Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married

by Heather McElhatton

  I call Nick. “Jen?” he says. “What’s up?” I tell him I need him to meet me at the pound in fifteen minutes. He should wear dark clothes and bring any tools he has that can cut, pry, pull open, or break into things. He pauses, and then to his credit he says, “I’ll be there.” I hang up and the Navy SEAL commander approves of the decision. Nick will be a worthy crewmember.

  The pound parking lot is empty. I leave the car running and start circling the building. I’m looking for any open door or sign of someone like a security guard. They probably have cameras watching me right now, which is fine. Lock me up tomorrow and throw away the key. Tonight, I will be getting inside this building. I find the gloomy entrance closed up tight. The big metal security doors are padlocked. Every window is barred and there’s not a night janitor to be seen.

  Nick’s truck pulls into the lot and parks next to my car.

  He hops out of the car and says, “What’s the plan, chief?”

  “Ace is inside that building, and we’re getting him out.”

  “Okay . . .” He looks up at the ominous shadowy building. “Whatcha thinking?”

  “The entrances have metal doors and double padlocks. Too hard to go through that way.”

  “Yep.” He nods. “Never liked doors much myself.”

  “The first-floor windows are all barred, the second-story windows aren’t.”

  He looks up. “Second story, then?”

  I nod. “Unless you have enough steel cable or chain link in your truck.”

  “Well then, let me take a look.”

  I’m gauging the height of our vehicles and measuring them against the building, all the while vaguely aware of him rooting around in his truck. Then I hear a loud clank and a heavy metal chain dragging on the ground. “I’m thinking those little window bars over there might pop out,” he says, and I agree. I move his truck and reposition it closer to the building as Nick drags the heavy chain over and clamps it with a thick U-bolt to the metal bars on a window. Then he bolts the other end of the chain underneath his idling truck.

  “Ready?” he says. “Just keep the wheels straight and gun it.”

  “You want me to do it?”

  “Hell, sweetheart, this is your rodeo.”

  “All right. Here we go.” I get into his truck and slam the door shut. Then I take a deep breath, shift her in gear, and punch that pedal down for every ounce I’m worth.

  Vroooorovrooom! The truck lurches forward, the chain goes taut, the engine starts straining. “Come on, you son of a bitch!” I grip the wheel with both hands, nearly standing on the gas pedal with my full weight. I hear a metal groaning and then bang! The truck leaps forward like a bronco from the gate and the iron frame bursts from the brick window well, clanking across the asphalt. I hit the brakes and stick my head out the window.

  “Did we pop it?” I shout at him.

  “We popped it!” he shouts back.

  Nick just helped me break into a city building. Not only does Jennifer the girl think that’s sexy, Jennifer the Navy SEAL commander does too. I repark his truck so the bed is right beneath the window we just violated, and we climb up, hoisting ourselves through the window. Inside the dark building we run down the empty halls, our footsteps echoing off the floors of polished cement.

  We find Ace in a lonely chain-link cage with cement floors and a big padlock on the door. He’s all alone, without even a blanket to comfort him in there. Ace whimpers when he sees me and limps over to the door. “Hey, buddy!” I whisper. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? Don’t worry.” A sheet of yellow paper is clipped to his cage. The top line reads “ACE”— IMMEDIATE TERMINATION.

  I snatch it up and rapidly scan the form for contact information or a signature. My jaw clenches when I see it. Of course. I’d recognize that spidery scrawl anywhere.

  Mrs. Edwin Keller. The cocky bitch signed it at the bottom.

  “Hey, Nick! We’re gonna need a hacksaw or—”

  “Some bolt cutters?” He whips out a pair of industrial bolt cutters from his jacket.

  “Where were those?” I hiss at him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says as he snaps off Ace’s lock, which clatters to the floor. We hear another dog whimper in the cage across the way, a skinny greyhound who’s shivering nervously. On the cage door it says “TOGGLE”—IMMEDIATE TERMINATION.

  “She said there were two dogs delivered. We’ll have to take this one too.”

  “Already on it.” Nick snaps off Toggle’s lock. Then we wrap the dogs up in our jackets; I carry Ace and he takes Toggle. We hear something in the other room and we both look at each other. Then we get the hell out of there.

  I go through the window first and stand on the truck bed as Nick hands Ace down to me. I set him down and tell him to stay, and for the first time in his life, he obeys me. Nick carefully lowers the greyhound down and I hold her while he climbs out onto the truck bed. He takes Toggle and I take Ace and we quickly leave the scene of our crime. I call him on the cell phone as we drive away and say thank you.

  “Shit, I think we should do that once a week,” he says. “Travel the land and become professional dog-nappers!” I thank him again and tell him I’ll call him to check on Toggle tomorrow. Then I hang up and drive for twenty minutes or more before I realize I have no idea where I’m going.

  At a red light I catch sight of the little Travel Angel on my dashboard. I lean forward, crushing it with my fist. “Ace,” I say, “from now on, we look out for ourselves. I’ve about had it with angels. No one will ever hurt you again, as God is my witness.”

  I drive to the house but I can’t go inside.

  Brad’s car is now parked in the driveway. It makes me writhe with rage. I turn around and keep driving. By this time it’s nearly three in the morning. I go the only place I can think of, the only place I know where I can turn up this late, or rather, this early.

  Ted’s house.

  Ted, my bookmark guy. Always in place when I need him.

  I drive over to his apartment and knock on the door. A pretty blond girl with a perky ski-jump nose answers. She’s wearing red flannel pajamas that are covered with big white snowflakes. An enormous beagle waddles up behind her. He sniffs at Ace, who growls at him. “Sorry,” I say. “I thought my friend Ted still lived here.”

  Then Ted appears in the doorway. He’s also in red flannel pajamas covered with big white snowflakes. I look at them and say, “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Jen?” Ted smiles. “Are you okay?”

  “Yep!”

  “This is Jen,” Ted says to the blonde, and she blinks at me. Then her face lights up.

  “Jen?” she says. “Your Jen?”

  “My Jen,” Ted says, grinning.

  “Come in,” the blonde says. “Come in!” She seizes me with freakishly strong hands and pulls me into the apartment. Before I know what’s happening, I’m sitting on the couch and my coat is off. “Vine!” the blonde says. “Vee have alcohol! Ted says you are always drinking the alcohol. I will bring the biggest bottles vee have. Vait here!”

  She bounces off to the kitchen.

  “Where’d she’d come from?” I ask. “A Swiss Miss can?”

  “Pretty much.” Ted nods. “Norway. Her name’s Kjersten.”

  He pronounces it like Shears-ten and smiles weird when he says it.

  “What . . . is Kjersten like your girlfriend?”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  “Well, thank Norwegian Jesus I missed that episode. She’s so cute I might vomit.”

  “Now she’s my fiancée.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “She is, Jennifer.”

  “I like that couch. Is it new?”

  “Oh right, like you really care.” He sighs. “I chased you for three years in that marketing department and you never gave me the time of day. Now you’re acting jealous? You crack me up. You really do.” Kjersten returns carrying a tray with two wineglasses and a mason jar filled with aquavit.
The mason jar is for me. “I vant to meet you for so long!” She smiles and it’s like her face is the sun. “I hear so much about you!” she says. “How much talent you have, how you’re so funny, so pretty . . .”

  I raise an eyebrow at her. “Ted said that about me?”

  “Yah! He says you eat more than most men.”

  Yep. There it is.

  “But he never lets me meet you!” she says. “I think he made you up to impress people!”

  “She did.” Ted smiles. “She said I made you up to impress her.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “Oh look!” Kjersten smiles. “Miss Biggles remembers you!”

  Mrs. Biggles? My . . . cat? I smile and look down. The room tilts. There she is, my long-lost companion, the one I gave up when I married Brad.

  “She was your cat, yes?” Kjersten asks me.

  “Mrs. Biggles is still Jen’s cat,” Ted says quickly. “She’ll always be Jen’s cat. Our friend Lana was watching her, but then she got a job in New York and now . . . we’re watching her.” He shrugs happily. “Hey, the more the merrier. We love the Biggles.”

  “I love Miss Biggles too.” Kjersten grins. “She sleeps vith me every night.”

  That’s it. My heart, or whatever was left of it, finally gives way and clanks on the floor. I kneel down to pet my old friend. I kiss Mrs. Biggles’s sweet head and start weeping. Ted puts a hand on my shoulder. “Jen,” he says. “Listen to me. You can have Mrs. Biggles back any time you want her.”

  “It’s not that,” I whisper. “I don’t want to take her. I can’t even provide her a . . . safe home.” Then I start weeping. I tell them everything, about Brad and Mrs. Keller and the dog-napping. I tell them I want my old life back. I can’t stop talking. Damned Kjersten wraps a blanket around me and makes herbal tea. She’s so freaking sweet it’s ridiculous. I pull myself together and splash water on my face in the bathroom. I collect Ace and his things, despite the fact that he’s curled up on the floor in postcoital delight with the beagle. He’s stretched out belly-up so Kjersten can rub his tum-tum. Just like my beloved Mrs. Biggles, he seems perfectly willing to live here now. I can’t say I blame him. Even I don’t want to go home.

  In the car I call Addi. I tell her I’m fighting with Brad and worried about Ace, and she demands I come over with Ace and stay. She’ll have the guest room ready. She won’t bother me, I can do my own thing. I drive over there, thinking I won’t sleep there but will just have a glass of wine. Right. Here’s the recipe for a meltdown: Start with a hangover, add one public humiliation and a terrifying ordeal. Pour into a shaker with complete exhaustion, semi-moderate heartbreak, and a jigger or two of bittersweet memories recalling times gone by. Top off with copious amounts of white wine and garnish with no clean underpants.

  Shake.

  Before I know what’s hit me, the tears spring forth and flow for everything. I weep for my life, I weep for my choices, I weep for Rome.

  Then the sun comes up.

  I’m asleep in the guest bed with a kimono on. “Ace?” I sit up and panic as I run to the kitchen, where Addi is hand-feeding my dog applewood-smoked bacon.

  “Who is the most precious little dog in the world?” she coos. “You are!”

  Ace and I go home. Funny to think he’s safer in Ted’s drafty little low-rent apartment with mismatched furniture than he is in my sprawling mansion on a lake. It turns out heated floors can’t keep you warm and locks don’t make you safe. I’m driving to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America, where all my neighbors are millionaires, but to me it’s quite literally . . . a civil war zone.

  I go to the gazebo and start to look through old wedding albums. Symbols of my ruined dreams, my buttercream candied-violet fantasies. I was going to be Wedding Day Barbie, all tiny-waisted and misty-eyed. Instead I wound up being Debbie Downer Divorcee, all chunky-butted and red-eyed. I hear someone whistle. I look up and there’s . . . Christopher.

  Hallelujah.

  I had called him and asked him to come over. I tell him about everything that’s happened, about burning down the cross, about my awful Valentine’s Day, about Mother Keller tossing Ace in the pound and Nick helping save him.

  “When I saw Ace inside that chain-link cage,” I tell him, “it’s like I never really cared about how anyone treated me . . . but Ace? No. I’m sorry. That’s not okay. Hurt me all you want, but touch my dog and we’re done.”

  “I once had this hairdresser,” Christopher says. “Brett. Jeremy always said I only went to him because he looked like an Abercrombie and Fitch model. He gave me terrible haircuts.”

  I tell him I remember that. “The guy who gave you a half Mohawk.”

  “Exactly. I believe you said I looked like an eighties pop star who survived a car accident.”

  “Barely survived.”

  “Anyway . . .” He sighs. “It didn’t matter who told me I looked terrible, I didn’t believe them. I thought Jeremy was just jealous, and you? I never listened to your fashion advice. Still don’t. But the point is, I only realized the truth when Jeremy went to Brett and got a haircut.”

  “I remember. He looked like Tina Turner in Beyond Thunderdome.”

  “I never saw Brett again. It was only when I saw what Brett did to someone I love that I realized what he was doing to me. Understand?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  We sit there for a moment.

  Finally I look up at him. “You know what?”

  “What?” He squints at me.

  “I have to leave. I have to leave . . . Brad.”

  A rusting Mazda pulls into our driveway and parks. A girl in a floppy red hat gets out carrying a big cardboard box and Christopher stares at me.

  “You got the Cinnabon girl to deliver?”

  “Satan made me join the Cinners Club,” I tell him. “So she owes me. Down here, Satan!”

  She makes her way to the gazebo and hands me the large cardboard box, which says CINNA-NUM!

  “They’re still warm,” she says. “Like you wanted.”

  “Can you drive a stick shift?” I ask her.

  She shrugs and says sure.

  “Then here you are. Have a Lamborghini.” I toss her the keys and she smiles at me.

  “You want me to move your car or something?”

  “Christopher, do you see an envelope around here with . . . oh, there it is.” I hand her the manila envelope I have with me in the gazebo. “Here you go. Title and registration. You’ll need those to prove you own it.”

  The Cinnabon girl frowns at me. “You’re giving me a car?”

  “No. I gave you one.”

  She peers up the driveway. “That green Lamborghini right there?” She holds the keys above her head and clicks the button. Beep-beep! The Lamborghini’s headlights flash twice and its venom-yellow eyes wink open.

  “Um, Jennifer?” Christopher whispers.

  “Not now, dear. We’re transacting. All right, Satan?”

  “I can’t take this.”

  “Well, of course you can. It’s for years of service. You provided more comfort and advice and support, frankly, than any psychologist. Take the car, because, as my friend Addi once said, life’s not fair and nobody asked you to be here, so shut up and just wax your damn pussy.”

  The Cinnabon girl looks back at me. Then she heads up the lawn and a moment later we hear the Lamborghini’s engine roar to life and the car peels out, followed by the sound of laughter, and then . . . we see a red hat go sailing up, up, up into the blue sky.

  Christopher looks over at me and says, “I think someone’s in love.”

  “I think I just figured out something about love.”

  “Spill it.”

  “Well, last night when I found myself demolishing a government building with a pickup truck in order to save my three-legged dog, I realized something: that finding true love and finding true north are the same thing. You just toss the maps and use your own compass . . . because true love can turn up anywhere
and it can look like anything. Even something super freaking unusual, even like a three-legged dog by the side of the road, eating out of Pampers. True love is saying, ‘I love this creature . . . even if no one else wants me to.’ ”

  “Welcome to being gay,” Christopher says.

  “True love is saying, ‘This is a bad idea . . . and I’m doing it. This bad idea . . . it’s mine.’ You can lock it in a building or put it on the moon. You can pass a law that says it’s illegal. It doesn’t matter. Do what you will . . . I will never give up on it. I will always come back for it. I will find it every time, because I’ve got a compass that shows me the right way and all you have is maps that don’t know where true north is anymore.”

  I look over at Christopher and he’s staring at me.

  “So.” I sigh. “Want to help me get out of this crappy marriage?”

  Christopher squeezes my hand and nods. “Honey, I’ve been dreaming about it ever since your wedding day.”

  “Good. Then we’ll launch my new plan: Operation Awful Wife.”

  Christopher smiles at me and nods.

  “Of course,” he says. “You had me at ‘Awful.’ ”

  18

  Operation Awful Wife

  Brad’s pretty irritated about his Lamborghini. I take the simplest road out and tell him I was moved by the Lord to give it away.

  “You gave my Lamborghini away?”

  “Well no, of course not!” I tell him. “I sold it for a dollar. God told me to.”

  He looks for his beloved car. He places ads and calls the police and is told if he wants to get it back, he’ll have to find the new owner and negotiate a deal. Brad asks me who the fuck I sold his car to and I say I can’t remember. When he starts to yell at me in earnest, I call Pastor Mike and schedule marriage therapy counseling. I say Brad seems inordinately attached to material things. When Mother Keller finds out we’re about to go into marriage counseling and embarrass her in front of the whole church, she calls Brad in a fury and he never mentions the Lamborghini again.