Dr. Shepherd had then rambled on about the column before talking again about my books, the latest of which was nearly done. I didn’t tell him I’d been a little distracted lately and had gotten behind on word count.
According to the internet, lack of attention span was normal when your wife left you. Even more so when she’d done it to hook up with one of her clients she’d been cheating on you with. And yet even more normal when you got left behind to live in the house you’d bought years before the two of you’d met, and that she’d redecorated to fit her needs and likes.
Most of my things had been relegated to storage because they were too “shabby and old looking.” Granted, the house was beautiful, if you liked living in a showroom. The bright and spare aesthetic didn’t quite go with my previous decorating style of “the more comfortable the better”. And though Nadia, my ex, had picked out some beautiful pieces for my office, none of it felt like me. And even less so now that she wasn’t around to convince me the odd-shaped, shimmering gray sofa in my office screamed successful author.
Regardless, after she’d left, I’d retrieved some of my old, beloved things. Specifically the desk I’d inherited from my grandfather with the burgundy leather inlay – and his and my grandmother’s initials etched into the corner – that clashed in the room Nadia had painted Evergreen Fog. Whatever the fuck color that was. Green? Gray-green? Green-gray? The color of my soul as it left my body?
It was either leave things as they were, try to make it work for me the best I could, or move house.
That last one was getting more enticing by the day.
Watching Brontë in the kitchen, after I refilled her bowl with fresh water, I noticed her once spritely blonde body now sagging, her eyes cloudy.
“Hey you,” I said softly, sitting on the floor in front of her and bowing my head so it rested against hers. “Sorry about the crazy lady in the park. You can’t help it if you gotta go. We all have accidents sometimes. I’ll bet she’s pooped her pants before too.”
Brontë exhaled and leaned into me.
“How about I get your bed and we work in here today. You don’t move a muscle, okay?”
I kissed her head and then hurried to my office where I grabbed her bed, her beloved stuffed cat, my laptop, a notebook, and my favorite pen. Five minutes later she was snoring and I was tapping my fingers on the table, the laptop open before me, while I stared instead out the window at the little garden Nadia had also stripped of anything soft and welcoming. Instead, she’d favored black iron, chrome, and the stupidest clear plastic chairs I’d ever seen. She hadn’t even let me keep a small patch of grass for Brontë, someplace nice she could lie on during sunny days.
“Grass is out. The upkeep is bad for the environment,” Nadia had told me. She’d apparently heard this from some woman called Maddy Marshall, one of her holy grails of advice givers on TikTok.
“There are grass alternatives that don’t need to be trimmed,” I’d said. “Plus, it would be nice to keep a place for her to use the bathroom that’s fenced in, so I don’t have to take her out myself in the mornings or late at night.”
“The gravel can be rinsed,” Nadia had countered. “And if you want a pet, you have to pick up after a pet. Right away. Otherwise the messes and smells will linger.” Her button nose had delicately wrinkled at the thought.
So Maddy Marshall won again. And while I found this particular piece of advice on the three-by-three square of grass I was trying to salvage for Brontë ridiculously stupid, in the end the argument just wasn’t worth it.
Nadia, a socialite turned influencer turned public relations darling, who had never once had to pick up after her pets a day in her life while growing up, just didn’t understand. And wasn’t willing to try. Regardless, I’d loved her. It wasn’t her fault the way she’d been raised. When she wasn’t worried about how she was being portrayed by others, she was funny and could be very sweet. And when she shined her light on you, you felt special and seen. I figured any problems between us had to be because of my shortcomings, and I was determined to make it work. I’d hated having divorced parents, no matter how well they’d gotten along and how easy they’d made the split for me.
So I’d tried. I really had. But in the end, it turned out I’d overlooked several red flags in the pursuit of what I’d thought was love.
I looked down at Brontë now, who was breathing loudly into the side of her bed.
“You’re the only girl for me, B,” I said. She didn’t open her eyes, but her tail thwacked the white tile floor twice.
My mind drifted to the incident in the park. I made a mental note to call the vet to discuss what had happened with B, and then found myself picturing the woman I’d encountered. The pink of her cheeks, her wide golden-brown eyes… Despite her being tall and lanky, there had been something sprite-like about her - which was why I’d been shocked about the ferocity of the shouting. It didn’t seem someone so dainty and innocent looking could spew hellfire like she had. And damn, she’d let me have it. It had been funny… until it wasn’t. And as I thought about it now, I grew angry again.
I should’ve spoken up. I should’ve taken back my apology. I shouldn’t have let her get away with her display, leaving me to duck my head as I set to work picking up after my elderly dog while onlookers scurried past. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I shouldn’t have reacted like I had.
“Old habits die hard, I guess,” I muttered.
I glared at my laptop. I was sick of these women who kept coming into my life. Always bulldozing me. Always making me feel like I was the one in the wrong. It had been happening since I was in high school, when shy, sweet-looking Elizabeth Bristol let it be known through her best friend that she liked me. My nose constantly in a book, I’d never have asked her out unless she had made the first move. But I knew who she was and had always thought she was pretty and interesting, at least by the selection of books I’d seen her reading over the course of the school year. So we’d dated. And slowly, so I didn’t even register it happening, she began to assert herself and her opinions on my life, until a few months later I was wearing a certain brand of jeans, a particular cologne, and had missed two author events I’d been excited to go to at our local bookstore because she’d “needed” me. Which meant she was in a bad mood and wanted me to sit on the edge of her bed and compliment her - before batting away every compliment, then eventually getting bored, wrapping herself around me and shoving her tongue in my mouth.
Two weeks before the Sadie Hawkins dance, she’d left me for Billy Martinez.
I’d only casually dated after that. Girls I’d take on one or two dates before scurrying off with claims of too much homework to get serious or some other bullshit excuse. Until I met Palmer Arrington my sophomore year of college. It took me two years to realize she was a more subtle version of what Elizabeth had been. After she’d dumped me at the end of our junior year, my younger sister shouted at the closed bedroom door I was suffering behind, “Stop being a doormat!”
But neither Elizabeth or Palmer was any match for Nadia, who had been the legitimate worst. I was pretty sure her list of accomplishments included a trophy for gaslighting.
For some reason in those early days I’d bought into her poor little rich girl cries. Her “Nobody knows the real me or is even interested” pleas. I was a little bit older, a little bit wiser (I’d thought), and had some success under my belt. I wasn’t green anymore. I knew what I wanted and my eyes were wide open. Blind, it turned out, but wide open, my sight only coming back to watch the train crash that was our demise, splashed out in full color in several newspapers and magazines.
So this woman in the park with her angelic face, expensive headphones, and dramatic overreaction to a little dog shit… well, she could bite me. I knew her type. I was a certified expert. Be cute all you want, poo-shoe lady. You can’t fool me.
I tapped my laptop awake, then opened a new blank document and typed in the title of my weekly column, Around the Neighborhood, that I wrote for the Brooklyn Tribune. I was a weekly contributor, providing commentary on things I witnessed or overheard in the neighborhood. A new coffee shop, a love story seemingly playing out in a beloved bookstore, two old men discussing their favorite place to get donuts while playing chess in the park...
They were observations. Bits of information. And the community loved it, oftentimes sending emails and letters of things they’d noticed themselves around town.
