Page 28 of Last Seen

Chapter Eighteen

Catriona

Brockville Artist Colony

Literature Workshop

2002

As I wander the beautiful, fragrant path, drowning out my demon’s cackle with the birdsong and splashing river, I can’t help but spiral a bit.

My divorce was agreed to with somewhat undue haste because neither of us could wait to get out of the marriage.

We were not compatible, especially when he, like my fictional Greg, started sticking it to the neighbor’s babysitter.

The girl was in college, but still, Tyler was flirting with the half-your-age-plus-seven line.

It feels like years ago, but it’s only been two days since my best friend, Alison, came over to celebrate the impending official split.

“You start your marriage with a party, you should end it with one, too.” That’s what Alison said when she showed up at my front door with two bottles of wine and an insouciant grin.

We drank, and we talked, and finally, when we were hammered enough, Alison asked me what was next.

“Writing.”

“No, I mean, what are you really going to do now?” Alison was slumped back in her chair with her glass of Chablis.

We were beyond drunk, and I was kicking myself.

I know better than to have more than two glasses of wine.

It doesn’t mix well with my meds. I am going to wake up feeling sick, with a headache and nausea, and I had a very long drive from Boston to Tennessee.

Getting drunk on top of the convoluted thoughts brought about by the ending of this failed chapter of my life was maybe not the smartest thing to do.

I can still taste the sour wine in my mouth.

But then, high on wine and girl power, I’d answered emphatically, sloshing some of the wine out of the glass into my lap.

“I’m not kidding. I’ve been applying to Brockville for a long time.

I was accepted a few years ago but couldn’t pull the trigger.

This time? I am going to drop everything and go.

Find a way to make it through, deal with the rest later.

” I shot back the last of my wine and declared, with all the seriousness I could muster, “Writing is my future.”

“I didn’t know you got in before. Why didn’t you go?”

I was weak. Scared. Not ready to face my fate. Don’t scare her, idiot. “Tyler forbade it. He didn’t want to spend the money.”

Alison had squinted one eye at me. “I mean, it’s not that I disapprove of you shaking things up.

But you’re making a lot of changes all at once.

Divorce is a moment of reflection. I get cutting your hair.

I even get wanting to change jobs. But to sell all your stuff so you can afford to run off to the forest and write a book?

With no source of income other than some alimony, which runs out in . ..”

“Five years or a new marriage.”

“Right.” Alison took a swig of the wine. “What does Dr. Chowdhury say?”

Ah, the good doctor. One of the bright points in my life, truth be told.

The only person who knows everything about me.

And I mean everything. “It took a bit of convincing, but she thinks it’s good for me to have agency here, to make decisions about my life that only affect me for a change.

I’ve never been able to do that. I met Tyler practically the first day I moved here, and I haven’t been without him since.

I need to find myself, and that’s why I’m following this dream at last.”

I hooked myself onto him the moment I realized he wasn’t bright enough to see me for who I really was. That he didn’t even put me together with his past.

The acting got boring, in the end. And I let slip, just a tiny bit, who I really was, and he ran right between the legs of the first young thing he could find. It’s fine. He wasn’t much of a challenge, and I don’t like to be bored. Ten years is a long time to be bored.

“Well”—Alison finished the last of her wine and tipped the empty glass toward me in a final toast—“I am thrilled for you, and I hope you won’t forget us little people when you’re some rich and famous author.”

“Hardly,” I replied, knocking my glass against hers. “I mean, that’s not going to happen—”

“No, no, don’t you dare. Agency, remember? Visualization. You only put into the world what you want to have happen. Say it after me: ‘I’m going to be famous and successful in my chosen career.’”

“I’m going to be famous and successful in my chosen career.”

“‘I will not talk down to myself.’”

“Ali—”

“Say it.”

“I will not talk down to myself.”

“‘I will live a wonderful life, full of joy and happiness.’”

“Who’s the therapist now?” At Alison’s glare, I shook my head. “Fine. I will live a wonderful life, full of joy and happiness.”

Alison stood, wobbly as a colt, and she threw her arms around me.

“I’m holding you to that, Armstrong.”

“Handon,” I said. “I’m taking back my maiden name.”

Alison grinned. “Good for you! Fuck him. Fuck Tyler!”

“Yeah, fuck him.”

I poured Alison into a cab, then went back up to the loft.

Even though I was bored and wanted it, divorce was sad, no matter how you cut it.

I’d been promised joy, promised happiness, but all I’d gotten was a richly oppressive sorrow, something new for me.

Maybe a little rage thrown in for good measure.

The honest truth? While our marriage ended because I checked out, Tyler thinks he left me.

He thought I didn’t know he’d found another woman.

That didn’t matter to me in the least. What pained me was the argument at the end of it all.

The hurtful things he said—because as much as I didn’t feel them the way another woman might, they hurt me in their way.

That he wanted to be with someone who wasn’t always detached.

Someone who wanted to make love all the time, who wasn’t dulled into a stupor by medication, unable to accept or receive pleasure.

It had become a thing, I learned during our last blowout fight.

Somehow, my inability to get off was the end for him.

I could. I can. Just not with him.

I had no choice, really; I had to start over. Tyler had always laughed at my dreams. I will take great pleasure in showing him that he’s wrong.

Getting into the retreat after all this time was providence and reminds me again and again that I deserve this and I need to believe in my creative abilities. I’ve always been a writer. Now I’m going to try to make it a profession.

And perhaps take care of a few other loose ends along the way. If I’m lucky.

I’m so lost in thought that I don’t see the small root pushing its way up through the cement, and catch my toe, stumbling forward. I windmill my arms to gain my balance and end up sprawled on the pavement. My knee is on fire, and when I pull up my jeans, I realize it’s bleeding. Damn.

“Whatever, asshole,” I say aloud, clambering to my feet.

“I’m going to be famous and successful in my chosen career.

” The birds chirp their agreement. That part of my life is over.

I’m shedding Tyler like an ill-fitting dress.

Had I ever loved him? I must have, to agree to marry him, right?

If love is something someone like me can experience, then yes, I think I did.

He was safety. A handsome, safe place to land when I struck out on my own after college, a seemingly nice guy who wanted the same things I did—no kids, travel, culture.

At the beginning, he loved that I wasn’t clingy, or needy.

Turned out, he did want kids, he preferred football to the symphony, and his idea of travel was taking the Staten Island Ferry to work on Wall Street.

Plus, he started to see my emotional independence as a detriment.

Apparently he did want someone to fawn all over him.

I couldn’t be honest with him. Not about everything. Not about who I really am. He knew a version of me, the one I curate for people, the person I molded myself into being to fit into society. To be on guard all the time with the person who shares everything in your life is exhausting.

Little by little, the marriage chipped away. My world shrank, until I started to realize nothing was going to change.

Well, that isn’t true any longer, is it?

The second I sign the papers and put them in the mail, the business of the divorce will be complete, and I will be free.

I will start fresh, rise up from the ashes, become the writer I was always meant to be.

After years of applications, I’m here, in the writing program at Brockville, fulfilling my dearest dream.

Yeah, you really are something. Shrinking away from it after the first opportunity to shine.

I can’t argue when he tells the truth. I hadn’t shone. I maybe glowed for a second, a heartbeat, but that nascent flame had been extinguished immediately because that blond bitch tried to get on top first.

Why did I let Brenda, of all people, get to me? I allowed a stranger to size me up and judge me unworthy. I am just as worthy as Brenda, just as capable of creative excellence. Probably more so.

So why didn’t I stand up for myself? Why had I let the whole class drag on my story?

You know why.

“Shut. Up.”

I’m talking to empty air. And the trip down memory lane has cost me; I’ve lost track of where I am.

I stop and turn in circles. The path along the river winds serpentine through Brockville, the only nongeometric thing I’ve seen so far.

The sky is a shimmery cobalt and the trees a vibrant viridian.

The water reflects them both, and it is disorienting. The cabin is that way, right?

All these trees. It’s beautiful, but it’s sinister, too.

I haven’t slept well since I got here. Too quiet.

Too gentle. I’m used to Boston, to the sirens and bustle and the constancy of the noise.

The sense that I’m never really alone, that a knock on the wall will produce one in return. Probably with a curse word to boot.