This is where, if he were smarter, he’d ask why I didn’t try that yesterday. I have an impulse to explain anyway: A very small and dedicated band of terrorists has cut the phone lines to every member of my family. Why? Well, obviously because my family stands for Good Things and the papers tell us every day that terrorists don’t like that. His family wasn’t affected. Does this tell you anything?
Until now, I never thought of Thad as not-smart. I watch him walk out the door and remember that when I first saw him I told my roommate, “He’s got a nice little butt.” He also had a nice little suit, but I didn’t want to sound like that mattered to me. I was cooking underground dinners then—strangers were paying actual money for the privilege of eating in our apartment—and my roommate was serving them, and we were the cutting edge of the alternative dining experience. Or we thought we were, and we had a waiting list, so a decent number of people must have agreed. Enough cash walked through our door that I cut my hours at my real job to very part-time and cooked increasingly complicated dinners, riskier dinners, more beautiful dinners. I don’t know how long Thad waited for a chance to eat at the card table by our living room window, but he showed up with a group of friends one night and his way of flirting was to act like a human being instead of like testosterone in a suit, and the next morning he e-mailed to say how wonderful the meal had been and would I be offended if he asked me out?
I wouldn’t be. I liked him. And he had that nice little butt.
He still has a nice little butt, although I can’t remember why that seemed to matter, or when he stopped acting like a human being.
I call my mother and ask if I can meet her for lunch. She wants to know why.
“Maybe it’d just be nice if I met you for lunch?” I say.
She doesn’t sound convinced, but agrees anyway.
The plate of chicken bones is still on the living room floor. It wouldn’t cross Thad’s mind to pick it up because, after all, it’s not his. His blanket is still on the couch, and it wouldn’t cross his mind to pick that up either because, even if it is his, I do that sort of thing, which makes it invisible.
I leave both of them and carry Rosie to the basement so I can carry her and the diapers back up, and I fold the diapers. I play with Rosie and stare at the plate of chicken bones for a long time before I shove it across the floor so the blanket almost drips into it but doesn’t quite.
I drive to my mother’s office, where I wait while she shows Rosie off to everyone who works within a football field’s distance of her desk.
Lunch: ½ garlic bagel with light cream cheese, which unlike nonfat cream cheese is edible; skim milk; double chocolate chip brownie with coconut topping.
Exercise: My mother holds Rosie while they say “Ba ba ba” back and forth and look very pleased with each other.
“I’m leaving Thad,” I say when I can’t listen to one more “ba.”
“But why?”
“It’s not working,” I say.
“We’re not happy,” I say.
I’ve been catapulted back to my teens: She’s asking how my date went, and I would tell her absolutely anything except the truth. Even if I didn’t do anything worth lying about.
Has this woman ever heard of privacy?
Okay, I have no idea why I don’t tell her the truth, but I’d rather paint my butt blue and dance naked on the rooftop.
She tells me happiness is something two people build over time. She tells me about the time she almost left my father because he—
I stick my fingers in my ears.
“Mom, I don’t want to know this.”
My guru chooses right forgodsake now to whisper that I should consider my new way of eating as a physical, mental, and spiritual makeover.
Could you wait? I say. I can’t ignore both of you at the same time.
She waits. My mother’s mouth stops moving and I take my fingers out of my ears.
She tells me how much she loves me, even if I don’t believe it right now, and that she doesn’t want me to make a mistake I’ll regret for the rest of my life.
“I won’t,” I say. “I’m not.”
What I do regret is taking my fingers out of my ears.
“Can I move home for a while?” I say. “Just till I get on my feet again?”
My mother sighs.
“Would today be okay?” I ask.
On my way back to what’s about to be not my house, I stop at a liquor store and scrounge a carful of empty boxes.
I pack my clothes.
Snack: 1 slice of multigrain toast with 1 tablespoon nonfat strawberry jam imported from an exotic region of France.
Exercise: My guru is silent, so I take on her job as well as my own. I remind myself that snacking doesn’t have to make me fat.
Good, I say. I’m relieved to hear that.
I pack Rosie’s clothes.
Calories burned: as many as are in a slice of toast with imported strawberry jam. Plus one.
This is such good news that it calls for a snack. Which doesn’t have to make me fat.
Snack: 1 slice of multigrain toast with remaining chicken half and homemade garlic mayonnaise left from a few days ago that I’d have to either throw out or leave for Thad if I didn’t eat it myself, and I do hate to throw food away.
Exercise: I pack Rosie’s toys. I pack her cereal, the cold-pressed, single-estate extra-virgin olive oil imported from an obscure region of southern Italy, the vinegar made from organic raspberries grown in an obscure region of northern Minnesota, the nonfat chemical alternate-reality stuff grown in an obscure corner of a laboratory in Illinois that claims to be food and that I bought for my non-diet, which I’m going to continue because if I don’t I will have started it for Thad and I didn’t, so there. I pack my non-diet book and all my cookbooks and find a three-year-old birthday card from Thad stuck between a couple of them.
I remind myself what happens to women in fairy tales when they open things they shouldn’t, but we already know how well myself listens to advice, don’t we?
Myself opens it and reads the first line: “Dearest One.”
I burn the card in the sink.
I nurse Rosie and put her in the crib for a nap.
I turn on the Food Channel, ignore it, and write Thad a note: “I hope this is a temporary madness. I don’t want to make a permanent division of our household items, so I—”
The note has as much to do with me as the conversation Thad and I had on Day One. I don’t use words like madness and items.
I burn the note in the sink and write another one. Halfway through, I realize I’m writing the same words in almost the same order.
I burn it in the sink.
I pull the battery from the smoke detector.
I write, “I love you very much and I hope that—”
I burn the note in the sink.
I write, “I’m taking some of my stuff. I’ll get the rest later. If I’ve taken anything you want, let me know.”
I wash the ashes down the drain. With luck, they’ll plug it up forever.
No, I don’t mean that. I love this sink. I love every ashy inch of its drainpipe and don’t know how I’ll manage my life once I leave it behind.
I weep.
I sort my CDs from his