“Steve didn’t have a choice,” I said, wiping my eyes. “It was Tight Tammy’s fault. She hypnotized him with her toned upper arms and thigh gap. Men are stupid. They get seduced by women with fake eyelashes and no discernible body fat.”
Hudson snorted. “I forbid you to cry over that man, Eliza. Do you hear me? I forbid you.”
“Who are you to forbid me? You don’t own me.”
“I don’t own you. I’m not even saving you. I’m supporting you. I accept who you are. You are not allowed to get fooled by a loser who prefers a woman with fake everything to you. Do you understand me?”
I pushed back from the counter and stood. “You don’t accept me. You want to change me. You want me to drink broccoli and eat egg whites and wear appropriate undergarments.”
“Yes,” he said, calmly. “I want you to be you. I want you to shed off all of these years of you not being you, of pushing down, ignoring, rejecting, sublimating everything that’s really you. I want you to embrace the Eliza that I know is in there.”
He pointed at me, jabbing the air with punctuation. “You need to wake up. You need to thank the Universe that Steve left you after he turned you into…”
“Into what?”
“Into the person you thought he wanted.”
“Take that back.”
Hudson stopped eating and packed up his food. “Eliza, I don’t take back the truth. The truth is the truth and nothing should get in its way. You were with a man who didn’t accept you. You warped yourself so much that you had disappeared. Vanished. You lost your voice, Eliza. You lost your essence. And you did all that for nothing, because he left you anyway. He moved on with a woman who has no voice and no essence. Because that’s the kind of man you were with. A chickenshit. A dufus. Any man who tosses you away is a moron.”
He zipped up the insulated bag. “I know you’re upset at me right now. I know you want me gone. So, I’m going to leave. But I’ll be back.”
Hudson walked from behind the counter, gave my upper arm a little squeeze, and I watched him leave the house through the front door. Once he was gone, I made a beeline for the kitchen pantry, grabbed a bag of Oreos and a bag of vinegar chips, and took them back to the couch. Flipping on the television, I found anotherI Dream of Jeanniemarathon. Sitting back on the couch, I ripped open the Oreos and took a bite of one of them.
“Oh, that’s better,” I said. Oreos had certain healing properties that one couldn’t find anywhere else. I watched Jeannie blink Major Nelson a steak dinner, and I started to cry, again. Not big crying. Just a couple more teardrops and one choked-up hiccough that I washed down with some potato chips.
“I’m not angry at you, Hudson,” I said to the empty room, as Major Nelson ordered Jeannie back into her bottle. “But you’re wrong. I didn’t warp myself. I didn’t lose my voice and my essence.”
My voice? My essence? I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t have a voice. I didn’t have an essence. Those were nonsense words. Made-up concepts. Hudson was totally wrong. I had been perfectly happy in my marriage. Everything would have been just fine if Tight Tammy hadn’t destroyed it all. I understood that Hudson’s heart was in the right place, but his opinions were in the wrong place. I would let him stew on that for a while and then come crawling back to me to beg my forgiveness. In the meantime, I had the whole rest of the day on my own to do and eat whatever I wanted.
The phone rang, and I jumped with fright.
I found the phone stuck between the cushions and blinked twice at the name on the screen. Steve Farris. Oh my God. My husband was calling me. He wanted me back. I had done it. I had won. Wait until he saw me! He was going to be surprised by my new self. I had new bras! I had ridden a bike in the sun! Steve was coming back to me, and we were going to live happily ever after. He didn’t even need to bring back the furniture. We could buy all new furniture or forget about furniture and go on a cruise. He would be apologetic about his breakdown, about his midlife crisis that threw him into the hands of Tight Tammy. And I would accept his apology with grace! I would show him what a wonderfully understanding woman I was. He would be grateful to me forever. Grateful and loving!
Tossing the Oreos and chips off the couch, I cleared my throat and answered the phone.
“Hello,” I said, dragging out the word like I was a sex symbol in a sixties movie.
“Listen, and listen good, Eliza. I’ve had enough of your shit,” he said without saying hello back.
“My…?”
“Shit! Your bullshit, to be exact. Sign the papers. We’re over here, waiting for our lives to begin, but you haven’t signed the papers.”
“The papers?”
“The divorce papers, Eliza!” he yelled into the phone. I had it away from my ear, and now I turned it on speaker. His voice boomed against the bare walls and played a weird backdrop to the mutedI Dream of Jeannie. Suddenly, it was like Major Nelson was screaming at Jeannie and saying horrible things to her. But weirdly, she was smiling and fawning all over him. What was wrong with Jeannie? Was she crazy? Didn’t she realize that Major Nelson was being mean to her? She should blink him to some place horrible, like a medieval dungeon or the Nordstrom’s twice-yearly sale.
“About that…”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” he barked into the phone. “We don’t have time for your games, Eliza. Stop playing games.”
Was I playing games? I didn’t think I was playing games. I didn’t even like games. I didn’t have one board game in the house, and I had never played a video game. Ditto sports. Sure, I had tried spin class once, but that was the extent of it.
“Do you know what you’re doing to Tammy?” he demanded.
The question stopped me cold. What I was doing to Tammy? How about what Tammy was doing to me? How about her breaking up my marriage and family and house and happy ending? How about that?
