“How bad is it? Ethan said Noah’s stopped crying,” she says. “I’m at the hair salon currently, sitting with bleach in my hair. Do I really need to come home?”
“No…” I’m at a loss for words. I want to ask her why she has bleach in her beautiful dark hair.
“Hello? So he’s okay?” she says. Several seconds pass. My mind is spinning. “Oh my god, hello, Alex? Just let me talk to Noah.”
“I’m here. I’m sorry. I need to know where the insurance cards are.”
“They’re in the drawer under the toaster. I’m so pissed at those boys. I told them not to jump on the trampoline until we got it fixed,” she says.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did. Remember when I was writing the gardener a check and I made the joke about deducting the trampoline cost from it?”
It hit me. The whole conversation came back to me.Shit.
“I told them to go jump on it. I forgot it was broken,” I say. I know my voice is weak…and penitent.
Silence.
“It’s not your fault,” she says, but it is precisely my fault. “Can I just talk to Noah?”
I look at Noah on the couch, staring at me. He’s completely calm but his elbow is swollen. I know I need to take him to theER.
“Alex!” she yells. “Let. Me. Talk. To. Noah!”
I hand Noah the phone.
“I’m fine, but it still hurts,” he says to Dani. “Okay. Okay. Love you too. I’ll call you from the ER. Okay. Bye.”
He pushes End on the phone and looks up at me. “She said to tell you if the wait is too long at the ER, then to just wrap itwell and she’ll take me in the morning. She also said to remind you that the ER gets crowded late at night and to park in the south parking lot, because the front entrance will be closed.”
Even though I work at that hospital, teaching a class one day a week, I would never remember those details about the ER. Again, when you don’t have to remember the minutiae, you don’t try to.
I’m confident everything will be fine. Looking at Noah now, I’m guessing it’s probably just a very small fracture, maybe even a sprain. The level of anxiety I felt has diminished, but the one thing still nagging at me is why Dani is bleaching her gorgeous hair, and why she decided after so long to finally show me some grace by telling me it wasn’t my fault, when it unequivocally was.
12
you wouldn’t listen anyway
Danielle
Time exists to provide a framework for our lives. We invented it. It’s subjective. You can’t measure half of something if you don’t know how much the whole is, and everyone’s number is different. This day has felt like ten days for me. It’s nine-fifteen and I’m exhausted. I feel like I haven’t slept in two weeks, but at least I’m here now, at the salon, getting some much-needed pampering and friend time in.
I hit End on my phone and look at Alicia, who is staring at me with concern from the chair next to me. Her hairstylist, Laura, a generous friend who has opened the salon late on a Sunday for me, had lathered my hair in bleach and was currently in the back room pouring champagne into flutes.
Earlier, Alicia had come dancing through the door of the salon with champagne, singing, “Happy divorce to you. Happy divorce to you. No more tears and no more fights. No more sad and sleepless nights. Happy divorce to you!”
It wasn’t exactly the joy I was feeling, but I appreciated hereffort. Now she’s staring, waiting for me to tell her what the phone call was all about.
“Noah fell off the trampoline and maybe fractured his elbow. Everything’s fine. Alex might take him to the ER tonight, but Noah’s gonna be all right,” I say.
“Well, why’d they call, just to ruin your first night of freedom?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it freedom. Alex needed to know where the insurance cards were.”
Alicia lives in a pantsuit and expensive shoes. Her blond hair is always pulled back into a tight, low ponytail. No bangs. She looks like a badass, but she is currently spinning around in the salon chair like a seven-year-old. I’ve known her since we were seven and really not much has changed between us. We’re best friends, but more like sisters, actually.
Laura hands us each a flute of champagne. Alicia holds hers up, “Cheers to single and ready to mingle.”
