and grin dopey grins at each other. I can sit in that same booth without remembering how she’d start off sitting across from me and then, halfway through, get up and plop herself down beside me. “I’m just being sociable,” she’d say, every time. “I’m paying you a visit. Hello, neighbor!” she’d say, and kiss me, and kiss me until the waitress with the blond bouffant and the coffee pot in each hand would stop and shake her head.
I have reclaimed the Tick Tock. Once it was our place, now it’s my place again. It’s right on my way home from work, and I like the spinach and feta omelet, and I can even order it sometimes without remembering how she’d bare her teeth at me in the parking lot, demanding to know whether she had spinach stuck between them.
It’s the little things that get me, every time.
Last night I was sweeping – my new girlfriend was coming over, and I wanted things to look nice – and I found a single kibble of dog food, wedged in a crack between the tiles.
I returned the obvious stuff, of course, the clothes and the jewelry, and I tossed out the rest. Her letters are boxed up in my closet, her picture’s banished to the basement. But how do you guard against a single kibble’s worth of her dog’s Purina Small Bites that’s somehow survived, undetected, for months, only to surface in your dustpan and send you reeling? How do people survive this?
Everyone has history, my girlfriend says, trying to soothe me. Everyone has baggage, everyone carries parts of their past around. She’s a kindergarten teacher, a student of sociology, a professional empath; she knows the right things to say. But it makes me furious to find C.’s cherry Chap Stick in my glove box, a single blue mitten in the pocket of my winter coat. Furious, too, over the things I can’t find: my tie-dye tank top and the Cheesasaurus Rex T-shirt I got for sending in three box tops from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, because I know she’s got them and I’ll never get them back.
I think that when relationships end there should be Thing Amnesty Day. Not right away, when you’re both still raw and broken and aching and probably prone to ill-advised sex, but down the road, when you can still be civil, but before you’ve completed the process of turning your former beloved into just a memory.
Turning your former beloved into a memory, I thought sadly. So that’s what he’s doing. Except… well, turning a former lover into a memory is one thing, but turning a child into a minor distraction, into something you can’t even be bothered with… well, that was something else. Something infuriating. Ill-advised sex, indeed! What about the consequences of his little slip-up!
But for now, I hired a cleaning crew for my apartment. The floors, I told them, showing them the kibble I’d found, muttering dire predictions about bugs and mice and other assorted vermin. But really, I am haunted by memories.
I don’t love her anymore. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Oof. I leaned back in the plush, double-wide leather-clad reclining seat and closed my eyes, feeling the most potent and horrible mixture of sadness and fury – and sudden, overwhelming hope – that for a minute I thought I’d throw up. He’d written this three months ago. That was how long magazines took to print things. Had he seen my letter? Did he know I was pregnant? And what was he feeling now?
“He still misses me,” I murmured, with my hand on my belly. So did that mean there was hope? I thought for a minute that maybe I’d mail him his Cheesasaurus Rex T-shirt, as a sign… as a peace offering. Then I remembered that the last thing I’d mailed him was news that I was having his baby, and he hadn’t even bothered to pick up the phone and ask me how I was.
“He doesn’t love me anymore,” I reminded myself. And I wondered how E. felt, reading this… E. the kindergarten teacher with her sweet talk of baggage and her small, soft hands. Did she wonder why he wrote about me, after all this time? Did she wonder why he still cared? Did he care, or was that just my wishful thinking? And if I called, what would he say?
I turned restlessly in my seat, flipping the pillow, then scrunching it against the window and leaning against it. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the captain was announcing our descent into beautiful Los Angeles, where the sun was shining and the winds were from the southwest and where it was a perfect 80 degrees.
I got off the plane with my pockets full of little gifts the flight girls had pressed upon me, packets of Mint Milanos and foil-wrapped chocolates and complimentary eye masks and washcloths and socks. I had Nifkin’s carrier in one hand, my bag in the other. In the bag was a week’s worth of underwear, my Pregnancy Packable kit, minus the long skirt and tunic, which I was wearing, and a few fistfuls of assorted hygiene products that I’d thrust in at the last minute. A nightgown, some sneakers, my telephone book, my journal, and a dog-eared copy of Your Healthy Baby.
“How long will you be?” my mother had asked the night before I’d left. The boxes and bags of what I’d bought at the mall were still strewn in the hallway and kitchen, like fallen bodies. But the crib, I’d noticed, was put together perfectly. Dr. K. must have done it while I was on the phone with Maxi.
“Just a weekend. Maybe a few days longer.” I told her.
“You told this Maxi person about the baby, right?” she’d fretted.
“Yes, Mom, I told her.”
“And you’ll call, right?”
I rolled my eyes, told her yes, and walked Nifkin over to Sa-mantha’s, to give her the good news.
“Details!” she demanded, handing me a cup of tea and settling on her couch.
I told her what I knew: that I’d be selling my screenplay to the studio, that I’d need to find an agent, and that I’d be meeting some of the producers. I didn’t mention that Maxi had urged me to find a place to stay for a while, in case I wanted to be in California for the inevitable revisions and rewrites.
“That is completely unbelievable!” Samantha said, and hugged me. “Cannie, it’s just great!”
And it was great, I mused, as I trudged down the jetway with Nifkin’s case banging against my leg. “Airport,” I murmured to the baby. And there, at the gate, was April. I recognized her instantly from New York. Same knee-high black leather boots, only now her hair was drawn up into a ponytail at the top center of her head, and there was something strange happening between her nose and her chin. It took me a minute to figure out that she was smiling.
“Cannie!” she said, and waved and took my hand. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you!” She raked her eyes over me in the way that I’d remembered, lingering just a beat or two too long on my stomach, but her smile was firmly in place by the time her eyes met mine. “A towering talent,” she pronounced. “Loved the screenplay. Loved it, loved it. As soon as Maxi showed it to me, I told her two things. I said, Maxi, you are Josie Weiss, and I said, I cannot wait to meet the genius who created her.”
I thought briefly about telling her that we had, in fact, already met, and it had been the single worst reporting experience of that month, possibly the entire year. I wondered if she’d hear me if I whispered “hypocrite” to the baby. But then I decided, why rock the boat? Maybe she genuinely didn’t recognize me. I hadn’t looked pregnant the last time she’d seen me, any more than she’d been smiling.
April bent to peer into the carrying case. “And you must be little Nifty!” she cooed. Nifkin started growling. April appeared not to notice. “What a beautiful dog,” she said. I snorted back laughter, and Nifkin continued to growl so hard that his cage was vibrating. Nifkin has many fine qualities, but beauty is not among them.
“How was your flight?” April asked me, blinking rapidly and smiling still. I wondered if this was how she treated her famous clients. I wondered if I was a client already, if Maxi had gone ahead and signed a pact in blood, or whatever one did to acquire the services of someone like April.
“Fine. Very nice, really. I’ve never been in first class before.”
April linked her arm through mine like we were grade-school chums. Her forearm fit neatly below my right breast. I tried to ignore it. “Get used to it,” she advised me. “Your whole life’s about to change. Just sit back and enjoy the ride!”
April deposited me in a suite in the Beverly Wilshire, explaining that the
