12 You Wouldn’t Listen Anyway

12

you wouldn’t listen anyway

Danielle

Time exists to provide a framework for our lives. We invented it. It’s subjective. You can’t measure half of something if you don’t know how much the whole is, and everyone’s number is different. This day has felt like ten days for me. It’s nine-fifteen and I’m exhausted. I feel like I haven’t slept in two weeks, but at least I’m here now, at the salon, getting some much-needed pampering and friend time in.

I hit End on my phone and look at Alicia, who is staring at me with concern from the chair next to me. Her hairstylist, Laura, a generous friend who has opened the salon late on a Sunday for me, had lathered my hair in bleach and was currently in the back room pouring champagne into flutes.

Earlier, Alicia had come dancing through the door of the salon with champagne, singing, “Happy divorce to you. Happy divorce to you. No more tears and no more fights. No more sad and sleepless nights. Happy divorce to you!”

It wasn’t exactly the joy I was feeling, but I appreciated her effort. Now she’s staring, waiting for me to tell her what the phone call was all about.

“Noah fell off the trampoline and maybe fractured his elbow. Everything’s fine. Alex might take him to the ER tonight, but Noah’s gonna be all right,” I say.

“Well, why’d they call, just to ruin your first night of freedom?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it freedom. Alex needed to know where the insurance cards were.”

Alicia lives in a pantsuit and expensive shoes. Her blond hair is always pulled back into a tight, low ponytail. No bangs. She looks like a badass, but she is currently spinning around in the salon chair like a seven-year-old. I’ve known her since we were seven and really not much has changed between us. We’re best friends, but more like sisters, actually.

Laura hands us each a flute of champagne. Alicia holds hers up, “Cheers to single and ready to mingle.”

We clink glasses, I take a massive gulp and say, “I appreciate you trying to lift my spirits, but I think this celebration is a little premature.” And then I say what I’ve been saying to her for years: “It can’t always be coke and threesomes, Lish.”

“You’re such a buzz kill,” she says. We both know it’s a joke. Alicia hates platitudes or trite sayings, she’s actually a pretty buttoned-up and realistic person. Her wedding involved me, Alex, her and Mark, a justice of the peace, and the courthouse. She’s not about fanfare or party-girl culture. And anyway, we’re in our forties.

Laura stands over me and examines my hair. “It’s lifting. You’re gonna be a blonde soon.”

“Really?” I say, getting excited.

“Not really a blonde. Someday, if you want,” Laura says. “It’ll probably take a year to get you there without frying your hair. You will be lighter after this though. We’re going for a yummy honey.”

“I have no idea what that means, but it sounds delicious,” I tell her. “Oh, Alicia, I almost forgot to ask you…why are you and Mark friends with Jacob Powell on Facebook?”

“Jacob? Oh yeah, we work with Jacob. I always forget you dated him.”

“What? Wait a minute, he’s a lawyer? And how could you forget I dated him? He broke my heart.”

“I was going to tell you awhile back. He’s a financial analyst we use for certain cases. It was completely coincidental that we hired him. I didn’t even realize it was him until we met face-to-face. We’ve been using him for a couple of years.”

I’m in shock. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me. “What? A couple of years? Well, did you guys discuss the fact that he dated your best friend?”

“Yeah, Dani, in the beginning, but I forgot to tell you. It was right around the time your mom got really sick. It didn’t exactly seem like a priority.”

In rapid-fire speak, I ask, “What’s he like? What did he say about me? Did you tell him I’m getting divorced?”

She rolls her eyes. “Calm down, jeez. He’s exactly the same. He looks the same too.”

It’s terrible but I instantly recall an image of us having sex. My face flushes.

Alicia continues. “He’s always off somewhere, here or there, surfing in Costa Rica, building houses in Haiti. The type of work he does gives him the freedom to be anywhere. He does well for himself. Never got married though. No kids.”

“I’m not surprised. But what did he say about me? About our relationship? Did he ask how I was?”

“About your one-year, semi-relationship nearly three decades ago? Hmm…let me think how that conversation went, though I’m surprised you even care,” she says.

It’s not subhuman to wonder if people think about you. There are moments and experiences I had with Jacob that stuck with me. I often thought about Jacob when Alex would be in serious mode, when he’d be all business, no pleasure. I associated Jacob with fun intensity. It wasn’t often, but when I would think about him, I would instantly get a rush of adrenaline. Alex, on the other hand, was security and logic to me. He was there physically, but so often non-participatory on an emotional or psychological level, and it had nothing to do with his intellect. I could be laughing to the point of tears while telling Alex a joke and he would just stare at me. On the other hand, I could be crying hysterically, and he’d just look at me like he didn’t understand why I was upset. I still resent that about Alex. He never seemed to understand how to be toward me, and he never tried to.

When you’re married, even after so many years, you still want to be your spouse’s number one in everything, but is that even a reality? To be the good, fun, nonjudgmental friend, while also being the lover, parenting and financial partner, and the person you want to cut loose with? Can we desire our spouse enough to reach that level of excitement, lust, passion after years of ups and downs? How can you want something you already have? Alex and I were both at that place when we decided to split. We no longer wanted one another…on any level.

In the beginning of our marriage, I constantly compared Alex to Jacob. While Alex enjoyed being active, getting out and exploring, he insisted on details being meticulously planned out. It was a point of contention for a while, but after a few years I learned to accept it. Every vacation we took was over-researched to the point where there was no surprise in it, no novelty…just an anticlimactic trip that, as a writer, I had already fully imagined in my mind. Jacob represented the opposite to me. Spontaneity, freedom, the thrill of the unknown.

“The memory is a little hazy at this point,” Alicia says. “He mentioned you a couple of years ago, right when we started working with him. He asked how you were and I told him your mother had moved in and was sick. He said to send thoughts and good wishes from him, and I’m sorry, but I forgot.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, I mean, he knows you’re married. I’m sure he knows you’re a writer. He can look you up.”

Laura checks my hair again. “Let’s go rinse you,” she says.

We make our way to the shampoo bowl; Alicia follows. I’m still hung up on the Jacob news.

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. I don’t ask him stuff like that,” she says. She’s humorously frustrated.

“So he’s still hot?”

Resigned, she huffs and then smiles wide. “Yes, he’s still hot. Don’t go getting any ideas though.”

“Single and ready to mingle,” I say, joking.

“Coke and threesomes,” she pings back. I love her.

After Laura blows my hair out, she spins me around for the reveal. It’s shocking at first. It’s nowhere near blond, but I realize now that if I had gone for blond I would have had a coronary at the sight of it. I’m practically having one now.

“It looks great!” Laura says. “Do you like it?”

I smile. “I’m…Yeah, I like it.”

Alicia is standing behind me, next to Laura, looking at me in the mirror. “Bombshell. You look like J.Lo.”

I don’t look anything like J.Lo. My hair color is more Jennifer Aniston anyway, but it’s totally shocking against my face, at least forme.

“You’ll get used to it,” Laura says. “It’s an adjustment, but the warmth looks great with your skin tone.”

Laura has blown out my hair in soft waves. I do look younger. I know that was the goal even if I could barely admit it to myself.

“I do like it. And I need this change,” I say finally. “I’ll get used to it.”

“Next time we can get you even lighter,” Laura says.

“We’ll see…”

I’m so exhausted I can barely think and Alicia is looking at me, as perky as ever. “Wanna go find a bar?”

“On a Sunday night? No. I need to get back to the apartment and finish unpacking.”

We leave each other on a good note. As I walk to my car, I call Noah. A while ago, Alex and I decided to get the boys phones, and now I’m so grateful that we did. I can’t imagine the days when divorcing couples had to ask each other to talk to their teenage children.

“Hi, Mom.”

“How’s your arm?” I say.

“It’s just a hairline fracture in the upper part of my ulna. They gave me a brace. I can’t do baseball this season.”

“I’m sorry, Noah. That is a bummer. What’s an ulna?” I ask.

“Really, Mom? Did you ditch math and science all the way through high school?”

“Funny. Now tell me what it is?”

I knew what an ulna was, I just liked to hear the boys explain things they had learned.

“It’s one of your two forearm bones, Mom. You have one.”

“I know, I was just testing you. You need to get to bed. I love you. I’ll call you guys tomorrow. ”

I say good night over speakerphone to Ethan and Noah and get ready to leave the salon parking lot. It’s late. Before I start my car, it hits me that I will frequently be saying good night to my children over the phone. How strange. I’ve been there since they were born. Even when I was working, I’d write from home and go into the office once or twice a week for a few hours. I’ve always been there to kiss them good night.

Back in the apartment, I put some things away and collapse onto the bed. It has that stiff, new feeling, and it smells like chemicals. It occurs to me that Alex bought the sheets the same day he bought the bed and just put them on without washing them first. They’re white. He’s always hated that I bought white sheets. He says it makes him feel like he’s in a hotel room. I like to be able to bleach them when I need to, so for twenty-plus years we’ve had plain white sheets. The first time he actually gets to buy sheets on his own and he buys plain white. I wonderwhat’s changed for him. Did he get them to please me? Orare we both just conditioned to operate on autopilot at this point?

I’m falling asleep with my clothes on. While still lying down I peel everything off and throw it on the floor. How liberating. I crawl under the stiff covers and take a deep breath. As I reach over to set my alarm, I realize that I have nowhere to go tomorrow morning. I skip the alarm and stretch out, basking in the feeling of being naked. It’s been eons. Without thinking, I open Facebook on my phone and look up Jacob Powell. His profile is public, and it basically looks like a travel log. He is still very good-looking and in amazing shape. Surfing all over the world will do that for you, I guess.

I send him a friend request and continue scrolling through his pictures. In this moment I am free. I feel alone, but not lonely…yet .

A second later my Facebook pings with a notification that Jacob accepted my friend request. A second after that I see a direct message from him. I close the app, set my phone on the nightstand, and shut off the light.

I won’t read the message from Jacob…not tonight anyway.