my request for a cup of decaf. I use what I hope is a casual tone, but coming out of my mouth, it sounds judgmental.
“I felt like having one. I got one here a few weeks ago, and it was really good.”
On a date with Laura? I want to ask. This isn’t really the sort of place you bring a date. It’s the sort of place you bring a spouse. Or a wife-to-be. I stop considering his love life and start rolling and unrolling the edge of my paper napkin to give my hands something to do. “Because you actually look like you’ve lost weight.”
“Maybe,” he says. “I started running again.”
“Again?”
“I ran before law school. So, what do you want to talk about, Rach? Is there something you want to tell me?”
I had wanted to jump into the conversation before he asked that question, because the reality is that after that question has been asked, whatever comes next better be pretty good. I really don’t know how to begin, so I look at my slightly ragged napkin for answers. The paper serviette is silent.
“I left that night at the party because I was really thrown-off seeing you there,” I admit, deciding immediately that honesty is the only way I’m getting through this.
“I was too,” he offers. “I didn’t know if Laura invited you, if she was even in touch with you anymore.”
“I wasn’t, not really,” I tell him again. “But she invited me to the party, and I thought I should go.”
He doesn’t seem keen to discuss her. “But you’re not working at the library anymore?”
“No,” I say, taking a deep breath at the same time. “I left that job about ten months ago. I needed to do something totally different. My whole life had been turned upside down so it seemed like the right time to shake out everything in the process. I wanted to choose something that didn’t resemble my old life at all.”
“What did you pick?” Adam asks, and I can tell that he’s genuinely interested. Perhaps he’s only curious to know what I thought was missing from our life, but I’m hoping it’s because he actually still cares about me somewhat.
“Nothing. That’s sort of the funny part. Now I think I’m going to go back to the library.”
“That’s funny?”
“No, I just mean that I realized this year that the change I thought I needed wasn’t the change I needed. I spent the year learning how to cook and writing a food blog, and I got an agent who is shopping my book proposal.”
“That’s great, Rach. So you became a writer?”
“Sort of. I mean, yes, I’m writing, but there isn’t real money in it, so I’m going to go back to the library. Which is okay, because this year wasn’t about finding a great new career. It was about finding things that make me happy. Finding my voice. Standing on my own two feet.”
He’s silent for a long time, long enough for the waitress to return with his milkshake and my decaf, long enough for both of us to take several sips before we speak again.
“I was trying to remember if we ever cooked at home. I guess we didn’t,” he says. “What is the book about?”
I suddenly feel shy admitting this to him. “Divorce. Cooking. It’s called The Divorced Woman’s Guide on How to Cook Your Life from Scratch. So that’s what I’ve been doing. But I guess you didn’t know any of that,” I conclude.
“No, I had no idea. Congratulations, Rach, it sounds like you’ve had a great year.”
He hasn’t tried to find out about me. He hasn’t inquired. He doesn’t care anymore. I’m trying not to think those thoughts.
I want to tell him that despite all of that, I haven’t had a great year. I’ve had a terrible year, and as we approach the anniversary of our divorce in the next few weeks, I have only been more filled with longing rather than healing. That it doesn’t really matter what I’ve accomplished this year in the face of what I’ve lost. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him.
I believe him when he says that he didn’t know. He looks too bewildered, too thrown off that the Rachel he knew could become a writer. Stepping back, it does seem strange and out-of-place, like seeing a friend for the first time with colored contacts. A small part of me is a little insulted that he’s so shocked by the accomplishments, but wasn’t that the entire point of the Year of Me? To rub it in his face how little he knew his wife once he started spending all of his time at the office?
“Are you still at Brockman and Young?” I ask even though I know the answer.
“No, I left my job too. Maybe it’s the post-divorce thing to do,” he says, somewhat dryly.
“Are you working at a different law firm?”
“No, I’m an English teacher. I teach high school English and composition at a private school. That’s actually how I met Laura—through her brother, who works with me at the school. You don’t need a teaching degree to work there, but I’m taking some additional classes regardless.” He has placed the book on the table, and I stare at the spine as if it contains my response. Candide by Voltaire. He looks down at the book too and moves it slightly closer to himself. “I actually have you to thank. If you hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have stepped back and seen how unhappy I was being a lawyer. I really only practiced law for you, and without you there, I didn’t need to do it anymore.”
“For me?
” I exclaim. “But I never told you to be a lawyer.”
“I know you didn’t. I chose that myself. But, come on, Rachel, you knew I wanted to be a teacher. I was only doing law school to make my parents happy—I had no desire to practice law. But how could we have lived in this neighborhood on a teacher’s salary? Even now, I’m only doing it on savings. At some point, I’ll be pushed out to one of the outer boroughs.”
“We didn’t have to live in this neighborhood!” Our conversation is beginning to skate a little too close to an O. Henry story, and I stop savaging the corner of the napkin to look him straight in the eye. “You loved being a lawyer. You loved it so much, you never came home.”
“I never came home because I had to work ridiculous hours to support the lifestyle you wanted!”
We’re getting progressively louder, and other diners have peeked over from their respective booths. I recognize one table from our old apartment building, an elderly couple from the fourth floor who bought cat food by the case and needed someone to help schlep it upstairs each week. They give me a disapproving look, and I note the clump of cat hair clinging to the bottom of the woman’s coat before I return to my argument with Adam.
“What kind of lifestyle did you think I wanted?”
“Cruises. You were always talking about cruises. And private school for our future children.”
“I wanted to go on a cruise because I wanted you to be trapped on a boat with miles of water around us and no Blackberry service, where you couldn’t sit in the room working and leave me swimming on my own, like you did on every single vacation.”
“I had to work like that because I needed to make money to pay for those vacations. I had no time to do anything I wanted to do. God, Rachel, until I became a teacher, I hadn’t been to a museum in years. I was so relieved the day I walked out of that office,” he spits out.
I am so stunned I can barely breathe.
He worked those hours because he thought I wanted a lifestyle that it never occurred to me to want. And I only placed out those ideas for vacations in order to get him away from said work schedule and grab a little time for us as a couple. Now I realize how I sounded to him: whining for cruises, begging him to let me take him clothes shopping, booking us nights at expensive bed and breakfasts. I expect to see O. Henry sitting at a nearby table, twirling his handlebar mustache and nodding at our ridiculousness.