Bob Marley was singing about everything being all right. The glow of the distant fireflies dimmed. From inside the house, I could hear Madd laughing with some friends.
“So, this is how it ends, after all these years?” I managed to say.
“This is how it ends,” he said, his voice echoing with finality.
9
The loss set in with indescribable force a month later when Adam packed up and left for his new solo life. I had to drag myself out of bed, and when I did, everything felt wrong.
I had three fender-benders in two weeks.
More than once, I sat in my car at a stop sign waiting for the light to change.
I took acid control tablets four at a time when the instructions said take two.
I pumped gas and then drove away with the gas cap on the roof of my car, went to the local auto parts store and bought a new one. The next week, I did it again. When I went sheepishly to see the auto guys, they told me they were going to order an extra cap to save for the next time I came in. It could have been funny, but it wasn’t.
I took a fall on the front steps and bounced on my shoulder down two stairs to the sidewalk, breaking three ribs horizontally. For days I couldn’t raise my right arm, reach out, or pick anything up. Coughing and sneezing brought piercing pain. I waited to puncture a lung. Truth: I almost wanted to get worse so I could retreat to a hospital bed, wear a nightgown, and be served painkillers and lime Jell-O by kindly nurses.
I cried when I ran out of conditioner. I cried at the supermarket when they didn’t have unsalted rice cakes. I cried when Ian left for high school, because I didn’t want to be alone. I cried until I ran out of Kleenex and had to wipe my nose on an old washcloth. I cried into Penny’s fur until it was matted.
I ordered immune support and mood-boosting vitamins on Amazon, then forgot to take them. I drank new age cold remedy tea that didn’t stop my nose from running like a hose when I cried. But I had kids to take care of and a household to run as a single mother. I didn’t have the option to take to my bed.
I tried hard to form a plan but came up empty. The best I could do was to get up every morning and be there for the kids. Get them up and ready for school. Make their lunch, find something for dinner besides scrambled eggs, wrestle with math homework, listen to their stories, remind them to turn out the lights and go to sleep. Tell them their dad loved them but needed to get away for a while, as if the separation weren’t permanent.
Adam kept in touch with Ian and Maddy. I had to give him credit for that. He called Ian every night, which meant so much to our son. Maddy talked to Adam less frequently. Like me, she took it hard that he wanted to live in a camper, traveling the country, rather than in our home that stayed in one place.
Divorce papers came in the mail seven weeks after Adam left, from a small town in Ohio.
He must have paid all the legal fees. All I had to do was sign and return the papers in the self-addressed, stamped envelope. Such a small, innocuous way to end a marriage, but when I brought the envelope to the post office to mail, I clung to it as if I couldn’t let go. I tried to breathe with the razors I felt crisscrossing the place where my heart once was.
The Adam years were over.
10
It was six months later that Bryan and I stumbled upon each other, literally, in a restaurant in Ashton where I’d gone with Eddie to watch a live band play.
I was inching my way to the bar for a dirty martini for Eddie and a vodka cranberry for myself when a cute guy suddenly turned with a draft beer in each hand, and even as he tried to balance the mugs, they sloshed all over the front of my white T-shirt. Well, it wasn’t really mine; I’d borrowed it from Maddy because I had no cool bar clothes.
It was a wet T-shirt contest gone very wrong.
“I’m so sorry, let me help—”
“It’s OK,” I said, even though it wasn’t.
“Here,” he said, shrugging off his jean jacket. “Take this.”
“No, I can’t—”
“I don’t want you to have to leave before the band comes on,” he said, tipping his head a little to the side, as if trying to figure out whether he’d seen me before.
“Well, all right.” I put it on, and it covered the beer stains.
“I’m Bryan,” he said, extending his hand.
“Jessica.”
“I’m sorry again for the way we met, but I’m glad we did.”
We found a quieter corner of the bar where we could talk without yelling. Eddie gave me a discreet thumbs-up before heading out.
When he left, I still had the jacket in my closet. Never did give it back.
Bryan was the opposite of Adam—wiry, about 5’ 10” to Adam’s 6’ 3” with a flat stomach and muscular arms that flexed in the snug black T-shirts he wore. He was also completely bald, but it suited him. He shaved his head, which looked great because it was perfectly symmetrical. Adam loved to talk and make people laugh but Bryan was quieter, an intent listener, following every word I said.
Bryan had a tattoo of Batman that he’d designed himself, spanning the space between his shoulder blades. He was a gifted artist. He could sketch cartoons, paint modern acrylics on huge canvases with wide swaths of red and blue and yellow, sculpt
