Something isn’t right with Siobhan. I caught it right away, back in Grace’s office when she came out. It struck me that she was, well, not, like, hysterical or anything, but that something wasn’t right. We’re in the car now, and she’s being quiet. Quiet in a funny way that I don’t like.
I asked Grace point blank if somethin’ was up, but she told me that she couldn’t talk to me about it. So I didn’t get anywhere with her about it.
I did get my question answered, though.
Sarah can’t touch me. I’m gonna go ahead and cut back on what I’ve been payin’ for. I was curious if, what with us living together and lookin’ to get married, could she, like, sue me for some kinda support. Well, she can, but it wouldn’t get her anywhere. Besides, I’m still gonna pay the big bills, the rent, the car, the car insurance. But I think I’m gonna let my dog-napping, independent woman have a little bigger taste of independence. She’ll be pissed off, I’m expectin’ that, but she can’t really do anything about it, considering I’m still shelling out.
So I’m pretty okay with the day. But Shi is deadly quiet.
“Did everything go okay?” I ask her.
“Yeah, went fine,” she says.
Doesn’t sound like it. Sound’s like somethin’ went to shit.
“Are you gonna have Grace...”
“Grace is probably going to try and sue my old lawyer. That’s about it,” she says.
“Well, that’s good, right?”
“I guess.”
“Are you SURE everything’s okay?”
“Yeah. I talked to Errol, we’ve worked it all out. There wasn’t anything to work out anyway, it was all just a formality that my former lawyer neglected to tell me about. So Grace is going to see if she can squeeze her about her fees and all. Everything else is fine.” And she sighs. “He’s going to help me with the camp payments, too, so, I don’t have to borrow anything, thank you for offering.”
“Any time.”
She sounds fuckin’ miserable for someone who’s just gotten a lot of shit off her plate. Her voice is weird, airy-like. Like she’s not even payin’ attention to what she’s tellin’ me.
“So, Errol, he’s like, gettin’ another job?” I don’t know why I’m bein’ this nosy, I just am. I don’t like the silence in the car.
“Oh, yeah. In fact he’s moving to Florida. Going to manage condos, something like that. And he’s getting married, too, I was expecting that.”
But there’s somethin’ in her voice that says she wasn’t expecting that at all. I can tell by the way she sounds, you know, how she makes it real clear to me that she KNEW that this guy was gettin’ married again, tryin’ to make it sound like it’s nothin’. It sounds like somethin’.
“Doris Hanney.” She says the name out of nowhere.
“Who?”
“That’s who Errol is going to marry. Doris Hanney.”
“You know her?”
“Not really. I’ve only spoken to her a few times. Met her once. Do you have a cigarette?”
“Yeah, sure.” I give her one, get the lighter for her while she’s drivin’. “So, where in Florida?”
“I don’t exactly know the place, it’s in the Keys, Maritime, Marthalon?”
“Marathon?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I gotta friend, lives down there.” Sort of. He’s sort of a friend at the moment, and he sorta lives there when he’s there. Nick. Carter. Nick Carter. Good old Nick of the ‘I’m doin’ a suck ass solo CD whether you guys like it or not’ Carter’s. Nick the prick. Nick, Nick, whose ass I’d like ta kick.
“Is it nice?” she asks, breakin’ into my little chant.
“Beautiful.” It is. Tropical. Hot. Heavy air. Not like out here, with the desert and everything. It’s beautiful here, too, but not the same way.
“Tish will be with him in August. It sounded like it would be nice.”
Then she goes quiet again, just smokin’ her cigarette and watchin’ the road. It’s not too late in the afternoon. I don’t think I’m makin’ it to my meeting again, though, ‘cause I shoulda had her drop me off there, and instead we’re headed back to the house. Oh well, I guess if I wanted to I could go to an evening meeting in Santa Monica, but I don’t. I feel like it’s been a kinda long day. I’m willing to just go home.
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I have to get out of this car and be by myself for a minute. Just a minute to gather myself and collect my thoughts, because if I don’t, I’m going to cry. Thank god for this cigarette, because it keeps me busy trying to smoke and drive at the same time.
I don’t want to answer anymore questions and I’m glad that Alex has finally gotten tired of asking them. Or better yet, maybe he’s gotten bored. Because I’m going to have to tell him to shut up about it if he continues.
I need to think. Be in a quiet place and think and let the ache inside of me explode, just get it over with. Because I feel like shit. I feel not only small and petty and mean, but angry and jealous and ripped to shreds. I don’t know what’s been going through my mind all these months since Errol left and the divorce finalized. I don’t know why it never occured to me that he might be happier with someone else. And I don’t know what I did wrong in my marriage so that he IS happier with someone else, and is ready to embark on something that the two of us and Tish should have been embarking on. I hate him for that. Hate him with a kind of loathing that I don’t even recognize inside of me.
If my hands weren’t clutching the steering wheel, I’d be squeezing the life out of something right now.
And I’m humiliated. Humiliated that I thought I had it all covered and that I was so, so wrong about everything. Humiliated that I’m bitter. Because I am bitter and I have utter disdain for bitterness in people.
I don’t understand anything. I don’t understand how my marriage has, in the space of a few short hours, been presented to me as a sham. Not just a sham, a farce. I wonder how long, how many years, Errol had been unhappy. I wonder if all the moving around we did was him trying to ‘start over’ time after time, to jump start a relationship he saw as, as, as less than satisfactory.
I see know, that what I perceived as a lack of ambition in Errol might very well have been a simple lack of enthusiasm. Because when I talked with him, he sounded enthusiastic about his future. About moving to Florida, about what he would be doing there. Granted, there was no way that could have been us, we never had any money, there wouldn’t have been the capitol necessary to buy condos, to rent and manage them. But I didn’t even know that it was something he would be interested in. There were places we lived where he could have done the managing, could have tried that, but he never said a word about being interested in something like that.
Now I don’t know what other things he may or may not have been interested in. And I never will. I wouldn’t ever ask him now, that would be the ultimate humiliation, and one that I’m not about to face.
And I’m angry. I’m angry because things are working out for him. He’s marrying, he’s going to move to someplace ‘nice’, and he’s going to have a job he’s going to enjoy. He’s going to be happy. And he left me to have that. He left me for someone else, which was humiliating in itself, and now, instead of being miserable and seeing what a tremendous person I was, his life is falling into place with apparent ease and he’s happy.
And I’m not.
Thank god I’m driving this car, because I have to think about what I’m doing and be careful with it because it’s not mine. It keeps parts of my mind occupied; it keeps my tears in. I maneuver the car into Alex’s driveway. My own eyesore of a vehicle is sitting there. I was supposed to get rid of it. Now I want to smash it to bits with my bare hands. What was a problem for me yesterday is not worth considering today. That car will be gone by tomorrow.
“I forgot to call about the car,” I say. I don’t even recognize my own voice. It’s distant, tinny.
“No big deal,” Alex says.
“I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he assures me.
I wish he wasn’t being nice. I do, because it would give me an excuse to lash out. At the moment, I don’t care that it might cost me my job. I want to hit someone, something. I don’t want to feel all of this anger and rage bottled up inside of me. I’ve only felt like this once before, and it was when I caught Errol with Doris. In a diner. I know Errol never thought he’d be seen there, sitting in a booth in broad daylight, but I did, and I called him on it that night, after Tish had gone to bed. That was just like this, that feeling of being lied to, of being kept in the dark, of being demeaned.
And the anger. Red hot anger.
I get out of the car and come around to the passenger side to see if Alex needs help. He seems quite capable, though, getting himself out on his own. A few more days and his life will be back to normal, if you could call it that.
“I’ll go start supper,” I say.
“You don’t have...”
“Yes, yes, I do,” I tell him. He knows something’s wrong, he’d have to be dead from the neck up not to. But I DO need to start supper. I need to be doing something. Tish won’t be home soon, she’s gone to Kim’s again so I wouldn’t have to worry about timing if we got held up with the meeting with Grace, or stuck in traffic. She won’t be coming home until after supper, which is good, because I want to be past this by then. And I don’t have to make anything elaborate, although I might, just to stay occupied. In the kitchen, I can be occupied alone. “Why don’t you sit out by the pool, and I’ll make you something special to drink, and then I’ll take care of supper?” I offer.
“Okay.”
I can see that he’s not about to argue. I can see that he sees that there is something wrong with me. And that he understands that my request for him to sit out by the pool is no request at all, it’s a thinly veiled order.
As I said, he’s not stupid.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
