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As I was putting on my makeup, my mother appeared in the bathroom doorway.
“Let me take Ethan to school so you’re not late,” she said as I applied the last coat of lip gloss.
After Ethan had started preschool, both he and I cried every morning for the first month. Drop-off consisted of twenty minutes of saying our goodbyes, five minutes of waving, and five minutes of me trying not to interrogate Miss Lindsay about whatever I perceived to be a choking hazard. Is that toy new? It comes with balls? Aren’t those balls a little small?
By the second month, Ethan cried for only ten minutes, but my emotional routine stayed the same. Now he was running into school, backpack bouncing behind him, leaving me, long forgotten, behind him. I practically had to beg him for a kiss goodbye now.
“Okay. Thank you,” I said, carefully brushing a fleck of mascara from my cheek. “Don’t forget—today is family picture day. I printed the one of me, Ethan, and Mark at his party at Long Island at Play, but I think I left it on the printer. Can you put it in his backpack?”
That photo showed the three of us smiling brightly by Ethan’s Buddy the Bulldozer cake. The calm before the shit storm. No one studying that photo could have ever guessed what was brewing behind the scenes or what happened after the photo was taken.
Our custody arrangement stated that I had Ethan during the week and Mark had him every weekend. I wished it were every other weekend, but that was the arrangement that was best for Ethan. He wasn’t shuffled anywhere during the week that might disrupt school or his sleep schedule. I wanted to include a photo of both myself and Mark because Ethan had started asking questions like, “Who is my new dad going to be? Is Alana my new mother?”
I had tried to instill a consistent message. “Mommy and Daddy are your parents, and we love you. Just because we don’t live together anymore doesn’t mean we’re not a family.”
In my towel, I sifted through all the clothes that didn’t fit in the small closet along with Ethan’s. There were hangers of pants, tops, and dresses all squeezed onto a clothes rack on wheels in the corner of the reading room.
What does one wear to sign divorce papers?
I settled on black pants and a charcoal-gray top. I knelt down to the shoebox that now stored all of my necklaces and grabbed my silver choker. As I clipped the back, I realized something. My throat. I touched it. That throat issue that made it feel like my own body was strangling me never happened anymore. Thank God.
Mark and I had agreed to meet at a Starbucks near Grand Central. The train from Queens was delayed. As I walked as fast as I could from the subway station, I thought of some of the things Veronica had said after I’d gotten back together with Mark before we got engaged—that I was doing it to please my mother and because I was afraid to be single. I remembered how shocked, horrified, and defensive I’d been. I still wouldn’t change a thing. I knew now that it didn’t matter what she or anyone might have said. It all had to happen the way it had happened, even if it meant I was now living with my parents and perfectly happy being single. I had my son to focus on and my new career direction. And I didn’t care what anyone thought of that, including my mother.
Mark was seated at a table in the back, studying his phone, with the divorce papers in a neat pile in front of him.
“Well, hello there,” I said as I approached and pulled out the chair across from him. “Sorry. The train was late.”
“Hey,” he said. “You wore your ring?”
Getting right to business.
We’d decided Mark would take our wedding bands and my engagement ring to a jeweler he knew next to Grand Central, and whatever we could get for them would go into Ethan’s college fund.
“I had to scan the appraisal for your ring,” he continued. “It was buried at the bottom of one of the boxes that are in my living room now. So I’ll email you or text you as soon as I hear back.”
“Okay, sounds good,” I said as I pulled off my engagement ring and wedding band for the last time. I watched as he dropped them into a small manila envelope.
We could have signed the divorce papers electronically, but we’d had to meet up so I could give him the rings, so we’d done it all at once.
He tapped the papers in front of him. “I put tabs next to all the places for you to sign.” He turned the papers around to face me and handed me his pen. He seemed nervous.
“I didn’t get a chance to read the electronic version. I’ve been really busy with my new clients and Ethan and everything, but are there any changes?” I glanced up to see him pinching his eyebrow.
“There’s one.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I’m about to sign, so I’m glad you’re telling me now.”
“I think you’ll be happy with the change. You see, Alana is pregnant.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I had no reason to be shocked. Why shouldn’t she be pregnant? “Congratulations,” I said.
“And Alana thinks that, with the new baby, it’ll be hard to have Ethan every single weekend.”
“Is that what she thinks?” I asked sarcastically. Of course I was happy to not have to hand Ethan over every weekend, but I still took offense that he might be “too much” with a shiny new baby and all.
“So would an every-other-weekend arrangement work?”
“Sure. Of course. When is she due?”
We chatted about due dates and C-sections and Ethan as an older brother while I kept flipping and signing and initialing. “Any other changes? I’m trusting you here.”
“You can trust me.”
Is that a dig? I paused. I wanted to say, “Again, I’m sorry I hurt you, but as I recall, lucky for you, you had one foot out the door at the time anyway.”
But I didn’t. I just finished signing the papers then handed them to him.
He put them in his briefcase and tucked the pen in his jacket. “I’ll drop these off at the courthouse. I’m sure you’ve got to get back home.”
“Thank you,” I said. “So I guess that’s it.”
He shrugged. “That’s it.”
“Too bad we’re here and not at a bar. Feels like we should have a toast or do a shot. Something ceremonial. Something involving alcohol.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Yes, I know. It was a joke, Mark.”
“Oh. Ha.” He stood.
“Well,” I said as I extended my hand. “It was good being married to you. Thanks for Ethan.”
He laughed, and we hugged. As people rushed in, waited in line to order their morning coffees, stared impatiently at their phones, we held each other in the corner. We hugged for the first time in a long time in the corner of Starbucks, divorce papers in tow.
As I headed to the train back to Queens, I grabbed my phone and tried to come up with a witty status update. How about, “Divorce papers signed. Ready to mingle”?
Nah. Not funny, and more importantly, not true. I was not ready to mingle.
I clicked out of Frontbook then held my finger over the little X on the app and deleted it.
###
“SO, THEY’RE BACK TOGETHER?” a guy on the train asked.
Huh?
He sat several seats to my left and across the aisle, but there was no mistaking he was talking to me. He was pointing in my direction, smiling, and we were the only ones on the train.
“What?” I asked.
“They’re back together?”
“Who?”
“Your magazine. Those two.” He flicked his chin.
“Oh.” I glanced at the cover of the magazine I was holding. It featured an actor and actress who had notoriously broken up a few months ago but were now reunited. “Yeah. Looks that way.” I shrugged.
“That’s nice,” he said.
“I guess.” And I guess if you don’t shut up, I will switch cars at the next stop.
“My cousin went to high school with him. He said he was a good guy.”
I glanced up again, lowering my magazine. Should I tell this annoying guy in no uncertain terms that I just signed divorce papers, found out my son will have a half-sibling, and really just want to enjoy a quiet ride home, reading my trashy celebrity magazine? Maybe not. I’ll let it go. I’ll walk toward the door and switch cars at the next stop.
Just as I was about to stand, I noticed something that pushed my butt back in the seat.
“Where’d they go to school?” I asked.
Chatty train guy over here is the furthest thing from an ogre. He had blue eyes and a chiseled chin. I’d never understood what was so great about a chiseled chin, until now.
“Somewhere in South Jersey.” He got up and moved to the seat next to me. Mr. Chiseled Chin smelled good, too, like soap. “Supposedly, his dad is a teacher and still teaches at the high school. You never picture these stars with normal families.”
“Yeah,” was all I could say. Would it be weird if I leaned over and sniffed him? Yes, it would. Do not sniff a man on the train. Act normal.
“You live in Queens?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Shit! Think of something else to say! “You?”
“No. I live in the city, but I have a client in Queens. I don’t usually make house calls, but I do for her. She’s in her seventies and lives alone. She’s a sweet lady.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Chiropractor.”
“Nice. So you can straighten me out?”
“Back issues? Or daddy issues?”
I love him. “Mommy issues.”
He chuckled. “Can’t help you there. So, what were you doing in the city?”
“I just signed my divorce papers.”
“Oh.” He leaned back. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. It was the right thing. It’s all good.”
“Good.” He smiled. “I don’t know Queens that well other than my client’s neighborhood. Where’s a good place for lunch?”
The train reached my stop at that moment.
“This is my stop.” I stood, and so did he. I had to hurry off before the doors shut. “I can text you the names of a couple of places.”
“Let me give you my number,” he said as the doors beeped alerting us that they were about to close.
I grabbed my phone to put his number in my contacts, but the doors began to shut. I hopped onto the platform. He reached out his arm to stop them from shutting, and I got another whiff of his soapy scent.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his card, and handed it to me.
I snatched it and waved as the doors shut and the train departed. Then I bounded up the steps of the station and squinted as the sun hit my eyes. I put on my sunglasses and examined his card.
Charles Loray, Chiropractor. Greenleaf Chiropractic. 188 Spring St., New York, NY 10012
###
MY MOM, DAD, ETHAN, and I sat around the dinner table—our new normal.
“Ethan is a very good nurse,” my mother said.
“He is?” I asked.
“While you and Daddy were working, Debbie from the hospital came. She laid out all of my pills and took my blood pressure. Ya know, the whole shebang. And as she’s doing my pressure, Ethan lined all the pill bottles up, all in a nice row.”
My mother still had a nurse come every month to check her blood counts. So far, every test indicated the cancer hadn’t returned. She had gained weight and seemed pretty much back to normal.
“Good job, Ethan.”
“He held my hand when she put the needle in my arm. Ya know, to take the blood? Right, Ethan?”
Ethan was preoccupied with his macaroni.
“Answer, Ethan.” I nudged him. “You did that?”
“Uh-huh.” He moved one noodle to the edge, and then another noodle, until three were lined up in a row along the edge of his dish. “Where do these come from?”
Oh, come on with this question. I thought we were past the “Where do things come from?” stage. I couldn’t wait for him to read so I could say, “Google that shit, kid.”
“The pasta factory,” I said.
“How do they make it?”
I don’t fucking know. “With a machine. We’ll look up a video later.”
“My mother used to make her own macaroni,” my mom said. “With a little machine. I’d help her line them all up on the table, each little bow tie.” My mother spoke to Ethan in a way I’d never heard her speak to anyone before—sweetly but sincerely.
“She had a machine?” he asked. “What did it look like?”
“It was metal, and it kind of had this crank that ya turned on the side. She would attach it to the edge of the table and put the pasta in one side, and out would come the bowtie on the other side.”
“Bow tie?”
“The macaroni. Ya know, bowties? We had to pinch each one in the middle to give it that bow-tie shape.”
“Then what?” Ethan asked.
“We cooked it.”
“You cooked it or your mom?”
“Well, I was about your age, so my mom probably cooked it.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in heaven.”
Ethan didn’t know where to go with that, so he returned to the ziti lined up on his plate and shoved one into his mouth.
“She went to heaven when I was just a few of years older than you,” my mother said.
I wanted to hug my mother, but she wasn’t a hugger. “You were so young,” I said. “I’m sorry that happened to you. So little.”
“Oh, Jada.” My mother swiped her hand in my direction. Any ounce of tenderness she’d just had for Ethan was not transferred to me. “It was so long ago.”
“Still. It was your mother. She died, and you were just a little kid. That had to have some impact on your life.”
“Sure.” My mother took a bite of macaroni and shrugged. “It made me tough, and I made you tough.”
Tough? In that moment, I saw her pain in a new way, like she’d been hiding it for most of her life under teased hair, red nails, and loud opinions, but there it was. She was a little girl who’d lost her mom and, a few years later, her dad.
I don’t care if you’re not a hugger. I will hug you. Hard! I stood up from the table and walked to my mother. I leaned down and put my arms around her.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “What has gotten into you? Get off me.”
I stayed there. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Jada, sit back down.”
“No.”
“I’m trying to eat!”
“Too bad.”
“Jada!”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Ethan stand up and walk over. He put his arms around her too.
My father laughed. And then Ethan giggled, and I said, “Group hug!” That made Ethan laugh harder, which finally broke my mother. She relaxed her shoulders and laughed as she said, “Sit the hell back down, would ya? Have you lost your mind?”
Ethan fist-bumped my father on the way back to his chair, which I was glad about so he didn’t feel left out.
My mother worked her fingers through her bouffant, which we had apparently messed up when hugging her. “What has gotten into you people? Eat your dinner.”
I ate my dinner like my mother said.
“Ethan, want a spoon?” she asked him. “You can eat those ’ronies like soup.”