Читать книгу The Divorce Diet - Ellen Hawley - Страница 11

DAY

6

Exercise: I wake up with the first grayish hint of dawn. Everyone whose life makes sense is still unconscious, but I don’t want to miss a single joyous minute of mine, so I dress in the almost dark and wrap that same blanket around Rosie. She whines when I buckle her into her car seat. To settle her down, I sing, “We’re going to catch Daddy’s ass in flagrante delicto.”

I can’t find anything that rhymes with delicto. This gives me an unexpected insight into why so few people write songs about lawyers.

Outside the house that used to be mine, I slide the seat back and nurse Rosie. The street’s empty, so why not? It’s Natural, isn’t it?

I watch the house. I watch Thad’s girlfriend’s car, which is parked in the driveway like a neon sign that says, “We’re still going at it.” If I had paper and a pen, I could write down her license plate number, and this thought gives me a reason to be here.

I rummage through the glove compartment, but I don’t have a pen. I memorize the number.

I sing, “What shall we do with the rotten daddy?”

When Rosie starts to cry, I get out of the car and ring the doorbell.

I ring the doorbell again.

Thad answers wearing the wine-dark terry cloth robe I gave him for his birthday last year and absolutely nothing else. Under their pelt of hair, his legs are beautifully shaped.

I smile brightly and say, “I need to get the crib. My mother’s—”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know. My mother—”

“This is Saturday. It’s Saturday.”

“I know. Saturday. I’m sorry I woke you, but I didn’t want to use the key now that I don’t live here.”

I smile even more brightly.

“I’ll just take the crib apart and load it in the car if you’ll watch her.”

I hand him Rosie, who’s smiling now, and flapping her arms at him, and I turn away so I won’t have to see this, but it’s too late, I already have.

“This is kind of a lousy time,” he says.

I push past him.

The bedroom door is open and a woman’s head rests on my pillow, looking back at me. I stare long enough to decide she’s no prettier than me. Her car may have gold lettering, but it hasn’t rubbed off on her.

“I’m just looking for a screwdriver and the pliers so I can take the crib apart,” I tell her.

I begin taking the crib apart.

While she’s in my bed, I tell myself as emphatically as if I might not have noticed this already.

Why should I have to explain myself to her? I ask as intensely as if I expected an answer.

I should rip out her eyeballs, I think as seriously as if I meant to do it.

It makes no sense that I’m mad at her instead of Thad, and it’s not like I don’t know this, but if I want Thad back it makes even less sense to rip his eyes out, and I have to hate someone.

I indulge in fifteen seconds of blood-drenched fury.

I store the crib hardware in a plastic bag while Thad and his girlfriend whisper in the other room and Rosie blows raspberries.

“Would you give me a hand with this?” I call to Thad.

He comes in with Rosie and they look so natural together that I start to cry.

“Just tell me,” I say. “How long ago did it start?”

“It didn’t—” he says.

“One month ago? Two months?”

“We didn’t—”

“The hell you didn’t.”

I wipe my eyes with my sleeve.

“You need a hand with that or not?” he says.

“Not.”

I stomp into the bathroom for tissues and end up searching the cabinets for evidence that the woman has moved in. I don’t find any, but she probably has anyway. Her stuff could still be in the car. They would have been so eager to jump into my bed that they left it there.

I blow my nose, toss the dirty tissue in the sink, and finish taking the crib apart.

Thad doesn’t offer to help move it, so I drag the pieces to the front door. The girlfriend has parked her gold-lettered self in my living room. She’s thrown on last night’s clothes—an expensive pair of slacks, a linen shell—and she’s an odd combination of rumpled and overdressed.

I smile at her brightly.

“Nice mattress, huh?”

I don’t wait for an answer, just drag the crib pieces to the car.

When I go back for Rosie, she’s sitting in the woman’s lap.

I say, “Do not touch my baby. Do not ever touch my baby.”

I pluck Rosie from her arms and turn to Thad.

“Do you have the rest of the child support?”

“It’s only been—” he says.

“I haven’t had—” he says.

“How much did your nice dinner cost last night?”

“I put that on my credit card.”

“Oh, well, that makes it okay then, doesn’t it?”

“What do you want me to do?” he asks. “Stop living?”

I say, “I have.”

I leave, and because I have to go somewhere I drive to McDonald’s.

Breakfast: coffee with 1 skimpy plastic container of chemically altered half-and-half; Egg McMuffin; plasticated hash browns; something claiming to be an apple pie.

Exercise: I stare numbly at my empty food wrappers.

Snacking, my invisible guru mumbles.

She’s too embarrassed to finish the sentence.

I drive to my parents’ house, put Rosie on the floor for a nap, and carry the crib pieces in from the car. I stack them in the hallway so I won’t wake Rosie and watch the Food Channel while my father reads the paper.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask.

“Gone shopping.”

That’s good. It means she won’t ask where I was.

For the palest sliver of a second, I long for someone to ask where I was.

I check my non-diet book. For breakfast, I should have had three-quarters of a cup of cotton wool, one cup of nonfat skim milk, and half a grapefruit peel.

Rosie cries. I know just how she feels.

Lunch: ½ bag of frozen green beans; 1 tablespoon of whipped imitation butter.

Exercise: I nurse Rosie.

Calories burned: millions. I feel them leaking out of my pores.

When my mother comes home and asks where I was, I burst into tears and tell her about the woman in my bed, who was the reason Thad ended our marriage.

She says, “So he’s the one—”

I cry hard enough to close off any chance of discussion.

I watch the Food Channel.

My father trips on the crib pieces and I move them into the bedroom, arranging them on top of the clothes. I fit slot S of crib piece 1 into tab T of crib piece 2.

The crib’s harder to put together than it was to take apart.

My father offers to help.

I say, “Thanks, but I’ll get it.”

I stare at the crib pieces.

Who cares about the crib pieces anyway? They’ll be here later.

I play with Rosie and watch the Food Channel.

I tell my mother, “She’s not even particularly pretty.”

I say, “I bet she can’t even boil water.”

I say, “I am so depressed.”

When my mother starts to cook, I don’t care enough to argue.

Dinner: my mother’s pot roast with frozen potatoes and carrots; 1 white roll that would crush into a ball the size of a styrofoam packing peanut if put under pressure; whipped imitation butter; chocolate almond ice cream.

Exercise: I watch the Food Channel, but it’s another guy-time competition. It might as well be wrestling.

I put Rosie to bed and stare blankly at the crib pieces for I’m not sure how long before I turn off the light and crawl into bed with her.

The TV plays in the living room.

My guru is awake.

Depression and stress, she says, are the two most common triggers for overeating.

I’m not depressed, I say. I’m upset. Who wouldn’t be upset?

Trigger, she says.

Not, I say.

Trigger, she whispers.

Not, I say. Not, not, not.

Okay, I can’t sleep. I think about getting up and watching the show on aircraft carriers that my parents were watching when I came to bed. I think about Rosie rolling over and falling out of bed if I’m not here to fence her in.

The TV gibbers in the living room.

I try to sleep.