by Erin Duffy
“Do you only have one set of underwear?” I asked Dee Dee, which understandably caught her off guard. “You were wearing purple underwear the last time I saw you, too. It’s sad that I know that, but since I do, maybe you could go ahead and clear that up for me.”
“Oh my God, Claire,” Owen said when he looked up and found me standing at his table. I’d never been so happy to not be wearing fake eyelashes. I could only imagine what he’d say to me if I were. “What are you doing here?”
“Having dinner. I do that, you know.”
“Where’s Bo?”
“I left him with the valet. Where the hell do you think he is?”
“Calm down, Claire. Don’t do this,” he pleaded. I didn’t care. I just walked away from the first date I’d had in years. I was doing this. It was already being done.
“Don’t avoid my question. I really would like to know. Do you?” I asked, ignoring the sweat that was running down my cleavage, and the roll that was still trying to escape from my stomach, and forcing myself to remain calm and steadfast in my search for honest answers. “Do you only own the one pair? Or is that purple number you’re wearing your favorite, or something?” I asked, nodding toward the purple lace. “Or do you have an entire arsenal of purple underwear?” I wasn’t sure why I needed to know. I thought maybe it would make me feel better if she only had one pair of underwear and that was why she was wearing the purple again, but I doubt that was the case because women like her always had more than one lacy matching set. No one had an affair with a married man without stocking up on the good stuff—hell, there was probably an entire section in the department stores here for mistresses who want to entice married men and ruin the lives of the unsuspecting wives buying body shapers to fix the damage done by childbirth on the other side of the store.
Owen ran his hand through his hair. I’d had it with that hair. I reached into my bag and grabbed the scissors that were tucked away in the pocket next to the nail file and my house keys. I heard some small voice of reason inside that sounded an awful lot like Antonia asking What are you doing? But I told the voice to shut up because Owen and Dee Dee were ruining my date and it wasn’t fair. He’d taken too much from me. He took away my home in Chicago. He took away my marriage. He took away my security. He took away my confidence, and my pride, and my future, and my son’s chance to grow up with a united household, and I wasn’t letting him take one more thing from me.
I decided it was time I took something from him.
I decided to go with his hair.
I lunged over the wine bucket with my manicure scissors, and with one smooth motion, lopped off part of his bangs.
“Are you crazy?” he yelled as he recoiled toward Dee Dee, and grabbed the front of his hair. “What the hell are you doing?” I watched wispy strands flutter and fall like pieces of hay into his soup. It looked like minestrone.
“You just assaulted him!” Dee Dee screamed. A waiter suddenly appeared and grabbed my elbow. “He could press charges, you psychotic bitch!”
“Oh, why don’t you just shut up before I hack off your stupid beach waves?” I said, not sure why I chose tonight to lose my mind when I’d tried so hard up until now to make sure things went smoothly. Of all the restaurants around here, why did we have to end up at the same one on the same night? Better question: Why hadn’t Owen ever taken me here? Why was he all comfortable in his little booth with Dee Dee, and yet I’d never even heard of this place? Was this where they went to be together while we were still married? Was this where they were on nights when I thought he was traveling or working late? I needed to get out of the restaurant before I threw up all over their table. If Owen thought I made a scene in the oyster bar, he hadn’t seen anything yet.
“It is not okay to play ‘leggo my Eggo’ with my husband,” I said, as another waiter grabbed the scissors from my hand and placed them in his pocket. “You should know that.”
“Ma’am, I need you to leave. Right now,” the waiter said, as he and his buddy flanked me and nudged me toward the door. I felt like I was being bounced by the cast from Jersey Boys.
“Yeah, I’m going,” I sighed, realizing that poor Fred was still sitting at our lovely little table with the white rose and the votive candles, watching his date attack her ex-husband, and also, because he was old-fashioned and wanted to pick me up, that he was my ride home.
Chapter 11
THE DOORBELL RANG on Wednesday at 5:30, just as it should have, and I glanced over at Bo sitting quietly on the floor in his elephant footie pajamas, playing with a giant blue block, and wondered if I would ever have to tell him the story about how I attacked his father with manicure scissors in a restaurant. Would Owen tell him? If Bo approached him one day when he was a teenager and told him about some crazy girl who taped pictures of herself all over his locker or something, would Owen say, “That’s nothing. Did I ever tell you about the time your mom cut my hair off at dinner?” I couldn’t believe how fast I’d spiraled that this was now something I had to worry about. Antonia hopped off the couch to get the door, which was wonderful, because I was too tired to move.
“Nice hair,” Antonia said as she opened the door and tried desperately to stifle laughter.
“Come in,” I said from my seat at the bottom of the stairs. Antonia stepped to the side and Owen stepped into the foyer. He immediately scooped Bo up off the floor and stretched his arms above his head, turning my little boy into a chubby little airplane, making him laugh, and coo, and squeal, because he loved his dad. Owen’s shirt rode up above the waist of his pants, exposing a thin strip of toned muscle and taut skin, and part of me wanted to go rub my hands across it the way I used to, because those feelings didn’t just go away no matter how much you wanted them to.
“Do you have anything to say to me?” Owen asked. “I’m done being the punching bag, Claire. I’ve dealt with the beans, and the holes in my clothes, and the Craigslist ad, and even the Facebook post, but you went too far Saturday night. That was so out of character for you I’m beginning to worry that you’re not stable! It stops now. All of it,” he ordered. It didn’t bother me much, because he didn’t mean much to me anymore, so I shrugged.
“I’m sorry I cut your hair. I wish I had waited until after dinner. The soufflés looked delicious.”
“Fine. Don’t apologize.”
“She could do a whole lot worse to you than that and wouldn’t owe you an apology, Owen,” Antonia said.
“Were you on a date?” he asked, which made me smile. He’d noticed Fred. I felt vindicated knowing that Owen was aware that other people were interested in me, even if he wasn’t.
“None of your business,” I answered, and I loved being able to say that, too, especially because it was true.
“No, I guess it’s not. For what it’s worth, I don’t love the idea of you seeing other people either, but I want you to be happy.”
“Thanks for the endorsement.” I pulled Bo’s diaper bag off the hook near the basement stairs, and picked his overnight bag up off the floor. I hated giving him to Owen. I hated that he had two rooms, and two homes, and two parents who couldn’t make his family work as one. I kissed his soft cheek as I said good-bye.
“I’ll bring him back in the morning,” Owen said.
“Okay. Don’t forget to plug in the night-light I got for his room. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, and it’s pitch-black, he’ll be scared.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Claire. I’ll plug it in. He’ll be fine,” Owen reassured me. “When are you going to come and see my apartment? I think you’ll feel better about my taking him if you see where I live. Maybe part of the reason you’ve gone completely nuts is because there’s still a lot of unknowns. Let’s try and clear some of them up so that I don’t have to worry about you ending up in an asylum somewhere. Please come.”
“Yeah, that must be it. It’s all those pesky unknowns that are plaguing me.”
“I
want you to know that I’m taking care of him. You’ll have a little peace once you see his room and everything,” he said. I hated to admit that he had a point, but he had a point.
“You’re right. One of these weeks I’ll drop him off at your place.”
“Okay, good.” Bo was nuzzling Owen’s neck, and I felt the urge to cry, not because I was handing him over for the night, but because I had attacked the one other person in this world Bo loved as much as me, and hurting Owen was kind of like hurting Bo, too, and that was completely unacceptable to me. The old familiar guilt wrapped itself around me, only this time I was sure that I deserved it.
“Owen,” I whispered, because I could barely bring myself to say the words I needed to say out loud. “I’m sorry. What you did was awful, but I shouldn’t have attacked you. I’m sorry I did that.”
Owen sighed. “No. But maybe that can be the end of a long list of things neither of us should’ve done this year. And what about the Craigslist ad? My phone rang off the hook for a week. Do you have any idea how many wackos are on Craigslist?”
“No, I’m not sorry for that. Just to be clear. Just the scissors.”
“That’s a start. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Owen carried Bo out to his car and I watched through the window as he secured him in his car seat, and climbed into the front seat. The headlights burned brightly, and I waved to Bo as Owen backed the car out of the driveway, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. I felt like I should do it anyway.
I turned to face Antonia. “I guess that could’ve gone worse.”
“Uh, yeah. I have to say, I’m hugely impressed by that display of maturity. I was expecting a complete disaster.”
“Maybe we’re making progress,” I joked. “Or at least maybe I am. I don’t know what’s happening anymore.” The tears came unexpectedly. Owen and Bo were together, and I was all alone and I couldn’t imagine a time where this wouldn’t feel like torture.
“What do you want to do now?” Antonia asked, which should’ve been a pretty easy question to answer, but nothing was easy for me anymore. Part of me wanted to go into Bo’s room and sleep on the floor, and part of me wanted to go into my room and sleep on the floor, and part of me wanted to go into my room and sleep in my bed, even though the mattress was starting to mold to my body and not in a good way.
“I honestly have no idea.”
“Let’s go walk into town and get something to eat,” Antonia said.
“I don’t think so, Antonia. Can’t we just order in?” I asked, because no part of me wanted to walk into town and get something to eat.
“Come on. If I’m going to live here for a while I need to get my bearings,” she said, but I knew she was thinking that the fresh air would make me feel better, which was what people usually told you when they didn’t know what else to say.
“I’ve been here since August, and I still don’t have mine. You get used to it.”
“We’re going.”
“Can’t we go tomorrow?”
“No. You need to eat,” she said. “No one died. You’re going to get over this.”
“And eating is going to help with that?”
“It’s not going to hurt. Haven’t you ever heard of comfort food?”
“I’m not hungry,” I answered.
“I don’t care if you’re hungry. You’re going to eat,” Antonia said. “FYI, any Italian will tell you that food can cure most of life’s problems, and if it can’t, well, you should still enjoy your dinner while you figure out what to do next.”
LIGHTS ON MAIN Street burned brightly and Antonia and I walked arm in arm through town.
“You really are doing great,” Antonia reassured me, which I appreciated. I didn’t know how to measure how well I was doing. I didn’t know what qualified as a normal amount of crazy, and what was too much crazy, and what was just crazy enough. “You just went on a date. It takes some women years to get to that point. That should make you feel amazing. It’s not easy to find nice guys to go out with, believe me, I know.”
“He was a really nice guy and I scared him away. How many chances am I going to get to meet new people?”
“You don’t know that you scared him away.”
“I went berserk in the restaurant, Antonia. If I didn’t scare him away there’s something seriously wrong with him.”
“So then call him and explain yourself, not that that will be easy, or think of it as a practice date. That’s okay. You got the first one over with, and that’s important, even if it didn’t exactly go well.”
“You know what really sucks about this whole thing?”
“There’s only one thing?” she asked.
“I liked being married,” I admitted, which for some reason made me feel pathetic. I shouldn’t need a relationship to define me, and I didn’t realize that mine had, but the truth was I liked being Owen’s wife. I liked being Claire Mackenzie.
“You’ll like being single again, too. You weren’t married for that long. It’s not like you spent thirty years with some guy and then got ditched for a twenty-two-year-old with a convertible.”
“A divorce is a divorce. I don’t think mine is somehow better than that of someone who’s been married longer.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that you still know how to be you. You just need a little time, and then you’ll remember who she is. You’re going to be just fine. I think you’re still in shock more than anything else.”
“You’d be surprised how fast you can get used to not being alone,” I said.
I was probably reimagining my own history a little where that was concerned. I may have been married, but I was still alone a good amount of the time. Owen’s schedule was brutal, and when he’d finally come home he was often so tired he just wanted to take a hot shower and get into bed. I couldn’t blame him. Airports were exhausting, but it would’ve been nice if he’d bothered to acknowledge that I’d been alone the whole week with the baby, too, and had no one else to talk to. I missed adult conversation, and the time we spent together, and the feeling like we were a team united in something. Toward the end, though, I’d felt a little bit like we had assumed our roles in the relationship, and those roles rarely intersected. He would take care of the money, and I would take care of the baby—lather, rinse, repeat.
When Owen came home from his last business trip, I think it was from Portland, I made him a special dinner, because I knew things were tense. I wanted to make him pulled pork sandwiches with homemade vinegared slaw for dinner because he loved them, and I thought it would be a nice way to welcome him home. I’d purchased a Heritage pork shoulder from the butcher in town and seared it in a huge roasting pan that took two burners to heat and spattered oil all over the stovetop. When it was browned, I placed it in the slow cooker and added beef stock, and bay leaves, and peppercorns, and chili peppers, and tomatoes, and let it braise for eight whole hours. I sliced cabbage and carrots and herbs on a mandolin even though I was terrified of slicing my hand open on the blade, and spent what felt like hours chopping, pickling, and stirring. I even made his favorite potato salad, the one with the mayonnaise and the tarragon and the hard-boiled eggs that I hated. I bought soft rolls at Whole Foods and after almost nine hours of cooking, I had my perfect welcome-home meal ready. When Owen arrived, he dropped his bag on the floor, and commented that the house smelled good, which it did, because it was impossible for a house to smell any other way if there had been a pork shoulder cooking for so long. I handed him a dark amber beer, and rubbed his shoulders and told him to sit down so that I could serve him the best pulled pork sandwiches ever made, but he said he had Taco Bell at the airport and wasn’t hungry. Instead, he drank the beer, and sat on the couch watching Vertigo on the Turner Classic Movies channel. He didn’t even taste it, or say thank you, or pretend to be hungry even though he wasn’t, because that was what you did when someone you loved spent all day making dinner for you. I was hurt, but he didn’t get that, because we had stopp
ed understanding each other the way we once did. The pork went in the refrigerator, and the potatoes went in the trash, and I went to bed because I was no longer hungry either, and drained from making the effort. Still, I didn’t know the next step was divorce. No one ever told me that if you stopped effectively communicating with your husband his high school girlfriend would swoop down from the Coldwell Banker office and steal him away from you.
I paused in front of the window of Farmhouse Kitchen. That was it. That was the name of the restaurant that Dee Dee told Owen that he just had to try because it was simply the best food in the entire world and we should totally take her word for it. The lights were dim save for a small lantern on each table, because apparently in order to be supremely trendy, you had to turn off all the lights and pretend you were dining in the pre–Ben Franklin era. Wine bottles sat on coasters on the table, encouraging people to help themselves. The diners ran the gamut of the expected: bored housewives pretending to be enthralled with their husbands’ tales of war from their day at the office, first date hopefuls trying to figure out how many glasses of wine had to grace their coaster before they’d be comfortable, and insecure singles trying to prove that they weren’t insecure in their singleness by having dinner at the local nose-to-tail hotspot alone. “Let’s eat here,” I said to Antonia. “I’ve heard good things.”
DESPITE DEE DEE’S claim that this place was impossible to get into, and that she could help because, of course, she knew someone, we only had to wait ten minutes for a table, so we waited at the bar. I had just ordered a glass of wine when I looked over and spotted one of the moms I’d seen at the library before, and I thought I’d seen her once in the drugstore, too, in the aisle that sold children’s Motrin and Snoopy Band-Aids. We made eye contact, and I smiled, because that was what you did when you saw someone you recognized in a bar, but she looked away, and I wasn’t at all sure why she did that. “I think I know her,” I said to Antonia.