Really Good, Actually(85)

What happened was this: I became distracted by an odd, insistent noise and looked up to discover its source. Across the aisle, a few seats down from mine, a black gym bag was emitting a long, low growl. A blur of grayish-brown fuzz from inside revealed it to be a cat, furious in its carrier, meowing and throwing itself against the sides of its mesh and canvas prison. Watching this made me miss Janet. She used to do something very similar, scooting around in tiny circles inside her bag until— ah.

It was Janet. Her little face was mashed against the carrier’s front window, displaying her signature snaggletooth. The carrier had a smiley face key chain attached to it, one I’d tried and failed to take off several times. And above this, with the bag in his lap, was Jon.

I could feel my pulse in my ears. I was a big bag of whooshing blood. I snuck another look at Jon, who did not notice me—he had headphones on and was absorbed in his phone, ignoring Janet’s antics but occasionally patting the bag in a soothing way. He looked good. Healthy. He was dressed up, for him: a light sweater I didn’t recognize over a shirt one of his sisters had given him for his birthday last year. He looked like he was going to a job interview, or a party, or a date.

I had thought about this moment once or twice . . . a day, for the last three hundred and fifty-three days. There was so much I wanted to say, so many ways I had imagined this encounter taking shape. I could sing the exact right song, of course, or fall to my knees and apologize, or say something clever but devastating, toss my hair over my shoulder, walk away. I could admit that I was angry, still, at both of us. I could explain what I had discovered with Helen: that cutting someone totally out of your life without warning during an ongoing legal process was not a particularly useful application of “boundaries,” and had robbed us of the small moments of exposure necessary to defang moments like these. I could hug him and see how it felt.

The bus stopped again.

I wondered if he would recognize me with my new hair. I wondered if I could grab Janet and run. I took a breath, stood, and walked past them—my cat in the ratty carrier I’d bought at a yard sale, my husband in a shirt I loved—my little family. I stepped down into the street and the doors closed behind me. I leaned against the bus shelter and let my breathing slow. My eyes watered but did not break into full tears, and when I raised them to watch the bus depart, Jon was looking at me, and I didn’t want to say anything cool or do anything right, I just wanted him to know I was sorry it had turned out this way and I hoped he was okay, and to promise that I would be too, probably, or at least if I wasn’t, it would not be his problem. I guess I would also have liked it if he made the cat wave her little paw out the window, but it would have been unwise to let Janet out of her carrier on public transit. Jon’s upper lip twitched, and the bus pulled away, and I watched our old life drive up Ossington Avenue.

Then, obviously, I had to wait for another bus, which was kind of a pain in the ass.

I decided, ultimately, to walk, and got to Clive’s an hour or so later, slipping into the crowd as Tom’s dad gave a speech about how excited he and his wife were to welcome a woman like Amirah into their family. Amirah’s cute parents dabbed their eyes, and Tom smiled bashfully at his father’s platitudes. It really was the same every time.

A dark-haired woman holding a baby (there had started to be babies at things) stood in front of me, next to a tall blonde in enviably dramatic earrings. The blonde leaned over her friend’s infant and whispered, “I don’t know how many more of these I can do.”

“Rachel, relax,” said the brown-haired woman. “You always get like this.”

“I’m thirty-two,” she said. “I’m thirty-two and I’ve never even been engaged.”

I knew why Rachel felt this way. Wedding stuff was everywhere. Since I’d turned twenty-five, developments in other people’s relationships and families had been the social tentpoles of my year: engagements in the winter, starting at Christmas and continuing into Valentine’s Day, then in spring the weddings from last year’s engagements would start, and by autumn some bitches would be pregnant. My social feeds were similar: girls from elementary school stretching their left hands to the camera in posts that were indistinguishable from the omnipresent ads for engagement rings; photos of friends at quirky, jar-filled venues; babies next to chalkboards proclaiming they were sitting up now. Despite my rigorously clicking NOT INTERESTED every time it appeared, I was being stalked by a sponsored post for something called ModernWeddingHarpist.com.

I did not feel pressure when I saw these items. I had been married—it was bad. I had not considered that it might also feel bad to not have been. The blonde swished past me, looking for the bathroom. She was so beautiful it was hard to imagine her having any problems whatsoever.

I had been reading a lot about intuitive eating and let my intuition guide me toward a plate of mushroom and leek pastry things. I ate seven, knowing they would make me bloated and gassy later, which was probably not what this approach to food was going for, but I figured there would be a learning curve. The event was dry, out of respect for Amirah’s parents, who also believed that Tom worked at a “kombucha brewery,” something Amirah thought she had made up but which had blissfully turned out to be a real thing. I poured myself another sparkling water and surveyed the room.

Tom was standing alone at the other end of the snack table, carefully reading the little cards Clive had made to explain each dish. I wandered over to ask some whispered softball questions about craft beer. He was friendly as always and knew an unbelievable amount about hops. Unable to keep up with the yeast filtration chat, I tried to glean if he was the type of man who would be psyched to receive a large book of blown-up beach photography.