All of this brought flashbacks of Adam, to the good times when the kids were little: parent-teacher conferences, the games of Yahtzee and Monopoly, taking them to the drive-ins knowing they’d fall asleep before intermission.
I’d overcome the sense that I was responsible for Adam taking off, knowing logically it wasn’t my fault he wanted to be somewhere else, have a different life than the one we’d built. But the parallel circumstances of being alone were wildly painful. Adam had taken to the road, and so had Bryan.
After Adam, I’d moved on and forged a new life with Bryan. I’d had it, that new life, and I sent him away. In his black SUV with a bike on the back.
After Bryan left, I had to sit in my own head and figure out how I felt, and how to even begin to feel better. It was a kind of loneliness I’d never known before. It had all happened so fast, that damn cat lady lawyer made the paperwork appear so quickly—voilà! You’re divorced! Free to go your separate ways! Godspeed!
I remembered the day in the kitchen with the chicken frying, how much sense it made then for us to separate, how clear it had been that Bryan belonged in the sun with his family, how amicable we’d been, how we congratulated ourselves for being adults and handling it all so well.
I wasn’t prepared to fall to my knees when I found one of his T-shirts at the bottom of the laundry basket. I lined up all the bottles of hot sauce, salsa, and cranberry mayo in the fridge front and center to make myself believe he was still there (he was big on condiments), hugged his pillow at night until it no longer smelled like him, kept the one lone flip-flop I found in the closet in a drawer in my nightstand, because I couldn’t bear to throw it out.
Grief, as it turned out, wasn’t linear. It was more like one step forward, two steps back. Or up and down. A fucking roller coaster.
I wasn’t prepared for that kind of sorrow.
I wasn’t prepared to be that alone.
I had needed Bryan to recover from Adam. Now they were both gone. Now what?
15
Madison did what she felt she had to do: she called Eddie to get me out of bed.
Eddie had stayed by my side through my first divorce, listening to me lament, drying my tears, stopping me after two glasses of wine. He’d pointed out all the positive things to being single: freedom, not having to answer to anyone, parenting the way I wanted, using the whole bed to sleep, filling the fridge with Chobani and apples and bags of pre-washed spinach. He was there for me in the way a best friend always seems to be.
“OK, it’s time to rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” Eddie announced, coming into my bedroom and throwing open the room-darkening shades.
“Tired,” I mumbled.
“You’ve been in bed all day, missy,” he announced. “I think someone’s being a little bit diva here.”
“Leave me be,” I said, pulling the blanket over my face.
“Well this may cheer you, Ms. Shopaholic,” Eddie held up a brown box from Amazon. “You should be earning cash back with all the things you buy. Have you considered therapy?”
“If you’re trying to make me laugh, it’s not working.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Eddie said, pulling off the tape and opening the box. “Ah, here’s something practical. A steamer? This for rice? Didn’t you buy one a few months ago?”
“It’s a facial steamer.” I pushed the covers off to look. “You steam open your pores and your moisturizer sinks in better. It’s like an at-home facial.”
“Oh, now that’s something I could get into,” Eddie said, pulling out the directions. “We could save a lot of money at the day spa.”
Eddie and I took a trip to the spa every couple of months for a Swedish massage, mineral bath, and manicure. We’d done facials a few times and his gentleman’s facial left his skin buffed and glowing. Mine gave me rosacea on my cheeks.
“Facials really aren’t for people with sensitive skin,” the twenty-year-old esthetician had told me afterwards.
“Get out of bed and we’ll steam open our pores,” Eddie said when I refused to budge. “In twenty minutes, you’ll look like new.”
“I don’t care how I look. I’ll probably just return it.”
Eddie chuckled. “You’ll make Amazon regret their generous return policy. I bet you send back half the stuff you order.”
“Not half,” I said indignantly. “I keep lots of stuff—the striped mittens, the kitchen towels with the roosters on them, that roller thing for sore feet.”
Penny bounded over to Eddie, wagging furiously. She nudged his hand and he scratched behind her ears.
“Traitor,” I told my dog.
“Let me remind you that I didn’t grieve this much when Matthew left me,” Eddie said, pulling my covers right off the bed.
“You weren’t with Matt three years.”
Eddie sighed. “Well, it felt like forever.” He sat down and rubbed my leg.
“Yeah, but then you met Don, and now you’re happily married, damn you.”
“I had my share of heartache before Donny. You helped me get through it, just like I’m going to get you out of this little slump of yours.”
I turned away from Eddie and curled up. “You don’t understand.”
“Honey, I understand fine. Do I need to remind you of the bad times? The pro and con list?”
I grunted in response.
“Picture last winter,” Eddie said. “Bryan came home from work and collapsed on the couch, where he ate dinner and then went to bed at 9.”
“He worked ten hours a day; he was tired,” I said.
“You stopped communicating altogether, you stopped having sex—”
I groaned. “I regret telling you that.”
“Sweetie, you tell me everything. That’s what I’m here for. Besides, it keeps me entertained.”
I grunted again.
“Seriously, babe,” Eddie said, brushing the hair out of my face. “You can do this.
