Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Clementine
When I drive up to my parents’ house, there’s already a ton of furniture on the front lawn. My dad is sitting in an armchair, just looking at it. He waves when I get out of the car, and even from thirty feet away, I can tell that he’s trying to be cheerful but failing miserably.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. “What’s going on?”
He gets out of the chair with a grunt — one of his knees isn’t what it once was — and looks around, surveying the scene.
“She wanted my things out of the house,” he says, his tone carefully neutral.
I glance at the front door.
“She’s not there,” he says. “She rode her broomstick off earlier this morning. Something about a ‘much-deserved girls’ day out.’”
I’m here for two days. Today is Dad’s day. Tomorrow is Mom’s day. I’m staying with my sister, who’s at least a neutral party, since I’m afraid that staying with either parent will make the other angry at me.
I try to ignore the broomstick comment. Neither of them is exactly handling this well, and I’m still trying to be supportive and understanding, yet stay out of it.
“Will she mind if I go get a glass of water and pee?” I ask.
“Go for it,” he says.
Inside, the house looks weirdly half-empty as I fill a glass and drink it slowly. Things that I wouldn’t have thought were my dad’s are gone — the old cuckoo clock that used to be in the foyer, for example. I always just assumed it had been my mom’s idea, but now it’s not there.
I finish my water, stare at the spot where it used to be, and wonder how well I know my parents as people. I know that they have lives that extend before and beyond my time on earth, but it’s hard to think of them as Martha and Rick and not Mom and Dad.
Sometimes, I wonder if they were ever in love, like really in love. I know they got married quickly, and that I was born about a year and a half after the wedding. Maybe they felt like they were already stuck by the time they realized they weren’t right for each other.
Maybe they were right for each other, though, I think. And they couldn’t make it work anyway. I’m sure it happens, people who love each other but just can’t be together.
I force myself to think about anything but Hunter, last night. I finish my water, pee, and go back outside, where my dad is lounging on a couch, waiting for the movers.
I’m really just there for moral support, because three burly men come and move all his furniture and possessions into a moving truck, then from the moving truck into his new apartment, in an old building across town.
It’s not a particularly nice place, but it’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.
“I don’t think I’m gonna be here for long,” he says, flipping on the lights. “Just until I figure out what I want to do next. I’ve been thinking of moving to Mesa, it’s a nice place, got that cute downtown, and the commute to Ashlake wouldn’t be a problem...”
We arrange his furniture and start unpacking. He’s got boxes and boxes from Target: four plates, four bowls, four sets of silverware, a microwave. He tells me that all my parents’ flatware was from their wedding registry, and that when my mom wanted to keep it, he let her out of spite.
“Let her remember that she married me every time she eats yogurt,” he says, tearing into another box.
Then he looks over at me.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says.
I never ask him why he wants a divorce. Honestly, I don’t really want to know the details, because I think I understand the larger picture pretty well.
It’s close to eleven when I say goodbye. He hugs me tight, for a long time, so long I almost start to worry that he won’t be okay.
“Thanks for helping your old man out,” he says. “I know this hasn’t been easy on you.”
I don’t say anything.
When I get to Jane’s apartment, she opens the door, and without speaking, points to her couch.
“Sit,” she says, and goes into her kitchen. “Wine or whiskey?” she hollers.
“Whiskey,” I holler back, practically flopping onto her couch.
“Straight or sour?”
I think about it for a moment, but it’s not hard. Jane bartended her way through college — a better choice than working in the library, which is what I did — and makes great whiskey sours.
“Sour,” I call.
A few minutes later, she kicks my legs unceremoniously off the couch, hands me a drink, and sits down.
“Here’s to growing old with cats and spiders and definitely not men,” she says, clinking her glass against mine. “And for the record, if I were a man or a lesbian I’d say definitely not women, because the enemy here is marriage and not one sex or the other.”
I laugh and take a drink. It’s delicious, because Jane knows how to make a fucking drink.
“How was he today?” she asks.
I look into my glass and shrug.
“He seemed... more good than bad,” I say. “He managed to only say a couple of bad things about Mom, so I guess that’s progress.”
Jane just shakes her head. She’s two years younger than me, but we’ve had an inverted relationship since we were teenagers: she’s louder, more outspoken, a little pushier. I’ve always been shier than her, and because of that, sometimes I think she feels the need to protect me.
I keep telling her I don’t need protecting, I’m just quiet. I’m not sure she believes me.
“I’m glad he’s finally getting his stuff out of there and into his own place,” she says. “Uncle Brandon’s guest room is not a long-term plan.”
“I don’t get why he even asked for a divorce if he didn’t have a better plan,” I say, leaning my forehead against my hand and my elbow against the back of the couch. “Why not wait a week, until you’ve found an apartment or something?”
Weirdly, dissecting the logistics of my parents’ divorce makes it easier to deal with. Emotions are tricky and slippery. Apartment leases are not.
Jane just looks at me, and instantly, I know there’s something she’s not saying.
“What?” I ask.
She looks away.
“Jane,” I say.
Jane squeezes her eyes shut, her whole face scrunching up. I wait.
“She cheated on him with a guy she works with at the hospital,” she says, the words coming out in a rush.
My mouth falls open, and I stare at her. She cracks one eye open.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
All those phone calls, accusing my dad of cheating? All those crazy guesses about the neighbors? It was her, the entire fucking time?
“Why are you sorry?” I ask, because I’m still processing the rest.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” she says. “I mean, I wasn’t supposed to know, but I was over there having dinner before they announced it, and I guess they were in counseling at the time, and it just... came out.”
I take a long, long drink.
“And, I’ve only gleaned this in bits and pieces, but I think they were trying to work through it, and then she did it again, and he just asked for a divorce on the spot,” Jane goes on. “So he didn’t really have a plan.”
I stare into my whiskey sour. I don’t even know if I’m surprised, because of course my mom would go on the offensive about something like this, try to get suspicion off of herself.
I love my mother, but that doesn’t mean she always handles situations well. She’s only human.
Jane stands and points at my glass.
“Finish your last sip,” she orders me. “You need another one.”
I obey, because she’s right.
Two whiskey sours later, we’re still on the couch.
It’s late, and we’re this close to Really Drunk, but not quite there.
I feel like it’s justified, though. She’s just finished telling me about the fight she and my dad got in.
It was over a dresser, but as she’s telling it, I can tell it’s really because he felt like she was picking our mom over him, and I tell her that.
She’s quiet a minute.
“Yeah,” she says, and kicks her feet onto the coffee table. “Fights are never about what they’re about, huh?”
“You should make that into a poster,” I say, leaning my head back against the back of the couch. “You know those, like, cutesy posters of cheesy sayings that people hang over their bed? ‘Always kiss me goodnight’ and shit? Make one that says fights are never about what they’re about.”
“For people to hang in their bedrooms?” she asks.
“For people to hang wherever they have their fights,” I say. “Last dude I dated, it was his car. Dude before that, the kitchen.”
“Hmm,” she says.
We’re both quiet for a moment, and of course I think back to Hunter. Jesus, we had some fights, and Jane was right about those, too: they were never about what I thought they were. Not in retrospect.
Really, they all boiled down to the same thing. For me, anyway. I was just afraid that I loved him more than he loved me.
Fuck, was it really that simple?
I sigh and look at Jane’s ceiling.
“I know, right?” Jane agrees.
I have the urge to tell her about Hunter, that he’s back and still very hot and actually seems to have matured, and I have too, but I don’t. Dealing with our parents is more than enough.
“I’m with Mom tomorrow,” I say, instead of telling her about Hunter. “Any advice?”
“Don’t fucking tell her I told you she cheated,” Jane says.
“Duh,” I say.
“She just started watching Game of Thrones,” Jane says. “Talk to her about that.”
“I’ve never seen it,” I say.
“It’s the middle ages, a brother and sister fuck, and a bunch of people die while fighting to be King,” Jane says. “That’s about it. Oh, and there are lots of naked titties on TV, and she does not approve.”
“Thanks,” I say.
After a long silence, Jane stands and takes our glasses to the kitchen.
“I should get to bed,” she says. “I’m working in the morning. You want help pulling out the sofa?”
I consider the couch for a moment, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to do anything less than pull out a sofa bed right now.
“I’ll just sleep on it,” I say.
“Cool,” she says, and points at a chair. “Sheets and shit. Night, Minty.”
“Night, Shay-shay.”
When she was little, she couldn’t say her own name, and it stuck. She sticks her tongue out at me, then heads into her bedroom.
I manage to brush my teeth and wash my face like an adult human before collapsing back onto the sofa, haphazardly wrapping myself in sheets and rolling onto my side. Then I try to fall asleep, but I can’t.
My parents’ divorce makes everything feel like it’s turned upside-down. Suddenly, I’m the adult here, the one who’s handling things maturely, and it’s bizarre. When you’re a kid, it’s normal to see your parents as a unit, so suddenly seeing them separate is strange, to say the least.
Especially when you’re an adult yourself. Once you’re past a certain age, you just assume your parents are stuck together. And then, one day, they’re not.
Maybe nothing lasts, I think, feeling very dramatic. Maybe there’s no real love. Maybe everyone winds up alone and miserable either way, married or divorced or whatever.
I burrow harder into the couch, trying to make myself fall asleep.
Just bang Hunter, I think, half-asleep and drunk. You want to. If it goes bad it can’t be worse than last time, right?
Drunk me has a point.
My mom and I go shopping for stuff to replace everything my dad took. There aren’t all that many stores in Ashlake, so I don’t think it’s going to take all that long, but I’d forgotten that my mom is legendarily indecisive.
Somehow, we debate between two different plate sets for twenty minutes. That’s not that bad, except they’re both white, and the patterns are barely different.
“I just wonder if it won’t be unpleasant to scrape a fork along this one,” she says, rubbing the slightly raised design with one finger. “Don’t you think it’ll be a little weird, Minty?”
“Get the other one, then,” I say, my patience wearing thin.
“But I do like this pattern,” she says. “I think it’s really nice, and it’s kind of a contrast to the pieces we already have.”
“I don’t think the fork scraping is a big deal,” I say.
She just looks at the plates again.
I’m getting annoyed, and I have to fight the urge to say is your lover gonna be eating off these or something? but I know better.
Lord, do I ever know better.
I know her choices have nothing to do with me, and I don’t want to be mad at her. I’m pretty sure people can be complex enough to cheat on their spouses and still love their kids.
But I definitely feel some kind of way about it, and I’m having a hard time acting normal around her, knowing what I know. Knowing that she was married for almost thirty years, and then she just did that.
I guess no one’s ever safe, I think. You think things are fine, and then bam.
My mom takes a couple steps away and starts looking at different plates.
“These blue ones do add an exciting pop of color,” she says.
I grit my teeth and follow her.