Long Division (36 page)

T
oday I'm calling my book
Miss Harper Can Do It
after my e-mail address. And by “do it” I mean, I can break your heart in revolting, terrible ways. Ways that are so evil that when you will tell your future girlfriends about them over shared ice cream sundaes, the girlfriends will be so sick and disgusted by my evilness, they won't eat another bite of the ice cream. Then she'll put her hand tenderly on your wrist and you can have the rest of the sundae all to yourself. Even the cherry. If you even like those. Remember this.

So tonight I watched a particularly satisfying segment on the local news. It was a story about a program at Purdy, the local women's prison, where long-term inmates train dogs for the blind. Since a prisoner has heaps of free time, she can devote nearly all of it to raising and training a puppy. Helping an eager Labrador become the useful citizen she never was. Most of the inmates in the program were convicted of nonviolent crimes: theft, fraud, and larceny. Embarrassing acts of desperation. And though I was feeling so thoroughly terrible for being such a deceiver myself, the story cheered me up slightly. I started to think about second chances, rehabilitation, and soft, wet puppy tongues. I started to think that a jumpsuit, a leash, and a confident command voice were all that stood between me and clear, spotless happiness. The women seemed so pleased with themselves. They smiled politely during their interviews. The inmates spoke about how hard it is to give up the dogs when it's time, but how grateful they are to be doing this job. The segment was still going when my phone rang. It was David. I picked up.

“So what are you up to tonight, babe?” His voice was more playful than usual.

“Not much. Watching a show about lady prisons.” And then I asked how he was doing and he asked how I was doing. We were both something like “fine” or “fairly well,” and so I guess it was nice to have an even-keeled, reasonably positive status report on both sides. And as he rattled off some story about someone getting promoted, I wondered what the conversation would have been like if I had actually sent that fucked-up e-mail about the cotton candy kiss.
¹⁵⁹
Would he be shouting
What the hell is wrong with you, Annie?
or
You disgusting, loathsome bitch!
or
How could you do this to me when I'm over here?
And though I kind of wanted to hear those things from David—I wanted him to be so disgusted with me that the idea of ever being my boyfriend again would become instantaneously and irrevocably appalling—I knew deep down in the gaping pit of my ugly heart that his nonugly heart would never ever ever lash out like that. But if he could say them and he could think of me as this huge nasty-ass sinner, then maybe he wouldn't be so wounded. Much easier to get over an evil subhuman beast than it is a troubled but mostly kind soul whose needs you couldn't fulfill. Right? But instead of verbally reminding me of all the varieties of filth that I really, truly am, David told me about how one of his sisters, Shannon, just got engaged. He had recently spoken to her on the phone and heard how incredibly excited she was about marrying her longtime boyfriend, Bruno.

“Yeah, Annie, it was so interesting. Shannon said to me, ‘Sometimes when I'm alone and I think of Bruno and how we'll be sharing everything forever, the thought brings me so much joy that my body literally tingles with love.' ”

“Literally tingles, huh?” I said, pronouncing each syllable in literally with an exaggerated staccato.

“And Annie, to hear Shannon talk like this, I realized something that I've probably kind of known for a while now.”

“That Bruno is a really cool guy?” I asked.

“No.” And he paused. “That you're not tingling anymore.”

“Me? What? What do you mean?
Literally
tingling?”

“You've lost it, Annie. You
don't
tingle.” And he said it strong and fast: a true accusation. I am shocked. David was supposed to be distracted by guns and raids and car bombs. His mind was supposed to be completely engrossed in the horrible war game his career has tossed him into. He wasn't supposed to be noticing my fading interest in our relationship. He wasn't supposed to notice the gradual drain in my enthusiasm and the way I looked for lame excuses to be angry with him.
¹⁶⁰
And he isn't supposed to use gross baby words like “tingle” to call me out on my well-guarded apathy. It seems ridiculous now, as I write this, but I always assumed that the war has been numbing his romantic sensors. It seems ridiculous now that I actually believed I could go on faking it until his feet were back planted safely on U.S. land. I have been so so so unfair.

And as he waited for my reply, my defense, my confession, I still wanted to deny it. I still wanted to smother him in sweet lies and tender compliments and faux heartfelt apologies. But then I remembered the laws-of-your-heart permission slip he gave me last summer. (And then I remembered Gus.) Maybe I was mistaken in thinking David didn't actually want me to take the offer seriously—it was a hastily scribbled note that followed a note about doughnuts. We've never even talked about it. But here he is, very well aware of my lack of tingling: my desire to escape. Not that I believe in that sort of physiological reaction to love, but I get it.

“David,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Silence. Silence. Silence.

“You want to break up with me, don't you?”
Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

“I think so.” Annie Harper, BIG FAT WUSS.

“You
think
so?” He doesn't say it in a mean way. He says it like he's wet and cold and his words are partially muffled by rain. And then I say
I'm sorry
about fifty times in a row. And then he says
I knew it
about fifty times in a row. We never get to the long, articulate discussion about the effects of the W.A.R. on our romantic connection—on how it sneakily revealed that said connection wasn't as substantial as we originally believed. I never told him that I had fallen in love with someone else. He did not accuse me of it. As far as breakups go, it wasn't heated or bittersweet or an eloquent breed of sad. It was just plain old, mundane, stuttering-fool sad. It was the breakup that 3,457,938,724 couples have already had. And after we hung up and I sat at the foot of my bed and cried into my shirtsleeves for several minutes, I realized something horribly revolting (but at this point, unsurprising) about myself.

I wanted the circus breakup instead.

 

I spent the rest of the evening composing a laundry list of people I needed to tell about my monumental failure. In no particular order, I needed to get in touch with: