by Emily Giffin
“Fine,” I say. “Ben wanted a baby.”
“And you?”
I pause and then say, “I didn’t—don’t—want a baby.”
“What do you want?”
Nobody has ever posed the question quite like this before, and I have to think for a minute before I can answer. “I want a really good, committed relationship. I want close friends and good times. Like right now…I want freedom to do my job well without feeling guilty or beholden to anyone. I want freedom generally.”
“Oh,” Michael says, and then takes a long swallow of beer. “I see.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I say, recognizing that you’re more likely to invite or tolerate criticism when someone isn’t so free with it.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s just that…being married cuts down on your freedom. Having a husband—or a relationship at all—puts constraints on you. You handled that fine. I don’t think I could deal with those sorts of constraints. It’s why I had to call it quits with Maya,” he says, referring to his ex-girlfriend. It was Michael’s most serious relationship to date, one that he ended when she demanded a ring—or at the very least, a key to his apartment. He continues, “I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be good at it that I didn’t even want to try…It seems to me that you left Ben more because of fear than anything else.”
“Fear of what?” I say.
He shrugs and then says, “Fear of failure. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown.”
I look at him, feeling dizzy.
“And yet, here you are anyway…” he says, his voice trailing off.
He doesn’t have to say the rest. I know the rest. Here I am anyway, facing all of the above. Fear of failure, fear of change, fear of the unknown. And right here, in a bar under a bridge in Brooklyn, I feel a very small pang of regret.
Michael says he has to get back home, that he has a hot date tonight. Actually, he doesn’t say it’s hot, but I assume that part. Michael only dates hot women. So we take the subway back to Manhattan and part ways on the Lower East Side.
“Are you going to be all right?” Michael asks.
“Yeah,” I say, kissing his cheek. “Thanks for today.”
“It was my pleasure,” he says, tipping an imaginary hat.
As we say good-bye, I wonder if, come Monday morning, I will confess to Michael the very stupid thing I’m about to do.
Nine
I really can’t say exactly what makes me take the subway up to my old apartment when, prior to this afternoon, I was convinced that short of mere happenstance I would never see Ben again. Of course the martinis are a factor, but I’ve never been one to radically change my behavior when I’m drunk. I’ve never, for example, hooked up with someone while drunk whom I wouldn’t have hooked up with otherwise. Besides, by the time I get off the subway at Seventy-second and Broadway, I’m not nearly as intoxicated as I was in Brooklyn. I could easily regroup and head back to Jess’s place.
So I think my little detour has less to do with alcohol and more to do with what Michael said to me in the bar. The stuff about fear motivating my decision to divorce Ben. As I walk the several blocks to Ben’s apartment, I consider my faults, ticking off the list of adjectives that other people have thrown at me during arguments—and that I’ve thrown at myself during quiet, introspective moments: stubborn, judgmental, moody, impatient. I have my share of character flaws, but I’ve never counted cowardice among them. To the contrary, I have always thought of myself as one to accept challenges and take risks. It is part of the reason I’ve been so successful at work.
Still, something rings true in Michael’s words. Maybe I am just afraid. Maybe I let Ben go because the fear of having a baby actually outweighed the fact that I didn’t want one. Maybe I feared the person I would become. Maybe I feared something I couldn’t quite name, even to Ben, even to myself.
Somehow I think I believe that seeing Ben will give me these answers. Or maybe it’s just an excuse to see him again. In any event, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing has changed. I still don’t want a baby, and Ben still does.
But here I am anyway, standing on the sidewalk, looking pensively up at the third-floor kitchen window I used to look out of every morning and every night. I picture Ben, unshaven and barefoot, making a late-afternoon snack. I can see him pouring a glass of milk and arranging Ritz crackers on a plate before smearing just the right amount of peanut butter across the face of each one. I can see him licking both sides of the knife and dropping it with a clang into the sink. I can see him eating his crackers peanut butter side down, while he sits on the couch and watches golf. I can see all the little ordinary things he used to do, things that now seem like faraway memories.
I take a deep breath and climb the outside stairs to the front door. My heart is racing as I close my eyes and press the buzzer over my old last name. “Davenport, Apt 8C.” I wait to hear static and Ben’s voice saying, “Hello?” but there is only silence. I look at my watch. It is 5:15. Maybe he went for a run. Ben loves to run in the park at this hour of the day. Sometimes I’d go with him.
I decide I will kill a few minutes and go get some soft-serve ice cream at the little candy store around the corner. I walk there slowly, looking around at my old neighborhood, noticing things I never noticed before. A green wire waste can. A jagged break in the sidewalk. A row of red geraniums planted in a second-story window box. When I enter the candy store, the Middle Eastern clerk working behind the counter smiles and says hello as if he recognizes me. Maybe he does. Maybe he has noticed that Ben now comes in alone.
I smile and order a chocolate-vanilla swirl in a sugar cone with rainbow sprinkles. I also buy a bottle of Evian and a pack of spearmint Trident. I am four cents short, so I get out my credit card, but the clerk says don’t worry about it, you’ll be back. I almost tell him that I won’t actually be back, but instead I just thank him. I take my cone, retrace my steps, and try the buzzer again, just in case Ben returned while I was gone. Still no answer.
I sit on the top stair and take a few bites of the vanilla side of the cone. I don’t know why I consistently order the swirl when I like vanilla so much better. It just seems like I should prefer chocolate. I also decide that the rainbow sprinkles were a bad idea. They are good in a dish, but too messy on a cone. I eat a little faster as the ice cream begins to melt. I tell myself that I will only wait for Ben as long as it takes to finish my cone. Anything longer than that might make me feel like a stalker. The last thing I need right now is to feel like a stalker. Besides, my buzz is completely gone now, replaced with a faint headache, the kind that is sure to get worse. I hold my cone in one hand, unscrew the bottle of Evian with the other, and down about half of it without stopping. I am starting to panic a little, wondering what I will say to Ben. Wondering if there is any point to my being here at all.
A lone pigeon bobs his way toward me. “Rats with wings” Ben calls them. I lick the chocolate side of the cone and contemplate walking back to the subway when I suddenly spot Ben jogging in place, about a block away, waiting for the light to turn green so he can cross West End Avenue. He is wearing burnt-orange running shorts, a gray Wake Forest basketball T-shirt, and his favorite White Sox baseball cap. I feel a nervous flutter in my stomach and then a sense of comfort for having correctly guessed that he was on a run. I still know you, I whisper, and then I wave just in case he can see me. It’s not an eager wave, just a casual, hand-in-the-air acknowledgment. I wait for him to wave back, but he doesn’t, just adjusts his cap, bending the bill with one hand. I wipe my mouth with my napkin, and stand, thinking he’ll see me any second.
Instead, he turns in the other direction to face a girl jogging toward him. My mind freezes and then clicks into place. Ben is running with a girl. He is on a date. A late afternoon, summer date. A run-in-the-park-together date.
I think back to our first run together. It was after we had slept together. About a week later. Two tops. I know this for a fact. I have an excellent memory, espec
ially when it comes to dates. And Ben.
I study this woman—this girl—he is with. She has long, thick, white-blond hair pulled back in a perfect, silken ponytail that swishes back and forth just right. It is the kind of hair that I coveted when I was much younger, believing that I could somehow train mine to look and behave the same way. The girl strides forward, once, twice, three times and is now beside him. Ben says something to her and then leans down and grabs the bottom of his shorts as if to catch his breath. I can see his profile. He stands, and I watch his chest rising and falling with the effort that comes from a hard finish. His shirt is damp across the chest. The girl stretches her left hamstring. She has long, thick legs, reminding me of a beach volleyball player, only without the tan. Her skin is as pale as her hair. Her face is long and angular. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she is attractive, and unfortunately for me, very memorable. I can’t tell how old she is, but something about her expression and stance makes me think she’s still in her twenties.
All of these observations transpire in a few seconds, but that is long enough for a stream of ice cream to melt down the side of the cone and trickle onto my hand and forearm. It is also long enough for the light to change and Ben and his date to come bounding toward me. And it is plenty long enough for me to realize that I am completely trapped. If I still had my key to the front door, I would duck into the building and hide behind the stairwell near the mailboxes. Gamble that Ben already picked up the mail. I cannot turn and walk in the other direction because Ben knows my back as well as he does my front. I will be tortured wondering whether he saw me and just chose to let me walk away. And my third option—aggressively approach them—is something I just can’t make myself do. So I just stand there, my feet rooted to the concrete. I frantically try to clean myself up. By now another half-dozen drips of ice cream are trickling down the side of the cone, carrying sprinkles downstream with them. I am a total mess.
You dumbass, I think to myself, for coming here at all and, even more, for ordering a cone on a hot day. A cone with rainbow sprinkles. What am I, twelve? This is my last thought before Ben sees me. His expression is confused at first, as if I’m completely out of context standing in front of a place where I lived for years. Then he smiles tightly, obviously flustered over the impending introduction. His eyes are casting wildly from me to the girl. Me to the girl. She is still oblivious. She doesn’t seem to notice me at all, looking right through me in the way you look right through so many people every day. Especially in a big city. She is in the middle of telling a story. Something about a stress fracture she got from running around the reservoir in the same direction, day after day. It was diagnosed right before last year’s New York marathon. She had to pull out of the race. One of the saddest days of her life.
I can tell Ben wants to interrupt her, save everyone the extra layer of embarrassment that comes when a third party has a delayed understanding of the awkward thing transpiring. But short of telling her to shut up, he can’t stop the story. She finishes by saying this: “But that’s one of my goals in life. To run a sub-three-and-a-half-hour marathon.”
I am angry that we have one of the same goals—but I was only aiming to finish a marathon. I wonder what her other goals in life are. And if they include Ben. Motherhood. I feel as though I’m going to throw up. Ben has a pained look on his face, too, and this helps a little, but not much.
“Hi, Claudia,” he says, looking up at me.
“Hi, Ben.”
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
“Good to see you, too,” I say. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just…went for a little run.”
I make direct eye contact with the girl, and wonder if Ben told her about me. Told her that, technically, I was his wife until last week.
“Oh, sorry, um, this is my friend Tucker Jansen,” Ben stammers. “Tucker, this is Claudia Parr,” he says, pausing for one beat before using my maiden name.
I memorize her name as she flashes me a polite, friendly smile. Unfortunately, it reveals absolutely nothing. I still don’t know if she knows who I am. I do notice, however, that she has very few lines around her eyes. She is definitely in her twenties. I’d put her no older than twenty-six. The name Tucker seems to corroborate my guess. Nobody born in the sixties and seventies has a name like Tucker. The surname craze didn’t start until later. She is an eighties child. She was probably five when St. Elmo’s Fire came out. Three when Flashdance hit theaters. It is entirely possible that she hasn’t even seen those movies.
I swallow, descend the stairs, and shake her hand. “Hi, Tucker. It’s nice to meet you.” Luckily I am left-handed so my right hand is not the sticky one.
Tucker’s grip is firm, but her skin is soft. Alarmingly soft. “Nice to meet you, too,” she says.
We are all stuck at this point. What else can we say? If Tucker knows who I am, she can’t say anything. And if she doesn’t know who I am, she can’t say anything. Ben really can’t offer up, “This is my ex-wife.” Or, “This is my new girlfriend.” Or, “You two actually have a lot in common. You’ve both had stress fractures! Only Claudia got hers from tripping on an escalator rather than training too hard. And she only ever aspired to finish a marathon.”
And I certainly can’t say, “So, Ben, do you think that I’m allowing fear to govern my life?”
So we all just stand there for a second, smiling unnaturally, until I say, “Well, I was just in the neighborhood. Thought I’d say hello.”
“I’m glad you did,” Ben says.
“Yeah. But I have to get going now,” I say, glancing at my watch. I am still holding the half-eaten cone, which is beginning to drip from the tiny opening in the bottom. Note to self: the next time you stalk your ex-husband, go with a waffle cone.
Tucker says, “Well, I better get going, too…”
This statement is a strong indication that she knows exactly who I am. She feels rude and awkward standing there with my ex-husband while I am forced to slink away. It is arguably a compassionate move on her part, but it makes me feel even more pathetic. Then again, maybe she really does have to get home. Maybe she has to shower and get ready for the dressed-up, nighttime portion of their date. Or maybe they are already showering together. She appears to be completely unself-conscious, the sort of girl who might hop in the shower with a new boyfriend, under bright lights.
I feel tempted to let Tucker go so I can stay and talk to Ben. But I feel too humiliated and decide it’s better to walk away first. Show both of them that I am fine with whatever they have going on. I give Ben a small, formal smile and say good-bye. Then I shuffle away quickly. I hear Ben and Tucker exchange a few words and then she is behind me, saying my name. She so knows the deal.
She asks if I’m going to the subway. I detect a Chicago accent and think, Midwestern, wholesome.
I say yes, I am.
“Me, too,” she says.
Great. I am now stuck walking several blocks to the subway with her, maybe longer if we’re going the same direction. Now I really think I might puke. I can actually feel the martinis and rainbow sprinkles in my throat as I ask, “So how do you know Ben?”
“We met at a party.”
“Oh. That’s nice,” I say, and then can’t resist asking, “When?”
“Memorial Day.”
“That’s nice,” I say again, feeling somewhat relieved that we didn’t overlap.
“Ben and I are just friends,” she offers clumsily.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
After a long silence, I say, “Us, too. Although we used to be married.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Well,” I say with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah,” she says with her own anxious chuckle.
And that’s about when I think to myself that I’d rather be a contestant on Fear Factor than continue a conversation with Ben’s new “friend.” So I manufacture an Upper West Side errand.
“I have to r
un in here and check out some things,” I say, pointing up to a random store we are walking past.
“Oh,” she says. “Do you have a dog or a cat?”
Leave it to me to pick a pet store when I don’t have a pet.
“Neither…I, um, just need to get a few gifts…I have some friends with dogs,” I mumble. “So…it was nice to meet you, Tucker.”
“It was really nice to meet you, too, Claudia. Hope to see you again.”
Not if I see you first and actually have a chance to escape.
“So. Bye,” I say.
“Buh-bye,” she says.
Buh-bye?
I duck into the store and pretend to be enthralled with a tank full of goldfish, comforting myself with the knowledge that Ben hates when girls say buh-bye. It will never last between them. She is young, athletic, and sweet. And I’m sure she’s dying to have children. She even looks fertile. But she says buh-bye. At least I have that much to hold on to as I face another Saturday night alone.
Ten
Ben calls me twice that night. The first is when I am still at the pet store, gazing at those goldfish and wondering who the hell thinks that fish make good pets. Then he calls again just after I’ve returned to Jess’s apartment, showered, and dumped two manuscripts and a sharpened red pencil onto the kitchen table. Both times, I feel too sad and queasy to answer. I never fancied myself irreplaceable. I mean, our divorce is proof that I am totally replaceable. But I really didn’t think Ben would be out there so soon, meeting women already, as if he is up against some male biological clock. And whether Tucker is just a friend or his actual girlfriend or someone he’s sleeping with or someone he aspires to sleep with or his second wife or the mother of his future children isn’t the point. Tucker actually is entirely beside the point.
The point is—Ben is moving on and I am not. Instead, I’m trekking up to his apartment with some half-baked inquiry about a purported fear. A total, transparent, pathetic excuse. The kind of thing I would rip Jess apart for. All of this not only confirms that I’m taking the divorce harder than he is, but now I also know that Ben knows that I am taking the divorce harder than he is. And this part probably sucks the most.