Page 60 of Summer Romance

He leaves thirtyminutes before my kids could possibly be home and I kiss him by his car. I think of Phyllis and kiss him anyway. When they’re home, Greer tries to be cool telling me that Caroline Shaw invited her to sleep over on Friday night, but I can tell she thinks it’s a major win. They all shower and Cliffy wants to read Captain Underpants, so I get in bed next to him while he giggles and turns pages. When he’s sleepy, I go down to the basement and put the wet clothes in the dryer. I haven’t cleared this space yet, and I’m sort of looking forward to it. But I know I have to go through the paper first. We are meeting with Pete on Friday to decide on a budget. That’s only three days away.

I go to the dining room and flip on the lights. The paper pile has grown. In the dead of night I can hear it breathing. There are actually two stacks of paper and I fight the urge to measure them. Measuring your paper piles is an exquisite form of procrastination, and I won’t allow it. I do, however, take my laptop, which I happen to know is thirteen inches wide, and hold it vertically against the piles. Yes, they are each over a foot tall. Earlier today I ironed my pajama bottoms, mainly because I was waiting for the girls’ soccer stuff to dry. I look down at them now and they remind me of a crisp summer suit. They trigger a memory, and I follow it back upstairs to my closet.

My closet is a terrible double-barred thing where anything that’s longer than half your body sort of lounges in a mess over the bar below. I hunt around through blouses and skirts and the dress I wore to my rehearsal dinner until I find my navy blue suit. I pull it out and there’s dust on the shoulders. It’s been neglected since before Greer was born, but it’s still in pretty good shape. The skirt is too short, but the blazer is sublime, with its three gold buttons and the tag right inside the collar, brandishing those two beautiful words:Ann Taylor. I pull it off the hanger and put it on over my T-shirt. It fits perfectly. I dust off my shoulders and button just the top button. It’s a pantsuit now over my ironed pajamas. Somewhere, theRockytheme song starts to play.

I race back to the living room and set a timer on my phone. I open my laptop and start a brand-new spreadsheet. The white of the background and all of those tiny rectangles give me the chills. I typeExpensesat the top and take a deep breath.

The first envelope I open is the hardest. I feel the old overwhelm creep up, like the sheer volume of paper in front of me is going to suffocate me. It’s my utility bill, $257 for the month of June. I decide to just track the single expense and I search through the pile for other utility bills so that I can come up with an average. I am both ashamed and delighted to find that I have data going back to November because it’s been so long since I dealt with the paper. I estimate the earlier fall bills by googling historical weather, and I have a number.

I do the same with the credit card bills. They are basically food, clothing, and general household expenses likehaircuts and plants. There’s a separate bill for club soccer that I find astounding. Summer camp isn’t that cheap either. The mortgage, the life insurance, health care copays. There’s the servicing of our boiler and, of course, cable and mobile phone charges.

When I have a number for the average minimum amount of money we need to sustain life around here, I lean back in my chair. I didn’t have an expectation of the number so I can’t say if it’s high or low, but I like knowing what it is. There was nothing in this pile of paper that was going to take me down. In fact, the order created by these little rectangles emboldens me. I remember my onetime dream of a spreadsheet that would monitor my many accounts. When this is settled, I am going to figure out the next steps to get me there.

I sort the bills in piles and three-hole-punch them into a binder. A binder! I print out overviews for each category and then a summary page for the front. I format my spreadsheet with thick lines between categories and then change it into Times New Roman font. I reprint, re-three-hole. It’s two a.m. before I head back upstairs, hang up my blazer, and go to bed.

35

Friday morning I find a pair of navy pants and a short-sleeved white blouse in the back of my closet. At the last minute I add a belt. I could wear my navy blazer, but it’s August now and I have enough reasons to sweat. My kids won’t be up for a while, and neither will Phyllis. So it’s just Ferris and me in the backyard watching the sky brighten over the creek. The air feels wet from the dew coming off the grass. My coffee is warm in my hands.

I have been feeling so good lately that I am letting myself be hyperaware of how I am actually feeling. When I was married I learned that all of my feelings were wrong. I should have felt grateful, not overwhelmed, to be home with three kids. I should have felt relieved, not mournful, that I didn’t have to go to work anymore. My mom in particular painted a picture of my life that I felt guilty not embracing. I had everything she’d ever wanted. I think for a long time I just sat in that disconnect. What was wrong with me that I wasn’t ecstatic? I adore my children with a ferocity thatastounds me. But I did not love Pete. And I missed my job. My mom saw me so clearly; she had to have seen that.

“I don’t want Ethan to leave,” I tell her. I say it so quietly that the geraniums almost miss it. This is a thing I cannot unknow.What else?she asks me. And I sit in the silence of that question for a minute. I feel the hard edges of the binder I’ve been clutching since I got up this morning. I open it and run my finger over the columns of numbers, left justified. “I want to work,” I whisper. Unless they build fifty new exceptionally messy houses in Beechwood, my organizing business is going to dry up. I’m definitely going to need more income, but I also want to be that person again.What else?I want a job with a desk and endless spreadsheets. In the same way I don’t know how I’m going to have a relationship with Ethan when he lives four hours away, I also don’t know how I’m going to find meaningful work in a small town while being the mostly-sole parent for my kids. But this morning, that’s okay. It just feels good to sit here and know what I want.

Ethan texts: Can’t believe we’re almost done with Pete

I smile at my phone. Me: Same

Ethan: I’m going to meet you there, if that’s okay. I have a call at 9

Me: Take your time, I can totally handle this

Ethan: Wow, okay

Me: Seriously, I’ve got spreadsheets. And a belt

Ethan: A belt? Pete’s not going to know what hit him

After I get my kids to camp and make Phyllis’s eggs, I take my laptop and my three-ring binder and head for Lacey’s office. I am aware that it’s not confidence that’sholding me up right now. It’s information. For sure, being prepared is self-care.

I sit in the parking lot for a second to take a few breaths. “I’m going in,” I say.You’re going to knock ’em dead.

I walk into the office and Pete and Lacey are waiting. I say hello and catch Lacey looking over my shoulder for my attorney.

“He’s coming,” I say. “But it’s fine. I have what I need.” I gesture with my binder and sit down.

“What’s that?” Pete asks.

“Our bills, a list of expenses. That’s what we’re going through today, right?”

“Yes,” says Lacey. “Let’s get started. Pete made copies of your household’s expenses and has made a preliminary offer of support.” She hands me a spreadsheet.

I look over it, line by line. “You left out cable and home maintenance,” I say without looking up. I refer to my binder and add the numbers in the margin.

Lacey looks at her copy and says to Pete, “That makes sense to add. Do you agree?”

“What are you trying to pull, Ali?” Pete’s leaning forward.

I fold my hands on the round table. I lean in. “I’m trying to make sure the kids and I have enough to get by. And I don’t think you want our house falling apart, since it’s half yours.” I’m being even, and I love the evenness in my voice. I love my binder. I look back to his spreadsheet and compare it to mine. “You’ve estimated utilities by annualizing the May bill, which, as you know, is the lowest of the year. I have the winter bills going back to November.” I pass my open binder across the table to him.

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