Really Good, Actually(23)
“This is bumming me out,” Amy said. “Let’s get nachos.”
We moved bars and ate melted processed cheese under a neon tiger as Amy told me about her dating life. She was seeing three different people, all of whom she had met “on the apps.” The most exciting was a twenty-four-year-old aspiring actor who was already famous in certain corners of the internet for stunt videos where he climbed improbably tall, out-of-the-way buildings. We watched a few. They were stressful and impressive. Amy said he was amazing in bed and that he “specialized in divorcées,” because he traveled a lot and didn’t have time to settle down. Also, because he was mature for his age.
Amy said that lots of men were into divorced women: “The damage makes you kind of sexy, so they’re more likely to stick around instead of ghosting or having sex with your friend to prove it’s casual.”
I countered that Amy’s great bod and fun attitude were probably what made her appealing to men.
She grabbed my phone, held it up to my face to unlock it, and said, “No, it’s divorce,” while downloading Tinder.
I told her about the incident with Calvin, how I didn’t feel ready to meet anyone yet.
Amy clicked her tongue: “You don’t have to marry the guy. Plus, it’s so cool that you fucked his friend, like . . . burn.”
I tried to explain that we hadn’t fucked, just platonically shared a bed in which my boob had slipped out of my sleeping tank only once, but she was no longer listening. As she swiped through my photos, not even blinking at the dozens of mortifying sadness selfies I’d amassed, I felt pleasantly powerless.
Amy settled on a three-year-old picture of me smiling with friends on a patio in Collingwood, before saying, without malice, “You should maybe grow out your bangs.” She paused for a moment, then cropped a conspicuously attractive friend out of the picture and made it my profile image.
“You’ll like dating,” she said. “Everyone eats ass now.”
Amy and I workshopped opening lines as couples started to pack it in around us, established pairs walking out holding hands, newer ones politely hugging and heading in separate directions or exchanging too much eye contact before coyly agreeing to share a cab. I looked them over: how many of these people were happy, how many were unhappy and didn’t know it, how many were pretending to be happy even though they knew damn well they were miserable . . . and when would they be single, if so? I tried to imagine myself joining them. The last time I had been available, dating meant putting on a Going-Out Top and sneaking Smirnoff Ices into a movie theater. I thought about the jolt of one knee purposefully touching another, lingering in the street after last call, two bodies making excuses to move closer. I probably still had one of those tops somewhere.
Amy and I soldiered on, decamping to the bar’s patio and switching, ill-advisedly, to cocktails as we compared breakup stories. Amy’s family had been handling it badly—they loved her ex. Her mother was even occasionally still in touch! Mine were being as supportive as they could from Kingston. “I feel like they don’t really know what to say,” I said. I had recently asked my mother whether any of my family had seen this coming, and she had texted back: define “seen.”
Amy’s parents were still together, which meant, she felt, that they saw her as a failure. More than thirty years of marriage they’d managed, and their daughter couldn’t hold it together for three. My parents separated when I was a child but did not formally divorce until we were adults, leaving my sister and me to grow up in a limbo state I’m sure had no ramifications for our adult approaches to intimacy.
For her divorce, Amy had gone out in a blaze of glory, not quite keying his car (“I was tempted, because of Carrie Underwood”), but definitely not being careful as she lugged her things down the driveway past his souped up Toyota Yaris. Their condo had been everything to her, she told me. The day she left it was her “personal 9/11.”
Still, Amy’s lawyer was sure she would be vindicated.
“We’re going to take that fucker to court, and he’ll have to go live with his mother in Orangeville,” she cackled. “Orangeville! Can you even?”
I said Jon and I were hoping to avoid lawyers for anything more than paperwork purposes; we’d already divided up almost everything, so there wasn’t much to fight about. I explained that taking the high road felt important, that we owed it to our younger selves to be kind. Amy drained her martini and puffed her cigarette, looking more divorced than anyone in history: “Good luck.”
The night carried on. I felt myself cross the threshold between fun drunk and “about to quote a song lyric from my past,” but there was nothing to be done except drink through it. I told Amy everything I posted online felt like a PR exercise, like I was trying to broadcast to friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and a few friends’ dogs that I was doing well, possibly even thriving. I had found myself putting on makeup before watching a movie, then posting a few front-facing camera videos to Instagram, cracking dumb jokes about the films. Always, I chose movies Jon had loved (still loved, presumably). Always, I deleted the videos in the morning.
Amy said the pursuit of a glow-up was only natural. I should come to spin with her if I really wanted to get the word out. Her studio had a mirror that said strong as a woman on it, and she loved the way it made her butt look in selfies.