In the days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief. When I am angry, I can make everything about Nick—his failure, his mistake, his loss. I can focus all my energy on punishing him, refusing to see him, ultimately leaving him. In one very dark moment, I even consider turning him in to the Ethics Committee at the hospital. I am comforted by anger’s sharp, precise lines, its definite road map. Anger makes me believe that my brother is right—there should be no forgiveness or second chances. Life will be different moving forward, but it will go on.
Grief is a more complicated matter. It is something I can’t direct at Nick, as it is also about my loss, my children’s loss, the loss of our family and everything I once cherished and believed in. It has a component of fear and one of regret—of wishing I could turn back the clock and do things differently, more vigilantly guard my marriage.
Be a better wife. Pay him more attention. Have more sex. Be more attractive. When the grief hits, I find myself looking inward, blaming myself for somehow allowing this to happen, for not seeing it coming at all. Grief also has a disorienting effect, offering no game plan whatsoever, leaving me only one option: to suffer there in the moment, until it is usurped by rage once again.
***
On the morning of my thirty-sixth birthday, a dreary, blustery Monday in January, I find myself squarely in the anger camp, and am further riled when Nick calls in the morning, just after Carolyn has arrived to watch Frankie and I’ve dropped Ruby off at school. I nearly answer the phone, but keep my track record alive and let him roll to voice mail, even showering before I check his message. When I finally listen, I detect a note of desperation in his voice as he wishes me a happy birthday, followed by an urgent plea to see me, if only to have cake as a family. I delete it immediately, along with an e-mail letting me know that if I won’t see him, he will leave my gift on the front porch as he did with my still-unopened Christmas present, a box that is too small to be anything but jewelry. I flash back to our tainted anniversary, feeling a rush of resentment toward him—for not giving me a gift that night, not even a card. For not switching his call in the first place. For everything. I hold on to this anger, determined not to dwell on Nick or my situation on my birthday.
Then, in an ironic twist, my divorced parents, neither of whom I’ve yet told my news, are both in town. My mother’s visit was always a given, as she almost never misses seeing me or my brother on the “anniversary of our births,” as she calls them, while my father is in Boston for a last-minute meeting. He calls to wish me a happy birthday, then informs me he has several hours before his flight back to New York. “Can I take my little girl to lunch?” he asks, sounding chipper.
I scribble on a notepad, Dad’s in town, and hold it up for my mother, who forces a broad, fake smile. I see right through her, feeling stressed at the mere idea of being at a table with both of them, and say, “Shoot, Dad. I already have plans. I’m sorry . . .”
“With your mother?” he asks, knowing that she owns this day, that he relinquished all birthday rights, along with the furniture and photo albums and Waldo, our beloved (by everyone but my mother) basset hound. It was always clear to Dex and me that my mother kept Waldo out of spite, a reaction that once annoyed me, but I now understand.
“Yeah. With Mom,” I say, overcome by two emotions, seemingly at odds. On the one hand, I feel intensely loyal to my mother, along with a fresh sense of empathy for all she went through; on the other, I am frustrated for her, with her, wishing she could get over the bitterness I know she still feels. Bitterness that does not bode well for my future—or Ruby’s and Frank’s, for that matter.
“Right. I figured as much,” he says. “But I was hoping to see you, too.” A note of exasperation creeps into his voice, as if to say, It has been years since the divorce. Can’t we all be grown-ups here and move on?
“Are you ... . alone?” I ask gingerly, knowing that Diane’s presence would be a deal breaker in the scenario I am actually contemplating.
“She’s in New York. . . C’mon, hon, let’s do it. Wouldn’t it be nice if both of your parents took you to lunch, together, on your thirty-fifth birthday?”
“Thirty-sixth,” I say.
“We can pretend,” he says, a smirk in his voice. My father hates growing older more than I—or any woman I know—which my mother ascribes to what she calls his boundless vanity. “So what do you say, kiddo?”
“Hold on a sec, Dad,” I say, then cover the phone and whisper to my mother, “He wants to join us. What do you think . . . ?”
She shrugs, smiles again, and says, “It’s up to you, honey. It’s your day.”
“Can you handle it?” I say, not at all fooled by her cool-as-a-cucumber facade.
“Of course I can handle it,” she says, looking vaguely insulted.
I hesitate, then return to my father, giving him instructions on where to meet us. Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I watch my mother reach for her compact, carefully, nervously, touching up her lipstick.
“Fabuloso,” my father says.
“Dy-no-mite,” I deadpan, wondering if I will ever achieve the indifference that has so clearly eluded my mother. Or whether, years from now, I will hear my ex-husband’s name and feel just as frantic to look my best. To show Nick what he’s missing, what he destroyed and lost, so long ago.