“You and Bryce have no money. How can you afford to divorce him?”
“I took out a loan, if you really want to know.”
“But how did you qualify for a loan?”
“I tell you I’m getting a divorce, and all you care about is the money? How about ‘I’m so sorry to hear this, Abigail’? How about‘Why are you getting divorced, Abigail’?”
I rolled my eyes. “I know why you’re getting divorced.”
“Why youmightget divorced,” my mother interjected. “I mean, really, I think we need to pause for a moment and consider the implications of—”
“And why am I getting divorced, Natalie? If you know so much?”
“Because your husband is mean and dumb and drinks too much. He probably calls you names in front of the children. He probably hits you sometimes.” I paused, waiting for Abigail to confirm or deny this hypothesis, but she remained silent, her expression so still, so fathomless in its depth, that it looked like a great body of water at night. And so I went on, ignoring the terrifying stillness of my sister’s face, ignoring, too, the horrified expression on my mother’s.Lord, save us all.“He’s lazy, too. He’s never done anything with that shop. The man is and has always been a loser, but now it’s becoming harder for you to bear, and so now you, my poor sister, have somehow gotten it into your head that you will be better off without him, and I’m sorry, Abigail, but you will not.”
My mother’s hand was still pressed against her heart, like she was trying to stanch an arterial bleed. “The children,” she kept saying. “The children. The children.” Less a phrase than a pulse.
“The children will be fine,” Abigail said angrily. “AndI willbe—”
“You will be a single mother of five living on food stamps,” I snapped. “Thatis what you will be. You don’t even have a job history, Abigail. My God. You’d be lucky if they hired you to bag groceries with the teenagers in town.”
Abigail was crying now. My mother was too. It was just possible to hear the faint whistling of my husband down the hall while he shampooed five sets of heads. My fury circled back around, and it felt, suddenly, like I was eating myself alive. “Have you thought about where you’ll live? You can move in with Mother for a while, but not forever. And then what? You’ve never lived on your own before, Abigail. Do you know what it takes to apply for an apartment? Do you even know what a credit score is?”
“Stop it,” Abigail whispered. “Please, Natalie, stop it.”
I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to. I was angrier than I’d ever been in my life. I felt sick with it. “Do you honestly think the rules don’t apply to you? That you can just waltz away from all your responsibilities, completely unscathed?”
“Of course I don’t, that’s not what I’m saying, that’s not what I—”
“Do you think Bryce won’t file for custody? Of course he will. He’ll be remarried within the year, and then he and his new bride will fight for the children just to spite you. He’ll say you’re a cruel mother, a drunk, and the judge will agree with him, and before long you’ll be seeing your children every other Saturday. They won’t even know you.”
“What do I do?” Abigail said suddenly. “Oh my God, what do I do?”
She looked at my mother and me with such a blankly panicked expression that she seemed inhuman to me, like some animal that had wandered onto a highway.Stop it,I nearly hissed,stop looking like that, so pathetic,but I was officially out of breath. My mother scooched over to Abigail on the couch. “There, there. Oh, Abigail, honey, just take a deep breath—”
I breathed in sharply, and for a moment I was back in that hospital room, gasping in panic at my own irretrievable mistake. My heart constricted painfully and I stood up. “I’m going to check on the children.”
As I walked down the hallway, a memory surfaced: a stapled set of papers, handed to me a few days before my wedding.
“I can’t do it, Mama,” Abigail sobbed behind me. “I can’t do this for another forty years.”
It’s a basic prenuptial agreement,Doug had said.You’re welcome to look it over with your lawyer.
“Of course you can do it, sweetie,” my mother said. “Of course you can.”
As if I’d ever spoken to a lawyer in my life.
“How? How can I keep going like this?”
Just sign here, here, and here. That’s it, and then you’re finished.
“You keep going because you have to.”
And then the same paperwork, the same conversation, two years later:a basic financial agreement.
“The children will be done with their bath soon. They can’t see their mother in such a state, now, can they?”
Caleb’s name, and Caleb’s name alone, will be on the deed for the ranch.A twinkle in Doug’s eye as he explained this small asterisk to our original gentleman’s agreement.
