Chapter 23
For the first time since she was a teenager, Claire sleeps in.
She wakes around nine thirty on the first of November. Usually by this time she’d be up and dressed, have breakfast made, and be busy with the first of the day’s chores. Now she rises in her nightgown only when she hears the sizzle of pancake batter hitting a griddle.
“Blueberry pancakes?” Anita says over her shoulder, when Claire has poked her head up over the back of the couch. “Orange juice is in the fridge—could you pour us some?”
Claire never gets blueberry pancakes anymore. Pete prefers chocolate chip or banana, so she digs in with gusto. She feels ravenous—where normally she’d stop after one, she devours six pancakes easily with a glass of juice and a coffee.
“I think I want to start looking for a place to live,” Claire says, once the plates have been cleared. “I don’t want to be in your hair for too long.”
“I don’t mind having you here,” Anita says. “Don’t feel any pressure to leave on my account.”
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re allowing me to stay,” Claire says.
Anita re-fills Claire’s coffee. She pushes the cream and sugar towards Claire without her asking, and while Claire mixes them in, Anita watches her with a smile.
“You know,” Anita says thoughtfully, “I hardly recognize you today.”
Claire doesn’t doubt it. Having not brought any of her products with her, her face is bare. Her hair is unbound in its natural curly state, and tangled from sleep.
“I’m sure I look a bit of a mess,” Claire says. She fiddles with the ends of her hair. It’s been so long since she wore it in anything but an updo that she hadn’t realized how long it had gotten.
“Not at all,” Anita says. She leans across the table to clasp Claire’s upper arms, squeezing them tight. “And that’s not what I mean. You’re taking up space again.”
Claire isn’t sure what that means, but Anita is beaming, and it makes Claire feel as if she’s finally done something right.
“I’m not really sure what my next step should be,” Claire says, cupping the warm coffee mug in her hands. “I don’t even know what made me leave, in the end. I just snapped last night. I don’t even know anyone who’s gotten divorced.”
Anita stirs sugar into her own coffee. She methodically taps the spoon against the rim of her cup, sets it on the table, and takes a sip. “You do, actually.”
Claire looks up from her mug with a start. She’s always known that Anita isn’t married, but she’d assumed that she was a widow. “You? Really?”
“How do you think I could afford to start this business without a husband?”
“I always thought it was life insurance.”
Anita snorts. “If only. No, in my case it was infidelity. Pretty cut and dry. Your case will be a lot harder, unless you wait to file until the new year.”
Claire frowns. She hasn’t put much thought yet into the legalities of it all. “Why the new year?”
“Haven’t you read the papers? Some family act is coming in on the first of January,” Anita says.
She shuffles to a kitchen drawer, pulling out an address book and flipping through it.
“Starting then, you won’t need to prove abuse or infidelity.
You can divorce for any reason. They’re calling it irreconcilable differences. ”
“And…how exactly would I do that?”
“You call a lawyer,” Anita says. She stops at a page in her address book with a victorious noise, and scribbles something onto a piece of paper.
“I’ll get you in touch with mine. He’ll get you started with your dissolution petition and summons.
And you’ll need a bank account.” Anita brandishes the pen in Claire’s direction.
“I assume you don’t have one? I can pay you in cash for now, but you’ll want somewhere to put your money eventually. ”
“Summons? Will I need to go to court?” Claire says. She’d thought that the hardest step would be making the decision to leave, but it’s becoming clear that it’s only the beginning. And she can’t imagine that Pete will take it lying down.
Anita hands her a scrap of paper with a name and number on it. “Only if Pete won’t settle things the easy way. And if you want to get out on your own right away, there are little apartments like mine above every shop on this street. I’ll help you look,” Anita says.
Claire nods. She taps a quick rhythm on the table, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “How did you do it? Start over after your marriage fell apart?”
Anita sips slowly at her coffee. “You know, my marriage might have fallen apart, but my life really came together afterward. I’ve got my shop, and my little place. I’ve got friends and family.”
“Friends,” Claire says. The hollow place in her chest where Jackie used to live feels bigger than ever. “I guess I don’t have many of those, now.”
“What about that Jackie?” Anita says, blithely unaware that it’s the worst thing she could possibly say in this moment. “She’s been by a few times to buy supplies, you know. She even bought one of your paintings.”
Claire is sure that if she opens her mouth, she’ll start to cry. She clenches her jaw, staring down at the table, and Anita makes a soft noise.
“A story for another time,” Anita says quietly.
Anita leaves Claire to her own devices for the morning. In the afternoon, Claire joins her in the shop to start her new life in earnest.
~ ~ ~
The job turns out to be the best possible distraction.
It’s easy to throw herself into helping Anita run the store as November marches onwards—Claire learns how to order supplies and do inventory.
Anita even lets her help with balancing the books.
It turns out that Claire has an easier time with the mathematics of it.
When the shop is quiet Anita encourages her to paint, and Claire gets brave enough to break out the oils again.
Her first few tentative pieces are nothing special, but she can feel the rust shaking off.
One thing Claire is sure of is that Pete has no idea where she’s gone.
So, Claire works. She tucks her money away.
She meets with Anita’s lawyer and gets the ball rolling on divorce paperwork.
She puts a deposit on a shoebox apartment above the sandwich shop a few doors down from Anita’s, which will let her move in just before Christmas.
Brick by brick, she builds something new.
When in early December Anita gives her a weekend off, Claire finds that the sudden lack of purpose feels unnatural.
There’s no cleaning to be done, no cooking, no grocery shopping.
She has so few clothes with her that there’s nothing to mend or iron.
She doesn’t have much to do besides lie on Anita’s couch.
“I’ll be with you in a jiff,” Anita says when Claire pushes the door to the shop open, not looking up from her notes. “My damn accountant wants a record of every time I’ve so much as passed gas this month, and I’m in the middle of a thought.”
“Take your time,” Claire says.
Anita sets the pen down, sighing heavily as she looks up. “Claire. Did I not tell you to take the weekend?”
“I have nothing to do,” Claire says, already drifting towards a box of paint palettes that needs to be priced. “At least here I can be helpful.”
“That’s the point of it. You need to stop being so helpful,” Anita says. She rises from her stool, shooing Claire towards the door like she’s an unruly raccoon raiding the garbage bins. “Get out there and make friends. Get a hobby. Rob a bank.”
“You want me to commit a felony?” Claire says.
“If that’s what it takes,” Anita says, shoving Claire out the door. “I don’t want to see you in this store until Monday. Understood?”
Claire is left on the sidewalk, blinking confusedly in the morning sunlight.
She goes back upstairs and paces the apartment. She picks up three different books, but none hold her attention. She gets out her sketchbook, but she’s too antsy to draw.
Instead, Claire goes to the phone.
“Considering it’s nine in the morning, this must be Claire,” Theo says, after four rings.
Claire smiles. Theo’s sharp edges might have unsettled her when they first met, but now she suspects that it’s a token of affection. “Do you ever just say hello?”
“Not a chance,” Theo says. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. How’s the single life?”
“I’m doing what you said. I’m finding my feet,” Claire says.
“And?”
“Pete always made me feel like I’d never make it without him. But it turns out that it’s much easier to be on my own. I have all this free time, and nothing to do with it.”
“Get a bus ticket to San Fran,” Theo says breezily. “We can hit the town tonight. Shake the suburbs out of you.”
Claire’s eyebrows shoot up. She’s never ridden a Greyhound bus, but she does have some money to spare, now. “You want me to visit you? Really?”
“Against my better judgement, I’ve grown somewhat fond of you,” Theo says. “And I never could ignore new blood in need.”
The two-hour bus ride is shockingly comfortable.
The seats are plush, and the bus is air conditioned.
Nobody sits beside her, which gives her the entire journey to look quietly out the window and wonder at her new sense of freedom.
A few months ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of taking a bus to the coast. She’d have had to ask Pete first, and not only would he have said no, just asking probably would have caused a fight.
Now she’s trundling along the highway on her own, with 25 dollars in her pocket and a friend waiting at the end of the road.