Bitter Sweet Street

by Lena North

  I blinked, not questioning his knowledge.

  My thoughts immediately went to our goddamn cat. In spite of having been on a diet for the past seven years, it was fat. It also smelled like old mothballs no matter how much of the expensive aloe vera shampoo I used, and I hated it. The feeling was completely mutual, and now the disgusting animal would ruin my possibility to make a swift escape from my marriage. Hell no, I thought.

  Before I could stop to think, I picked up my phone and called Maddie.

  “Ange –”

  “You love our cat,” I interrupted her.

  She didn’t. In fact, she probably hated it even more than I did.

  “What?”

  “When you get back to Chicago, you will go to our house, and you will pick it up and take it home with you.”

  “Wh –”

  “First thing when you’re back, Maddie. It is now your cat. I give it to you, and if you don’t take it, I will tell Andy what you did.”

  Silence.

  “I have pictures,” I semi-lied.

  Another long silence.

  “Fine,” she snapped, finally.

  I assumed this meant photos of my husband and her actually existed, and closed the call without another word.

  Then I started crying silently again.

  “Do you have any more guns?” Zack asked quietly.

  “Four. Closet in the hall.”

  “I’ll just grab them, and have Danny lock them up in his gun safe, okay?” he asked.

  “Whatever,” I rasped out and went inside, too tired to even say thanks.

  “Angie,” he called out when I was halfway up the stairs.

  “Yeah?”

  “You think it’ll feel like this forever but it won’t. You’ll get through this.”

  I didn’t answer him.

  When I lay curled up in bed, I tried to find my fury again because as awful as that had been, it had been better than how I felt right then. I had at least felt alive.

  As I lay there in the dark room, I felt dead.

  ***

  I woke with a pounding headache and a queasy feeling in my stomach, which clearly were the after effects from drinking all that red wine. A wave of nausea hit me when I moved, so it took a few moments to remember where I was, and what had happened.

  “Angie?” a soft voice whispered.

  I opened my eyes and found Louise and Beebs by my side.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Not great,” I told them, which must have been obvious.

  “Pat took that woman down to the bus station, and put her on the shuttle to the airport,” Beatrice said.

  I closed my eyes tightly and pressed my lips together to stop them from trembling. That woman. My best friend. My roomie from college. She’d held my baby at the christening. And she’d slept with my husband.

  “Is there anyone we can call?” Beatrice murmured. “Your mother?”

  Oh God, no.

  “There’s nobody to call. Please, please don’t call my mother. I’ll call my kids sometimes later, and everyone else can wait.”

  “What can we do for you?” Louise asked.

  “I know you are trying to help and I appreciate it. I really do,” I rasped out. “But all I want is to be left alone. I need to be alone, Louise. Can you do that for me?”

  “Absolutely,” she replied quietly. “Sleep for a while, Angie, and we’ll take care of everything.”

  “Okay,” I said, tired so deep into my bones I couldn’t even express my gratitude.

  Their soft steps and the clicking sound as they closed the door were the last things I heard, and then I slept again.

  The ping from my phone, indicating I had a text message, jostled me out of sleep.

  “Aww, Mom, so sorry to hear you have the flu. Hope you feel better soon. Your neighbor sounds super nice, and she promised to give you chicken and noodle. Take it easy and call when you can, love ya.”

  I was still trying to get my sleep-fogged brain to understand my daughter’s message when there was another one.

  “Flu sucks. Spain, not so much. You’re the bestest, get better quickly.”

  Johnny.

  Louise had apparently called my kids and told them I was ill. It made me feel like the worst mom ever, but the fact that she held them off for a few days filled me with relief. Then my phone pinged again

  “Your nice neighbor told me you have the flu. LOL. Your mother.”

  I blinked, wondering what on earth my mother found hilarious.

  “Grandma, why are you laughing at Mom?!?”

  Apparently, my mother had sent the text not only to me but also to her grandchildren, and Annie asked what my befuddled mind also wanted to know.

  “I’m not laughing at all. Your grandmother.”

  “Grandma, what do you think LOL means?”

  “Lots of love. Your grandmother.”

  “Grandma, it means Laugh Out Loud!!!!”

  There was a long silence, and I could clearly picture my mother staring at the phone, trying to spin this in a way which made her look good.

  “I see. Angelica, you should have told me. Have to go. Your mother.”

  Annie, curious now, quickly replied, “Did you say that to someone else, Grandma?”

  “Yes. Myrtle. Have to go. Your grandmother.”

  Oh, my God. Myrtle’s husband Bert had passed away a few weeks earlier, so it was quite clear to me why my mother “had to go”. I hoped she would find it in herself to apologize properly. Any other time, I would have had a separate conversation going with my girl, joking about my mother and how she couldn’t get that we would see on the phone who texted what. I turned off the phone and closed my eyes.

  I fell asleep immediately, and woke up to find a small refrigerator in my messy living room, with a note from Louse and Beatrice saying that they’d filled it, I should just leave a note if I wanted something else, and the builders would stay away for a while. I cried when I read it, and I cried again that night when the door downstairs opened, Daniel called out, “Burger and fries, Angie,” and closed the door. He or Pat came each night with take-out, and I had no clue how the women did it, but they kept the fridge stocked with fresh food without me noticing them entering my home.

  I cried until I had no more tears left in me, and then I stared through the window at the trees outside and the mountains rising sharply behind them. I knew I had to figure out what to do but couldn’t shake off the sadness long enough to start planning. I felt hollow, as if someone had carved out everything beneath my skin and left a huge void filled with nothing but hurt and emptiness. So I slept again, and when I woke up, it started all over with me crying helplessly. I thought I’d never manage to get myself out of the awful bottomless pit of loneliness and self-pity I’d ended up in, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get out of it.

  This went on for almost a week, and I didn’t see or talk to anyone. I texted cheery messages to my kids and told them I felt better and would call later. They texted back wishing me well, and I sent happy smileys and some more cheery messages. It was all lies, but I couldn’t involve my children in the misery I felt without including their father in my explanations, and that would be unforgivable. So I lied and hit the smiley with the red cheeks and stupid, smug grin a few more times before pressing send.

  Then one morning, which was not so much morning as lunchtime, I found Louise and Beatrice waiting for me in my living room, together with a group of women I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?” I asked, wondering if I was dreaming.

  If I did, it would surely qualify as a nightmare. I hadn’t showered in a week, and not changed clothes either. The bags under my eyes were probably the same size as the saddlebags on the Harleys I’d seen cruising along Main Street. Meeting a handful of women who all looked like they changed underwear on a regular basis and actually owned a hair brush was not what I wanted. At all.

  “H
ello, Angie,” Louise said.

  There was an awkward silence, and I contemplated how rude it would be to turn around and simply leave them standing there.

  “We’re here for an invention,” one of the women said.

  “Intervention,” another hissed.

  “That’s what I said,” the first said.

  “No, it wasn –”

  “Girls,” Beatrice murmured.

  “Right,” they both said at the same time.

  I stared at them. Interventions were for alcoholics and drug addicts, weren’t they?

  “My husband left me two years ago because he fell in love with our daughter’s English lit teacher,” one of the women said quietly. “They live three houses down the road from me now.”

  “My son died of cancer last year,” another said.

  “My mother has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”

  The last came from Beatrice, and I turned slowly to her, but my head snapped around when Louise spoke.

  “I thought Danny was cheating on me last year.”

  What?

  “He wasn’t, but I thought so. It isn’t what you’re going through, but it is in a way. I know what I thought and how I felt so…”

  Tears filled my eyes as I looked at her.

  Then the last woman took a step forward. Her face was blank in a way that made it hard, and her eyes were so sad.

  “I cheated on my husband. I didn’t love him anymore, and instead of getting out of our marriage I had an affair.” She made a short pause and added quietly, “Several affairs.”

  “Roxy…” Louise murmured and put an arm around the woman’s shoulders.

  “I wish I’d done things the right way. I didn’t love him, but he didn’t deserve that. My only excuse was that I felt trapped and old, and blamed him for not giving me what I wanted. What I never told him I needed. In the end he found out, and we split up. He didn’t love me either, but I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he found out what I’d done. I’ll live with that forever.”

  I sniffled, and Beatrice handed me some tissues.

  “We all know, Angie. One way or the other, we know what hurt feels like. Please let us help.”

  I swallowed a few times and cleared my throat.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered. “It all feels useless. I don’t know why I should even bother trying when we’ll all die one of these days anyway?”

  “But Angelica, on all the other days we won’t,” Beatrice replied. “Life happens here and now, on all the days we don’t die.”

  I swallowed again.

  “You don’t even know me,” I argued.

  “We knew your Aunt Jenny, and want to get to know you,” one of the women countered, and when I didn’t say anything, she stretched her hand out. “I’m Molly.”

  I shook her hand, and the other two women introduced themselves as Roxanne and Amelia.

  They were like a tornado made of cotton and spun sugar. Before I knew what hit me, they had coaxed me into going upstairs and into the shower. When I was done, I found clean clothes laid out on the bed for me, and then they simply ushered me over to Louise’s house where food was prepared. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about me, and them, and life. I hadn’t spent time like that with a group of women in a long time, and their presence didn’t fill the void inside me, but they softened the edges of it, making them feel less jagged and harsh. It had hurt to even breathe the past week but crying and laughing together eased away some of the pain and I felt how my shoulders slumped a little with relief.

  “Angie,” Molly said as she was on her way out of the door. “We haven’t asked, and I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but you should know that I’m a lawyer.”

  I stopped breathing.

  “Family law,” she added quietly.

  “I –” I started but she cut me off immediately.

  “If you have someone in Chicago, you should use that firm, but if you don’t, then I have some friends there who –”

  “I want you,” I said.

  “Ang –”

  “I want you,” I repeated.

  “Okay,” she said. “Stop by my office tomorrow and we’ll talk. Main Street, next to Higher.”

  I nodded, and she hugged me.

  “You’ll be fine,” she whispered and left.

  “I will absolutely put pressure on you,” Roxy said with a cheeky grin. “I have a yoga studio, and I expect you tomorrow morning at seven.”

  Seven? Seven in the morning?

  “Um,” I said.

  “Louise, bring her, okay?” Roxy simply said to my now giggling neighbor, and left too.

  I was apparently going for a freakishly early yoga session and then seeing a lawyer.

  Chapter Six

  I’ll find out

  The next weeks passed by in a whirlwind of yoga, renovations, and meeting my new gang of girlfriends for various activities which I suspected were partially constructed to keep me busy. I went along with it all and pretended I was happy, and the longer I pretended, the more it became real. I still cried sometimes, and life felt a little bit wobbly, but I was finding my way out of the sadness. I talked to my children, and even though I fibbed about my flu, I could at least be honest when I told them I felt better.

  When I called Stewart, he surprised me by being calm and rational. We discussed what would happen, and agreed to let our lawyers create a proposal with an equal split of all common assets. Maddie had kept her promise to pick up the cat, something that actually made Stewart snicker quietly because he had hated the fat animal just as much as I did.

  “Will you come to Chicago?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was thinking next week, to pack my things, and…”

  Suddenly it became real. I would pack up my home, and sign divorce papers. I wouldn’t be Angelica Marsden anymore. I would be Angie Parker again.

  Oh, my God. I would be single.

  “I’ll be in Hong Kong next week, but you have the keys,” Stewart said, and I snapped out of my thoughts.

  We talked some more, and then we said our goodbyes. I expected to feel something, anything, and I didn’t.

  Instead of giving myself time to freak out about my lack of emotions, I took a deep breath and called my children, something I’d promised Stewart I’d do. He would stop by Annie on his way back from Hong Kong and would call Johnny when I had talked to them. He might have turned out to be a shitty husband, but his voice was sincere when he told me he wanted to do what was best for our kids, and I was grateful for that. A small voice in my head whispered to me that he should have thought about that before he slept with my best friend, and heaps of other women, but I pushed that back.

  I wished I could have told my children in person that their father and I were getting a divorce, but with Annie on the east coast and Johnny in Spain, there was no time to get to both of them and I wanted them to hear it from me before word started spreading back in Chicago. They seemed to take it well, both of them assuring me that they had expected it, that they understood, and that they were okay. Annie said she’d come to Colorado and visit me a few weeks later, and I promised Johnny I’d be at O’Hare airport when he got back.

  When we’d hung up, I sat on the porch and tried not to cry. My kids were wonderful, Stewart and I were cordial towards each other, and I had no reason to cry, but I wanted to. This was not how I’d imagined my life would turn out.

  The mornings in Roxy’s yoga class had rubbed off on me, though, so after a while, I crossed my legs and started breathing slowly. As I inhaled the cool, fresh mountain air, I calmed down and my thoughts started to wander. Then I realized I hadn’t heard the squirrel in a long time.

  “Crap,” I whispered, but this was met with total silence.

  “Asshole,” I said, slightly louder, and there was no reply to this curse either.

  What the hell, I thought and got to my feet.
Without thinking it through, I leaned forward slightly over the porch rail.

  “Fuck!” I shouted.

  Familiar laughter echoed immediately, although it was unfortunately not the squirrel.

  “Hey there, Angie,” Zack said as he came walking through the forest.

  Damn it.

  “I was just…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain what I was doing because the truth would only make me seem like a crazy woman and I couldn’t come up with a plausible lie.

  “You’re doing okay?” he asked, still grinning.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding stupidly and wishing I didn’t feel so awkward.

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll just…” he said and indicated the trail to my neighbor’s house.

  “Okay,” I said. “See you around.”

  “Yeah, Angie,” he murmured. “See you around.”

  He walked away and I groaned quietly as I put my hands over my face. I’d asked that man if he’d had a Brazilian wax, he’d heard my friend admit to sleeping with my husband, seen me fail at shooting a squirrel, and now I’d shouted crude words at him. I was also quite sure he’d been the one to wipe up my puke before taking my guns away because Louise had just looked surprised when I tried to thank her.

  “Shit,” I said hoarsely.

  And the squirrel barked out laughter.

  I raised my head and stared at the forest in front of me, wondering if the squirrel was the devil himself incarnated. Then my phone rang.

  “Hey, Angelica,” a deep voice said.

  It took me a few seconds to hear who it was, but when recognition hit me I felt a smile spread on my face.

  “Michael!” I said happily.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called before,” he said. “I didn’t want to…”

  “It’s okay, Michael. I didn’t call either,” I said.

  We’d worked together for several years, and I’d always liked him so if I would have called one of my colleagues it would have been him. Or Jonas. I should call my former boss, I thought. I had no clue what to tell him, but I should call when I got back to Chicago.

  “How are you holding up?” Michael asked.