Not long after the end of my conversation with
Jamie, my phone vibrated twice in rapid succession, indicating a Facebook
Messenger message. I opened it to find a
message from Chelsea that said, “I’m
coming to see you.”
“Huh?” I wrote back.
Eloquent, no?
“Next weekend,” she replied immediately.
No.
No no no nonononono. I couldn’t
deal with Chelsea next weekend. I just
couldn’t. “I’ll be down in Rochester for Christmas. We can do something on my way down or back
up,” I wrote back. “You don’t have to drive all the way up
here.” Chelsea lived in Eagan, a
suburb of St Paul. I’d literally drive
right through it on my way home to see my parents at Christmas.
“Too
late, I already took Friday off work to drive up!” she wrote back.
I took a deep breath, then typed fast and hit send before I could talk myself out of it. “Chels,
I still live with Kevin.”
The three dots appeared. They hovered for several seconds, then went
away. I watched them appear, hover, and
disappear over and over for almost 90 seconds before her message finally materialized. “Wait,
what?” That had been an awful lot of
thinking and typing for a 10 character message.
“I
still live with Kevin because I haven’t found a new place yet,” I typed
back. Never mind that I hadn’t really
even looked. Feeling guilty, I added a
lie. “And I have some appointments for showings this weekend.” I hoped that would make her rethink her
plans. Who takes off work to go visit
someone without checking with that person first, anyways?
“Oh
good, I’ll go with you!” she replied.
“It’ll be fun! And I’ll get us a hotel room. I bet you need to get out of there for a
weekend.”
I sighed and resigned myself,
because there was no way I was getting out of this. She was right, I really could use a weekend
out of this house. But now I needed to
actually schedule some showings this weekend.
I sent a quick email to the address Kelly had sent me, then shoved
myself off my bed to leave my room for the first time since the night before.
I opened my bedroom door and almost
tripped over something. I looked down
and found the space heater sitting on the floor outside my bedroom. I briefly considered marching it straight
upstairs and chucking it at Kevin’s head, but instead took it into my room, set
it on my dresser, and plugged it in.
Cautiously, I crept up the
stairs. Kevin’s schedule was never
consistent, and I didn’t have any idea if he’d be at work or not. I was greeted by a blissfully silent house,
and a note on the kitchen table. It
said, “Sorry again for last night. I put the space heater downstairs for
you. I was thinking about picking up
Pizza Luce after my shift, let me know if you want me to grab you
anything.” I crumpled the note and
threw it in the garbage, not willing to accept his manipulative “peace
offering” of pizza from my favorite pizza place.
Kelly’s brother-in-law got back to
me quickly and we set up a meeting for Monday to talk about my budget and what
I was looking for. I wasn’t really sure
what was holding me back, but I just didn’t feel ready to be starting this
process. I tried to remind myself that
not having to share space with Kevin anymore would be a good thing, and would
eliminate the risk of a repeat of last night, but the thought of moving out was
still daunting.
Nonetheless, my appointment went
well. I really liked Kelly’s
brother-in-law, Mike, and he had some good ideas of ways to maximize my rather
small budget. He promised to try to get
some showings scheduled for Saturday, and I thanked him profusely. I felt guilty, knowing that I probably wasn’t
super serious about moving rightthisminute, but maybe I’d find something
perfect and it would make it easier.
Maybe.
I spent most of the week dreading
Chelsea’s visit. That sounds terrible, I
know. I love Chelsea but sometimes she’s
just a little clueless, and I knew she’d spend the weekend harassing me about
my divorce. I was looking forward to getting out of this house though.
Once Friday rolled around, I had
accepted that Chelsea was coming and was even starting to look forward to
seeing her. I went into work at 7 so
I could leave early. I worked as a
scheduler/admin assistant at a local recruiting firm. It wasn’t a very exciting job, but it was
flexible, it paid the bills, and my boss and coworkers were great, so I liked
it.
My boss sent me home around 2,
knowing I was expecting company.
See? He’s awesome. When I got
home, Kevin was sleeping on the couch.
He has a perfectly good bedroom (I know because it used to be my bedroom
too). I don’t understand why he can’t
sleep there like a normal person. I
didn’t even bother trying to be quiet or respectful, and a mere 5 minutes after
I got home, I heard him sigh and haul himself off the couch. He didn’t say anything to me, just made his
way upstairs. His bedroom door closed
heavily—not quite slammed, but his frustration was certainly apparent. Sorry
not sorry!
Once I finished washing my dishes
from the night before and that morning (and only
my dishes), I headed downstairs to quickly pack up a few things for the
weekend. Then I scribbled a note to
Kevin that read: “I’m gone for the weekend,
so the house is all yours. I’ll be back
in the early afternoon on Sunday, so if you could not have any half-naked whores
girls on the couch then, that would be great.” I thought my correction was a wonderful show
of goodwill.
I threw my overnight bag in the
backseat of my car and drove to the liquor store. I picked up a couple bottles of wine there
then headed to the grocery store to pick up a few snacks. Finally, I made my way to the hotel where
Chelsea had reserved a room for us for the weekend.
An hour later, we were sitting on
the couch in our hotel room, drinking some wine. “Wait, so what do you mean you filed
together? Like, you actually went to the
courthouse together to file your divorce stuff?” she asked incredulously, interrupting my explanation about how it all went down.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “You only have to pay one fee that way,
instead of each paying it. And then you don't have to go in front of a judge or anything. It was weird,
though.” I filled her in on the day:
“Seriously,
Kevin, we needed to leave five minutes ago, and if you’re not ready, I swear to
god I will kill you!” I yelled up the
stairs. I knew he’d be running late this
morning. I knew it.
“Jesus,
Jenna,” he snapped, coming down the stairs still buckling his belt. He made it all the way to the bottom step
before swearing and turning around, heading right back upstairs. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath to keep
myself from following and strangling him.
“I don’t know why you’re in such a fucking hurry to go do this anyway,”
I heard him mutter as he came back down again.
“Was
that rhetorical?” I asked. “Because 1. I
need to be to work at 8:30, and 2. You cheated on me for two years. Remember that?”
He
sighed heavily and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking at me as if I
was a child and he was exhausted from dealing with me. “I couldn’t forget it if I tried. You’re making sure of that.”
“Good,”
I spat. “You shouldn’t forget it!”
“Can
we just go?” he asked wearily.
“That’s
what I’ve been wanting to do for the last 10 minutes,” I retorted, stomping
towards the kitchen. I wasn’t making
this easy for him, but why should I? He
didn’t deserve for it to be easy. He
deserved to be just as miserable as I was.
More, actually.
We
drove separately, because we were each leaving for work directly from the
courthouse. Of course, the only two
parking spots left in the lot were directly next to each other. On the way into the courthouse, he tried to
make small talk with me. Feeling a
little guilty for how bitchy I had been earlier, I engaged. Once we hit the elevator to go up to the
court administrator on the 4th floor, we both fell silent.
There
was one person ahead of us. We stood
there silently until it was our turn.
Once we got to the window, I had no idea what to say, so I wordlessly
shoved the divorce petition at the bored looking court administrator. She paged through it quickly, asked us to
clarify something, then we signed and Kevin paid the fee and she told us to
have a good day. Have…a good day? Okay.
The
silence was killing me by the time we were back in the elevator. “Well, this is awkward,” I said, laughing nervously. Kevin shot me a withering look. “What?
It is.” He just rolled his eyes
and shifted to lean against the wall of the elevator. I rolled my own eyes at his turned away head
and sighed. Nothing like divorce to
bring out the adult in me, huh? Of
course, since we had parked next to each other, we had to walk to our cars
together too. “Well,” Kevin said, once
we’d completed the trek. “See you later,
I guess?”
“Yeah,
I guess,” I replied.
Neither
of us spoke, and we stood there awkwardly for several seconds. Then we both turned away and got in our
cars. He pulled out of his spot
immediately, but I stayed. I rested my
forehead on the steering wheel and squeezed my eyes shut. I willed myself not to cry, and to my
surprise, it worked. I just sat and
breathed for several minutes. I briefly
considered calling in sick to work, but knew that I wouldn’t feel any better
sitting at home, so I finally lifted my head, sucked in one final deep breath,
and turned the key in the ignition.
“That sounds like the weirdest
morning ever,” Chelsea said, when I finished.
“Basically,” I replied,
shrugging. I unsubtly steered the
conversation away from my divorce and we spent the rest of the evening drinking
wine, eating room service-delivered dinner, and watching trashy TV.
It was nice to sleep in a room that
was heated to a reasonable temperature and wake up without wondering if my
ex-husband was home or not. We got
ready, went out for breakfast, and met Mike at the first showing of the
day. He’d managed to set up 3, and I was
glad there weren’t more than that.
I was perplexed to pull up in front
of what looked like an apartment building.
Chelsea and I exchanged glances before getting out. I spotted Mike getting out of a car
nearby. “Hi there!” he called.
“Hi, Mike,” I replied. “This is my friend Chelsea. Is this…an apartment building?”
“Condos,” he corrected.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s the difference?”
“You rent apartments,” he said,
grinning. “You buy condos.”
He motioned for us to follow him,
and reluctantly we did. As we were
walking, I said, “You know, I’m not sure how I feel about paying to share walls
and listen to elephants clomp around above me.”
“Well, you’re in luck, because this
is a top floor, corner unit,” he said. I
looked at him skeptically and he continued.
“You’re going to get more for your money with a condo. Your mortgage plus your HOA fee here would be
cheaper than the next place I’m showing you, and the condo is 350 square feet
bigger. Your HOA fee is going to cover
lawn care, snow removal, any outside maintenance, your water, sewer, and
garbage, plus the high speed wireless internet through the entire
building. You’re a young, single
woman. A condo is a good buy.”
I was still skeptical, but Chelsea
elbowed me. “Keep an open mind, we’re
just looking.”
“Okay, okay,” I agreed
reluctantly.
The condo was nice, but I could
hear the neighbor’s TV and it had a view of the highway. I knew I couldn’t afford to be too picky, but
going from our 2000 square foot house in a nice, quiet neighborhood to this
wasn’t going to do it for me.
I told Mike what I liked and didn’t
like about the condo before we moved on to the next place. The other two we ended up looking at weren’t
good at all. The second one Mike basically
vetoed as soon as we pulled up to it, but we took a look anyway just so I could
get a feel for what was out there in my price range. The third actually would have been perfect,
except there was a strange musty smell through the entire house that likely
indicated some serious water damage of some sort.
I tried to hide my discouragement
as Chelsea and I drove back to the hotel.
I apparently failed, because Chelsea said, “Hey, it’s only the first
couple, right? There are lots more
places out there.”
“Yeah,” I said unconvincingly,
staring out the windshield at the road in front of us. “Lots more.”