“You could keep scrolling, Penny,” I muttered.
Then a new comment popped up.Solidarity, sister. I already have the Divorce Badge, so what are we Mom Scouts going to do next?
Something about having someone else look to me caused a swell of pride, a feeling of ... worthiness.
Another scan showed that a lot of other women wanted to join my mythical troop, and a warm happiness of belonging, of being looked up to, bloomed within me. I could think of a hundred badges that I would like to earn, but this channel couldn’t just be about home economics projects.
Not anymore.
This would have to be about what it really meant to be a woman. Today I’d stood my ground instead of caving to Mitch. That should bea badge. I’d protected Suja from the clerk. I’d held my tongue instead of telling Parker more than he needed to know. Those were the sorts of things that I needed to do in order to heal, and they might be the things other women needed to hear.
God knew I could use a road map.
Well, Vivian, making plans is what you do, and you really need to make some plans for all of this to work.
Another comment popped up with#MitchIsADick, and I felt a stab of remorse. Just because he wanted a divorce didn’t mean he deserved to have me airing our dirty laundry online.
Then again, the woman who’d been doing his laundry for almost twenty-five years didn’t deserve to be yelled at or to have her drawers emptied. He’d made his bed on the futon, and he could lie there.
At least for now.
I’d already put into play a plan to get him to voluntarily move out.
For the first time since I’d found the folder with Mitch’s divorce plans, I felt a pinch of optimism. Maybe ... well, maybe this would be better for me in the long run.
Maybe?
Masochist that I was, I went back to the comments, hungry for more of that approval. Many were a variation ofLOLorHe had it coming!Some sported the hashtag#MitchIsADick.
No arguments here.
Of course there were the variations of “I bet you were never actually married. You’re probably an old cat lady who’ll die alone.”
First, I felt a pinprick of shame from the disapproval, but the idea was so ridiculous that I eventually rolled my eyes and let the mean words roll off my back. Disparaging comments from random men were par for the course on the internet, but when I saw one that saidI’m single and I know how to appreciate a fine woman, I groaned.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that anything a woman said or did that became popular would bring creepy men out of thewoodwork to tell her she was wrong, to hit on her, or, most perplexingly, both.
But then another comment:Vivian, I know who you really are. Be careful.
A chill flash-froze me from inside out. But what did OneBadMother49 know about me? I shook off the oddity of a statement that neither praised me nor truly condemned me. And what about the eerie addition of “Be careful”? Was someone after me? Had Mitch come up with a creative way to get back at me? Was he this OneBadMother49? He did like to occasionally refer to himself as One Bad Mother, then add a word that rhymed with trucker. Recently, he’d been using 49 in all his passwords because he loved former Atlanta Brave Julio Teherán.
To create a YouTube account would be so much work for Mitch, though. Too much alcohol and not enough sleep had to be making me paranoid.
Then again, this was the man who’d somehow sought out a lawyer despite not having made his own dental appointments in over twenty years.
And hewasa dentist.
My phone rang, and I welcomed the distraction. It was another radio station wanting to know if they could speak to the Mom Scout of the ah-mazing chicken salad. I had tons of voicemails and emails from people who wanted to speak to ... me.
Moment of truth, Vivian. Do you want to lean into this or hide?
I chose to lean in.
I opened my laptop to my calendar and started making appointments for these calls. While listening to my voicemails, I spent the rest of the afternoon researching which radio stations had the biggest markets and returning call after call. Adrenaline surged while I was on the phone and abruptly dissipated the minute I was finished.
My phone pinged with a text from my mother:ETA 4:32
Good.
