The thought of paper in pockets brings to mind the attorney I discovered.
“I was talking to someone at work,” I say in my best casual voice. There is no easy way to segue into the discussion of divorce attorneys with your husband.
“Oh yeah? You have a new feature idea?” Adam says.
I smile at the fact that Adam’s first thought is of my writing.
“No, uh, a coworker of mine got divorced recently. Said it was amicable and really clean. Affordable, too. She gave me the number of her attorney.”
“Oh.” Adam finishes taping closed a box. “You have an attorney already?”
“Not officially. Do you?”
“No.”
“Good, because I was thinking, if you wanted, we could use the same one?”
His eyebrows raise.
“That’s what Mika did—the girl from work,” I explain. “She said she and her ex-husband wanted it fast, efficient, and cheap, and no drama, and their attorney was really great. Maybe we want to meet with her? I have her information. You can contact her on your own, if you like. See if you’re inter—”
“If she’s good enough for you, she’s good enough for me, Halley.” He begins assembling another box.
“Okay.”
“I think that’s a good idea, actually,” he says, tone a bit upbeat. “Sharing a lawyer. I didn’t even consider it.” He pauses, then says, “To be honest, I haven’t really considered an attorney or anything to do with divorce proceedings. Actually, why not ask Griffin?”
“Griffin? He’s a corporate attorney.”
“Not Griffin himself. His firm or someone he knows.”
“Adam, do you really think it’s such a great idea to involve family in our divorce?”
He gives a self-deprecating laugh. “You’re probably right. So, we’ve got an attorney?”
“Potentially.”
“Potentially. Good.” He looks into my eyes. “I wish we could have found a better solution, Halley. A solution where we stay together.”
“Me, too.”
“I’ve thought about us and this whole mess nonstop. It isn’t easy.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say solemnly.
“The fact that it’s not easy and we’re still doing it, though, is kind of that flashing light.”
“Flashing light?” I scrunch my brow. “What do you mean?”
“That flashing light that says, this is the right thing. A wake-up. Our obstacle is . . . insurmountable.”
I wanted with my whole being for Adam to agree that our relationship should take a different course. That the problems before us could be met with a solution that neither of us wanted to admit was the best one. For both of us. Now that he does, it all becomes so real, so palpable, so final.
“I’ve visited Rylan twice since the hospital visit,” he says. He’s seated on the edge of our bed, his hands limp in his lap, a tiny smile playing on his lips. “I can’t get enough of him, and babies grow so fast.” He looks over at me. “I can see now that you’re right, Halley. It hurts, and I don’t want to let you go, but I can’t let go of wanting to become a father someday. I should have been able to see it all sooner—how I felt, how you felt. I mean, your letter in Copper!”
I nod, my lips pressed together, my hands firmly clasped in front of me.
“You’ve always made it clear that you don’t want to become a parent, and I think I lost respect for that along the way,” he says. “I got so caught up in what I wanted that I thought time could persuade you otherwise. Or I just wanted to live in denial, simply say, ‘It’ll all work out’ without really giving genuine thought to if and how it would work out. Like you said, water and oil don’t mix, Hals. Okay, maybe for a brief moment when you shake them together everything seems to be cohesive, but let time pass and they’re no more suitable to one another than a man wanting a child and a woman not.” Adam looks at me with glassy eyes. “If we’re both honest with each other, I think the most honest thing we can do is part ways. I’m sorry it ended up like this, Halley.”
“I am, too.” I crawl across our bed and move beside Adam, slipping my arms around him. “I am, too, Adam.”
Everything he’s said, as difficult as it is to hear and as painful as it is to digest, is right. It’s how I feel. It’s heartbreaking and relieving.
I pull back, brushing my hair from my face. Adam stands, clears his throat. He moves away, picking up a stack of folded clothes at the head of the bed, and begins to pack them.
“You think this will ever feel . . . normal?” he asks, pensive.
“Not being together anymore?”
“Yeah.”
I shrug. “At some point,” I say, hopeful. “I think so. I think it will when . . . when you find someone to have a child with.” My heart aches at the idea, at my admission. At my letting go of Adam. “When you . . . become a father.”
“And what about you?” He raises his brows.
“Well, we covered that. No babies for me.” I force out a half laugh.
“That’s not what I mean.” He stops packing. “Halley, if we’re going to pull the honest card and divorce because of it, then I want you to go out there and live your life with every bit of purpose you can find.”
“I can’t think about remarrying, Adam.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He moves across the room and stands right in front of me. “I’m talking about you living your purpose. You saw how Nina has hers with Rylan, and you tell me to go become a father and fulfill that role.”
“Yes.”
“What about you?” He places a hand on my upper arm. “Halley, you’re an amazing writer.”
“Let’s not compare having a child to writing articles for a women’s magazine,” I say with an eye roll.
“Halley, you’re not happy at work.”
“What?” Where is this coming from?
“All right, yes, you’ve had some wins lately,” he says.
“Damn straight.”
“But writing’s your calling. Can you honestly tell me you’re writing what you’re passionate about?”
“It’s a job. I need the money. And it’s a writing job,” I say, starting to become irritated at the strange turn in conversation.
“I’m only saying you deserve to be happy. And you’re not happy at work.”
“Granted, I could be happier, yes.” I give him this.
Adam’s eyes lock on mine. Both his face and his grip on my arm are imploring, encouraging.
“Halley, whatever it is for you, be true to yourself. Go after it. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you and so much potential. Live honestly.” He drops his hand from my arm and takes a step back. “Maybe it isn’t for me to say, but I will. Write that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Go be that author you’ve always dreamed of being.”
I crinkle my nose at his carpe diem monologue. “O-kay,” I draw out.
“I’m serious. I think you should do it. Like you did with your letter, put it all out there—without fear, with honesty, passion . . .” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Share what you’ve got inside that very talented head of yours.” He smiles, his eyes creasing in that forever-memorable way of his. “You’ve got it in you. I believe in you, Halley.”
“That . . . that means a lot, Adam.”
“I think it’s time you go do what you’ve always wanted to do. Write the next great American novel!”
“Ha! Well, if I were going to write a book, I wouldn’t attempt the next great American novel.”
“Whatever it is, just do it,” he pleads. “Okay? No more excuses. Be true to who you are. Promise me?”
“Promise you that I’ll write a novel?” I say through a laugh.
“Yes.” He’s absolutely serious. His shoulders pull up toward his ears, his arms still crossed. “I know you’ve got one in you. Hell, probably a dozen. What have you got to lose?”
I jut my bottom lip out in response.
Truth is, I have let
fear and lack of confidence get the better of me. I’ve used the excuses of “no time,” “Copper is my job—my paying job—not writing novels,” and “I’m probably not good enough to make it,” and allowed them to foolishly dictate my chasing my dream. I have always wanted to write and publish a novel—even, as Adam suggested, a dozen—but what if the words didn’t come out right? What if no one believed the story or felt for the characters? What if I wasn’t any good? What if . . . what if . . . what if . . .
“Look,” Adam says, snapping me back to the conversation. “I’m just saying, if we’re going to do this whole live-honestly thing, Halley, then for god’s sake, go for it! Do it!”
I nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I know, Adam.”
It’s so much easier to say than to do, I want to tell him, but instead, I continue nodding and say, “I’ve got it. Don’t talk but also walk.”
“Exactly.”
I keep nodding, as if convincing myself as much as Adam that I will consider filling that void—that hole—in my life. Conquering fear, self-doubt, apprehension. Pursuing my purpose, living true.
Adam leans over the bed to grab another stack of clothes.
“Who knows,” he says, “maybe sitting down and focusing on a book will help you through the . . . divorce. I know I plan on mastering this mountain biking thing.” He catches my gaze and smiles.
“I heard about that,” I say in a flirty kind of way. “Mr. Tame the Mountain, are we?”
I watch as Adam neatly places my folded clothes into boxes, as he clearly labels, tapes, and sets one box after another aside in an orderly stack. There’s a mechanical yet also thoughtful and emotional approach to his system of packing away his wife’s belongings. A peculiar analogy to the passage of time and life pops into my head once again. I start to think about how we compartmentalize things in life—this goes into that box, this in that one. How we discover coping mechanisms, seek answers, and ultimately solve one problem after another, often battling what the heart wants and what the head says. How sometimes we choose to hold on to something—this blouse, this relationship, yes—and let go of others—this pair of jeans, this marriage, no. How we create systems to try to make sense of things. How we fill gaps, pass time, and eventually learn to heal and move on after our hearts break. Or, at the very least, try to. It may seem trite and perhaps even a little defeatist. Although I suppose, for the eternal optimist, there is also a great deal of hope in it. It’s peculiar how hope and love are uniquely, inextricably paired, yet also at odds with each other.
One thing this is—to use yet another literary cliché—is bittersweet. I know most wouldn’t drop their divorce into the bittersweet category. Bitter, yes. I’d like to think, though, that in my and Adam’s divorce there is not a change just in the love and relationship between a husband and a wife, but also in the hope and possibility of a child, a parental love that deserves to be awarded and explored and lived. And, yeah, maybe even that next great American novel, too. We’ll see. Whatever lies ahead, I have to believe that with the turn from one chapter to another there is a future that Adam and I will come to look back on and admire, knowing we lived as fully and as honestly as we could. Even if it wasn’t together forever.
I tell myself that Adam and I will look back on all of this not with heavy hearts but knowing we made the best call we could in a shitty situation. I tell myself this because I want it to be true. And because I need it to be true. Bittersweet it may be, but divorce is never easy. Not on the one who calls for it in the first place and not when it’s mutual. And certainly not when you still love each other, when you have to learn how to let your love change. It’s a transition—a chapter—and learning something new always takes time. It always hurts before it heals. It’s always bitter before it’s sweet.
“Halley?” Adam’s got a load of my paperbacks in his arms, having moved on from clothes to another subcategory of my personal items.
“Hmm?”
His eyes lock with mine in the way only his eyes can. “I love you.”
I look at the paperbacks in his arms. My eyes instantly gravitate to the bright-orange spine that reads The Baby Name Wizard. My throat constricts and my stomach tightens. And like that, tears begin to well, but not before I look back into my husband’s eyes, swallow down the pain, and whisper, “I love you.”
I was wrong. This is the heaviest I love you I have ever—and will ever—say. It is the hardest. It is our last.
Nineteen
The appointment with the divorce attorney has been made. I wonder if this is how Charlotte felt when she made that first marriage counseling appointment. That first official, bring-in-the-third-party step of attempting to repair a damaged relationship. Things suddenly become so much more real. As if everything that preceded the appointment—the separation, the anguish, all that waiting—weren’t enough. While Charlotte and Marco are on their way to marital reconciliation, Adam and I are on our way to what Marian’s lovingly coined individual identity reconciliation. I get what she implies—Adam and I don’t hate or resent each other; we’re not angrily pulling the plug on our marriage, vengefully calling it quits, fighting over assets and finding ways to apply pressure, get in the last word and final dig to the side. We’re reconciling with each other on an individual level. He’s to find himself, and I’m to find myself.
Adding the appointment with the divorce attorney—my last entry for the year—to the calendar on my cell phone and scrawling it in red marker on the calendar on the kitchen wall emphasize the realness and permanence of it all. To tell me and all who pass by that calendar that what is happening is not a nightmare, nor a theory, nor a thought.
Needless to say, it puts a very odd spin on Christmas this year. Never mind that I can’t pass by a Christmas tree lot without tearing up, but Christmas is a time of cheer and festivity. A time to be around loved ones. A time of hope and wishful thinking and gratitude. Marian and I are each other’s rock, more so now in the aftermath of our tragic love stories. Had either one of us known what a hellish year this one would be in the love department, we’d probably have purchased stock in Ben and Jerry’s. Heavy doses of calories and broken hearts bring best friends together like nothing else.
But the vibe in our home is anything but merry. It’s downright depressing. Alice’s complaint about the lack of holiday decor in her home is warranted here. Marian and I don’t have as little as a silver strand of tinsel out, much less a tree or two single-girl stockings hanging above the fireplace. It’s just wrong.
I’m about to tell Marian that I think we could both use some cheering up by finally getting into the spirit of the season when she beats me to it.
“Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! And all the merry-merries my best girl deserves!” Marian trills, waltzing from her bedroom with a large brown carrier bag in hand, “Gucci” inscribed in gold across the center.
“Christmas isn’t for another two days,” I say in protest, but not because I’m a stickler for opening gifts only on Christmas morning. I haven’t given a single thought to any Christmas gifts this year. It’s terrible. I have nothing for Marian. Or anyone, for that matter. This is entirely unlike me, and I find myself using my divorce as a cheap cop-out. I wonder how often and for how long I will be able to use divorce as an excuse for brain-dead moments?
“I know,” Marian says, “but it isn’t the eighties anymore, and you still blast eighties tunes like they’re today’s hits.”
“That I won’t argue,” I say with a laugh.
She presents the carrier bag to me by holding its handles with two fingers, the nails freshly painted a Christmas red.
“You got a mani,” I note.
Marian’s been out of sorts because of the whole Cole thing. She even let her dark roots start to show, which she never used to allow, since she still didn’t buy into the whole bleach-blonde-hair-with-black-roots look. Super skanky, I think she called it. I was as relieved to see her touch them up a few days ago as I am to see that her nails are back
to their maintained selves.
“I may be heartbroken and unable to move on, but I’m not about to go super skanky on myself,” she says, making me smile. “Come on,” she urges, dangling the bag in front of me. “Open it!”
“Damn, Marian.” I take the bag into my hands. “I feel horrible. I haven’t done my Christmas shopping yet.”
“Who cares? Open it.” She claps her hands in excitement.
As the bag indicates, Marian’s outdone herself and bought me a Gucci handbag. It’s a classically designed tote, and I am immediately obsessed with it.
“Marian, this is way too expensive,” I say as soon as it sinks in that this bag costs more than any single item in my closet. More expensive than any bag I already own or that coveted pair of hot pink SJP heels Adam got me for my last birthday.
“I got a great bonus, and I have a well-paying job, Hals,” she says breezily. “And it’s not about the cost. It was my pleasure.”
“Well, thank you.” I run my fingers across the leather straps.
“And I love to shop,” she says with a cackle. “Besides, I can’t watch you go off to work schlepping that boring nameless bag you carry.”
“It does the job,” I say, defending my trusty large black bag.
“Well, Gucci does the job, too, in style.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Open it!”
“Open it?” I look down at my bag, noticing there is something inside.
It is a medium-size black box. As I pull it out and discover what it is, I immediately smile and look to Marian.
“Thank you, Marian. My gosh . . .”
Marian returns the smile. “Now you can easily make—”
“Coffee for one,” I finish.
“I was going to say, ‘healthier amounts of coffee,’ but you get the idea.”
“Thank you.” I set my new French press on the sofa and wrap my best friend in a hug. “Thank you, Marian. For everything.”
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