Chapter Thirty-Two
Addison opened her eyes as the first hint of sun peeked through the bedroom window, and reached out her hand to feel for Ben. The bed was empty. She sat up and called out his name, trying to make sense of her feelings as she realized she already missed him, missed his skin and his smell and the safe feeling she had lying in his arms. He stepped out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt.
“I have to head back to the city,” he said, without even a hint of regret. “My editor summoned me.”
When?Addison thought, but thought best not to ask it out loud.
He hurried around his bedroom, getting his stuff together like the house was on fire, and Addison suddenly felt very out of place.
“I’ll get out of your way,” she said, grabbing her clothes from the floor and slipping them back on under the covers.
“No rush,” he said. “Shep will come to fetch Sally around ten—so you may want to be out of here before then.”
“I could have taken Sally,” she said.
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Impose, she thought. All he ever did with Sally was impose.
And with that, he kissed her quickly on the cheek, quipped, “Have to make the boat,” and left.
She convinced herself that he was just stressed about work. She gave and received a bit of love from Sally and headed out through the front porch.
Julia’s sun hat was sitting right back on its hook.
Addison sat down on her meditation rug. She felt awful, heartbroken, and guilty. Why had she brought those boxes over so flippantly? And why was she being so flippant with her own heart? Ben’s wife’s things were all over that house. Her books were clearly still sitting on her nightstand. Her clothes still hung in her closet. Ben had shown her how much pain he was in over and over again, and yet she’d ignored it. Anyone in their right mind would have left right after dinner, feigned a migraine, saved themselves. A month ago, she was someone who wouldn’t even go in the ocean, and now she had ignored every red flag. She was angry—with herself.
She went back inside the house, determined to make “those fucking scones” as she was now referring to them in her head.
Addison floured her work surface, pulled out the leftover scone mixture from the fridge, and ran it through her hands, kneading and squishing, forgoing the round cookie cutter and forming the dough into random shapes—a circle, a triangle, a square—placing each haphazardly on the baking sheet. She had gone rogue. She stared at the pan for a minute, when inspiration hit and she ran back out to the studio.
Uncovering her creation from the day before, Addison put her hands through her scalp, her clay scalp, and opened it up like the crater of a volcano. She molded a piece of fresh clay into an abstract shape—as she had with the scones, and slowly and meticulously attached it by wetting the clay with a small brush and using her thumbs to seamlessly mold the pieces together. She stood back and looked at it. She was onto something. Hours later, the sculpture resembled Medusa, except instead of snakes, she had abstract shapes jutting from her skull. It looked like she felt.
Utter confusion.
Her phone buzzed, and she hoped it was Ben, but it was Nan with an offer. A very good offer. Addison texted her back. Should I counter?
If Addison had been keen on selling, she wouldn’t even have thought to counter; she would have just said yes. But she wasn’t doing so for the money—the offer already felt like she would be winning the lottery. She was countering for the time the negotiation would afford her. In her heart, she was sure that what she felt happening between her and Ben was real, but a few seconds later, she was equally sure that it wasn’t.
Again, she needed time. They needed time.
She walked down to the lifeguard stand and took a dip in the ocean without even hesitating at the break. She hoped the confidence it inspired would give her a good dose of fortitude. It didn’t.
That night, she wrote and erased six different iterations of “just checking in,” ranging from the literal, Just checking in, to How did it go with your editor? to Tomorrow is recycling day. I can bring your cans out too if you want, to I understand that things went very quickly with us. We can slow down if it makes you feel better, to What the hell Ben? Come back, to the crowd favorite, the hi emoji. (Yes, she had consulted her posse on the group chat for more texting material.) She decided to send nothing. She would have to give him the space he clearly needed.
Addison was surprised when she woke up feeling even sadder than she’d felt the day before. She hadn’t slept well and had barely eaten since Ben left—she found it tough to swallow.
After dragging out the recycling, Addison went for a long beach walk, hoping to clear her head in the beauty of it all. There was a light mist coming off the ocean. It was too early for the throngs of homeowners and day-trippers to have set up their chairs in purposeful configurations. The mornings belonged to the beach walkers and the anglers and the dogs. She walked for a couple of miles, stepping in and out of the ocean and watching the sandpipers scurry back and forth in the foamy surf. It was really something.
“The Walrus and the Carpenter,” the Lewis Carroll poem she had been tasked with memorizing in the sixth grade, played on repeat in her head, providing relief from her thoughts and quandaries. The mind is funny that way, she thought, reflecting that sometimes a song or a poem gets stuck in your head for no reason but to take up room and allow your brain to rest. She couldn’t remember her Amazon password but could still recall every word of the humorous verse from Through the Looking-Glass about two old friends taking a walk on the beach, weeping to see such quantities of sand.
“If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,” the Walrus said, “That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear.
When Addison arrived back at her block, a record-breaking (for her) two hours later, Sally came running toward her onto the beach. Addison’s heart jumped from her chest at the sight of her. It sank, just as quickly, when she spotted Shep following a few steps behind.
“Have you heard from Ben?” she asked at his approach. She couldn’t help herself.
“No. But it’s not the first time he has wandered off.”
Her face said it all. He cut to the chase.
“You seem like a nice girl,” Shep said kindly. “At first, I was all in on this love connection, but now—maybe he is too broken?”
Addison shrugged. She had certainly never wanted a broken guy before. She could accept the offer on the house today, clean out the place by Sunday, and never look back.
Sally took off after a seagull, prompting Shep to chase after her.
“I’m sorry, Addie,” he said as he jogged off.
“It’s Addison,” she said to no one.
She typed a message to the real estate agent.
Counter with whatever you think is right.
It was met with a thumbs-up emoji.
She followed it with a text to Kizzy.
Anything on the job front? September is coming quickly.
Kizzy wrote back right away.
I was about to reach out! Word is Ogilvy is looking for fresh blood. Should I set up an interview?
Now Addison gave the thumbs-up.
Two thumbs up on my new life plan, she thought. Both prospects should have made her smile. They didn’t. She was miserable. Possibly more miserable than she had ever been.
She went to the studio and continued molding abstract shapes and attaching them to the piece she was now calling Utter Confusion.
At around three in the morning, it felt done. She left it to dry.
Too exhausted to think, she fell asleep quickly that night and woke the next morning with Utter Confusion calling out to her. It had been so long since she had that yearning to make something with her hands—even longer since she had felt the pull of creativity calling her back to a piece she was working on. She didn’t have that same draw at work. Yes, she was proud of many of her ad campaigns over the years, but those collaborative efforts felt very different from this. She remembered the feeling from college, remembered skipping parties when a piece she was working on had total control over her. She poured herself a bowl of cereal and ate it while staring down her creation, taking it all in before choosing the colors to paint it with.
Gicky had a nice selection of glazes arranged by shade along the shelves of an antique corner cupboard. Addie opened each jar to see which were dried up and which were fresh. She mostly leaned into the more muted colors, blues with names like Dawn and Isle and Yonder, Lettuce Green, Green Thumb, and one vibrant and shocking tangerine. She took her time with each section of the sculpture, only stopping to eat a second bowl of cereal and to use the bathroom. It was nearly midnight when she was done.
Despite the hour, Addison couldn’t wait to fire up the kiln. She gingerly placed her piece in the center and closed the lid. She set the timer for noon the next day and nervously went to sleep.