20. Alana
It was justthe surgeon’s consult, Alana lectured herself. She didn’t have to dress all the way up. This was going to be the person…holy shit, this was going to be the person who cut her open and removed her uterus. Or maybe would just instruct someone else on the actual cutting her open? She didn’t actually know. Maybe if she would have ever watched any of the eleven thousand medical shows her mom used to watch, she would, but it was never her vibe.
And so here she was, spiraling on a Sunday morning, trying to figure out what to wear when she knew full well it didn’t really matter.
Or did it?
“Alana?” Hudson called.
“Huh?”
“Are you good?”
“Yeah, I’m totally fine.”
“Then why have you been muttering to yourself while you stand in front of your open closet stark naked? Which. Can’t say I’m all that upset about the naked part, but the muttering concerns me.”
“Okay, maybe I am freaking out a little.” Alana looked down. “Oh, I’m like, naked, naked.”
Hudson laughed. “And I am trying my best to stay on track.”
“Stressing about clothing choices for no reason.”
“We’re going grocery shopping after. Does that narrow it down for you?”
Alana breathed out slowly. “Weirdly, yes.”
“I’m going to go pick up the car and I’ll meet you back here in twenty five, okay?”
“You don’t have to come,” Alana said. “Really. They already agreed to let me have the surgery.”
“Just in case,” Hudson said. “Also, the thought of suburban grocery shopping sounds incredible right now.”
“Okay, old man.”
“You know you feel the same way.”
“Are you taking the bags with you, or should I bring them?” Alana asked as she pulled a t-shirt dress from the closet.
“They’re on the table, if you can bring them down.”
“Sure.”
“Call me if you need anything,” Hudson said, and left the bedroom.
Alana was in the middle of putting on her mascara when the domesticity of it all hit her like a ton of bricks.
Sure, she and Shannon would have had a very similar conversation. But she and Shannon had not had what must have been award-winning sex repeatedly, and the amount of time she and Hudson each spent in their respective beds was rapidly shrinking.
It wasn’t her fault. Sleeping with Hudson was like sleeping with the world’s most comfortable pillow who didn’t snore and would occasionally give her earth-shattering orgasms, and acted as a backup alarm clock by groaning like he was murdered every time her 7 AM would go off.
She’d asked him if he wanted her to switch the alarm clock, or to sleep somewhere else, and he had looked at her like she had asked him if he wanted to go back to working at Cafe Kaffe. “It’s your room,” he said. “And you have to get up so you can go to work. I’m not fully awake when it goes off. Don’t restructure your whole life because I’m currently semi-conscious in your bed.” And that had been the end of that conversation.
Was that something she should be unpacking, probably with Lane?
Absolutely.
Was she going to be doing so?
Definitively not.
But it was getting more and more difficult to keep up the not married ruse internally, especially when there were less and less things in her daily life to remind her that while they were legally married, it wasn’t real and it wasn’t forever.
It was getting increasingly harder to not blurt out “love you!” as she rushed out the door to go to work, or before she went to bed. The only reason that having people find out that she and Hudson were legally married terrified her was because it wasn’t real, and one day soon they were going to get divorced and she’d have to come up with a reason to explain to the people who knew what happened.
What was she supposed to do, tell the truth? Or worse, tell the other truth?
‘We got married for health insurance and had decided on one year of marriage’ honestly didn’t sound so horrible when the alternative was ‘we got married for health insurance and then I fell in love with him but he didn’t love me back so when the year was up we went our separate ways.’
God, she was so incredibly fucked.
Dr. Flua was a cheerful, no-nonsense kind of person, who, much to Alana’s profound relief, once she realized the reasons Alana was getting surgery, congratulated her. “I hope this is the first step in a life with significantly less pain,” she said. “But this is the bump on the road before you get there.”
Alana pushed the tears back, telling herself that she had cried in enough doctor’s offices recently. “Thank you,” she managed, squeezing Hudson’s hand back. “I can’t say I’ve ever looked forward to a bump in the road more.”
“I can’t say you’re the first person to tell me that,” Dr. Fula said kindly, and Alana wanted to cry all over again, not just for her, but for every other person who’d sat in this chair and tried to keep it together when the profound thought of relief was finally becoming a reality.
“So, we’re going to run a battery of tests first, so we can establish some baselines and get some information that will ensure that we can move forward with the surgery,” Dr. Flua said. “When we get closer to the actual date of surgery, we’ll talk about the possibility of hormone-replacement therapy.”
“Great,” Alana said, who, honestly, would have responded that way if Dr. Flua would have told her that she had to be able to do fifty burpees in a row to qualify for surgery.
For all that Alana had built this doctor’s appointment up to be, she and Hudson were back at their rental car in less than forty-five minutes.
“This all feels like finally meeting Oz,” Alana said as she climbed into the passenger seat. “This was so much bigger in my mind.”
“Well, it also took you a hell of a long time to get to this part,” Hudson said. “It’s a weird change when people finally start taking you seriously.”
“Is that what this is?” Alana asked, flabbergasted. “This weird jumble of feelings?”
“I mean, I can’t read your mind,” (thank God, Alana thought) “but that’s what it sounds like to me. That you’re so used to having to fight tooth and nail to prove you deserve the bare minimum, so when someone just hands you a regular amount without asking you to prove anything, you don’t know how to react.”
“So, do I not need a therapist anymore?” Alana teased. “Because that’s some ‘I went to school to learn to help people work through their feelings’ kind of shit.”
“Nah, it’s some ‘I have a very smart therapist’ kind of shit,” Hudson replied. “I can’t be trusted to navigate my feelings alone. Tried that one, it didn”t go too well.”
Same, Alana didn’t say.
“You know what part of suburban grocery shopping I forgot about?” Alana said to Hudson as they contemplated the prices for canned corn. “The part where everyone else in the civilized world also goes suburban grocery shopping on Sundays.”
“Yeah, I remembered when we pulled into the parking lot,” Hudson replied. “But hopefully the pricing will balance the emotional turmoil?”
“Considering I’m thinking about buying canned beets just because they’re so cheap here, even though I do not actually like canned beets, I think it will.” Alana sighed. “Why the hell do we live in New York?”
“As opposed to New Jersey?”
“God, no. I dunno, maybe even somewhere more upstate. Somewhere where I wouldn’t pay an ungodly amount of money to live in my very cute apartment. Somewhere I could have a backyard or something.”
“Because your job doesn’t let you work remotely full time and you also would possibly crumble to dust if you had to drive everywhere?”
“I could bike.”
“But would you?”
Alana grinned. “Nah. Probably not.”
“Blame the grandparents?”
“My mom’s came after the war, but my dad’s side, it was my great-grandparents,” Alana said. “Tootled over here from Russia-Poland-Lithuania, saw Manhattan, said, ‘nobody’s trying to actively murder us for our religion? Sounds good!’ and then stayed. The fact that I grew up in a different borough is only through sheer luck and the grandparents wanting to live across a bridge, and my parents both going to the same CUNY.”
“Same with mine, except when mine moved, they went all the way to Long Island,” Hudson replied.
“Do you think any of them knew each other?” Alana asked, adding a three-pack of romaine to the cart.
“It would be funny if they did,” Hudson said. “But also, there were, what, like, a million Jews in New York in the early 20th century.”
“And yet somehow we found each other.” Alana paused. “In like, a non-romantic friend way.”
“Well, technically Shannon and JP found each other in a non-romantic friend way, and we were both dragged along.”
“That is true.” Alana looked at the cucumbers. “Do we really think we’re gonna eat all of those before they go bad?”
“No,” Hudson replied. “We won’t.”
“But what if we made them into pickles?”
“Are you going to make them into pickles?” Hudson countered.
“Nah, probably not.”
“Then I’d go with no.”
“Excuse me, young man, can I trouble you to lift a bag of potatoes for me?” an elderly woman asked.
“Sure,” Hudson said. “Which bag?”
“One of the twenty pound bags down there on the bottom. I don’t know why they keep them all down there.”
“Potatoes store best in dark and cool places,” Hudson explained, squatting down to grab a bag. “Do these ones look nice?”
The woman peered at the bag. “Those are good. Thank you.” She patted his arm, and turned to Alana. “You know, you have a wonderful husband.”
Alana smiled. “I do.”
“You should cherish him,” she continued. “A good husband is getting harder and harder to find. My late husband, Morris, of blessed memory, was one of the last good ones, my mother used to say. And that was in the 50’s.”
“Wow,” Alana managed, doing the math of how old this woman must have been.
”One day, you’re also going to be an old woman asking a strong young man for help with potatoes, and thinking about when your husband was young enough to carry this many potatoes, and you.” The lady smiled. “It’s a good life you can have, as long as you remember that all good things should be fought for, and a good relationship means trusting each other with the ugliest parts of you.”
She patted the bag of potatoes. “And now I’m just rambling. Thank you for your help, young man. Have a wonderful day.” She waved, and then slowly pushed her little shopping cart down the aisle, leaving Hudson and Alana standing, at a loss for words, in the vegetable aisle.
Alana mostly managed to contain her overthinking during the rest of the grocery run, during the car ride back while they argued over the best kinds of road trip music and if there were different genres for different kinds of road trip (Alana: yes, Hudson: no), and when they unpacked the groceries, proceeded to look at each other, and agree that even though they had literally (literally) just restocked the kitchen, they were not actually going to cook anything, and instead were going to order Dominican food.
When she came back post-skincare routine, Hudson looked like he was deep in thought about something.
“Everything okay?” Alana asked, dropping onto the oversized chair in the corner.
“Everything’s fine,” Hudson said, a sure sign that it was not. “I was just thinking, though.”
This was it.
But which ‘it’ was it?
“Okay…”
“Your surgery is scheduled, right? And we just had the surgical consult? Maybe we should talk to Ben about starting to file for divorce.”
If Alana had been holding something, she would have dropped it. “What? Why?”
“Well, you don’t need me anymore.”
What the fuck…
“Hudson, this was…this is a two-way street!” Alana burst out. “What are you talking about? Do you really think I would be that much of an asshole that once I got my part of the deal, I would just tell you to go fuck yourself and hang you out to dry?”
“No, but I’m the one proposing it.”
“And did you magically get backup health insurance from somewhere?”
“No…”
“Then exactly how do you think this is going to end? What’s going to happen when you decide to put on a fucking hairshirt and then all of a sudden, you’re not on any insurance anymore, and you have to get another dose of your medication that’s like, ten grand per dose out of pocket?” The anger was steadily rising. “Is being married to me that much of a nightmare?”
“It’s for your own fucking good!”
“How exactly is this for my good?” Alana demanded. “I promised you that we’d be married for a year, Hudson, and I meant it! Why would I need to get divorced now?”
“I dunno, so you can have your life back.”
Alana resisted the urge to scream. “That’s why I married you. So I could get this surgery and then get my life back. Is this some sort of twisted way of trying to tell me that you think I should be more effusive in my praise that you agreed to marry me? Because you have a weird way of showing it.”
“I just wanted you to know you have options.”
“Yeah, I have options now because I married you. Because you agreed to come with me to City Hall and lie to a clerk and then go to a doctor and lie to him also. That’s why I have options now.” She took a deep breath in, held it, let it out.
Nope. Still mad.
“I’m going to go to my bedroom, and I’m going to lie in my bed and read some truly top-tier monster romance and then I’m going to overthink this argument,” Alana said. “Because if I don’t, I’ll say something I’ll regret.”
“Starting to regret saying any of this at all,” Hudson said. “I was trying to be helpful.”
“But you tried to be helpful without asking me what I thought, without taking my feelings into consideration,” Alana said. “And that’s gross.”
“Oh, and you just absolutely freaking out immediately was okay?” Hudson shot back.
“See, this? This is why I’m going to bed to read because if we keep doing this either one of us will say something we won’t ever be able to take back, or we’ll have sex so incredible we’re never going to be able to top it and then we’ll start trying to get into fights to bring us back to this place and it will never work and the fights will get increasingly uglier until shit gets so bad we won’t be able to turn back.”
Hudson sighed. “Fine. Go to bed. But the probability of one of us saying something we’d both regret would be lower if you actually let me explain myself before you freaked out.”
Alana said nothing and walked to her bedroom.
It took all the self-control she had left not to slam the door behind her.
God, he was so annoying and self-sacrificing and ughhh, she kind of hated him right now.
It was either hating him, or hating herself.
Twenty minutes later, Alana had moved onto the next stage of being angry, the part where she was mad that he had made a good point.
So, maybe she shouldn’t have freaked out right away when he told her they should start the divorce process, but exactly how was she supposed to explain the reasons she did to him?
‘I’m so sorry for blowing up at you, Hudson, but you told me you wanted to get a divorce early even though it would inconvenience you and quite frankly I have no idea why you’d say that. But because at some point over the past few months I have realized that I actually love you a lot, which was very much not in the plans of things to do this year. And the only reason I can think of that you would want to get divorced earlier was because the thought of being married to me was so gross to you that you’d be willing to risk the fallout of not having health insurance so nobody would have to think that you actually married me, and due to the whole me in love with you thing, that hurt my feelings a lot and I reacted poorly.’
Yeah, absolutely not. Things were bad enough as is, dropping that ridiculous little explanation would have made everything one million times worse.
But he was right. And that was the worst part.
She hadn’t listened to his explanation (in her defense, it had been a dumbass explanation).
But she didn’t want to have to hear him tell her how much he regretted marrying her.
Ten minutes later, there was a small knock on the door. “I’m still mad,” Hudson said. “But your dinner’s here.”
“I’m also still mad.” Alana’s stomach gurgled.
That bitch didn’t care about any sort of fights. Alana sighed. “Just put my stuff in the fridge.”
“It’s out here on a TV tray,” Hudson said. “Wouldn’t recommend eating it in bed, but you do you.”
Alana dropped the Kindle she hadn’t even been using (it was hard to get yourself lost in a book when you were too busy reliving the argument, over and over and over again), and shuffled to her bedroom door.
Hudson, that piece of shit, had plated her food, and poured her a glass of water.
She was suddenly five again, and Auntie Yaya was reading Where The Wild Things Are, and after all of Max’s adventures, he came back home and found his dinner waiting for him.
“And it was still hot,” Auntie Yaya read. “The End.”
Alana wasn’t wearing a monster costume, her bedroom hadn’t changed into a magical forest, and she hadn’t become king of the wild things. Hell, there had not been a single wild rumpus.
But her dinner was still waiting for her.
And it was still hot.
Alana waited until she had moved her dinner into her bedroom, until the door was firmly closed behind her, before she started to cry.