I’m pretty sure my marriage is over.
I’m angry. I’m so pissed off I could scream, throw things, tear a hole through the sky.
But…I’m not sad. Not for myself, anyway. I’m sad about what this means for my daughter, but I think I’ve known that my marriage was doomed from the start.
The Earl and I hooked up a few times after I’d drunkenly admitted to harboring a massive crush on him one night at the local bar, The Dugout. When the stick I peed on turned pink weeks later, he got down on one knee and did the honorable thing. I said yes because I loved my parents. I loved the life they gave my brother and me, the united front they always showed, and the unwavering commitment they had to each other and our family. I wanted the same love and commitment for my baby. I wanted the same love and commitment for myself. Being a wife and a mother might seem like a humble dream to some, but it was always a dream of mine.
It wasn’t long after we said ‘I do’ that the marriage was going to be nothing like my parent’s. Eventually, I realized that the Earl and I were playing poker and were stuck in an intense battle of waiting to see who would fold first.
And tonight, the Earl took home the jackpot, and I’m sitting in my parent’s backyard, drinking alone.
With that thought, I pull my phone from its place in my bra (not it’s usual hangout, but dammit, they need to make women’s leggings with pockets) and pull up a message thread, ready to share my misery with the only person who has ever truly understood me. The one person I know will let me lick my wounds and not rub it in by saying ‘I told you so’ even though she very much did tell me so, more than once.
Delilah:
It’s over, Vee.
I send the message and wait. The bubbles that show a response being written pop up immediately, then disappear. I take a sip of my wine, and it tastes like battery acid in my mouth. I didn’t check the label before helping myself to a heavy pour, but either this wine Mom bought is cheap as hell or it has gone rancid. Coughing back a gag, I pour the liquid outinto the grass and slide inside to grab a ginger ale instead.
Back out on the porch, I check my phone and see that Ivy still hasn’t responded. My thumbs hover over the keyboard. I want to call, but it’s after nine on a Friday night. She’s either hunched over someone’s back working on a tattoo or at a bar finding some lucky woman to spend the night with.
I contemplate writing more, or maybe sending an audio note where I hash out all the details and try not to cry. But just as I hit the record button, a text comes through.
Ivy:
Fuck, Lilah. I’m on my way.
2
SMOKING A DOOBIE
IVY
“Alright, Ivy. I’ve got almost all your appointments rescheduled or moved to The Inkwell. The only holdout is Darren Miller. You’re supposed to start the line work on his chest piece on the fifteenth. He’s not happy about the prospect of change and wants to know if you’re willing to come back that day?”
I roll my eyes as my former apprentice turned right hand-woman, Devi, tucks a pen into the tightly coiled curls she has tied into a ponytail on top of her head. Of course, Daren Miller is unwilling to work with me on a schedule change. The dude is a supposed up-and-coming country star (who is currently still playing for tourists and their dollar bills at a honky-tonk off Broadway) and is already infull-on diva mode. I hate tattooing him. He’s a total bitch about the pain, always twitching and wincing, begging for numbing cream. He even once asked if I’d be willing to tattoo him while he’s under general anesthesia.
I swear, men are the species’ weak link. We’d all be better off if we could figure out how to reproduce through cloning like those New Mexico whiptail lizards.
Talk about women in men’s fields, right?
But Daren’s money is green, and he’s given me a bit of creative license to turn his skin into an American Traditional flash sheet, so I let him keep coming back.
Turning to Devi, I shove my iPad into my duffel bag and sling it over my shoulder.
“You tell Darren Miller that he can either come to Fox Hole and let me do his line work at The Inkwell, or he can waltz around Nashville shirtless with his chest bare as the day he was born and see if his lackluster personality is enough to lure unsuspecting tourists on Broadway into his bed, okay?”
Devi’s pupils go wide as she gapes at me, stuttering. She’s the sweetest angel pop I’ve ever met who never has a bad thing to say about anyone. Even though she’s been working with me since she started as a receptionist and has had her own chair in mystudio for years, I still shock the woman with my attitude from time to time.
“I’m kidding, Dev. Don’t worry about Darren. I’ll shoot him a message myself. You handle your own appointments and help the ladies hold down the fort while I’m gone, yeah?”
I offer my fist up, and after Devi’s knuckles meet mine, I throw up a peace sign as I head out the back door. The overhead bell chimes as I step into the night. I know that Devi and the other women who keep Lilith & Lace running will be more than capable of handling the place in my absence.
I opened my shop the year I turned thirty, after spending my twenties building a reputation as one of the best tattoo artists in the south. When my mentor—a bitchy old queen named Mollie who’d been tattooing Nashville natives and tourists since the seventies—told me she was ready to retire to a goat farm with her wife, I took it as a sign to branch out on my own.
I bought an old garage with an exposed red brick exterior on the outskirts of The Gulch neighborhood and called it Lilith & Lace. For the last five years, my team of exclusively queer and wickedly talented women and I have made Lilith & Lace the premier spot for celebrities, locals, musicians, and tourists alike to get their ink done in Nashville.
L&L is my baby, and I am endlessly proud of what I’ve built here. I hate to leave her, but I know she will be in excellent hands while I head to my hometown of Fox Hole to tend to the other half of my heart.
