“Don’t get out of this car, Nan. There is a better way to go here. Screaming in parking lots is not the Karma Factory way.” And then in a lower voice, she added, “We are women of grace and fucking dignity.”
I thought I saw Chuck’s leg and flinched. “Oh!” And then yes, there he was, walking to his car, and that stupid grin was still on his face. I put the binoculars down and I could still see that grin. He opened the door and took a paranoid look around him. It was then that I decided to leave it up to the universe. If Chuck saw me, I would jump out of the car and run at him and throw these heavy binoculars at his head. If he didn’t see me, I would trust that Ana was right to wait and I would stay in the car. I had one foot in the car and one foot on the pavement. It was so ridiculous how I never knew what to do.
Chuck set his keys on top of his car and then he stood there in the sun, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt. He really needed to start working out. That paunch. And that skeezy car. And that ridiculous tropical shirt. He looked like a retired mobster who’d moved to Florida to avoid indictment.
I waited for him to see me, or, if not me, then at least my conspicuous car, which would count too, or if not my conspicuous car then Ana’s even more conspicuous car. That would also count as his having seen me. But—what an idiot. He saw nothing. He was off in his dream world, dreaming about what the blond woman looked like naked. Fucking asshole. And then the blond woman was driving by, driving slower past him. A red Mazda. Shelly Two—I was already calling her that. Shelly Two waved and Chuck waved back. Then Chuck got into his decrepit car and drove away. Where, I didn’t know. Because I didn’t know what Chuck did anymore.
“Nan honey, breathe,” Ana said.
I tried to breathe. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her lips. It was too disturbing to see yet another person I loved looking like a stranger.
I brought my foot back into the car.
With Shelly, it had just been that one time, that one drunk night. “It’s like someone else did this, not me,” he’d said. I’d imagined a dark dark room and their drunk clashing bodies and it happening so fast that neither of them could really remember the details. But this. This was so much worse. It was daylight, it was conversations, it was fucking Mexican food. It was a real connection. And Shelly Two looked like a real person. Possibly with substance. She was clean. She wore stylish shorts. She had no humpback or the limp I’d been hoping to discover when they’d walked to the door together. Shelly Two had nothing I could easily make fun of. And her calves were more toned than mine. And she was blonder than me. Obviously, because I wasn’t blond at all. Shelly Two was really blond. Charlize Theron blond. Or blonder. And she had made him smile like that.
“Nan?” Ana touched my shoulder. “Come here, my darling,” she said, and pressed my still-shocked body into hers. She smelled like me because she was wearing my dress. I was too shocked to cry. I felt the angry energy wearing off and I knew that when it did, I would be very tired.
“I was just going into the coffee shop to get some iced tea,” Ana said, “and I looked in the window of Patricio’s and I was like: Is that Chuck? He didn’t see me, don’t worry.” She patted my back. “Kind of crazy, right? Since I only met Chuck last night. If this had happened yesterday, I wouldn’t have even known who he was.”
I wasn’t really listening to her because a new daunting thought had taken over. “I’m getting a divorce,” I said. I didn’t say this angrily, but with the wonder of a person who has been walking on a road for a very long time and then suddenly the road ends. And the person says, Oh. Oh? Oh, the road has ended. So suddenly? There must have been a sign on this road. Or many signs. Didn’t you see them? Why didn’t you see them?
“If it makes you feel any better,” Ana said, “my divorces have all been pretty positive experiences. It might not feel that way to you now, but you’ll get through it. The only way out is through, Nan. It just takes time.”
Time. Over time, I would get used to the idea of a divorce.
But what about the meantime? What about the rest of today? And tonight, at home? What would I say to him? Would he continue to live in the ohana until he found his own place? A divorce could drag on forever. What about right now?
I said all of this to Ana. “I mean like tonight, what am I going to do?” Instinctively, I had looked at her, the person I was talking to. Those lips. I would have to get used to them. But for now, I looked away, looked back at the parking space where Chuck’s shit Honda had been and a new car was parked there already, a shockingly yellow car, and the world was moving on too fast without me.
Ana reached behind my seat and pulled out the Costco tub of Red Vines. “You want one?”
“No thanks.”
She was inspecting the tub from the bottom now. “Good, because it looks like they melted.”
“I’m melting.”
“May I make a suggestion?”
“Yes.” Again I accidentally looked at her and again, I looked away and again my eyes fell on the yellow car. Circles. I was spinning. I closed my eyes. That was the only thing to do. Go through your life blind, Nancy. Go through your life like a blind fool.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
The we made me like this plan already.
“We’re going to go home. You’re going to take a nice long bath. I brought some bath crystals you can use. They will invigorate you. I will make dinner for the boys. We will lock all the doors. I will explain to the boys what is going on.”
“No,” I said, “We can’t tell them about this.”
“Fine. I will tell the boys the PG version of what is going on. I’ll just say something happened and we have to lock Dad out tonight. Okay? This will give you time to think about what you want to do. You will go to bed early and you will sleep—I have some pills that will help you sleep—and you will feel better in the morning. And as far as karma, I think it’s clear that Chuck deserves some right now. Be-yond deserves. I don’t have a plan yet, but do I have your permission to carry out my plan when it comes to me?”
This might have been a place to take pause, but I didn’t. Not a split second of dead air passed before I said, “Yes.”
?
LAVENDER DEAD SEA SALT, RELAXING THE WORLD ONE BATH AT A TIME. What a dumb slogan. But it did smell good. And I wanted to believe it was relaxing me.
Ana had drawn my bath. She’d sat on the edge of the tub, feeling the water with one hand and her lips with the other—“I can’t stop touching them”—and then she’d lit candles and turned the lights off. I’d looked at the filled bathtub and said in a drained voice, “No one takes care of me but you.”