World's Shortest Fairytale

Minding my own business this morning over a cup of coffee, my phone began to ring at the unearthly hour of 8:30. Anyone who knows me well knows not to call me, unless it's a work day, until after 10 or they find themselves speaking with the only known human Chupacabra. So I rolled my eyes thinking that it was probably a salesperson pitching penis enlargement pumps or telling me that I have a relative in Nigeria who just died and they needed money to release the estate.

I was thinking up snarky comebacks as I fumbled for my phone, but as soon as I looked at the caller ID, I experienced an irritation of a whole different kind. The kind of irritation that churns the pit of my stomach so furiously that I'm pretty sure I've swallowed an entire beehive and they're all dancing the tango down there.

It was Lawyer's office number.

I stared at the phone with total terror, since he's often the bearer of bad news, and raced through the potential disasters I could possibly be facing. My conference isn't until the end of the month and things are relatively quiet until then (at which time I fully expect Ex to spend an hour screaming at me, and that's great since it only costs an arm and a leg to do so, while picking up the phone would be a much more cost-effective route. Oh, my mistake. Picking up the phone might require balls.). I have a court date in October, and other than that, I couldn't think of anything that could be on the immediate horizon.

I finally picked up the phone to hear one of Lawyer's assistants asking me if I was going out of town in November.

"I don't have any plans at the moment, why?" I asked her.

"We're scheduling your trial date during that month and Lawyer wanted to ensure you're in town," she said.

I hesitated for a few seconds. Could it be? Is it true? Could the final nail destined for the doomed wedding coffin be almost within my reach? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel that doesn't happen to belong to a freight train?

"Uh, you mean, like, the final trial? As in the I'm-going-to-be-divorced-after-this-is-over trial? As in I might be free by the end of 2007?" I stammered, glee hovering just beneath the surface.

"Yes, that's the one," she laughed. "I'm glad you're having this reaction. Sometimes when I call clients to schedule trial dates, they cry and freak out on me."

"Oh, no, not this client! I'm going to run outside and do naked back flips down the street to celebrate!"

We said our goodbyes and hung up, and I looked at the phone as if it were a genie who had just popped out of a bottle and given me three wishes. Though it's still a couple months away, I was left with a lingering feeling of freedom already. I haven't felt this light since I dated the sociopath and weighed double digits for the first time since 6th grade. I already feel like a single person again! Premature, yes, but I don't give a rat's ass. It's the best feeling I've had since this whole mess started over a year ago.

I posted this in the comments section of Lemon Gloria the other day, so forgive me if you've already read it, but it's just so appropriate. My sister Carla sent me an email a couple of weeks ago and it's pretty much my theme story now.

"Sent: August 31, 2007 8:50 AM
Subject: World's Shortest Fairytale

Almost, couldn't help but think of you when I read this.

XOXO,
Carla

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, 'Will you marry me?'
The guy said, 'No,' and the girl lived happily ever after and
went shopping, drank martinis with friends, always had a clean house,
never had to cook, had a closet full of shoes and handbags,
stayed skinny, and was never farted on.

The End "

Update: Sorry about the technical difficulty if you saw the accidental post. ;)

Forced Contemplation

I'm in upstate New York right now for my family's annual Adirondack adventure, and this is pretty much the view from my cabin. It's not so much an adventure, since we stay in cabins (albeit rickety ones) on the grounds of an old, great Adirondack Park resort, although I think braving the steep terrain to my cabin in 5 inch stilettos is pretty adventuresome. This used to be the vacation spot for the wealthy urban - the used-to-be Hamptons - but it's now a destination spot only for die-hards like us.

Because it's not the hot spot of old, the silence here is utterly and deafeningly profound when the sun slips behind the towering blue mountain to the west, the one that looks like a giant, sleeping whale. Last night, I sat on my porch to watch the sunset and listened to the waves lapping gently on the shore. And I kind of panicked.

Carla just had a baby a few months back and can't be here with us, though her older son is staying with me here. I miss her terribly and her absence has left me unable to subjugate my own thoughts about what has transpired since my most recent visit here, about this time last year. On our annual trips here, Carla and I always stay up late, drink wine, gossip, and above all, laugh nonstop. My nephew said to me last night, "Aunt Almost, I wish Mom was here. Nobody makes her laugh like you."

I used to beg Ex to come here with me when we were married and he always refused, as he did with most of my social invites, except for once. Last year at this time, I was already aware that I wanted out of the marriage. Of course, since Ex was aware of that as well, it was the first time he asked me if he could accompany me because he knew how important this place is to me. I said no. Carla and I had a blast. She had accidentally gotten knocked up, and when I'd sneak outside to smoke a cigarette, she'd whisper out the window, "Almost, dammit, blow some of that smoke over here. I swear, this kid is going to be the next Tommy Lee because he already loves cigarettes and it feels like he's playing the drums in there."

This year, I don't have Carla's craziness to make me giggle and the silence is an invisible prod, forcing me to deal with issues that I usually drown out with the sounds of the city outside of my door. My mom just asked me a few minutes ago, "What do you think about the nature of marriage?", which was ironic because I had just spent the previous evening staring at the lake and unpacking painful memories to examine in order to truly understand the demise of my marriage.

I hooted and shot her an incredulous look. "What do you think I think about it, Mom?"

She laughed. "Remember the guy who used to be our house painter back when we lived in New Jersey? He was with the same woman for 16 years and they had 2 kids, but they had never married. The kids were embarrassed and urged them to tie the knot. Do you know that they went from a blissful relationship to being divorced within 6 months of getting married? Why do you think that happens?"

"Because all of a sudden, you're not with that person because you want to be, you're with them because you're have to be. You're inextricably bound."

She looked thoughtful and said that she wanted to talk more about it over dinner. I'd rather not, because what I said to her today is my all-encompassing view on marriage. That, and the fact that I know I will never again get married.

There's one other factor that's making it nearly impossible for me to ignore contemplating the changes in my life since July of last year. The genius that I am, I forgot to bring my computer plug and I currently have 18% battery. I can't even entertain myself with mindless web browsing or bothering my friends with an avalanche of emails.

I'm cooking dinner tonight for the family and I think that afterwards, I will go in search of something entertaining so that I may once again subjugate these thoughts, if only temporarily. Perhaps I won't have to search too far, because my 12 year-old nephew has gotten into asking me and my mom sex questions these days. The latest were, "What's a no-tell motel?", "What's a lot lizard?", and "Have you ever gotten waxed? Where? Why would you wax there??"

I'm looking forward to his next set of questions, which I have a feeling will be about transgender issues, since I threatened to turn him into a full-on drag queen this evening if he didn't stop sucking in candy like a black hole sucks light.

But when my nephew goes to bed, I will be alone with my thoughts again on a quiet lake with pine-scented air, both of which silently scream at me to stop pushing thoughts and feelings into a deep, dark place. And I will probably once again miss Carla. And then bring out more memories that I so carefully packed away so they wouldn't hurt so badly. Like last night, I will probably symbolically turn them over in my hands, and the mere act of almost tangibly experiencing them again will make them less painful. I will repack them, yet in a place closer to the surface. Perhaps forced introspection isn't such a bad thing after all.

60,000 Pennies

My sister Carla is pretty much a badass. I grew up always looking up to her. I actually wanted to BE her for the entirety of my youth. I consistently went into her room and stole her stuff just to try and magically morph into The Mystical Big Sister. Needless to say, this pissed her off to no end. She exacted her revenge once by cutting off all of my hair when I was about 5 years old and we didn't always have the closest relationship (I don't blame her, since I constantly raided her room), but once we hit adulthood we became the type of sisters who would cut off a limb for each other. Carla and I, though we don't have the time to see or talk to each other as often as we'd both like, have each other's backs no matter what.

So when Carla was going through a horrific divorce several years ago, I felt like I was going through it with her. In retrospect, I had no idea what she was enduring, because you can never understand this kind of punishing soul-extraction until you yourself experience it. And she had a young child as well, which I'm pretty sure makes the whole process indeterminately more unbearable. In any case, I was as sympathetic and empathetic as I could possibly be, and I hated the whole process for her.

My sister, the pragmatist of the two of us, has always had this quite practical theory. While she was going through divorce mediation, she said to me, "Almost Free, it's always the person who wants out of the marriage more who ends up paying more."

For Carla, this ended up being very true. Even though Carla's ex, Jack, has a job, she ended up taking the brunt of the financial hit because she made a few more bucks than he. Jack is such a tool you wouldn't even believe it. He put her through so much torment that it would take me a year to even begin to address it, but let's just say that he was the epitome of a horse's ass during that marriage (that dumbass actually asked me to sleep with him while he was still married to my sister). But yet Carla never once bad-mouthed him, comported herself with utter class, and ended up coughing up the bucks in order to end the unholy union. She's not rich by any means, but she just happens to have a good work ethic, so she got screwed.

Carla and Jack ended up sharing joint custody of my nephew, but according to the laws in her state, she had to pay him child support. OK, let's think about this.... joint custody, both have jobs, and SHE has to pay HIM child support?! On top of that, she had to buy their house from him. On top of that, he wanted to have half of her inheritance from our parents, and she had to fight him on that. To say that he has a sense of entitlement that rivals Paris Hilton's is a gross understatement.

Here's where her theory kicked in. I protested, telling her that this was the most appalling agreement I'd ever heard. She said, "Almost Free, I don't care. It's a bitter check that I have to write each month, but I simply consider it the price of freedom."

Now Carla has 6 years before she writes that final check, and we have a plan. On that beautiful day that she's required to deliver that final payment, we're going to have a little get-together in her state. I'm bringing my girls, she's gathering hers, and we're renting an ostentatious limo. It's going to be a scene. I'm bringing my newscaster cousin to film the debacle, we're going to get dressed in our finest designer gowns, pop bottles of Krug Rosè to drink on the way to Jack's house.....

and drop her final payment of $600.00 on Jack's front lawn. In pennies. 60,000 pennies, to be exact.