Then
Sunday, June 13
Brooklyn, New York
Sometimes I wish George were dead. It would make all of this easier. I would finally be free.
It was nearly eleven, dark apart from the streetlamps that lined the edge of Prospect Park, and I was situated on a bench, paralyzed with indecision. Nothing but huge oak trees behind me; electric bikes, scooters and cars, zipping across the avenue in front.
I’d poured Mary into a cab fifteen minutes ago, then stopped when I’d gotten her last text.
The words were a shock, coming from her. From sweet, play-by-the-rules Mary. Course, it was still Mary through and through. So cautious. So careful.
I could kill the bastard, that’s what I would say if someone was fucking with my things, my work, trying to take my kid from me. None of this conditional wishing shit.
I sized up the brownstone. How absurdly large, how incredibly unfair. That one family should have so much when so many others were barely getting by. When the taxes on this place alone could cover all my parents’ yearly mortgage. When I was growing up, even into my twenties, I thought rich people were smart or special, clever or at least very business-savvy. Then I met them. Then I lived with them, slept with them, cared for their children. And what I learned was that most of them were just lucky. Lucky and aware enough to know that they had gotten the biggest slice of the pie, ready to cling to it with clumsy, greasy hands.
Looking at the brownstone now, it wasn’t that I didn’t feel bad, course I did. I liked Mary, truly. Liked the way she seemed to genuinely care for me, to insist I drink water, to grab me before I stepped into a pile of shit. I liked the way she trusted me, even though she barely knew me. I liked the way she looked at Alex with nothing but earnest love in her eyes, like all she wanted was to not fuck him up, but she worried that she—or her situation—might do it in the end. I even liked what she’d told me tonight—here she was, mothering a kid who could have it all, have anything, and what she was worried about was not how she’d get him into Harvard, but whether he’d grow up to be kind, kinder than his dad.
Mary hadn’t asked for this, and she certainly didn’t deserve it. It was unfair, obviously.
But life isn’t fair, is it?
It’s a transaction. One person wants one thing, and another gives it, getting something in return. Some transactions, we’re okay with. Some we even celebrate, no matter if they’re good for us or not. Marriage, packing a venue full of best friends in ill-fitting chiffon dresses, propping tables with chalkboard signs and ranunculus blooms so everyone can cheer on a piece of paper filed with the local government. A hoped-for new job, a contract signed that promises you’ll answer to them, day in and day out, fifty-two weeks a year minus two for vacations and a few personal days (if you’re lucky!), a vow to spend more time with your coworkers, kissing your boss’s ass, working the career ladder like a woodworker with a chisel, than you’ll ever devote to your family, your friends, or even yourself. The purchase of a new home, a thirty-year promise crafted of equity and escrow and flood insurance and a now-empty savings account, the ubiquitous house-keys-and-champagne-flute photo inevitably to follow on social media. We did it! We looked the man straight in the face, and we said, yes sir, we will play your game, and we’ll smile while we’re doing it.
Other transactions, we look down on. Bankruptcy filings. Sex work and separations. Foreclosures and any number of nonviolent felonies that leave a bad taste in society’s mouth.
We don’t like the things that show us that it’s all a trade-off. That people want sex and are willing to pay for it. That substances are addictive. That the so-called American dream is stacked against you from the start. That breaking the rules is the only way to even the score.
But at the end of the day, we’re all just humans. Humans with wants, with needs. Ones who never evolve past trading homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly for another kid’s Cool Ranch Doritos.
Maybe a better me, a more naïve me, would give it all up—abandon this particular transaction—so I didn’t have to toss a grenade into what had become a real friendship with Mary. And maybe there was some part of me, however small, that still was good. Maybe that was why I was sitting here on a hard bench on the edge of the park, running my nails over a bit of peeling paint and staring at my damn phone. Deciding.
I flicked through Mary’s texts—her drunken confessions—and there was that stupid feeling in my stomach again. Guilt. God damn it.
I tapped out of her texts and back to his. Ones that had come in just as I was loading her drunk ass into a cab.
Dying to see you, come over?
And the address beneath, the address of the brownstone across the street.
Behold it now, in all its glory. The red door. The perfectly manicured plants. A light on up in the second story, a bedroom waiting for me.
A bedroom that Mary, herself, had slept in for so many years.
I took a deep breath, then thought, fuck it. Shot off the text.
Rounding the corner, be there in 2.
I stood, straightened my silk dress, reapplied my lipstick.
Maybe a better woman would have walked away, left it all behind.
But I wasn’t a better woman. I was me.
Besides, I thought as I crossed the street against the light, daring one of the bikers to try to hit me, George can’t get away with everything, can he?