“Leave this room a free woman, Hollis.”
I don’t have a choice. I feel it in my bones and see it all over her face. I need to let this end. Let him have the win so we can all move on with our lives.
I grab a pen and hover it over the line, forcing myself to sign. Life drains out of me with every looped letter of my name.
Ryan and his attorney shake hands. Make small talk. Laugh. We all stand—like a marriage of fifteen years didn’t just end and life as I know it get obliterated with my name on the dotted line—and shuffle toward the door. I want to cry but hold it in. I’ll wait until I’m in the parking lot and the safety of my minivan to have a proper come apart.
Yet I can’t stay quiet. I can’t let it go.
I grab Ryan’s arm—the arm I thought would hold me up until one of us died.
“Why are you doing this?” My eyes search his face for a glimmer of someone I used to know. “You don’t even care about the holidays.”
He looks at me and pulls his arm away, tugging at the crisp cuffs of his white dress shirt.
“But you do,” he says easily, the brown eyes I once thought were so warm now replaced with ice. “You went after the money, Hollis.” He shrugs, adjusting the knot of his tie. “You hit me where I hurt, I hit you where you hurt.”
Not only has time revealed Ryan as a piece of shit husband, it has also shown that he cares much more about money than I ever imagined possible. When I open my mouth to explain how wrong he has it, he strolls away, clapping his attorney on the back as they make their victory march down the hall.
Kat starts talking, but I can’t hear a word of it because the tears don’t wait for the minivan; they fall early. Not for the man I once loved—those shed and dried long ago—but for a season he’s stealing out of spite. The memories I won’t get. The joy. The traditions.
And once the tears start, they don’t stop.
Not on the drive home or through the entire bottle of wine I drink that night before I go to bed.
Not the next day when I put on my black bodysuit cat costume and full face of makeup.
Not as I sit on the front porch with our bucket of full-sized candy bars, which I eat most of as I scare costumed kids off with my chocolate-mouthed sobs.
Not as I try to figure out how I’ll ever survive this season without the four people I love most in this world, nor how I’ll ever deliver my annual series of articles dubbedHolidays with Holliswhen not one piece of me knows how to celebrate without them.
Halloween
Jay
The woman crying in the bowling alley wouldn’t be so problematic if she wasn’t doing it so loudly and from a seated position that has her encroaching into our lane. Dressed as a cat.
If I pretend she isn’t there and bowl my turn, I’m an asshole. If I ask her to move, I’m also an asshole. More than caring if I come across as an asshole is the fact that interacting with a strange woman having a public meltdown is the last thing I want to do. The last thing I’d bet any man wants to do.
“My money’s on a government diversion,” Marv says with raised eyebrows from behind the rim of his plastic cup of beer. His round face framed by hair sticking out like he’s been electrocuted makes his statement either more or less absurd.
“From what?” I ask, as my ball pops up the return and I slip my fingers into the holes, eyes glued on the weeper. Her cries have been replaced by a blank stare down the lane, shifting her presence from sad to spooky.
“From what?” he repeats with an incredulous scoff, eyes pinging around in their typical maniacal fashion. “Everything, Jay. How many times do I have to tell you they are into ev-er-y-thing?” He presses his lips into a tight line to drive his point home. “Why do you think they have these fancy new computers to keep score in here?” He flicks a finger against the screen of the dated computer monitor, but I don’t argue.
A monotone voice comes over the speaker: “Okay, Bowlers, it’s officially seven o’clock on Halloween, meaning the tree has been lit in the town square and Santa has arrived in Springer. Christmas has officially arrived in Christmas Village USA.”
When the previous Halloween music is replaced by “Jingle Bells,” per town tradition, the woman lets out a loud sob.
I grimace and glance around the bowling alley. The only other person besides Marv, the cat, and myself is the acne-faced, teenage boy who works here, obliviously useless as he scrolls on his phone. An annoying sense of obligation claws at me. Like it’s my duty as someone not crying to ask this basket case what’s wrong.
I just want to bowl—like we do every Halloween—and have fun—like we do every Halloween—without all this.
“She’s not bleeding,” I say, unmoving as she drops fully onto her back. Her head rests in her own lane as her long black spandex-covered legs stretch into ours. Bowling ball cupped in my hands, I glance at her assigned table: one beer, barely touched. She’s not drunk. “She’s probably fine.”
“Could be menstrual,” Marv says between sips. “The females hide the blood making it nearly impossible for the males to detect. Trust me—” He gives me a knowing look. “I learned the hard way.”
I don’t ask him to elaborate.
