The Breakup (12 page)

2. The claustrophobia—by which I mean I feel like I can’t go anywhere without banging into someone I know. At a four-way stop
last week, I realized I knew the drivers at the other three stop signs. There’d
been an accident at the intersection of Ridge and 16th streets, and I knew both drivers. I was at Pak-Mail and happened to
glance down into the trash can, where I noticed a manila envelope addressed to Leanne Swanson. I know Leanne Swanson. She
was in my Lamaze class when I was pregnant with Pete. Roger liked to flirt with her. Then one day she farted when we were
practicing pushing—not just a meek little toot but a thick, juicy, cheese-cutter. Roger didn’t flirt with Leanne Swanson after
that.

3. The Stonehenge Syndrome—by which I mean the bizarre compulsion townsfolk have to display small versions of Stonehenge (or
similarly stark configurations of roughhewn stone columns) on front lawns. I do not understand this. In other places, people
seem to do just fine with statues of saints, or concrete ducks, or those flat wooden things that are meant to look like a
little fat person in bloomers bent over picking strawberries.

4. The dearth of good Chinese restaurants—by which I mean that what passes for Chinese food here would make most people recoil
in horror. Our Chinese restaurants serve white bread. Enough said.

But just when I am sure I can’t possibly tolerate another day here, I realize I have nowhere else to go. My parents are here.
My grandparents and great-grandparents are buried here. I went to a church potluck last week and felt affection for everyone,
even the people who annoy me, like crotchety Pearlie
Wilson, who never smiles and who sneaks leftovers into her straw bag when she thinks no one’s looking. Or Mel Ruckbaker, who’s
always trying to sucker someone into one of his get-rich-quick schemes. There’s Chad Weaver, all peach fuzz and acne, trying
to catch a glimpse of Tiffany Campbell’s breasts as she leans over the punch bowl. I see Reverend Lee offer a welcoming handshake
to that young couple who just moved here from New York City, and I hear him assure them that we may not be as exciting as
the Big Apple, but this is a heck of a great place to raise kids. They smile politely, but they have no idea what he means,
and they won’t until they start raising kids here—and then they’ll know exactly what the Reverend meant, and eventually they’ll
wonder why everyone makes such a big deal about New York—until someone serves them white bread in a Chinese restaurant.

’Til next time,

V

Had lunch with Dale today. The big news about Roger’s young protegée is this: She’s writing a tell-all book about her escapades
as a coed hooker. And there’s going to be a fat chapter on Roger, who, rumor has it, is described as a “saggy, sour-assed,
washed-up hack writer.”

I’ve slowly started telling people about my divorce. The reaction has been generally supportive. It’s an amazing experience,
actually—all these people I barely know confessing that they never liked Roger in the first place. The widow who lives at
the end of the cul-de-sac approached me as I was pulling the trash cans to the curb. I froze in fear when I saw her. I thought
she was going to yell at me about my trash cans, loitering at the curb like a couple of grungy hobos long after everyone else
on the block has stowed theirs neatly and out of sight. “I just want you to know that I’m pulling for you. I never liked him,
you know.” She squeezed my arm and smiled benevolently. “You’re better off without him, dear.”

I wanted to say, You have lived here for seven years and I don’t even know your name. “Thanks,” I said.

I ran into Ben Murphy at the bank. He casually asked how I’d been.

“I’m divorced!” I blurted out. How did I expect him to react? Twirl me around and sing out in joyful gratitude? Actually,
yes.

Instead he smiled (I like to think it was a wry, knowing, eager smile) and said, “Is that so?”

I returned the smile. “Yes, that’s so.”

“Well, then.”

I waited but he didn’t say anything else.

’Til next time,

V

Roger won’t leave me alone. He called three times today. As soon as I see his name on Caller ID, I let the machine pick up.
But the last time he called he used a pay phone, and I answered, damn it.

He says he has one final offer for me, and he’s “absolutely convinced” that I’ll be interested. I didn’t have the strength
to argue with him. I told him he could stop by tomorrow morning. For ten minutes. And that’s it.

’Til next time,

V

When Roger showed up at the door this morning he looked far too hopeful for a man bound for divorce and, in all probability,
jail. He carried a storage box, much like the one in which Tippy nursed her kittens. I glanced out the back window. Mary was
sunning herself on a blanket in the yard while Pete darted in and out of the sprinkler.

“What have you got there, Roger?”

He smiled. “Patience, my dear.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “May I?”

I stepped aside and let him through. “Go ahead.”

He hefted the box onto the table and pushed it toward me. “Okay, kiddo, here’s the deal.”

“Whatever you’re selling,
kiddo,
I’m not buying, so don’t bother,” I told him.

“I’m not selling a thing, wifey. I’m giving it away.” He gestured toward the box with a flourish. “Go ahead. Open it.”

“Don’t call me wifey.”

“I know you thought you could claim this as your own, and that’s fine. I ask no questions, make no accusations. It’s yours.
Spend it however you’d like.” He lifted the lid. “On one condition.”

It was the strongbox. So it was Roger who’d ripped my parents’ home apart, not Eddie.

“Condition, Roger?”

“Please abandon this silly divorce business and let us be a family again. I’m begging you.”

He had to be kidding. Then again, he was just being Roger, a man whose capacity to lie to his wife was outweighed only by
his capacity to lie to himself. Roger didn’t realize that I knew he was worth far more than the contents of that box.

“You can’t buy me back, Roger. Please take your lousy gold and go home.” I tried to move him toward the door. He was rooted
to the floor. He asked if he could see Pete. I blocked his view of the back window and told him that Pete was at Hunter’s
house. “Next time you need to contact me, call my attorney. I’m serious.”

He winced. “Did Mary get rid of the baby as I’d suggested?”

“Get out of here, Roger.” I wish I could expunge him from my life completely, but I know that as long as we have a child between
us, I will have to deal with Roger, at some level, for another fifteen years or so, and I find this fact unbelievably depressing.
I’d like to think I’d get full custody and he’d be denied visitation rights, but Omar has warned me that custody rulings in
this state have been increasingly favorable toward men, even those with checkered histories. Some guy was granted visitation
rights even though the child he was visiting was the product of acquaintance rape—he was the rapist.

’Til next time,

V

Speaking relatively, today was perfect. In the morning, I took Mary and Pete to church. Mary wasn’t familiar with the liturgy,
but she seemed completely connected to the services, enchanted by the music, riveted to Reverend Lee’s sermon (topic: is it
serendipity or divine intervention?). After church we went out for bagels (Mary had two), then hit the mall, where I bought
her three pairs of shoes and let her go wild at Claire’s, that girly doodads place in the mall.
Then the three of us squeezed into one of those little photo booths. When the picture slid out of the slot, Mary grabbed it
and kissed it. “My family,” she said.

It was a pleasure to watch her act like a real teenager, and I wondered whether it was a mistake to want her to go through
the pregnancy.

According to today’s paper, the
Heirloom Roadshow
—those earnest and overweight traveling antique experts—are coming to town. Lynette wants to go, and she wants me to come
with her. “Come on, Val, it’ll be a kick,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been dying to get an expert opinion on my grandmother’s
old plates.”

At first I demurred—I couldn’t imagine a worse way to spend a Saturday afternoon, packed inside the mildewed National Guard
armory with hundreds of locals and all their dusty old junk. Then I remembered my rapidly dwindling checking account. But
what would I sell? My family wasn’t big on heirlooms—my mother had given me her old Corelle plastic dinnerware when I got
my first apartment and a cheap silver bracelet her grandfather gave her on her sixteenth birthday. Typical. My family has
successfully slashed and burned all its geneological ties. Lynette had traced her own roots back to the Civil War. A couple
of years ago, my sister Teresa made a halfhearted effort to trace our family history and came up with a potato farmer named
Seamus.

“You could bring that sculpture, the one Roger
gave you for your birthday,” Lynette suggested. “Didn’t he tell you it was in his family for generations?”

I’d forgotten about that sculpture, a bronze cowboy affair I kept on the mantel. Roger hinted that the piece was extremely
valuable. In fact, he said it once belonged to Franklin Roosevelt. If it was worth a few thousand dollars, it would cover
my bills for a couple of months in a crunch.

’Til next time,

V

Yesterday morning I brought a breakfast tray into Mary’s room but her room was empty. I reflexively looked under the bed—a
child’s hiding place—and while I didn’t find Mary, I did discover a crumpled supermarket bag. Inside, brown glass bottles
and a sticky teaspoon. Tinctures and oils, and a Ziploc bag of something that looked like tea. I recognized the names on the
labels. These were the herbs Mary had asked me to buy for her, the herbs she thought would end her pregnancy.

I had a terrible premonition, the absolutely certain sense that Mary was in danger. I left Petey with Lynette and drove wildly
through the streets, screaming Mary’s name. I went as far north as Mercer, as far west as the highway. Mary was a strong girl.
She
could have been anywhere. Sweating, crying, desperate, I drove home and searched the house again, the basement, the attic.
I stumbled outside, and something pulled me toward the ravine behind the house, a tangle of brush and trees, weeds, timber,
and flat rock. I shuddered as I looked into its depth. Mary was down there, puking into the creek. She was wearing my old
“I Fish, Therefore I Lie” T-shirt.

I yelled for help. Lynette ran onto the deck in her pajamas. I told her to call an ambulance. By 10
A
.
M
., Mary was in the hospital having her stomach pumped. By 11:03, her kidneys had shut down. At 11:09, Mary was pronounced
dead.

When I got home, I found her Aunt Esta’s phone number by the phone in Mary’s bedroom. She was stunned when I told her Mary
was dead.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Didn’t you know those herbs could kill her?”

Esta then confessed that she knew virtually nothing about herbs. Her “specialty,” she said, was tae kwon do. She said she
found the herb information in an old handbook lying around the house. She said she had only wanted to help her niece.

I told her that I would arrange for Mary’s body to be sent back to the Philippines, and she promised that she would accompany
the casket from Manila to Ilocos, even though it meant facing Mary’s parents. “This is all my fault, and I will tell them
that,” she said. “I take full responsibility.”

I asked Esta to tell me everything she knew about Mary, and she did. I spent the hour listening to where this young girl had
been, where she’d come from, and how she’d become my husband’s other wife.

Mary was of the Ifugao people, industrious, clannish farmers known for engineering magnificent rice terraces in the steep
Luzon Mountains. Her kin were among the poorest in the hamlet, and they subsisted primarily on the sweet potatoes they farmed
on a small hillside plot; potatoes, and the meager cash they earned selling chickens for ritual sacrifice. Her parents planned
to marry her off to the youngest son of a more prestigious family of rice farmers when she was twelve.

In the year of her twelfth birthday, Mary befriended a sociologist from Berkeley, a graduate student who had come to Hapau
to study the microeconomy of Ifugao weavers. Mary convinced the student, the earnest daughter of a minister, to take her along
to Manila, where Mary had a distant cousin. The student dropped her off at a post office, as Mary had requested. But the cousin
never arrived, and Mary lived on the streets, panhandling with the other street kids. She was clever and hardworking, and
became skilled at scrounging food in the trash bins behind restaurants. She made no attempt to contact her family in the mountains.

Two years later, a friend introduced her to H. Wilhem
Prost, an enterprising American who said he had a way for poor girls to find happiness and security in the United States.
When he said he ran a mailorder bride business, Mary balked—she’d heard about girls who were unwittingly “sold” into the
sex industry—but Prost assured her he wasn’t actually selling girls, just making introductions. “The men aren’t buying you,
silly,” he said. “They’re paying for the privilege of meeting you. It’s all very legal. Romantic, even.” Prost gave her a
good Christian name, put her up in a cramped apartment over a Laundromat with four other young women, and gave them enough
money to cover their expenses. Mary was grateful for the shelter and food.

Against enormous odds given the tightly woven fabric of the Ifugao community and the dominance of its patriarchy, Mary had
made her way to Manila, traded her native Austronesian tongue for English, and became one of Prost’s CLIT girls, posing in
a chaste white starched shirt for his catalog. She’d lied about her age, and he pretended to believe her. Within two weeks
of posting her photo online, Mary had her first offer, from a man who said he was a famous American playwright. He courted
her by mail, sent her pictures of his home
(my house!)
and photocopies of newspaper reviews of his play,
Basic Black.
One of her roommates helped her translate the letters, and they were beautiful, poetic. But
Mary was frightened and she decided to abandon the whole scheme. The other girls prevailed, urged her to take the risk. They
said that Mr. Tisdale seemed like a nice man. Besides, she wasn’t compelled to marry him, just meet him. What would be the
harm?