Voicemails

 
We’re at Tony’s Italian by the mall when my husband orders cheesy breadsticks and announces he’s leaving me.
 
“I wanted to do it at your favorite restaurant,” he tells me later, “so you’d have comfort food handy.”
 
I wonder what I’ve done to make him think Tony’s Italian is my favorite.
 
The day he moves out, I have the same cheesy breadsticks delivered and eat them on the couch, staring at my silhouette on the black surface of the TV.
 

*

 
“Tell me about the breadsticks,” says my sister, who is also my divorce lawyer. She’s standing over my kitchen trash, looking down at the Jenga tower of takeout containers, eyebrows raised so they disappear behind her bangs. For a lawyer, she talks like a therapist.
 
“It’s all I can eat,” I tell her, positioning myself between her and the fridge, in case she opens it and finds my stash.
 
My sister exhales in a deliberate way and brings her palms together in front of her chest. “Do you think you’re forcing yourself to relive this trauma as a form of self-inflicted punishment?”
 
“No,” I say. “Everything else tastes like nothing.” Nothing isn’t quite accurate. Since the night in the restaurant, any other food I put in my mouth, even Tony’s pasta, tastes like eating papier- mâché. Only cheesy breadsticks, those cheesy breadsticks, still taste the way they should.
 
My sister shakes her head. “Whatever, at least it’s not wine.”
 

*

 
On Sunday morning, five days after my husband moves out, I go down the street to the bakery-slash-coffee shop out of habit. My sister says it’s important to stick to routine as much as possible.
 
I walk alone, but when I turn the corner, I can see him inside, hovering by the window.
 
“You’re a creature of habit,” my husband tells me with a weak smile, the spot between his eyebrows creasing. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
 
I take a sip of coffee, which tastes like hot, blended paper.
 
He tells me he’s renting a place across town, a mother-in-law unit in the attic of an old Victorian. He says he couldn’t stomach staying with his parents.
 
I nod. I’m sure his parents have a lot to say about the situation.
 
That afternoon, after I’ve escaped the bakery, he calls the house phone. When I don’t answer, he leaves a voicemail.
 

*

 
I go to work as usual. Somehow, my coworkers have heard about the split and treat me like I’m dying.
 
“I finished that report for you,” Kyle, the new hire, says and pats my shoulder.
 
The front desk secretary, Marlene, leaves a chocolate muffin on my desk every morning.
 
“Chocolate heals all wounds,” she tells me in a lowered voice.
 
I recall the sweetness of chocolate on my tongue, peel off the paper, and drop the empty husk in my trash can so she thinks I’ve eaten it. Each day, I flush the muffin and eat breadsticks out of my purse in the family restroom.
 

*

 
Two weeks after the separation, the delivery kid arrives with my order. I know all of their faces by now.
 
He looks me in the eye and says, “We’re all worried about you.”
 

*

 
We meet with our lawyers and a judge to lay everything out: No, no one cheated. No, we didn’t fight. Yes, he can keep the new car.
 
He says I can have the house. His lawyer—not a relative—clears his throat and adds the addendum that I refinance.
 
“At least you never had kids,” my sister says when we get lunch after. “Custody battles are bloodbaths.”
 
I eat the salad in front of me because she’s looking, gagging my way through lettuce reminiscent of craft supplies.
 

*

 
I avoid the bakery in case he’s there. My home answering machine winks with new messages.
 
Somehow, despite spending eight dollars a day on breadsticks, I’m building savings for the first time.
 
My sister advises me to get out of the house more, so on a Friday night I follow my coworkers to happy hour. I order well vodka and marvel that the tang of old cardboard is an improvement.
 
Four shots in, Javier from acquisitions slides his buffalo wings towards me. “You should probably eat something.” 
 
I squint at him. “Do you want to have sex?”
 
Javier frowns, his whole face going soft. His eyes, I notice, are brown like my (ex-)husband’s. He says, “You’re in a dark place right now.”
 

*

 
“I admire you for not crying,” my sister tells me.
 
She’s dragged me to her bi-weekly hot yoga class. I don’t understand how the rest of the class are able to hold their poses. My palms are slick, and my mat feels like a Slip ‘N Slide
 
“Most women I work with become blubbering idiots the second the ink is dry.” Her hair is up in a perfect high ponytail, whipping back and forth when she exhales into the next pose. “You’re officially single. Get on OkCupid. Have casual sex. Eat something other than breadsticks.”
 
“I can’t,” I wheeze, but she inverts into downward dog and doesn’t hear me.
 

*

 
When I open the door, there’s a tall man holding my breadstick order, not one of the usual teenaged delivery boys. He looks older than me, mid-forties maybe.
 
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.
 
He tilts the box in his hand and points at the logo. “I’m Tony. The Tony.”
 
I feel like I’m meeting a celebrity.
 
He looks me up and down. “You’ve ordered breadsticks—just breadsticks—sixty-seven days in a row. I had to see for myself.” He looks disappointed.
 

*

 
Tony sits on my couch. When he stretches his legs out, he seems impossibly long, like he might be able to reach from one side of the living room to the other.
 
“He keeps leaving voicemails,” I say and hold up the answering machine so he can see where it flashes the number of waiting messages: twenty-three.
 
“I don’t understand.” Tony crosses his arms, takes in the room around him and the holes in the décor where my ex-husband’s belongings used to rest. “Why does he call if he’s the one who left you?”
 
I nibble the cheese off a breadstick and think before answering. “He regrets leaving, but only because he thinks he hurt me.”
 
“And?” Tony asks. “Are you hurt?”
 
I offer him a breadstick, but he shakes his head. “I’m gluten intolerant.”
 

*

 
My mother drives up from Pendleton to see me.
 
“Your sister said you’re grieving.” She has her hands on my cheeks and turns my face to inspect it from all angles. “You don’t look like you’re grieving.”
 
Years ago, my father, her first husband, died in an accident. Her second husband got skin cancer and passed away a few years back. My mother wears her grief like a faded jacket.
 
“You look good, actually,” she says, pushing my hair behind my ears. “You must be eating well.”
 

*

 
You have twenty-four new messages. 
 
I listen to the voicemails one at a time, replay them twice before I hit the delete button.
 
“Remember when we went to that concert in Vancouver?” my ex-husband’s voice asks. “We missed the last bus to our hotel and sat at the bus stop in the rain for hours. There wasn’t a taxi in sight.”
 
I remember the streetlights on wet asphalt and the way he had me slide my hands up his jacket sleeves to keep them warm. It was a good show.
 
I click delete.
 
“My mother thinks I’m a fool for leaving you.” A pause and the sound of his breath on the receiver. “She calls every day to tell me I’ll regret the divorce for the rest of my life. She tells everyone she knows about it. I was at the grocery store, and some lady called me an idiot. Apparently, she goes to my parents’ church.”
 
It’s been four months since I last saw my mother-in-law. Her incessant gossip used to drive me up the wall, but I like the idea of her telling everyone about me.
 
Delete.
 
“I was thinking about our honeymoon today. I can’t remember if it was your idea to go to Bermuda or mine.”
 
I don’t remember either.
 
Delete.
 
I sit on the couch all afternoon, listening to my ex-husband’s voicemails and drinking wine from Trader Joe’s. It tastes like licking a library book, but the flavor’s starting to grow on me.
 

*

 
“Does anyone else still have a landline?” I ask my sister as I wander the aisles of the co-op grocery store. It’s three in the afternoon on a Saturday, and I’m that asshole talking on my cellphone in public.
 
“Mom. Other old people, probably,” my sister answers. Saturdays are her designated day for laying around at home. It’s the only day of the week she and I are the same species. “What if he starts doing something weirder? Weirder than thirty voicemails, I mean.” I can hear her television in the background.
 
“Like what? Postcards?” I stoop over in the produce aisle, wondering what the difference is between butter lettuce and iceberg, besides three dollars. The only items in my basket are two mid-shelf bottles of wine.
 
“You let me know if you change your mind about a restraining order.”
 
I wonder how much longer her patience will last, how long until my divorcee card expires, and I have to socialize with someone other than my younger sister.
 
In the cooler in front of me, the co-op stocks four different kinds of basil.
 
“Hey, can I call you back later?” I ask and hang up on my sister before she can reply. I hold down two for speed-dial.
 
“Tony’s Italian,” a bored hostess answers on the other end. It’s the same one that works Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
 
“Hi, sorry, I don’t suppose Tony’s there?”
 

*

 
I boil five dollar gluten-free pasta because that’s the only part of dinner Tony trusts me with. He even brought his own wine—better wine.
 
Standing at my kitchen island, Tony has to hunch over to keep from smacking his forehead on the pot rack. He dices a whole head of garlic, followed by basil and spinach. There aren’t breadsticks in sight.
 
“I always knew I wanted to be a chef,” he tells me, stirring ingredients into olive oil at the stove. “Even when I was a kid. What about you?”
 
I laugh. I don’t think I could name a single thing I’ve always wanted.
 
Tony brings the food to the dining room already plated. He towers over his pasta like an adult at the kids’ table.
 
I take a bite with my eyes closed. At first, it’s the same taste and mouthfeel of bland mush I’ve experienced the last three months, but a flavor lingers after I swallow, and it’s not papier-mâché or even garlic. It’s an earthy whisper of basil.
 
Tony’s finished a second serving by the time I’ve savored the last bite of my first. I wonder what’s changed.
 
“There’s some guy outside,” he says from the window over the sink. “Just sitting in his car.” By the time I cross the room, the car’s pulled away.
 

*

 
The next morning, I salivate and speed walk down the sidewalk toward the bakery. I dreamt of almond croissants, of flaky layers and grainy filling, the taste of butter.
 
Once I’ve ordered, I sit outside. The pastry is haloed in its own reflection against the white plate. I appreciate that, unlike breadsticks, a well-made croissant is beautiful. I can imagine it framed and hung on my wall.
 
A shadow falls across my table.
 
“You’ve started seeing someone,” he says. I can read the hurt on my ex-husband’s face. “I drove by yesterday. You had a man over.”
 
I open my mouth, my first impulse explaining that it’s not like that with Tony, we’re just friends, but my hands prevent the words from spilling out by shoving the croissant in my face.
 
His eyes widen. “You don’t even like croissants.”
 
The flavor on my tongue isn’t as strong as it should be—as strong as flavors were before the divorce—but the outer layers of dough crunch against the roof of my mouth. The almond slices are firm between my teeth. I close my eyes and, bite by bite, stuff every last crumb of pastry in my mouth. When I open them again, there’s nothing left but powdered sugar on my lips, slivers of crust stuck to my fingers.
 
I’d like to walk away without looking at my ex-husband’s face again, but he’s standing between me and the gap separating the bakery’s metal tables. He’s still wearing an expression of shock.
 
“I got rid of the landline,” I tell him and leave, abandoning the empty plate and my untouched coffee. If he winces or watches me walk away, I don’t see it.
 

*

 
I don’t remember the walk home. With the cool interior of the front door against my back, I pull my phone from my pocket and flip it open. Golden flakes still cling to my fingers.
 
My sister doesn’t answer, probably still asleep. What was it I needed to say to her? After the beep, I lick my lips—sweet—and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Hey, it’s me. Do you know any realtors?” There’s more I should say, more words bouncing around my chest, but I can’t untangle them.
 
I hit END and dial the newest number in my contacts.
 
“This is Tony,” he answers. I imagine him in his kitchen, drinking coffee and flipping perfect eggs, over easy, without breaking the yolks.
 
“Tell me about almond croissants,” I say.