Ex and the Single Girl

Chapter One

Fat white flakes clustered around the edges of my
living room window as another Syracuse winter flipped late March the bird. I sat with my feet curled under me on the cheap futon in my tiny one-bedroom, lit by the flickering colors of the BBC version of
Pride and Prejudice,
which I was watching for what w
as probably around the eighteenth time. My hand was draped casually over a bag of Cheetos, which I planned on trading in for the chilled chardonnay in my fridge as soon as I could locate the motivation to get up.

“
...allow me to tell you how ardently I adm
ire and love you.”

I sighed. I couldn
’
t help myself. Nobody knows how to do lovers in a snit like Austen. Darcy paced, lecturing to Elizabeth all the reasons she was unworthy of him. Her eyes widened, then narrowed.

Things were just about to get good.

Ring
.

Damnit. I exhaled heavily, shooting my bangs up off my forehead, and glared at the phone, which hung at a defiant angle on my kitchen wall. Almost three years I
’
d been living here, and I
’
d never drummed up the wherewithal to straighten it.

“
In such cases
as these, I believe the established mode is to express a sense of obligation.”
Elizabeth
’
s eyes lifted and met Darcy
’
s. They were cold. “
But I cannot.”

Ring.

“
Shit, piss, and corruption,”
I grumbled, searching around for the remote control, even though I
hadn
’
t seen the thing in weeks. “
I sat through three hours of parties and pianofortes for this scene.”

Beep.
My voice crackled through my garage-sale answering machine, creaking with the cold I
’
d had when I recorded the outgoing message in February. “
Not h
ere. Do your thing.”

I
’
m a big fan of brevity. My mother, however, is not.

“
Portia, darlin
’
!”
Mags
’
s voice was like honey, sweet and slow to move. I never noticed her accent until I moved to upstate New York, where words that start out as one syllable tend
to stay that way. I shed my own drawl on the train ride out of town, although I
’
m told it comes out when I
’
ve been drinking.

“
Are you there, baby? You should answer the phone. It
’
s not right to sit and listen to people talking and not answer the phone. Ve
ra says that sort of thing absolutely ruins your karma.”

“
Vera thinks hairspray ruins your karma,”
I muttered, hopping off the futon and sweeping my arm underneath the mammoth cushion for the twentieth time that week, as though repetition of the ritual wou
ld make the damn remote magically reappear.

Mags released a stage sigh, the kind regular people only hear during plays by Tennessee Williams. “
I guess I can assume you
’
re not there. Well, please, baby, call me the second you get this message. It
’
s
urgent.
”

Urgent.
The word didn
’
t have the same meaning for Mags as it did for most people.
Urgent
could have meant that she had misplaced her unholy red pumps and needed me to talk her through the search. It could have meant that one of her favorite movie stars fr
om the forties had died, and the entire family needed to lift a glass in unison to the Great One
’
s memory. One
urgent
call resulted in my losing two hours of my life to gossip about Felicia Callahan getting fired from the Catoosa County Chamber of Commerce
for stealing four staplers and thirty-eight dollars in petty cash.

“
I need you to call me tonight, baby, the very moment you get home.”

I tossed the futon cushion back down and got up to hit the PAUSE button on my tiny TV/VCR. On an average day, I spent m
ore time looking for the stupid remote than it
’
d take for me to get up and walk over to the TV, but it was the principle of the thing. It had disappeared around the same time Peter left, and having it at large meant Peter might find it in his things and r
e
turn it. The very thought of him showing up on the doorstep with nothing to say but “
Here
’
s your remote”
was the stuff of which nightmares are made.

The machine beeped again, and I released a breath I hadn
’
t realized I was holding. I wandered into the kitc
hen, curling the top of the bag of Cheetos and tossing it onto the counter where it began its determined work of uncurling. I didn
’
t care. I
’
d done my part. I grabbed the corkscrew with one hand as I opened the fridge with the other.

Tick tock. Darcy
’
s wai
ting.

Freeze frame.

This is the pre-epiphany moment, the mental snapshot of myself that I revisit on occasion, mystified at how much I failed to notice. There I was, wearing the oldest flannel robe in existence, my unwashed hair sticking up in all directio
ns out of a lazy ponytail, my glasses smudged and crooked, a bottle of wine in hand with little splotches of Cheeto residue on the neck, and I had no earthly idea that anything was wrong.

It hadn
’
t been that bad when Peter
’
d been around. I
’
d been clean, li
vely, happy. I smelled good. I flossed. But then one day
—
Valentine
’
s Day, if you can stand the irony
—
I came home to a half-emptied apartment and a half-assed good-bye note scribbled in the title page of a book. And not just
any
book.
Peter
’
s
book. The one
he
’
d written during two years of late nights and early mornings while I encouraged him, making coffee and providing sexual diversions. The one that had hit the shelves and stayed there, neglected, while Steels and Koontzes flew from either side. The one t
h
at I read over and over, gushing over his talent every time.

I
’
d found it lying on the bed, the front cover held open with my itty bitty booklight, the title page etched with his deliberate handwriting.

I
’
m sorry. I wish you all the best. Love, Peter.

A si
mple note, vague as hell, fodder for hours and hours of painful dissection. What did it
mean?
Why would he sign a “
Later, Babe”
note with
Love, Peter
? Isn
’
t love pretty much a moot point when one is being dumped? And where had he gone? Had he run off with
another woman? Another man? Had he simply decided that he would rather be alone than with me? Which was worse?

For six weeks, these were the questions that haunted me as I plummeted into a cavern of self-pity. In six short weeks, I
’
d mutated from a normal
individual pursuing a Ph.D. and a reasonable future to a wild-haired social phobic, rationalizing my obsession with
Pride and Prejudice
by linking it with my dissertation topic, “
The Retelling of Austen in Post-Feminist Women
’
s Literature.”
Forget that I h
adn
’
t written a word since the day Peter left. Forget that I
’
d left the house only to teach my classes and to grab Cheetos and chardonnay at Wegmans. Forget that I had just earlier that very day briefly considered getting a cat. If nothing else, I should
h
ave been tipped off by the fact that when Peter and I were together, I
’
d more than once caught myself fantasizing about coming home one day to an empty apartment, leaving me blameless and beatified. And free. Now that my dream had come true, it begged the
question: what, exactly, was I mourning?

Continue action.

I carried the bottle of wine and the glass with me to the living room, kicking a path through the notebooks and pens on the floor as I settled back on the futon. The tape had stopped, and a blond si
tcom star from the seventies was hawking diet pills. I debated internally on whether the energy would be better spent getting up and hitting the PLAY button or continuing my futile search for the remote when the phone rang.

Again.

Two calls in the span of
fifteen minutes greatly increased the probability that whatever she was calling about was actually urgent. I pulled myself up off the futon and headed into the kitchen, flicking on the light and grabbing the receiver off its crooked base. “
Yeah?”

“
Portia,
darlin
’
, I knew you were home.”

“
In the shower.”
I took a sip of my wine. “
I heard the phone ring. Was that you?”

“
Yes, baby,”
she said. Her voice sounded tired. I wondered why I hadn
’
t noticed it before. I rifled through the junk drawer in the kitchen. Re
motes have turned up in stranger places.

“
Baby, I need your help. My back has gone out on me, and every moment is acute pain and torture. Doctor Bobby says I need to stay in bed for a few months.”

Only in Truly, Georgia, would a grown man who
’
d earned a me
dical degree allow himself to be referred to as “
Doctor Bobby.”
I stood up straight and slammed the drawer shut with my hip. “
A few
months?
Jesus, Mags. What did you do?”

“
I don
’
t know,”
she said, distress raising her voice an easy octave. “
But Doctor Bobb
y has given me strict orders. Which puts us in a bit of a spot. Vera can
’
t run the store alone, and Bev needs to be slowing down at this time in her life. So, I
’
ve been thinking...”

I raised my glass of wine to my lips, knowing exactly what was coming. “
Th
inking? What about?”

“
Well, we had a family meeting, and we thought you might come home for a while. To help out.”

I knew it.
“
How long a while?”

“
Oh, not too long, I
’
m sure. If you could come home for the summer, that should be fine.”