Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
DON’T TRUST THE MAILBOXES
LOUISA
I head downstairs, I’ve been meaning to check in on Oscar, but it looks like he must have swapped shifts, so I just hand the coffee I brought for him off to his replacement.
I make my way to the mailbox because I have been very good about the mail lately.
(Aren’t you proud of me?) It is a real point of personal growth.
It’s also part of the larger deal with Hudson that now that the paperwork for immigration is all but stamped with an approval, I don’t have anything else to be scared of.
So I check the mail once a week, which feels like a reasonable amount.
Mrs. Saraceno is in the mailroom when I enter, standing at the long row of small metallic doors.
I won’t say she’s waiting for me, but she might actually give me a reason to start avoiding the mail again.
One Pomeranian tucked into the crook of her arm with its rhinestone collar hanging from its neck, while the other two fight it out in their parked stroller.
“Louisa,” she says as adjusts the Pomeranian. “I’m so glad I’ve caught you.” (Caught is exactly how I feel.)
“Morning!” I say leaning in for a hug, as I narrowly avoid the biter in her arm.
“I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you have any idea when your husband plans to start demolition?” I’m already reaching into my mailbox, pulling out the modest, well-managed stack. (I know, I’m impressed too.)
“Erm–I think he said next month, or maybe the one after?” The inflection of the question mainly because I don’t exactly remember. He originally told me when this all started, but I don’t think he’s mentioned it since.
“Remind him to re-file the proper paperwork. Just because it’s lateral, doesn’t mean it’s not critical structural work to address, and we haven’t seen the updated plans.”
“Huh?” I say as I gather the mail in my hands, even pulling out some of the circulars and coupons that I don’t need, dropping them into the recycling bin by the mailboxes.
“The connecting renovation for 7B. I know he thinks it should be simple, but it takes just as much detail,” she says as if this is information I had.
She just keeps speaking like it’s a conversation I’ve been a part of.
Suddenly leaving me grasping at straws I can’t completely remember. Did we talk about it? Did I miss it?
“I'm sorry,” I say, trying to understand exactly what she’s asking.
Because what seemed like a surface-level question clearly has a lot more underneath that I am unprepared for.
“I’m confused.” My eyes must be glazed over, because the woman in front of me is going hazy as my heart begins to speed up.
Did he say 7B?
No. He fucking didn’t.
“I assumed you'd discussed the timeline, since the approval, but given how busy you both are, it seems not.” She gives the small satisfied nod of someone whose co-op board has done its due diligence, even if me, as a person, has not. (Clearly.) “It’ll be a lovely space when it's finished.” A pause. "Ambitious. Then again, he has always known exactly what he wanted, and would do anything to get it,” she says, without any awareness of what it's doing to the person she’s saying it to. Or if she does, she doesn’t care.
“Yes,” I agree, just resigned to what’s happened. “He knows how to get what he wants.”
When I get upstairs, the letter from the co-op board is exactly where he’s left it.
How fucking stupid could I be. I was there, when Mr. Ambrose handed it to him, and he just set it aside.
Obviously I thought it was because we were in the middle of something.
We were, at the beginning of something. (Little did I know.) It never occurred to me to open it, why would it?
I trusted him with the paperwork, I trusted him with everything.
I take the letter and head to the one place I never venture.
Walking down the hall to his office. The door opens without resistance, which it feels like it shouldn’t, like there should be some kind of acknowledgment from the universe that I am crossing a threshold I never have before, and he never wanted me to cross.
(I wonder why.) But the door just opens, into a room that is exactly what I should have expected and somehow still stops me.
It’s smaller than I imagined, which is strange, because everything about Hudson feels large.
But the room itself is just a desk and a chair with a narrow bookshelf, it doesn’t even look like he works here, always instead at the counter in the kitchen.
But maybe this is exactly who he is. Stripped of all the excess. (And I, I am the excess.)
The only thing on his dark wood desk is a single legal pad and a pen set parallel to its edge.
Everything about it is like everything else in his life before I showed up, organized to the point of severity, to the point of loneliness, somewhere so carefully contained that there is no room in it for anything accidental. (Again, me.)
I take a seat at his desk, the letter from the co-op board confirming the wire of funds and purchase of 7B.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
And I open his top drawer, pulling out all the papers, flipping through them, and chucking them on the otherwise clean desk.
I pull open another drawer, this one with hanging folders.
(And seriously, what kind of person in this day and age is using hanging folders as a storage system?) I take them out, one by one.
His mortgage for this apartment. Grams’ financials, anything to do with her power of attorney, and then, there it is. The Louisa file.
Don’t get me wrong, I knew there were Louisa files. We had to compile them to prepare for Immigration.
FUCK! Immigration. I check the time on my phone, seeing how long I have before I have to sit there and be questioned on all the things to do with my husband. Right now, I don’t know anything about him.
In the Louisa file, our marriage paperwork, the copy of the license, the official certificate, the immigration forms in careful order, the ones originally approved, the ones he made copies of in case he needs them today.
And behind that, divorce papers.
I don’t need to read them, it’s clear what they are, but what jumps out above all else? His signature at the bottom of the page, neat and certain, the same signature that’s on our marriage license in the folder directly in front of it.
I look at the blank line where my signature goes, the only thing he didn’t have control over. If he did, I’m sure it would already be signed.
He’s handled everything, he just couldn’t do this without me.
Of course. There’s no reality here except the one I pretended existed. Because there’s a difference between something feeling real and being real. And you aren’t the one who gets to decide.
I can feel the tears at the back of my throat, I can feel it behind my eyes and in my chest. A place that was once hollow, somewhere he filled slowly, is now drained of anything. Suddenly empty again.
There’s a stack of letters held together with a binder clip.
All from different co-op interactions, going back months.
The first letter is the board approval for the acquisition of 7B in conjunction with existing ownership of 7A.
I open the next one, a notification of permit approval.
The third is a preliminary timeline from the contractor.
I sit here, in his chair, with the letters arranged in front of me, laid out next to divorce papers, and I let myself understand what I'm looking at. But the story is pretty clear. It was always right here. He told, that first night. Anything more than this, it’s a liability.
I understand now. Because falling in love with him, the way I have, that makes extracting himself from all this so much harder.
When he made it clear what he was in this for.
I was just the only person dumb enough to think it could be more.
It’s overwhelming me in a way that makes me short of breath. So I take an inhale, and begin to count—no, fuck that. Fuck him, and his fucking breathing techniques and his manipulative bullshit.
He bought my apartment, and he’s had months to tell me. It was always part of the plan. He told me the cover story, never the truth. And to him, that’s perfectly fine. But to me, he’s a goddamned liar.
He needed a wife to satisfy the co-op board. No, he needed his wife’s apartment. And there I was, conveniently desperate, conveniently next door, conveniently willing to sign my name on anything he put in front of me because I trusted him. For no fucking reason.
The details undo me, because I cannot reconcile any of it. I feel something go very, very quiet inside me, and it isn’t peaceful. It’s betrayal.
I lay my head on the cool wood desk. Papers scattered around me, and just hours from now, we have our final immigration appointment, the one we have been building towards, the last piece of paperwork before everything gets filed and processed and resolved.
Except our divorce.