“You’re so lucky you own this place,” I said, leaning back on some vaguely nautical throw pillows. Lauren took my hand and placed it on her head, a gesture I knew well. I put my drink on the coffee table and started separating her hair into sections for french braids.
“I’m lucky the rest of my cousins are so garbage,” said Clive, kicking Amirah’s legs off him and standing up authoritatively, a man with a plan, even when the plan was vodka tonics. “Thanks, Aunt Grace! Eat a dick, Jordan and Luke!”
Amirah had spent the entire hang stretched across us on the couch, distracted by a text-based argument with Tom about a dinner reservation he had forgotten to reschedule.
“It’s like he doesn’t want me to nag him,” she said. “And then when I don’t . . .”
“You have to eat at a different restaurant?” said Lauren. “Nightmare.”
“Exactly, thank you,” said Amirah. Then, “Oh, fuck off,” when she realized Lauren was mocking her. “I’m meeting his parents, okay? I’m nervous.”
Amirah had nothing to worry about. She was universally adored by parents, still on holiday card terms with several exes’ families. It was rare for her to fret like this, another of many recent signs she was starting to consider Tom a serious romantic partner rather than a mere boyfriend.
“Do you think it’s too soon?” she asked.
Clive shrugged, emerging from the recesses of his fridge with three limes. “Famously, I either want to meet your grandma on the second date or do not bother with last names.”
Lauren nodded knowingly. “Can’t help you,” she said. “The apps have destroyed my idea of what’s normal. I had to break it off with that guy I was seeing—remember, he was agoraphobic, so we always had to meet at his house? Turns out he’s totally fine, he just doesn’t like coming to the west end.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Stealing that,” said Clive.
Lauren got up to examine her braids in the mirror. “Not your best work, no offense,” she said.
Amirah threw her phone into some pillows and let out an anguished sound. “What do I doooooooo?” she wailed, falling onto the couch and burying her face in my shoulder.
I said I wasn’t the right person to ask; at the rate I was speeding through rites of passage, I would shortly be retiring, then enjoying some time in a seniors’ facility before my funeral at forty. Clive snorted as he plopped a tray of chilled glasses on his coffee table.
“Oh, whatever,” said Lauren, carefully undoing her braids. “It’s weirder to be married young than it is to be divorced. Before when we went out, I’d have to be like, ‘This is my friend, Someone’s Wife.’ Now you’re like, reset.”
I told them I wished I were a widow. “I feel like when you get a divorce, everyone’s wondering how you ruined it all, what made you so unbearable to be with. If your husband dies, at least people feel bad for you.”
Amirah perked up at this, perhaps realizing she had been disengaged from a crucial support moment and seeing an opportunity to get back in the fray. She leaned forward to soothingly pat my head and looked at me very earnestly.
“Oh, babe, do not worry,” she said. “People feel very bad for you.”
Unanswered Texts, August 6–16
hey, I’ve got some mail of yours. do you want me to send it to your new place? hope all’s well over there.
did you get my email? we still have to settle on a date of separation . . .
hey, do you know what shoegaze is?
just saw eli from your work, i think. could also have just been . . . a guy haha
sorry to bug, but I really think we need to discuss next steps and get the ball rolling with the legal stuff. how is janet doing? hope you’re both well.
it’s your sister’s birthday today, fyi! i’m sure you don’t need me to remind you, but in case you did need me to remind you: it is.
saw that pottery barn spot you wrote . . . the actress they cast is like fourteen and her husband’s fifty, but it’s really good otherwise!! great job :）
haven’t heard from you in a while . . . thought i’d check in about your mail and the cat and the separation date, blah blah. let me know when you get a sec! hope you’re well!
hey, did you scrub your instagram? i accidentally saw it when i was trying to log out of janet’s account and saw you deleted everything . . . there’s like four pictures of food and nothing else. is everything ok? hope you’re well xo
????
. . . . . . . .
please, jon, i really don’t want to send one of those long, deranged block-of-text messages.
Getting back to me about our cat is not that much to ask. And I’m going to start looking for new apartments soon, and eventually I’ll move, and your mail will be going to a house where strangers live. Also since when do you subscribe to Architectural Digest? It is really painful to keep having stuff with your name on it show up at the door. It sucks, honestly. And by not getting back to me, you’re making it worse. I don’t want us to be one of those couples who has to hate each other to split up properly, but you’re being selfish and honestly a bit cruel. I can’t believe I’m saying this, i actually hate that you’ve driven me here, but look at Gwyneth Paltrow. All I’m asking is that you get back to me regarding your mail, and what a timeline might look like for divorcing. If you wanted to exchange a few pleasantries now and then, about life or whatever, that would be nice too. Oh also, re: Janet I am still hoping to share custody （this works great for Gwyneth and Chris, even though he is now with Dakota Johnson）。 Janet could handle it. She’s really adaptable—if you remember, we took her to Lauren’s cottage that time and it was no problem. I’m trying so, so hard to be reasonable here and I barely feel like you’re doing anything to help. I also need to talk to you about something else, nothing huge, but something that happened that I do think we should talk about, and I hope you haven’t been talking to other people about it somewhere else, and that you’re not avoiding me because of it, because that would be really unfair, and I promise it’s not what you think. I know you’re not supposed to “bring up the vows” at a time like this, but we did say we’d love each other for better or worse, and this is obviously much, much worse than we expected, but can’t we still try to be kind? It’s really starting to piss me off that the division of our entwined lives can be like, a non-event for you and an enormous administrative chore for me.
really do hope you’re well.
Chapter 7
Amirah set me up for a commiseration evening with a colleague of hers who had recently been involved in what she called a “category five divorce.” People in general were very keen to suggest I hang out with other people they knew who’d divorced before they’d gotten gray hair. Sometimes it felt like a gesture of support, and sometimes it felt like loading all the corpses on the same cart so the rest of the village didn’t get the plague.
My summer had been peppered with these arranged evenings, which always involved alcohol and usually involved crying, and each was odd in a different way. Being united only by one grim fact of your life left a lot of other points upon which two people could be incompatible. It was like constantly going for drinks with someone who had also lost an uncle, or whose roommate moved out unexpectedly, or who’d recently ripped a cherished pair of jeans. This woman’s name was Amy.