Tonight, after placing my order, I got in the shower. I don’t know why or how he was so fast, but Erik must have arrived within minutes of me turning on the taps. I didn’t hear anyone on the landing, because of the shower, and Erik didn’t ring the bell, knock, call out, or text. What he did do was call my ex-husband four times and leave three voicemails.
I’m sure I don’t need to explain why this was less than ideal, but unfortunately that was not the end of it. When I called my ex-husband to apologize, he told me it was not a big deal to receive four calls from a delivery driver at 4 am because he was at this point “pretty used to it,” and the only thing he found disturbing was the volume of my beef consumption. Erik had not been the first driver to call before trying the doorbell. In fact, it turns out that every single delivery person who has been to my home since our breakup has called my ex’s number before coming to the door. He says one of them even told him it was “always burgers,” which feels grossly unprofessional. Surely there is some kind of confidentiality clause in your employee contract? My deliveries are none of his or anyone else’s business!!!!
I ask that you amend the phone-first policy （or at least make it VERY CLEAR in the app）， remove the number 647-xxx-xxxx from my user profile, and credit my account $15, in light of emotional damages. Also, if there’s any way to add a tip to Erik’s bill now, I didn’t do so at the time, because I was so flustered and upset in the moment, and I really regret it. I know the gig economy is super precarious and you guys refuse to let your workers unionize, which in the long run is probably a way bigger deal than this burger mishap, plus he’s a good guy. Very kind eyes.
Thank you for your time. And to be clear, my dog is on a special diet where he can only eat ground beef, so that’s what all the burgers are for.
Margaret
To: [email protected] From: m——@gmail.com
Sent: July 30, 2018, 4:25 am P.S. The vet said my dog has to eat at very specific times of night, which is why the orders are all so late. It’s a bit inconvenient, but I am a very devoted dog parent.
To: [email protected] From: m——@gmail.com
Sent: July 30, 2018, 4:37 am Look, I thought about it some more, and I really shouldn’t have been in touch. Please don’t get Erik in trouble over this, he doesn’t deserve that. I only emailed because I wanted to make sure other people weren’t affected by this policy, which, for the reasons outlined above, has the potential to hurt a lot of people, or at least really ruin their day. I just care a lot （maybe too much, haha!） about my dog’s well-being and want to do right by Fozz （a Pekingese-Schnauzer mix I rescued from Puerto Rico through a charity）。 Anyway, I’m sorry to bother you. Please use my $15 credit to tip Erik, and we’ll call it a day.
Thanks,
M
Chapter 5
The grocery store was a minefield. So were my favorite coffee shop, the local subway station, and the bar I’d spent every birthday in since turning twenty-three. Toronto is too small a city to get divorced in, really. My recommendation, if you live in Toronto and your marriage is not working, is to stick it out or move away.
At first I avoided Jon （or the potential of him） by staying inside, but lately I had begun to venture out, taking my heart in my hands each time. Once, thinking I saw him, I ducked behind a bush like the heroine of a screwball comedy, if heroines of screwball comedies wore old camp sweatpants with the words aug ’02—we freaky across the butt. It was hard to know if I was seeing Jon everywhere because I missed him, my subconscious longing morphing the faces around me, or because every second man between Ossington and Dovercourt was an average-height white guy with a dark brown beard.
Still, the grocery store loomed largest in those early months, it being the most necessary to visit and often the only outdoor activity in my day. Sometimes I would shower, primping in the mirror as if the midsized produce chain a block from my house were a new lover. （Obviously, the idea of an actual new lover was out of the question, I was simply too old and disgusting and would never feel the touch of another or love again. I would die alone, probably sooner than expected, maybe tomorrow.） Other times I looked terrible and that was fine.
The five-minute walk down my quiet, tree-lined street felt long and slow and exposed. Couples were an affront, single people with their shit together equally so. I walked with a bereaved shuffle, blinking at the brightness of the sun, sweating in my leisurewear, and hoping not to run into anyone I knew. I always, always ran into someone I knew.
It’s actually very hard to live in the west end of Toronto and escape a daily unplanned social encounter, harder still to avoid someone you’re hoping not to see. I ran into students, relatives, elementary school classmates, and acquaintances from three jobs ago, each time doing grim mental equations regarding whether they knew and didn’t care, knew and did care, didn’t know and would like to, or didn’t know and wouldn’t care to find out.
All options were bad. If they did know, I had to buckle up for Soft Eyes, a concerned tilt of the head, and a drawn-out “How you holding up?” Their compassion felt terrible. The more maternal women and optimistically horny men would reach out for a shoulder rub, patting me like a child who’d done a bad job at kickball, instead of a woman whose plan for her life had fallen apart one day over mediocre pad thai. If they didn’t know, they would ask after Jon, and I would have to say, in a voice I hoped sounded wise and resigned and maybe a little European, that we were “taking some time apart.”
This was where I felt older divorcées had a competitive edge. It was hard to seem worldly and accepting when so little had happened to make me that way. I wanted to project the image of a together, independent woman, puffing a cigarette like, Ah, life! and then doing something cool like blowing a smoke ring or ashing without making a mess everywhere. Saying “I am getting a divorce” made me feel like a child clomping around in enormous shoes, my mother’s lipstick all over my face. I had been in love only once before meeting Jon. I’d legitimately assumed he and I would be together forever. Every encounter revealed my na?veté, put me in a pillory with a sign next to it: believed fully in romantic love and the possibility of eternal commitment （in this day and age!!）。
My first real run-in came a few weeks after Jon moved out. It was with an acquaintance called Gaby, who worked at an art gallery and dressed in such a way that if you saw her on the street you’d be like, I bet that girl works at an art gallery, which I think was how she liked it. I found her in the condiments aisle comparing two identical jars of tahini. She looked up while I was trying to figure out how to escape, a shared flash of god, I wish I hadn’t made eye contact passing between us as we both smiled and started the high-pitched, drawn-out “hiiiiiiis” of the reluctantly encountered.
When I asked how it was going, she said, “Oh, you know . . . terrible. Haha!” I sighed in a way I hoped sounded empathetic, and for a moment I wasn’t sure I’d tell her. She hadn’t asked, and for a real, full second, I lived in the gentle delusion that I was a woman capable of not saying, in one breath, without stopping, all of the following: “OhmyhusbandandIaretakingsometimeapartandIdothinkit’sforthebestbutit’shard,youknow,harderthanIexpected,actually,andIjustfeellikeabitofafailureandliketheyoungestpersontoevergetdivorced,whodoesthatattwentyeight,likemostofmyclosefriendsaren’tevenmarriedandhereIamrackingupdivorcebillsandputtingonmakeupincaseIrunintotheformerloveofmylifeinthecerealaisle,hahahaha,buthonestlyit’stheworstI’veeverfelt.” I paused, waiting for Gaby to reply with a comforting platitude, something like “Change is hard,” or “Hopefully it’s for the best,” or “It will get better in time.” She looked at me with pity, but something else too, before putting both tahini jars back on the shelf and saying briskly: