Really Good, Actually(16)

Thanks,

M





Chapter 5




The grocery store was a minefield. So were my favorite coffee shop, the local subway station, and the bar I’d spent every birthday in since turning twenty-three. Toronto is too small a city to get divorced in, really. My recommendation, if you live in Toronto and your marriage is not working, is to stick it out or move away.

At first I avoided Jon (or the potential of him) by staying inside, but lately I had begun to venture out, taking my heart in my hands each time. Once, thinking I saw him, I ducked behind a bush like the heroine of a screwball comedy, if heroines of screwball comedies wore old camp sweatpants with the words aug ’02—we freaky across the butt. It was hard to know if I was seeing Jon everywhere because I missed him, my subconscious longing morphing the faces around me, or because every second man between Ossington and Dovercourt was an average-height white guy with a dark brown beard.

Still, the grocery store loomed largest in those early months, it being the most necessary to visit and often the only outdoor activity in my day. Sometimes I would shower, primping in the mirror as if the midsized produce chain a block from my house were a new lover. (Obviously, the idea of an actual new lover was out of the question, I was simply too old and disgusting and would never feel the touch of another or love again. I would die alone, probably sooner than expected, maybe tomorrow.) Other times I looked terrible and that was fine.

The five-minute walk down my quiet, tree-lined street felt long and slow and exposed. Couples were an affront, single people with their shit together equally so. I walked with a bereaved shuffle, blinking at the brightness of the sun, sweating in my leisurewear, and hoping not to run into anyone I knew. I always, always ran into someone I knew.

It’s actually very hard to live in the west end of Toronto and escape a daily unplanned social encounter, harder still to avoid someone you’re hoping not to see. I ran into students, relatives, elementary school classmates, and acquaintances from three jobs ago, each time doing grim mental equations regarding whether they knew and didn’t care, knew and did care, didn’t know and would like to, or didn’t know and wouldn’t care to find out.

All options were bad. If they did know, I had to buckle up for Soft Eyes, a concerned tilt of the head, and a drawn-out “How you holding up?” Their compassion felt terrible. The more maternal women and optimistically horny men would reach out for a shoulder rub, patting me like a child who’d done a bad job at kickball, instead of a woman whose plan for her life had fallen apart one day over mediocre pad thai. If they didn’t know, they would ask after Jon, and I would have to say, in a voice I hoped sounded wise and resigned and maybe a little European, that we were “taking some time apart.”

This was where I felt older divorcées had a competitive edge. It was hard to seem worldly and accepting when so little had happened to make me that way. I wanted to project the image of a together, independent woman, puffing a cigarette like, Ah, life! and then doing something cool like blowing a smoke ring or ashing without making a mess everywhere. Saying “I am getting a divorce” made me feel like a child clomping around in enormous shoes, my mother’s lipstick all over my face. I had been in love only once before meeting Jon. I’d legitimately assumed he and I would be together forever. Every encounter revealed my na?veté, put me in a pillory with a sign next to it: believed fully in romantic love and the possibility of eternal commitment (in this day and age!!).

My first real run-in came a few weeks after Jon moved out. It was with an acquaintance called Gaby, who worked at an art gallery and dressed in such a way that if you saw her on the street you’d be like, I bet that girl works at an art gallery, which I think was how she liked it. I found her in the condiments aisle comparing two identical jars of tahini. She looked up while I was trying to figure out how to escape, a shared flash of god, I wish I hadn’t made eye contact passing between us as we both smiled and started the high-pitched, drawn-out “hiiiiiiis” of the reluctantly encountered.

When I asked how it was going, she said, “Oh, you know . . . terrible. Haha!” I sighed in a way I hoped sounded empathetic, and for a moment I wasn’t sure I’d tell her. She hadn’t asked, and for a real, full second, I lived in the gentle delusion that I was a woman capable of not saying, in one breath, without stopping, all of the following: “OhmyhusbandandIaretakingsometimeapartandIdothinkit’sforthebestbutit’shard,youknow,harderthanIexpected,actually,andIjustfeellikeabitofafailureandliketheyoungestpersontoevergetdivorced,whodoesthatattwentyeight,likemostofmyclosefriendsaren’tevenmarriedandhereIamrackingupdivorcebillsandputtingonmakeupincaseIrunintotheformerloveofmylifeinthecerealaisle,hahahaha,buthonestlyit’stheworstI’veeverfelt.” I paused, waiting for Gaby to reply with a comforting platitude, something like “Change is hard,” or “Hopefully it’s for the best,” or “It will get better in time.” She looked at me with pity, but something else too, before putting both tahini jars back on the shelf and saying briskly:

“Right. Well, my dad’s dying! So, you know, everything sucks for everybody.” As she turned away, I noticed how red her eyes were.

Later I looked Gaby up on Facebook and sent her a message, saying I was sorry I’d been so thoughtless, so wrapped up in my non-tragedy tragedy, that things felt very large at the moment, even though I knew, somewhere, that they weren’t, and she’d reminded me of that, and if I seemed out of sorts it was just that City Market was Jon’s and my classic spot to pick up the fancier bits we couldn’t get at FreshCo, and every time I went in there I found myself thinking, in another world, would we still be here, considering impulse-splurging on fresh tagliatelle? If it makes you feel better, I wrote, I realized when I got home that I’d bought a bunch of food I didn’t want to eat.