Sing You Home (10 page)

When I come to, my cheek is pressed into the sand and my hood’s been yanked off my head. The wind has turned my wet hair into icicles. Jerry’s face slowly comes into focus. “Hey, Gramps,” he says, “you okay? You took a hard knock.”

I sit up, wincing. “I’m fine,” I mutter.

“You want a ride to the hospital? To get checked out?”

“No.” I’m bruised and battered and shivering like mad. “What time is it?”

Herc lifts up the neoprene edge of his wet suit to check his wrist-watch. “Seven-ten.”

I’ve been surfing for over an hour? “Shit,” I say, struggling to my feet. The world spins for a moment, and Herc steadies me.

“There someone we should call?” he asks.

I can’t give them the number of one of my employees, because I’ve laid them all off for the winter. I can’t give them Reid and Liddy’s number, because they think I’m picking up the pastor. I can’t give them Zoe’s number, because of what I’ve done to her.

I shake my head, but I can’t quite bring myself to say the words:
There’s nobody.

Herc and Jerry head back out one more time, and I walk slowly to the truck. My cell phone has fifteen messages on it. I don’t have to call voice mail to know they are all from Reid, and they are all angry.

I call him back. “Reid,” I say. “Look, man, I’m really sorry. I was just about to hit Ninety-three North when the truck broke down. I tried to call, but I didn’t have service—”

“Where are you now?”

“Waiting for a tow,” I lie. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take to fix.”

Reid sighs. “I’ll get Pastor Clive a limo,” he says. “Do you need a ride, too?”

I don’t know what I did to deserve a brother like Reid. I mean, anyone else would have written me off long before now. “I’m good,” I reply.

Zoe had wanted me to quit surfing. She didn’t understand the obsession, the way I couldn’t pass by a beach with a rip curl.
Grow up, Max,
she had said.
You can’t have a child if you
are
one.

Was she right?

About everything?

I picture the sheriff showing up at her house.
Zoe Baxter?
he’d say, and she’d nod.
You’ve been served.
Then he would leave her holding the little blue folder, the one she must have known was coming sooner or later, and yet still would feel like a kick in the gut.

In the truck, I am still shivering, even with the heat turned up high. I hesitate . . . and then reach into the glove compartment. The bottle of Jägermeister is really just for medicinal purposes. You see it all the time in movies—the guy who’s got frostbite, the one who’s fallen off a bridge into the water; the fellow who’s been left out in the cold too long . . . they’re all confused and frantic until they take a nip to get their blood flowing again.

One sip, and suddenly they’re healed.

Two months later

If not for the garbage truck, I would have missed my court date.

I wake with a start when I hear the high-pitched beeps, jumping upright and smacking my head against the roof of the car. The garbage truck backs toward the Dumpster I’m parked beside and hooks its teeth into the metal loops so that it can lift the receptacle. All I know is that it sounds like freaking Armageddon.

The windows are steamed up and I’m shivering, so I turn on the ignition and blast the defroster. That’s when I realize that it’s not 6:00
A.M
., like I figured, but 8:34
A.M
.

In twenty-six minutes I am getting divorced.

Obviously, I don’t have time to go back to Reid’s and shower. As it is, I will have to break the land speed record to get to the Kent County Courthouse on time.

“Shit,” I mutter, throwing the car into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot of the bank where I must have fallen asleep last night. There’s an Irish pub around the corner, and last call is 3:00
A.M
. I have a vague recollection of a bunch of guys having a bachelor party, of being invited to do some tequila shots.

Fortunately, there’s no snow yet, or for that matter an overturned truck on the highway. I park illegally in a spot that isn’t really a space (not a bright idea at a courthouse, but really, what am I supposed to do?) and run like hell into the building. “Excuse me,” I mutter, my head pounding as I run up the stairs to Judge Meyers’s courtroom. I bump into a woman with her two kids and a lawyer reading a brief. “Sorry . . . pardon me . . .”

I slide into the back row of the benches. I am sweating, and my shirt’s come untucked from my pants. I haven’t had a chance to shave, or even wash up in the bathroom. I sniff my sleeve, which smells like last night’s party.

When I glance up again, I see her staring at me.

Zoe looks like she hasn’t slept in seventy-seven days, either. She has dark circles under her eyes. She’s too thin. But she takes one look at my face, my hair, my clothing, and she knows. She understands what I’ve been doing.

She turns away from me and fixes her gaze straight ahead.

I feel that dismissal like a hole punched through my chest. All I ever wanted was to be good enough for her, and I screwed up. I couldn’t give her the kid she wanted. I couldn’t give her the life she deserved. I couldn’t be the man she thought I was.

The clerk stands up and begins reading through a list.
“Malloy versus Malloy?”
she says.

A lawyer stands up. “That’s ready, Your Honor. Can we have the process on that, please?”

The judge, a woman with a round, sunny face, has decorated her bench with seasonal items—Beanie Babies dressed like Pilgrims, a stuffed turkey.

“Jones versus Jones?”

Another attorney rises. “Ready, nominal.”

“Kasen versus Kasen?”

“Your Honor, I need a new date on that. Could I have December eighteenth?”

“Horowitz versus Horowitz,”
the clerk reads.

“That’s a motion, Your Honor,” another lawyer replies. “I’m ready to go.”

“Baxter versus Baxter?”

It takes me a moment to realize that the clerk is calling my name. “Yes,” I say, standing up. As if there’s a thread connecting us, Zoe rises, too, all the way across the room.

“Um,” I say. “Present.”

“Do you represent yourself, sir?” Judge Meyers asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Is your wife here?”

Zoe clears her throat. “Yes.”

“Are you representing yourself, ma’am?” Judge Meyers asks.

“Yes,” Zoe says, “I am.”

“Are you both ready to go forward with the divorce today?”

I nod. I don’t look at Zoe to see if she’s nodding, too.

“If you’re representing yourselves,” Judge Meyers says, “you are your own attorneys. That means you have to put your case on if you want to get a divorce today. I highly recommend watching these other nominal divorces to see the procedure, because I can’t do it for you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, but she might as well be speaking Portuguese for all I understand.

We are not called again until over two hours later. Which means I could have showered, since, even though I’ve now sat through five other divorces, I have no idea what I am supposed to do. I walk past the gate at the front of the courtroom into the witness box, and one of the uniformed bailiffs comes up to me holding a Bible. “Mr. Baxter, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

From the corner of my eye, I see the clerk directing Zoe to take a seat at one of the tables in front of the bench. “I do,” I say.

It’s funny, isn’t it, that you have to speak the same words to get married as you do to get divorced.

“Please state your name for the record . . .”

“Max,” I say. “Maxwell Baxter.”

The judge folds her hands on her desk. “Mr. Baxter, have you entered your appearance?”

I just blink at her.

“Sheriff, have Mr. Baxter enter his appearance. . . . You want a divorce today, Mr. Baxter?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re representing yourself today?”

“I can’t afford a lawyer,” I explain.

The judge looks at Zoe. “And you, Mrs. Baxter? You’re representing yourself as well?”

“I am.”

“You’re not fighting the divorce today, is that correct?”

She nods.

“Sheriff, have Mrs. Baxter enter an appearance on her own behalf, please.” The judge turns back to me and sniffs. “Mr. Baxter, you smell absolutely pickled. Are you under the influence of alcohol or drugs?”

I hesitate. “Not yet,” I say.

“Seriously, Max?” Zoe blurts out. “You’re drinking again?”

“It’s not your problem anymore—”

The judge bangs her gavel. “If you two feel like having a counseling session, don’t waste my time.”

“No, Your Honor,” I say. “I just want this to be over.”

“All right, Mr. Baxter. You may proceed.”

Except I don’t know how. Where I live, and whether I’ve lived in Wilmington for a year, and when I was married, and when we separated—well, none of that really explains how two people who thought they’d spend the rest of their lives together one day woke up and realized they did not know the person sleeping beside them.

“How old are you, Mr. Baxter?” the judge asks.

“I’m forty.”

“What’s the highest grade of school you completed?”

“I got through three years of college before I quit and started my own landscaping business.”

“How long have you been a landscaper?”

“For ten years,” I say.

“How much money do you make?”

I look into the gallery. It’s bad enough to have to say this to a judge, but there are all these other people in the courtroom. “About thirty-five thousand a year,” I say, but this is not really true. I made that
one
year.

“You allege in your complaint for divorce that certain differences arose between you which caused your marriage to fall apart, is that true?” the judge asks.

“Yes, Your Honor. We’ve been trying to have a baby for nine years. And I . . . I don’t want that anymore.”

Zoe’s eyes are glittering with tears, but she doesn’t reach for the tissue box beside her.

We got together two months ago—after she was served with divorce papers—to hash out all the details the judge was going to need. Let me tell you, it’s a strange thing to go back to the house you used to rent, to sit at the table where you used to eat dinner every day, and to feel like you’re a total stranger.

Zoe, when she’d opened the door, had looked like hell. But I didn’t think it was right for me to say that to her, so instead, I just shuffled at the threshold until she invited me in.

I think that—at that moment—if she’d asked me to come back home, to reconsider, I would have.

But instead Zoe had said, “Well, let’s get this done,” and that was that.

“Do you own any real estate?” the judge says.

“We rented,” I say.

“Are there any assets that are worth some monetary value?”

“I took my lawn care equipment; Zoe took her instruments.”

“So you’re asking that you be awarded the items in your possession, and that your wife be awarded the items in her possession?”

Isn’t that what I said, but more clearly? “I guess so.”

“Do you have health insurance?” the judge asks.

“We’ve agreed to each be responsible for our own insurance.”

The judge nods. “What about the debts in your name?”

“I can’t pay them yet,” I admit. “But I’ll take care of them when I can.”

“Will your wife be responsible for any debts in her name?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Mr. Baxter, are you in good health?”

“I am.”

“Do you understand what alimony is?” I nod at the judge. “It states here that you’re asking the court to allow you to waive alimony today?”

“You mean, so Zoe doesn’t have to pay me anything? That’s right.”

“Do you understand that it’s a permanent waiver? You can’t go back to this court or any other court and be granted alimony?”

Zoe and I had never had much money, but the thought of having her support me is completely humiliating. “I understand,” I say.

“Are you asking for an absolute divorce today from your wife?”

I know it’s legal lingo, but it makes me stop and think. Absolute. It’s so final. Like a book you’ve loved that you don’t want to end, because you know it has to be returned to the library when you’re done.

“Mr. Baxter,” the judge asks, “is there anything else you want to tell the court?”

I shake my head. “Not the court, Your Honor. But I’d like to say something to Zoe.” I wait until she looks at me. Her eyes are blank, like she’s looking at a stranger on the subway. Like she never knew me at all.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Because we live in Rhode Island, which is a predominantly Catholic state, it takes a while to really get divorced. After the seventy-seven days we waited to go to court, it’s about ninety-one days before the final judgment, as if the judge is giving a couple just one more chance to reconsider.

I admit, I’ve spent most of that time shitfaced.

Bad habits are like purple loosestrife. When that plant pops up in your garden, you think you can deal with it—a few pretty purple stalks. But it spreads like wildfire, and before you know it, it’s choked everything else around it, until all you can see is that bright carpet of color, and you’re wondering how it got so out of control.

I swore I’d never be one of the eighty percent of recovering alcoholics who wind up making the same mistakes all over again. And yet, here I am, stashing bottles up in the ceiling tiles of Reid’s bathrooms, behind books on his shelves, inside a corner I’ve carefully slit open in the guestroom mattress. I’ll spill full cartons of milk down the sink when Liddy’s not home, then gallantly volunteer to run out at night to get more so we have it for breakfast—but I’ll stop at a bar on the way home from the convenience store for a quick drink. If I know I have to be around people, I’ll drink vodka, which leaves less of an odor on the breath. I keep Gatorade under my bed, to ward off hangovers. I am careful to go out to bars in different towns, so that I look like someone who drops in every now and then for a drink, and so that I don’t get recognized in my own backyard by someone who’d narc to Reid. One night, I went to Wilmington. I drank enough to get the courage to drive by our old place. Well, Zoe’s
current
place. The lights were on in the bedroom, and I wondered what she was doing up there. Reading, maybe. Doing her nails.