21
Tessa
In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I feel myself slipping into a holidays-suck-and-so-do-I malaise. It starts one morning when I am running late to pick up Ruby from school. My hair still wet and Frankie covered in crumbs, I strap him into his car seat, throw my minivan in reverse, and promptly slam it into the garage door—the closed garage door—resulting in a cool three thousand dollars’ worth of damage.
Later that afternoon, in an apparent attempt to make me feel better, Larry, the tattooed, mustached garage-door repairman straight out of central casting, informs me that it happens way more than I’d think.
“And would ya believe it?” he continues in a thick Boston accent. “Most often the men ah to blame.”
“Really?” I say, mildly intrigued by this bit of trivia.
Larry nods earnestly and says, “I guess ‘cause men ah busiah, ya know?”
I give him an incredulous look, anger bubbling inside me as I resist the urge to share with Larry just how many things I was mentally juggling when I left the house that day—way more than my husband could have had in his head when he sailed out the door with a thermos of coffee and his new Beck CD. Whistling.
Beyond my own feelings of idiocy and Larry’s sexist commentary, what disturbed me the most about the whole incident was my gut reaction as I stood there in the garage, assessing the crash scene. Namely, Nick’s going to kill me. It is a sentiment I’ve heard time and again—almost always uttered by my stay-at-home-mother friends—and one that has always grated on my nerves, right up there with women who try to hide purchases from their husbands, for fear of getting in trouble. Which always makes me want to say, “Is he your father or your husband?”
To be clear, I wasn’t afraid of Nick, but I was worried that he’d be disgusted with me. That he’d secretly wish his wife were a little more together. And I can’t remember ever feeling that way before.
The fact that Nick turned out to be understanding, even mildly amused, when I confessed my mental lapse, wasn’t much of a comfort because it didn’t really change the underlying truth—that the power was shifting between us and I was becoming a needy, approval-seeking wife, someone I didn’t recognize, someone my mother warned me about.
Several days later, the feeling returns after Ryan, my ex-fiancé, finds me on Facebook, requesting my “friendship”—and I find myself hoping that it might make Nick jealous, and thinking that I want him to be jealous.
Staring at the tiny photo of Ryan wearing Ray-Bans, a shimmering lake in the background, I call Cate and give her the news.
“I knew he would contact you eventually,” she says, referring to our debate some time ago in which I insisted that we would never speak again. For one, I had a scorched-earth letter promising that to be the case. For another, nobody in our circle of friends had heard a peep from him since our five-year reunion.
“Should I accept the add?” I ask.
“Hell, yeah,” Cate says. “Don’t you want to see what he’s doing? If he’s married?”
“I guess so,” I say.
“Besides, you can’t ignore a friend request—it’s rude,” Cate continues. “Especially when you were the dumper . . .”
“So if he had broken up with me, I could deny his request?”
“Absolutely. It would still be a little rude, but you’d be well within your rights,” Cate says definitively, the master of social networking nuances and scorned-lover tactics.
“Okay. Here goes,” I say, my stomach churning with curiosity and anticipation as I click the confirm button, go directly to his page, and read his update, posted last night: Ryan is taking the ferryboat home, all set to reread Middlesex.
I pause, thinking how odd it is to have such a vivid glimpse into someone’s life after having no clue what they’ve been doing for the last decade.
“What? What do you see?” Cate says.
“Hold on a sec,” I say as I scan his page, quickly discovering that he lives on Bainbridge Island but works in Seattle—hence the ferry. He still teaches high school English. He’s married to a woman named Anna Cordeiro, has one dog—a husky named Bernie. No children. His interests include politics, hiking, biking, photography, and Shakespeare. His favorite music: Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Books: too many to name. His favorite quote is from Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” No real surprises. I summarize for Cate, who says, “What’s he look like?”
“The same. Except he got contacts,” I say, remembering how blind he was without his thick glasses. “Or laser surgery.” “Does he still have his hair?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And his wife? Is she cute or not so much?” Cate clamors, as if it is her ex we’re cyberstalking.
“I don’t know. Cute enough. Short. Good teeth.”