Duh. The Honda Fit was gone. Either the rental company took it away or it was stolen. A part of me didn’t care about the missing car. This uncaring part of me wanted Steve’s credit rating to go down the toilet and take Tight Tammy with it. This uncaring part of me wanted revenge. Like Lorena Bobbitt kind of revenge. Like really sharp scissors kind of revenge.
But then there was the other part of me, which didn’t want to hurt Steve in any way. That part still loved him and was desperate for him to remember that he loved me, too. That part didn’t want to sabotage our future together because I was going to win him back, and I figured his return was only a matter of time. I mean, I already had better boobs and new panties, and tomorrow I was going to get up at six-thirty to be tortured in some way that would make me look a little more like Tight Tammy. Obviously, I was a hop, skip, and a jump away from looking great and getting my life back. Soon Steve would return to me, and we would be happy again.
So, I needed to warn Steve about the rental car.
My heart pounded in my chest, as I thought about calling him. What would I say? I had been waiting for him to contact me, to tell me that he had made a terrible mistake and that I wasn’t really a joy sucker. I had checked my phone a million times and waited for the garage door to open and his Cadillac to drive in and park in its place next to our second refrigerator and the Stairmaster. But he hadn’t contacted me, and I was in too much shock to contact him.
That’s a lie.
The truth was that I was a coward, and I didn’t want him to hurt my feelings again. I didn’t want to hear that I was a joy sucker, didn’t want him to yell at me to sign the divorce papers. If I didn’t talk to him, then there was still a chance that he could be regretting his decision and was miserable with Tight Tammy.
I walked into the house and put my purse and the bag of money on the counter next to the divorce papers. The stack of papers had seen better days. Now they were stained with melted chocolate and pomegranate juice, and a couple pages were ripped. I wanted to throw them away, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch them. If I laid my hands on them, they would be real.
With shaking fingers, I fished my phone out of my purse and called him. I sucked in my stomach while it rang and mopped up the sweat that had appeared on my forehead. On the third ring, he picked up. Well not really. It turned out that Tight Tammy answered his phone.
“Why don’t you sign the divorce papers?” she demanded instead of saying hello. I stumbled backward in surprise, knocking hard into the cabinets. Somehow, I managed to regain my balance, but I couldn’t form any words. I tried to remember any Joan Rivers routines I had watched, but nothing resembling a good comeback would come out of my mouth. “Why are you in denial?” Tight Tammy continued. “You’re delusional. You need to see a therapist. You need to get a job. Don’t you have any self-respect? Haven’t you been a freeloader for long enough in your life? You’re pathological, you know. Surely you know that.”
She wasn’t exactly yelling at me. Instead, she was scolding me, like I was the twenty-something, man-stealing girl making a living telling middle-aged men to squat, and she was the wise, angelic woman who had put a man through college and had raised a son almost single-handedly.
But what if she was right? Perhaps her tight little body gave her enormous powers of perception. Maybe letting myself go was actually letting myself go for real, and my self had gotten up and left, leaving me with no self, at all. Without my self, I could have very well been pathological. I could have even been a joy sucker.
“I’m not pathological,” I said, barely getting the words out. My voice cracked and strained, and I didn’t recognize it as mine.
Tight Tammy groaned in frustration. “Steve!” she called. “Steve, it’s your ex-wife!”
At the words “ex-wife,” my knees buckled, and I slid down the cabinets until I was sitting on the floor with my worthless legs stretched out in front of me. Faintly, I heard Steve’s Nordstrom loafers clack as he walked toward the phone. Then, I heard his heavy breathing in my ear. He was back.
“Why haven’t you signed the papers?” he demanded. I tried to answer him, but no words would come out. “We can make this easy or hard, you know.” My heart leapt at the offer to make this easy. So far, it was hard as hell, and I needed a break. I would have loved to have a little easy in my life.
“Easy?” I asked, hopefully.
It turned out that our ideas of easy and hard were vastly different. “I’ve been very easy on you, Eliza. All you have to do is sign. Do you really want me to drag your ass into court?”
I could understand the individual words, but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. He was being easy on me? Drag my ass into court? I wanted to beI Dream of Jeannieand blink my way out of his version of easy. I wanted a whole different easy where my husband was helping me pack to go on a cruise together. I needed him to see that I was better than Tight Tammy. I needed him to see that he wanted to come back to me.
“The rental car is missing,” I managed, showing him my responsible side.
His heavy breathing stopped, and there was a moment of silence. “What?”
“The rental car is gone.”
“Why the hell do I care?”
“Maybe it was stolen, or maybe the rental car company got angry because my credit cards aren’t good anymore,” I explained. “And your credit rating will go down the toilet.” There. I helped him. I protected him from a low credit rating.
“I don’t give a shit about your rental car, Eliza. Sign the papers.”
“But…”
“If you don’t sign the papers in ten days, no more Mr. Nice Guy.”
There was silence, again. At first, I thought he was waiting for me to respond, but the “Mr. Nice Guy” comment had me flummoxed, and after a few seconds, I realized he had hung up on me. I looked at the phone for a second before I put it down next to me.
It was cold on the kitchen floor, and the only sound was the refrigerator humming. I was totally alone, and I only had ten days to win back my husband. “Get up, Eliza,” I said out loud, but I didn’t move. I had lost all will to move my limbs, and I needed something to get me going. I needed a shot of happiness.
The doorbell rang twenty minutes later, and I finally got up off the floor. For a second, I thought Steve had changed his mind and had returned home, but if he had, he would have come through the garage and certainly would never ring the doorbell. I opened the door to see the Delivery Happiness man standing on my porch, holding a large grocery bag in one hand and balancing a pizza box on his other hand.
“I’m delivering your happiness,” he announced with a big smile. It was the first time I had seen him in daylight. He had bright green eyes and lines at the corners. Laugh lines. He was slender, and he looked like he was a few years older than I was. Attractive but not Hudson kind of attractive. Comfortable. Not like an old shoe comfortable but comfortable like a leather recliner with power massage, dual drink holders, and a place for the remote. He was wearing shorts, a paint-splattered t-shirt, and Converse sneakers.
