I watch her eyes take me in—my black sweatpants, my gloves, the gas can I’m holding limp at my side like a cumbersome handbag—and I’m sixteen again, wishing I could be more like her.
“I heard that you had . . . um . . . moved,” she says, her eyes darting down and to the left. I wonder what the real rumors were. That I died, joined a traveling circus, entered some top secret government research program. When we moved to New Jersey and I started Lincoln High School as a freshman, the only saving grace was that I had the chance to start over—to be somebody new. Aside from the faculty and school nurse that we met with before school started, I didn’t have to tell anyone at Lincoln High about my condition. So I didn’t. And as far as I could tell, the teachers kept it a secret. But that didn’t stop the stares and whispers and speculation in the hallways and during class.
“Nope,” I manage. My voice is soft, shaky, and I’m as embarrassed by it as I am by my appearance.
She stares at me, as if waiting for something more—an explanation of what I’ve been doing for the past nine years—and the same panic I felt with the cashier begins to creep in: Where do I look? What do I do in the silences? What if I laugh at something that’s not funny?
“Well, I’m divorced,” she says with a little giggle, as if she’s just told a corny knock-knock joke. “Trying to get back out there in the dating scene, but it’s not so easy with three kids.”
My eyes bulge, even as I direct them not to. Perfect, pretty, popular Madison H., who was probably voted most likely to be a famous reality TV star—or at least marry one—is a twenty-eight-year-old divorcée with three kids?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It’s my mom’s voice. I don’t think I’m mean enough to take joy in other people’s misfortunes—even if that person is Madison H.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “About your, um”—I clear my throat, hoping that will force it to become louder, less shaky, more normal—“divorce.” It doesn’t.
She waves her hand at me. “Oh, it’s fine. Those high school romances aren’t meant to last a lifetime. Should’ve listened to Nana about that.”
High school romance? “So . . . you mean . . . you married . . .” I search for my tongue in my mouth and try to make it form the name, but I am the very definition of speechless. Unable to speak. His name, at least.
“Donovan, yeah.”
She says it so easily, so casually, as if she’s telling me something irrelevant, like that she had muesli for breakfast.
I try to repeat his name, to see if it is that easy. If it just rolls off the tongue.
It doesn’t.
“You didn’t know that?” She cocks her head. “Aren’t you on Facebook?”
I shake my head no, hoping I’m giving the impression that I’m better than Facebook and not that I belonged to it for a total of three weeks and the only person who friended me was a man whose profile wasn’t in English. It may have been in Russian, but I’m not sure—I’m not great at differentiating between the various Slavic languages. In short, I closed my account.
“Well, anyway . . .” She eyes me up and down—her gaze resting on my gloves for a second longer than anywhere else—and I cringe again at my appearance. “What are you up to?”
I clear my throat as my brain scrambles to answer her.
“I ran out of gas,” I say. “And I need it.” That was stupid. Of course I need it if I ran out. “I mean—I, um . . . I’m looking for a job.”
“Get out!” she says, and she moves her hand as if she’s going to tap me right in the arm with her bloodred manicured hand but then stops at the last second. I flinch anyway, and it’s an awkward moment.
“Sorry,” she says, her extra-wide grin reappearing, “but we’re losing our assistant at the library and maybe that’s something you’d be interested in?”
The library? Madison H. is a librarian? A vivid memory barrels its way into my mind—Madison H. in English lit our junior year loudly complaining that Huckleberry Finn was too hard to get through: “Why can’t they just use real English?”
“So you work . . . at the library?”
“Oh God no,” she says. “I’m in real estate—well, I just got my license to be a Realtor. But I’m on the board of the library. Donovan thought it would be good for me, with him being in line to be president at the bank when his dad retires, blah, blah—not that any of that matters now.” She titters again. “But it’s fine. It’s a good experience.”
I nod, the word “Donovan” striking a chord in me again, vibrating through my whole body. And then I’m lost in the tidal wave of memories his name—and seeing Madison H.—conjures.
“Jubilee?” Madison says. I blink. Her voice is quiet, subdued.
“Yeah?” I say, struggling to meet her eyes. The humiliation is so acute, so fresh, it makes me want to sprint all the way home, leaving my bike, my handbag, the gas can, everything parked in front of the glass door at Wawa.
“Why are you doing that, that thing with your hands?”
I look down and see that my right fingers are methodically tapping the wrist that’s attached to my hand holding the gas can. I wonder how long I’ve been doing it.
“No reason,” I say, heat rising in my cheeks. I give my head a shake, a futile effort to rid myself of the past. “So, um, I don’t have any résumés with me. Can I send you one? For the library thing?”
Her eyes brighten. “You’re interested?” she says. “That’s great. Don’t worry about the résumé.” She pulls out her cell phone from the purse hanging off her shoulder. “Just give me your number and I’ll put in a word for you. I’m sure they’ll call you.”
I nod again and enunciate the digits that correlate with my house phone.
“Great,” she says. “Well, it was really good to see—”
“Why are you doing this for me?” I know it’s rude to interrupt, but the question is burning the insides of my mouth and I have to release it.
She shrugs, as if she doesn’t know what I mean, but her eyes shift, betraying her. “It’s a good coincidence,” she says. “You’re looking for a job, and I know a place that has one.”
But we both know it’s more than that. If you could open our brains and reveal our thoughts, I’m sure we’d both be thinking of the same moment, in the same courtyard that, try as I might, I can’t ever forget—the moment when Donovan kissed me. I thought we were alone, until a gaggle of kids came charging around the corner, pushing one another and laughing and shoving money toward Donovan—payment on their bet. Madison was one of them, though I don’t remember her laughing. Her face was long, serious, and the last one I saw before I passed out. And I always wondered, if she wasn’t there to laugh at me like the rest of them, why was she there at all?
four
ERIC
A YEAR BEFORE OUR divorce, Stephanie and I went to see her priest for counseling. It wasn’t my idea. When she suggested it, I countered: “How can he help us? He’s never been married.” But as with many of our arguments, I lost. In one of the sessions, she complained that I was too negative.