navid moved out exactly one month after I caught him cheating. I wanted him to leave, but I was also insulted by how quickly he found a new place; the rental market in San Francisco was a nightmare compared to when we’d arrived. Now it was a city where only millionaires could afford a small apartment, especially anywhere near our house in Noe Valley. Of course, he could only find a place in Oakland, where nearly everyone we knew lived now. I wanted him gone, but not too far. Oakland felt far.
While he packed, I took to my bed like a Victorian-era heroine. When I got up, I wrote discursive songs on the electric guitar, real indulgent Sonic Youth noise-type songs with no beginnings or ends.
The day after he signed the lease, he walked into the bedroom holding a rose-gold ceramic bird. It had hung from a short length of twine looped around a nail on the front door.
“You cool with me taking this?” he said. The bird was wrapped in his fist, sharp beak poking out as if he were squeezing it to death.
“I want it.” I got out from under the covers, then crossed my arms tight. I stank like neglect and sorrow, after three days in a blue silk nightgown, picking at the frayed hem, a coffee stain on the heart.
“I bought it!” he argued.
“No. We bought it in Petaluma, together. That garage sale on the side of the road. The religious kids in the ankle-length dresses.” I wasn’t sure. But I knew the detail would sound convincing.
“No, that’s where we bought the rose-gold lamp. I got this at that pawnshop outside of Vegas with Dave.”
“That’s an utterly fabricated memory,” I said. “We got it together, right before we got the house. It was the first thing we put up.”
“You can’t take everything,” he said, defeated, dropping the bird onto my dresser.
I followed him into the kitchen, where he was packing up the porcelain espresso cups. He was just tossing them into a box, with no protective wrapping. He’d taped the stainless-steel toaster oven shut and left it unboxed, like he didn’t care if it broke in the moving truck. Both of us could afford to buy another one, but I grabbed it, electrical cord trailing, pushed the door open with my foot, and dropped it onto the decorative stones of the patio.
“You don’t even make toast!” I screamed, taking the baseball bat I’d hidden inside the barbecue and bashing the toaster with it.
Navid began to laugh hysterically, raising his arms up like What the fuck is happening, which made me bash the toaster harder. It was so satisfying, watching it buckle with dents. Jackie, the neighbour next door, opened her window and peered out at the commotion. She squinted down at us, then put on her giant glasses. I was wearing my nightie and one grey wool sock, that’s it. My hair was a mop of greasy, mashed curls.
“You okay out there?” she yelled.
“Yeah,” I said, pausing with the bat aloft.
“Then shut up, for god’s sake!”
Navid’s laughter turned to crying.
The day Navid finished moving out, I went downtown to the fertility clinic to discuss options and the results of the ultrasound tests I’d had done earlier. I could have a baby. I wasn’t in a reasonable state of mind, but I felt a sudden razor focus about having a baby. I mean, why not now? But filling out forms in the waiting room, I began to fall apart. Who would I put for my emergency contact number? Agatha? Tom? My mother? Then I accidentally checked the No box next to the question Have you ever been pregnant before? It took me a minute to remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, going to that clinic in Lachine with Amita, driving back to my granny’s house to recover.
The day after my abortion, I found out Granny had died in Turkey, fallen from a boat unnoticed. It was also the first day my mother and I had an honest moment together as two adults. We’d walked down to the water together, the way I used to after dinner as a teenager. I was in shock that I would never see Granny again, feeling terrible about how we’d left things. Thinking of her in the water by herself, it made me curl up in her bathtub inhaling the smell of her awful overly scented soaps, weeping in a way that felt unhinged, helped by the still-lingering pregnancy hormones. Grandparents are supposed to pass quietly, in bed, surrounded by loved ones. That she’d gone alone, struggling, it was too much to bear.
When I got out of the bath, my mother was there, holding out a spoon of blackstrap molasses, the kind we used to feed the sheep at Sunflower. “You need iron,” she said, putting the spoon in my mouth like I was a baby bird. It was cold and I was wrapped in a towel, like a child after a bath. We both thought it would be good to take a walk, even though I was still bleeding and cramping. The house felt as if it were closing in on me.
We walked slowly, my hands jammed in the pockets of the old jeans I’d left behind from high school. My mother was gesticulating while she talked, and the loud jangle of her dozen or so thin copper bracelets punctuated her small-talk nattering. Eventually she was quiet for a few moments, and then turned to me as though just realizing I was there.
“How are you feeling? This is your first death. I know how hard it can be.”
“My first death was Taylor.”
“Oh, of course, of course.”
She got quiet for a block or two. I was expecting her to talk about it, but she didn’t. Taylor died at sixteen, a blood clot from the birth control pill. That Mom forgot was so telling. There hadn’t been a funeral. My dad had mumbled something about being sad about it over dinner that night and we never talked about it again.
I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops of my jeans to keep them from falling down. They’d built more houses by the lake. The street had been a dirt road when Granny moved here. There had been farms. Now it looked as if it could be any 1990s suburb.
“I go from feeling overwhelmingly sad, to feeling nothing. Like right now, is it strange that I don’t feel anything?”
“No, no, it’s common to feel numb at first. It’s shock.”
“I know she wanted me to have the baby, she was so Christian and everything. But it’s weird timing, don’t you think, that she’d die while I was pregnant?”
“Did she tell you straight out not to have an abortion?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a bit rich. Your grandmother had one. She told me about it for some reason, never told Bryce.”
“Are you sure? That sounds out of character.”
“No, when she first arrived in Canada. She was pregnant, but she found out your grandfather was cheating, and he’d actually brought his affair from Turkey over with them on the boat. He thought your grandmother didn’t know, but she did. Women always know. That man was a dog.”
I’d met my grandfather once when he visited Sunflower and he didn’t make much of an impression, except he drank this thick Turkish liquor that tasted of black licorice and tried to teach me to play chess. I knew Granny and he had split but she never talked about why.
I was still trying to accept Granny’s death, and here was a whole new story of her life. I never really thought about her at my age, or at any age other than old, or as being someone who had a life outside of being in our family.
My mother continued, “Back then it wasn’t legal. She had to pay a lot of money to get it taken care of. She said she wasn’t sure Grandad was going to stay, and she didn’t want to have a baby all by herself.”
“But she said motherhood was the only thing that made her happy, that saved her.”
“She lied. She wanted you to have a kid.”
“Even when I’m still basically a kid.”
“I had you when I was around your age.”
“Look how well that turned out.”
She jangled ahead a little faster so I had to jog to keep up.
“So, who was the father?” she asked.
“Father?” I said.
“Well, not father, really. Who knocked you up, Melissa?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“Really?” I expected her to look vaguely amused. She was the one who told me marriage was a conformist farce when I was eight years old. We reached the edge of the water at the public boat launch and dock. I picked up a few flat stones and skimmed them along the top of the lake.
Instead, she looked oddly concerned. “I understand you’re young, and it’s a time for parties and celebrating and rock ’n’ roll and all that.”
“It’s punk rock.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Remember, I bought your record, not really my thing. But the lyrics, Melissa. Your lyrics . . .” Her voice cracked a little. “Well, they were revealing, I guess.”
My mother waved her hand, like she was pushing that thought away. “But what I’m trying to tell you—what I want to talk about—is that I’m worried that you have a problem. The drugs, Melissa. You almost got arrested. I think I’ve told you that my father was an alcoholic. He used to drink from the minute he woke up in the morning. It ruined him, it ruined my mother. Killed them both. They say it can be genetic . . . addiction. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t think I’ve got an issue.”
“You’ve been shaking, you’re pale and sweating. I know the signs.”
“I went too hard in Vancouver. It’s not always a thing.”
“I just want you to be aware is all, of the genetic predisposition.”
“Okay, well, just letting you know it’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine, obviously, but I also wasn’t half mad and wandering into traffic. I was just having a shitty month.
But her concern felt like a drug. It made me want to grab both of her hands and confess everything about the tour—getting high, having a boy in every port, about Andie. All of it. But I stopped myself. I was getting giddy from our closeness. I grinned, looked down at the pavement, trying to contain myself.
“You know, to your granny, the abortion probably meant a moral failure. But it was also a failure to be a single woman with a baby, and that was public. She was always concerned with what people thought. She never acted as if she regretted it. That said, it was always hard to tell what she was ever really feeling or thinking, her being so brutally British and all.”
“Totally. She had such a poker face about everything.”
“But so many women have abortions. If you’re a woman who hasn’t, you’re likely the exception. Most people never regret it,” she said.
Though it would be years before she told me about her own abortion. That was how she was, wanting to be close but never wanting to risk any of her own secrets that might help foster that elusive intimacy.
I watched my mother staring out at the horizon across Lac St-Louis. But do you regret having me? I was too afraid to ask.
My mother turned to me abruptly and put both her hands on my shoulders.
“I know this is a hard time for you,” she started. I braced myself then, for some maternal wisdom, or an apology, something meaningful that I could hold on to. Her bracelets jangled against my shoulders. “And I guess I just really need to go do some walking meditation by myself right now.”
I was a bit stunned by this sudden turn, but it was also familiar. She used to do this when I was a kid, abruptly need to escape from me. Now that I wasn’t a child, if I kept her in my life, every time I got a flicker of potential reconciliation between us, would she always choose herself?
“Okay, sure,” I said, and started walking up the sloping pavement of the beach’s parking lot. When I reached the street, I turned back, ambling down the gravel as I watched her walk out onto the long dock, doing some sort of movement with her hands, like a bird trying to fly. When I jumped up on the first plank, the dock swayed a little.
“Mom!”
She had a look on her face so irritated I had the answer already. When I opened my mouth the question came out differently.
“Do you consider it a moral failing, to have left me?”
She closed her eyes as if my face was too bright to look at.
“Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t prepared to have this conversation right now. Please, I just need quiet.”
She turned and went back down the dock. I watched her. If I sat down on the beach, would she drop off the end to avoid coming back to me?
The rest of that time is a bit of a blur. My father moved back into Granny’s house. I moved to California. I didn’t speak to my mother again for a number of years. I almost never thought about having been pregnant.
Except now. While cycling to the clinic, I had been filled with purpose and excitement. But the fertility doctor was less perky, full of warnings, gloom and doom. I found myself gripping my purse in my hands as she spoke.
“Even though your eggs are viable, at your age it could be difficult to get pregnant. Especially since you are now single, yes? But it’s possible. Here are some pamphlets about IVF, pay attention to all the tips on how to prepare. Have you thought about a donor?”
“No. I mean, not yet. Just trying to narrow down my list.” But of course I thought of Tom. He was my list.
We went through the costs, the schedule, the details of every potential procedure. It was a lot to take in.
When I got home, Agatha was sitting on my front stoop wearing a mint sweater dress and giant sunglasses. I settled in beside her and cradled her legs dramatically.
“Welcome to your new life, babe,” she said. “How was the egg doctor?”
“I feel like having a baby will bankrupt me.”
“It probably will, but then you’ll have a baby. Babies are amazing.”
“Oh really?” I said. “I thought Finch wanted a new one and you were against it!”
“Babies are great. Toddlers are the devil. I’m hiding from mine right now,” she said, arranging her thick, glossy braid up in a bun on top of her head. “This morning I was so annoyed at Emily I had to leave the room to save myself from turning into a monster,” she said. “She was lying on the floor crying and claiming that she couldn’t walk. Of course she could walk! She just didn’t want to put her shoes on. I tried to reason with her, but she doesn’t understand that kind of complicated thinking yet. I lost it. I’ve tried being patient with her when she gets in these moods, but I can’t. I just can’t. I just slammed my bedroom door and punched my pillow and took deep breaths until the rage subsided. I actually had to give myself a time out! When I came back out, she was walking around just fine, like nothing had happened, with one shoe on. She looked so cute, but like, minutes earlier, I hated her. I can’t describe it any other way, I hated my own child.”
“It will get easier when she’s older. Three is hard,” I offered, but I didn’t know anything, really, about three. Four. Fourteen. I’d been reading so many parenting books, but the more I read, the less confident I felt. “Did you know that they did a study with world-class athletes, and had them mimic the exact movements of a toddler, and they couldn’t do it for very long, they were too exhausted? It’s a lot. You’ll get through it.”
“I believe that study. Man, I think every age is kind of cool but also awful,” she said. “You know, if I had to go back in time and decide all over again, I don’t know if I’d do it. But Finch would. She loves every minute of it. She doesn’t even notice that we haven’t fucked in months. She is so fulfilled it makes me sick. By the way, she signed you up for softball. She thinks it will help you through the divorce.”
“That’s insane. Who actually likes softball?”
“Dykes, historically. But you could be the token straight.”
“I’m bi. You always forget that.”
“I think you always forget that. I think your membership expires after a while.”
“So, did you come over to get me drunk?”
“Nope, I’m going to turn Navid’s old studio into an oasis for you.”
“I thought you were joking about that. I have a whole house of my own now. I was just going to let it be the room where the dog throws up and I don’t find it for weeks.”
“Missy, trust me. You are going to need a place. A special room for playing music, meditating.” At this, I raise my eyebrows. “For whatever,” she said. “It’s already soundproof. I have a whole plan.”
“I want to go to sleep. For a year.”
“Come on, you can lie on the couch while I get to work.”
Agatha cleaned out Navid’s old studio room and redesigned the space. She brought in a soft throw rug and a standing lamp that emitted a calming light, and placed several large ficus and cactus plants in front of the window. She set up a songwriting notebook on a music stand and placed my cello beside it. She adorned the walls with a framed poster from the Swearwolves’ first tour and a photo of Agatha and me in our twenties when she was in that all-dyke band from Portland; we were both onstage about to jump into a crowd, wearing lacy baby-doll dresses and boots bigger than our skulls. On the end table, she placed some smaller plants, a crystal that was supposed to be “cleansing”—I’d really try anything at this point—a book of illustrated birds, and a well-thumbed copy of When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön.
I stayed on the couch, dozing with the dog, staring at the TV in blinks, not really absorbing anything, feeling guilty every time she popped in to bring me a glass of water or carrot sticks, slices of peach that lost their vibrancy, easing into yellow bruised sponges. She touched her hand to my forehead. She looked alive and sweating with purpose. I couldn’t remember how that felt.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered on occasion. “I’m an adult, you shouldn’t have to do this for me.”
“I don’t mind,” she insisted. She put a few big crystals on the windowsill, even though I thought they were silly. Slowly, in my thirties, I had watched all my peers take one of two different routes, loosely described: they’d either become New Age—going to silent retreats, learning tarot, spending the money they used to spend on beer on hiking equipment and do-it-yourself kombucha kits—or they went full-tilt into the oblivion of their jobs, parenting, or substance recovery. Just as we were beginning to see the fruits of our labour, to see our dreams unfold, and to feel okay about where we’d come from, about how our childhoods had spit us out into our twenties, that was when the cancer started circling us, then miscarriages and car accidents. Time sped up as we attended fortieth-birthday parties and ten-year wedding anniversaries. And of course, divorces.
Agatha let herself out when she was done, during one of my deeper moments of sleep. I walked into the room and it was beautiful. It was all mine. I sat down with the cello and played for a few minutes, but couldn’t feel it. Someday I would really appreciate it, but not quite yet.
She had left me a note on the back of an unpaid bill on the kitchen table. It read: I’m giving you a couple weeks of mourning but then I’m taking you out to the Lexington and getting you drunk. You’re not dead yet and you need some joy! Plus, I have a plan for a new band and you are going to FREAK OUT. Call any time of day/night. You WILL be ok, I promise. xox
A new band? Agatha and I hadn’t been onstage in years. I wrote and recorded music for a living, but I hadn’t been in a band since the Swearwolves disbanded, unless you counted the community orchestra I played in on occasion for fun. I ached for it sometimes. But this wasn’t the time.
I woke up the next morning to a text message from Tom. Good morning! Life isn’t over! Soon it will feel like one of those weighted X-ray blankets lifting off your body, every decision will only be your own, and it will feel beautiful! He never said At least you don’t have kids, which was what everyone else said when they heard the news, like somehow the divorce should be a snap, with no strings.
Forty-five minutes later, there was a knock on my living room window. I was listening to the Mountain Goats’ “No Children” on too high a volume to hear the knock, but Penny was standing on the top of the couch, barking and scratching at the window. I popped my head up.
“Penny, it’s Tom!” said a voice outside. “Tell your mom to let me in.”
I got up and opened the front door. “Happy divorce, doll. I think divorce should always come with some celebration, so—” He reached into his bag and handed me a small assortment of semi-crushed tulips.
“Ah, yes, tulips, the official flower of romantic disentanglements.”
Then he handed me a baseball cap and a hoodie.
“Put these on, we’re going to have coffee outside of the house,” he instructed.
“I can’t. I’m not wearing, uh”—I looked down—“pants.”
“That looks like a dress.”
“It’s a nightgown.”
“No one can tell the difference. We’ll scare the gentrifiers.”
I put the cap on, wrapped myself in the hoodie, put the tulips in a beer mug of water, and put a leash on Penny, then followed Tom out the door.
We made for an awkward threesome ambling down the street. There was a new SoulCycle across from my house and I hadn’t even noticed. A spinning class was jammed into one room, visible from the street, going hard and nowhere like a tangible metaphor for the way I was feeling.
I hadn’t seen Tom in person in a while, because he’d moved north of the city to a small house near Petaluma, only coming into the city to visit the kids. The youngest was now in college, something I found impossible to believe. The first few minutes of being alone together in person were a bit strange, like we had to remember how to speak in full sentences instead of quippy, infrequent texts. We walked two blocks to a café at Church and 30th. Penelope was so happy to be outside, she stopped to smell everything. Tom was mostly quiet, occasionally squeezing my arm affectionately.
“I’m not a kid with cancer, it’s just divorce. Shit happens.”
“Still, I know it’s hard. Even though we’ve all been expecting it for years, you know. Navid was never good enough for you.”
“I never understand why people say that. He was a great partner.”
“Was he?”
“I guess I don’t have anyone to compare him to. He was the first person I settled down with. I just think it’s weird when people take sides.”
“When I got divorced you confessed that you thought Cory was slow and unevolved as a woman.”
“Oof, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It felt good at the time, though. I was so shocked when she left. I would have stayed forever. But I know better now, she was right. Plus, he cheated on you.”
I hated when people brought that up. Made me feel like the righteous protagonist in a rom-com.
We sat down at a sidewalk table, and Penny settled at our feet. Tom went inside and returned with coffees and smoothie bowls. I dipped a spoon into my bowl, revolted.
“It looks like a pile of something someone already ate.”
“I’m assuming you’re not eating much. I don’t have that problem,” he said, rubbing his ample stomach. “Remember I used to have well-defined abs back in the day?”
“I still have a few outfits from the Lollapalooza summer that I keep for nostalgia but I can basically fit the skirt on one leg.”
“We’re still cute, right?”
“You are,” I said. He really was more handsome as a bear type. We both paused, watching a young hipster couple at a nearby table get up to leave, their perfect skin, their shiny hair.
“Billy looks the same, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, he’s got some freakish ageless thing going on.”
“Maybe if you’re not prone to self-reflection you don’t get as many wrinkles.”
“Yeah, maybe we just don’t have time for massages every day with all the time we spend caring about people outside ourselves.”
“Good to know you guys still get along.”
It felt like old times, ragging on Billy together. The café music switched abruptly to “Untied.” This used to happen when servers would notice us, they’d put our music on. But it hadn’t happened in years. The song was nearly twenty years old, but because it got played in a 1990s nostalgia movie recently, I’d been getting bigger royalty cheques and I’d heard it in a CVS recently.
“This is so weird.”
“Totally weird.”
“That bridge still bugs me.”
“Me too.”
Tom lifted up his coffee in a cheers.
“I swear, divorce was the best thing to ever happen to Cory and me. Now I love the shit out of her and she’s my best friend. We’re better parents now. I love her new husband.”
I’ve heard this all before. And it did help. I didn’t remind Tom that he’d bottomed out after the divorce, and ended up in the hospital after a suicide attempt. He didn’t like to talk about it, but sometimes I remembered how helpless I felt visiting him in the ward. How he looked like all the life was just gone from his eyes, and there was nothing I could do but remind him he was loved, he was talented, he would get through it. Eventually, he did, and he had been doing well for the past few years.
“But I like having a partner,” I said. “It’s grounding. And I want a baby. I’ve been seeing a fertility specialist.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Remember when you hated relationships? When you broke hearts all across America? Like, literally.”
“I think the band functioned like a relationship did back then, it was anchoring. Now I feel like a relationship acts as the same anchor. I like sharing my life with someone intentionally,” I said.
“I don’t miss it at all,” Tom said. Tom was resolutely single. He had an occasional lover here and there, but he’d crafted this loner identity.
“I doubt I’ll ever fall in love again,” he went on. “I know what I like. I don’t want anyone intruding on that. I have good friends, the kids. Didn’t Aristotle say something about platonic love being the ideal? I have you, I have Cory. I can have sex any time I want, basically. It’s not that hard.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. To me, Tom seemed lonely. He was the epitome of someone who could use a partner. He could wander off into the depths somewhere and never return. I thought that a partner might ground him, but I didn’t share this. No one wants to hear their obvious vulnerabilities exposed when they’ve crafted such safe narratives to oppose them.
“So,” he said, changing the subject, “tell me more about this baby goal of yours.”
“Well, I want a kid. I’m thirty-seven. I have no time to waste if I want to find someone to do that with.”
“Yeah, don’t lead with that on Tinder.”
“I know, I know.”
“I don’t think you want a kid, Missy. You’re just at loose ends. You’re not a mom type, you never have been. You’ll always put your music first and you can’t do that with a kid around. You’ll resent the kid. I’m just saying. I know you.”
You’ll resent the kid. He said it so casually, forgetting I had a mother who ran away from home for that exact reason. But he kept going, and the more he emphasized my worst, most selfish qualities, the more I was certain that Tom didn’t know me at all. He knew my life history, he knew my talents and flaws, but he didn’t know where I was at in that moment. He was my music friend. Agatha was the person who knew me.
I was pretty much done with this conversation, and I didn’t want to invite even more lectures from Tom, especially since he was my only shot at a donor at this point. Convincing him of that was going to take some time. We sipped our coffees in silence, and then he walked me home.
He dropped me off as if I were a child, making me promise to eat some food, to text him if I felt sad.
“Come up to Petaluma. Billy and Alan are coming to stay next week. We can record some songs,” he said.
“Agatha wants me to join a new band with her, too.”
“Oh, we could do a seven-inch together, two side projects. Remember side-project bands?”
“It’s actually not a bad idea,” I said.
“I heard about Agatha’s band idea, everyone’s talking about it.”
“Everyone? Well, I guess that would make sense. She’s reached out to, like, every girl from every band from back in the day. I think she sees it as a sort of supergroup reunion.”
“Join that band, you need a new thing.”
Penny scratched at the front door, wanting to be inside. I pulled Tom into a hug.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said while walking away, “eventually.”
“I know,” I said, but when I got inside, and watched Penny circle her dog bed three times, the way she always did, before falling asleep, I felt strangled by the silence of my empty house.