the ringing continues, so I grab my wine and jog into the kitchen. My mom mentioned she wasn’t feeling very well when we talked yesterday. Maybe she’s feeling worse.
But it isn’t my mom. The Caller ID shows the last man in the world I would ever want to talk to again, but years of ingrained habit has me answering.
“Hi, Karl.” I hate the way my palms get damp as I wait for him to answer, the way my stomach clenches in dread. He’s just a man. Just a total asshole of a man who I used to love.
“Took you long enough,” he mutters.
“I could hang up if you prefer and you could call back,” I say, barely recognizing my own moxie. “I’ll try to answer more quickly.” Or not at all, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Why exactly would I do that?” he demands.
“I just thought—”
“Never mind.” He talks right over me. “I only have a few minutes, but I was calling to tell you that I’m having the divorce waiting period waiver couriered over. The courier has instructions to stay. Sign the papers immediately and send them right back. I’ll file them and all this unpleasantness can be behind us once and for all.”
Unpleasantness? That’s what he calls our ten-year marriage? Unpleasantness? Even though I did everything in my power to make him happy while, it turned out, he was running around with whatever woman would have him?
The anger from earlier drowns under a wave of regret. Not because our marriage is over—good riddance to bad trash and all that—but because I wasted so much of my time, of myself, on a man who so obviously never gave a shit about me.
It makes me feel naive. More, it makes me feel tired. And small. And sad.
I worked so hard to make him happy, worked so hard to make it work, and now it’s just…over. A phone call, a swipe of a pen, done. And all I can think about is that if I’d worked so hard at my marriage only to have it fail so completely, what makes me think I have any chance at all of keeping Aunt Maggie’s house?
I slide down the kitchen wall while Karl’s voice pours into my right ear, then land with a hard thud on the linoleum floor, all the fight extinguished that damn fast. All I can hear—all I can think about—is him saying that I need him. And maybe, just maybe, he’s right.
I have a list of repairs I can’t afford. A shitload of junk that needs to be sorted through and thrown away. Property and inheritance taxes that I don’t have the money for. And reality starts to really seep in—like it always does when I’m around Karl.
It absolutely sucks, but my father was right. I need to move back in with my parents, sell the house, and use the money from the sale to pay the inheritance taxes and get back on my feet.
Is it what I want to do? Not in the slightest.
Is it what I have to do? Yeah, it is.
It’s the only logical solution. And I’m nothing if not logical—isn’t that what Karl always said about me? Boring, logical Mallory who doesn’t have an exciting bone in her body? It’s exciting to think about keeping this place, about building a life worthy of the great-aunt who used to pick me up at school on a random day once a year and take me to Bloomingdale’s to pick out an un-birthday present.
The great-aunt who used to take me to the Strand bookstore and demand that I pick out no less than three or five or seven books to read, depending on what she considered her lucky number that day.
The great-aunt who used to take me for cheesecake at Junior’s or hot dogs at Gray’s Papaya and then up to the top of the Empire State Building to make a wish as big as the city.
And now I’m such a failure that I can’t even afford to keep her house. I can’t live the life she tried to give me or the life she wanted for me. All I can do is just…fold.
“Are you even listening to me?” Karl’s voice booms through the phone, bringing me back to our conversation. “I need you to sign the papers tomorrow morning.”
“I’d like to read them first.” Not I have to read them first or I’ll have a lawyer read them first, just “I’d like to read them first.” So