Welcome to #ReadWithMC—Marie Claire Virtual Book Club. It’s good to have you! In February, we read Monica Hesse Really good, reallyA laugh-out-loud comedy about a surprisingly young divorcee learning to accept her new single life. Read an excerpt from the book below, then find out how to get involved. (You really don’t have to leave your couch!)
This first month just passed in a blur. A typical day is waking up after one, then in bed happily masturbating. The last five years The soundtrack (the original Broadway cast recording) played in the background. My afternoons are mostly spent trying to work, then quitting and posting Instagram stories that make significant references to my emotional state. At one point there I turned twenty-nine years old.
This was what forced me to confess to my friends. As a group, we are hard-pressed for events, and birthdays should be no exception. We had agreed a few months ago to celebrate with a trip to the beach on Toronto Island, cake and cocktails and not much else. Chat was deep in discussion about the importance of sunscreen and the merits of various personal water taxis when I cracked. I need to take a break, I wrote, June went out. . . Permanently I think? An unbearable few minutes of silence followed, then Cliff wrote, Be there in thirty.
I crawled back onto my bed and stared at some of the water damage on the ceiling until I heard his footsteps stop. I got up, fixed my hair, went to the door, and for a moment I didn’t want him to come in. He would see my empty apartment, the books missing from the shelves, the piles for someone to buy. If I showed it to Clive, I would eventually show it to everyone else. I had to walk around and be alone in the world.
I gathered my courage to the landing and opened the door.
“Out of ten, how willing are you to joke about it?” he asked.
i thought. “six?”
“Okay,” he said. “So we’ll get to the eyebrows next time.”
Clive and I met in the university’s drama society in second year, and became close when we played each other’s love interests in what he called a production of “just chubs”. The music man. He still sometimes yelled “Mad librarian!” And after a few too many drinks he pulled me in for a wet kiss. We leaned against the kitchen table (I need to get some chairs) while I dyed my eyebrows with beard dye and Cleo told me I’d be back to normal soon.
“These things happen,” he said. “If you were committed to whatever you wanted at nineteen, you’d still be wearing that little vest. And anyway, the happiest people on earth, statistically, are childless, single women. You did it!” He held both of my hands like our little league team had won the big game.
Being blamed for something like this was classically Clive. The only things he takes seriously in life are cooking, his job as a reality TV producer, and his 2011 New Year’s resolution to “get famous,” which he Still working. Around the time of the contract (and presumably in service of it), he asked us to start calling him Clive instead of Brandon, which was his given name, and though it took some getting used to. Show, we finally agreed that the stylish Brandon was thin on the ground, so the change was quite fitting.
Clive and I split a bag of low-calorie chips and started my ‘yes phase’, although my lip started to tremble as I clinked my glass, forcing him to go back and give me Note that everyone should take things. A speed that works for her. When his assistant texts that they are in danger of losing Scott Maurer as a guest judge on a new show where hockey players are paired with professional ice dancers, Clive runs away and promises Who will meet me tomorrow.
Amira arrived an hour or so later, distracting me from my own situation with her classic workplace embroidery. Although she had been happily dating for over a year, Amira was constantly having romantic relationships with men at the hospital who then fell in love with her. The last of these poor fakers was a regular brat.
“It’s getting worse,” Amira said, half sorry and half loving. “Last week he made me a playlist. He keeps asking if I’ve listened to it, but for me, it’s where I write.
“Listening to a playlist.”
“Yes,” she said seriously. “Who knows what could be out there?”
It’s easy to see how Amira creates romantic havoc in C-Wing. She was casually beautiful, even in scrubs, and just a little bit in a way that men craved. When I got to my dorm, she was already fully installed in her room across the hall, adjusting the angle of the Pussycat Dolls poster near the window. I said, “Do non-Nikolans even have names?” And she said, “Maybe they’re all named Nicole,” and that was it.
“How are your parents taking it?” she asked after we scooped up Brian’s tracklist (handwritten on heavy paper, pointing out the relevant songs… ugh, Brian). I told her they follow my lead, which means we don’t talk much. My mom immediately offered to come down to Toronto and get it for me, until I needed her to take me back to Kingston and feed me all the comfort of nostalgic baked goods. But I stayed where I was. In a way it was a relief that my family—mom, dad, younger-but-smart sister Hannah—was safely evacuated a few hours outside the city, the depth of their concern only apparent in my father’s daily text: Alive. ? y/n
Anyone trying to comfort me was doing the impossible: too much care and attention felt like pity, not enough was proof that I was worthless and no one wanted to be around me. I told Amira that my ideal situation (to the extent that any of that is considered ideal) would be for everyone to know about the divorce without me telling them and for me to have some sort of stress relief room. lie in I was ready to enter society. I need a few weeks to hate myself and adjust to my new life as an invincible skin. Amira pulled her long legs under her, and I thought she would say something annoying.
“Do you want my mom’s therapist’s number?”
i didn’t. It was just a divorce, and not particularly juicy. I didn’t even have significant dreams—what would we talk about?
“I don’t think I’m very ‘trappy’ in general,” I said. “Doesn’t seem to fit.”
I meant this. The only healer I ever met was Jon’s cousin Penelope, a small woman with white dreadlocks who ran workshops where participants dug their own graves and were buried in them so they could experience their grandmother’s death. .
“I don’t think it will be . . . so,” said Amira. She put a finger to her lips and bit a corner of the chain, looking at me intently as she pulled it out with her teeth. . “But it feels like, if there was ever a time for a therapy lil supposition, this would be it, right?”
“I’m fine,” I promised. “I downloaded this meditation app thing, and I’m going to do more tricks. . . . Hey, does Tom know about Brian?”
Anyone trying to comfort me was doing the impossible: too much care and attention felt like pity, not enough was proof that I was worthless and no one wanted to be around me.
Tom was Amira’s lumberjack boyfriend, a man with big hands and a charming smile, who had some important jobs at a downtown brewery. They met on a dating app last spring and have been inseparable ever since. Their love language seems to resonate with each other in adorable photos captioned with lengthy descriptions of their friendship and the way their life together feels like an adventure. Going to their favorite adventure restaurant. First, Tom would hold Amira a disgusting glass of white glass — Friday with it — then when she got to Maine, Amira would post Tom — big boy likes a piece — and then Tom would post a picture of him. And Amira will finally close the circuit. Sharing the original “Friday” post to her story. That way, everyone they knew saw them on either side of the table as they ate. This attitude was quite the opposite of Amira’s, but love makes people rude and a little vain, and so it is.
I was interested in how she felt the embroidery fit into the images, Oyster Night, the Big Boy himself.
“I don’t do anything with these people,” Amira said. “And Tom is just a boyfriend so far.”
I had forgotten about Amira’s unorthodox definition of the word, which she felt meant no real commitment beyond time spent together. Amira has always been unapologetically normal until she decided she was a man. So far there have been two people – a high school boyfriend and a med student who still texts sometimes – but Tom seems to be due for a promotion.
“Anyway,” Amira said. “One is real life, and the other is, like, a frisson. I know what I want for a long time, but sometimes you really need to know that someone has never seen better than your horse.
It sounded good. Maybe I’ll have a frisson or two, even if my long-term path is irrevocably “post”. Amira received a text asking her to cover for someone at work. “Do you mind if I go?” she asked. “I’m trying to build goodwill so I don’t have to work New Year’s. Plus there’s a patient I promised I’d bond with.
“Should I be jealous?” I asked.
“Well, she’s seven years old with bone cancer, so maybe not,” Amira said.
I bit the inside of my cheeks between my teeth. “Fuwuk!” i told. “Like. I mean like.”
“I know what you mean,” she laughed. “And this patient’s prognosis is excellent. Calm down.”
I was always amazed at how gracefully Amira wore the rigors of today’s work, how she could go to the hospital and deliver difficult news to parents or help children manage their pain. They will face it for the rest of their lives, then come to dinner. And hear the rest of us complain about bad email etiquette. Every time she divulged some painful detail about the hospital, the others would scare us, although she indicated several times that it was not a competition, and Clive’s professional stress was no less valid because it was often a disturbing personal one. Life was created because of. Little Canadian sports figures. (“Are we sure about that?” Clive asked at the time. I still wasn’t.)
“God, this is so intense,” I said. “I don’t know how you’re not constantly broken.”
“There’s actually a crying room on the third floor,” Amira said. “But it’s great to be there for people who are going through a hard time. Like, it’s hard, but it’s good. I’m sure that’s how you feel when you . . . explain Macbeth, or .” … Honestly, I don’t know what your job is.
“Like half of it comes with punctuation for the colon before the paper titles,” I said. “But in many ways similar to helping kids with cancer, you’re right.” I stopped and started digging through my shelves. “Let me feed you before you go.”
I bought the ingredients for her favorite sandwich, a pickle and hummus mess with honey and ballpark mustard. Amira stood behind me as I collected it, running her index finger over the open jar before closing it and placing it back in the fridge.
“Why don’t you text Lawrence,” she said, first, swear. “Don’t just hang around your apartment. It’s fun in here without Janet.
To avoid crying at the mention of my cat, I yelled “Great idea” with incredible force and took out my phone. It turns out that the Laurens are meeting shortly after at a bar near the emotional Lauren’s office that offers wine by the ounce. I told Amira that I wasn’t feeling particularly friendly but wanted to drink a few thousand ounces of wine.
“Perfect!” she said “You can drive me to work.”
She grabbed her bag and we headed down the hallway, where I tried to present myself with a stray mascara I’d left on the shelf near my keys. I fingered the bags under my eyes and sighed loudly.
“Shame must be right because I lost the last bit of youthful beauty,” I said.
“Don’t talk like that,” Amira said. “Oh, I could kill Jon. I’m so mad at him.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said, putting my keys in the bag and opening the door. “True. If anything, it’s my fault.”
Amira turned away. “How is your fault?”
I really didn’t know, how it felt.
