ME: It’s fine. Leaving now.
ALEX: Copy.
I hate when he textscopy.The boys aren’t even phased by me leaving, so I kiss them and leave the house. Instead of going to Sprouts first, I head to the apartment to see what food is leftin the cabinets. When I arrive, Candy is walking into the complex at the same time. It looks like she’s returning from working a night shift.
“Hi,” she says cheerily.
“Hi,” I say, and slow down to walk beside her.
“Geez, girlie, you change your hair color like I change my underwear.”
“Hmm?” I say absently, not really paying attention.
“Light last week, then dark, now light again. Must cost you a fortune.”
“No, just once,” I say with a smile.
“Doggone it, really? I could swear your hair was dark last night when I saw you two.”
My stomach drops. I stop walking. My heart is beating out of my chest. I feel like I’m going to pass out. Candy stops next to me on the walkway.
I can barely get the words out. My body is weak. “That wasn’t me last night, Candy.”
She’s staring, trance-like. She cocks her head to the side. Her voice gets quieter and slower, “I’m not following you, honey.”
I take a deep breath in and exhale audibly. “God, this is hard. Alex and I are divorced. We share this apartment on the days we aren’t with the kids. They stay at our family home. I haven’t been here for four days, Candy. He and I won’t ever be here at the same time.”
“Oh,” she says, wearing a penitent look. “Oh, honey, I’m—”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know.” I’m having some weird crisis. There’s still hope in me that it wasn’t Alex she saw. I hope the first days he was at the apartment he didn’t break the one rule we made. “Are you sure it was him? I mean, I don’t care, but are you sure?”
“Yeah, sweetie, I’m sure. They went up the stairs to your apartment. I’m sorry.”
“It’s his business, it’s just that he’s not supposed to have women here.” I start crying quietly. I can’t stop the tears.
“It’s hard, sweets. I’ve been divorced twice. Would have been three times, but the last asshole dropped dead in line at the supermarket. But the first, that was the hardest. I really loved him.”
“Then why’d you get a divorce?” I’m sniffling, but genuinely curious to hear her answer.
“You don’t always stop loving ’em just ’cause you can’t stand ’em.”
She’s right. “Ain’t that the truth,” I whisper. In this moment, I decide that I’m going to have to adopt a different persona if I’m going to be a divorcée. I stand up straighter and put my shoulders back. “Thanks, Candy. I’m gonna be fine.”
We hug and then I head up to my apartment, wondering what went on in there the night before. I’m hoping he just hung out with someone. I don’t want to think about his sexual escapades in the bed I sleep in, or the couch I sit on. I would never have pinned Alex for a guy who picks someone up and then screws them the same night, but I guess I don’t really know him anymore. Who knows, maybe he’s been seeing her for a while. We’ve essentially been divorced for a long time.
I notice the cleaning people are arriving and walking toward the stairs, so I go inside and leave the door open. It’s not messy. There aren’t bras hanging from the ceiling fan. I doubt it even needs cleaning. I walk into the bedroom and notice Alex has taken the sheets off the bed and left the new sheets folded for the cleaning people to put on.
Wasn’t he the one who said we didn’t need to change thesheets? I guess when you’re boinking some woman all night in the bed I said was off-limits, it’s the least you can do.
The dirty sheets are piled in the laundry basket. I can’t believe he left them for the cleaning people to wash. He should have taken them and washed them himself. I hate him.
“Hello, ma’am?” says one of the cleaning women.
“Hi, yes, actually, there’s nothing really to do here,” I tell her. “You can go.” I have time on my hands to clean the tiny apartment. It’ll keep my mind off things.
About every three seconds I get an overwhelmingly nauseous feeling like a relentless set of waves. I shouldn’t care. I’m divorced. The cleaning crew is gone. I close the door and head back into the bedroom. I’m just staring at the bed, furious.
Whenever I get down about anything, I throw myself into something else as a distraction. I cannot waste this day crying, so I walk over to the laundry basket. I’m going to take the sheets to the washers and go to Sprouts. I can handle this. I don’t want to see the dirty sheets and imagine what might have happened on them. I want to wash them and put them away.
