It was exciting to be noticed, I thought, to notice someone noticing me . . . it was exciting, until I remembered this was not an original thought of mine, but a lyric from a song about “dangerous girls” that played on every dance floor I was part of, every year of university. Realizing this I felt old and tired—a divorcée in yoga pants lusting after some guy with a mustache because it seemed like maybe he was checking me out. Pathetic.
After class, Calvin stood in line with me while I got a green tea and kept walking alongside as I turned up the street in the direction of home. I asked if he still lived in his old place, and he said that he did, but on his own now, and added that he had “really done the place up,” with a projector for movies and a rug and everything.
“You guys should come see it,” Calvin said. “Fuck, sorry.”
I told him it was alright; I made the same mistake all the time. “I hadn’t even realized I’d become a ‘we’ person,” I said. “Not sure which is more embarrassing, using it during the relationship or using it after the relationship is over.”
“Probably after,” he said, completely earnest.
I sat on my front steps and asked Calvin the question I’d been strenuously avoiding since the instant I saw him.
“Oh . . . yeah, I mean, he’s been down,” he said, weirdly bashful. “We haven’t exactly gotten into it, but, uh, he’s smoking, I would say, more weed than usual, although I think he’s been seeing s— I probably shouldn’t get into it.”
I agreed that he probably shouldn’t, though didn’t mention that he probably shouldn’t have been outside my house in the first place. It was nice to talk to him; it felt familiar, like good times past, but the change in my circumstances also hung between us. Being alone—even single—felt, for the first time, intriguing.
He came inside, and we drank the beers that had been coming since we first encountered each other, sitting too close together on the couch and laughing about cottage weekends and house parties gone by, his sex life （robust） and mine （nonexistent, doomed）。 I confessed I’d been staying up too late and crying myself to sleep like a jilted woman in a film. Calvin said it would all work out eventually. He really seemed to believe it, and I wondered, aloud, if maybe it would. Breaks could be healing. People did that, separated and returned to each other. You sometimes heard about couples, apart for years, remarrying decades later. Calvin let out a loud, amicable laugh.
“Oh my god, that’s not what I meant at all,” he said. He laughed harder. “Are you kidding?! That guy is never coming back. You guys are OVER. I meant, like, you’ll both move on with your lives. Oh my god. Imagine!”
I realized as he said it that of course this was true, and of course at that moment he leaned in to kiss me. I let him, for a few seconds, enjoying the novelty of this new mouth, its sugary, beer-inflected breath and bizarrely solid tongue. Having someone casually name what was happening, without pity or reverence, was a foreign feeling too. My marriage was over! That didn’t have to be bad! It could even be funny! At least, it could be okay.
I stopped the kissing almost immediately. Sleeping with the man who had read Neruda at our wedding seemed like it would be very satisfying in a way that felt vulgar and dangerous, but it was certainly not the mature way of doing things. I imagined Lauren making a pass at Jon and felt my throat constrict. If I was going to move on, it couldn’t be with Calvin, and not only because an ex of his had told me he gave her “every strain” of HPV. I hadn’t spent enough time thinking about how to be with someone new. （And, although it was not a key factor in my decision, it occurred to me that I hadn’t trimmed my pubes since April.）
“I think, probably not . . .” I said, sinking back into my corner of the couch. Calvin was so undaunted by the rejection I felt like maybe I’d imagined his attempt. The mood in the room didn’t even shift.
“Weed?” he asked, traipsing over to the stove and lighting a joint before I’d even said yes.
We smoked and drank until late in the evening. I played him a recording of my sessions with the psychic, and he swore the man she’d drawn looked like his uncle. We ordered a pizza and showed each other important YouTube videos: a clip from a documentary where a woman has sex with the Eiffel Tower （me） and an eleven-minute supercut of Jason Derulo singing his own name （him）。 Sometime after midnight, I asked him to sleep over.
“I can’t stress how non-sexually I mean this,” I said. “But it’s been nice having you in the house and I’d like it if you stayed.”
Calvin agreed, with one condition.
Later, when I was taking him through each step of my skincare routine, I asked if this was his regular move with women. “Oh, definitely,” he said. “Doesn’t it make me seem sensitive?”
We double cleansed and applied an acid, serum, and night cream. It was the first time I’d done my full skincare routine since Jon had left. I fell asleep in my pajamas, a foot away from Calvin in his boxers and T-shirt, Guy Fieri smiling out at me over the rim of his little shades.
I woke up alone and glowing.
A Fantasy
I am at a karaoke bar, and I look amazing. Better than normal, but in a casual way, like I just got a haircut that affected my whole body. The bar is packed, and although I am the only person singing, everyone is on board with that and thinks it’s fun. In fact, I am taking requests.
The outfit I’m wearing is casual but looks special, like it’s not sparkling but I am, like “wearing sequins” is a vibe and I’m dressed head to toe in that vibe exactly. I am carrying myself with the easy confidence of a woman who both has a Tax-Free Savings Account and understands how one works. I sound great.
All the songs I’m singing are about heartbreak, and the raw emotion of my recent experience informs each number. People are so moved—some of them are weeping. Much of the audience is enthralled strangers, all of whom find me mysterious and alluring. The friends I came with are dumbstruck. No one can believe that I’ve been hiding this voice, that I’ve been so humble about it.
“We thought all her grief would be for nothing,” one whispers to another. “But look what she’s done with it. She’s like Nora Ephron, if Nora Ephron had the voice of Adele.”
Onstage, the pianist （there’s a band） gives me a little wink. A stranger leans over to my friends, “Sorry, do you know her?”
They beam. “We do.”
Everyone is smoking indoors, and it feels glamorous instead of like one of those old-man bars where the lights are always on full blast and someone’s chalking a pool cue for much too long while impossibly aged men read out-of-date newspapers and swear in Portuguese.
“What’s cool about Maggie,” a friend tells a stranger, “is that she’s divorced, but in like, a really fun way.”
“Divorced?” the stranger says. “So young? That is fun. Good for her.”
Suddenly, from somewhere: nuggets.
Chapter 6
Women should not be out here promising to buy the flowers themselves. I learned this the hard way, having woken up absolutely determined to do something thoughtful for my friends, in recognition of the food they’d cooked, the pep talks they’d given, and the maudlin slideshows of Janet pics they’d sat through since Jon’s official move out two months ago. They had better things to do—family gatherings, protests for or against various causes, brunches hosted by drag queens—and yet they’d rallied, taking me to the park to drink rosé, sending texts like plz shower . . . you can be depressed AND smell good, and even coaxing me out one night in August for a belated birthday celebration. It was time to repay their kindness （and, I thought, to build up further goodwill, since I was not done wallowing and would probably need to be babied for another month or so）。