Page 98 of Woman on the Verge

“I’m sure you want to see your dad before you drive home, though, right?”

“I do.”

“Can I make you breakfast first?”

“I would love that.”

He makes omelets with a side of potatoes left over from last night’s dinner. Watching him cut strawberries for a fruit salad, I’m dumbstruck. I am falling in love with this person who I know so well and also not at all. My self is splitting between a woman who is embarking on something new with him and a woman who is two decades into a lifewith someone else. How long will it be possible for both identities to exist, to compartmentalize?

“Here you go, my dear,” he says. He presents me with my plate and kisses my nose before turning to assemble his own plate.

I suppose I don’t have to know how long it will be possible. I just have to know that, at some point, it will not be possible. At some point, the proverbial shit will hit the fan. And I don’t know which version of myself will be left standing.

Chapter 17

Rose

February 10, 1985

Dear Diary,

I just got my first rejection letter. From Harvard.

I must assume that more are on the way.

I feel like a fool to have gotten my hopes up, to have relied on this little kernel of possibility to nourish me.

Now what?

I just finished rereading Kate Chopin’s novelThe Awakening. It’s hard to believe it was published in 1899. So revolutionary. I read it for the first time in a literature course as an undergraduate. At the time, I didn’t relate to the main character, twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother Edna Pontellier. I do now.

Edna is in a stifling marriage and aches for a fate different from that of other wives, who, as she puts it, “idolized their children, worshipped theirhusbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves.” She believes firmly that “she has a position in the universe as a human being.” Like I said, revolutionary.

Edna bucks social conventions by wandering alone in public unescorted, then embarking on an adulterous affair without remorse. She tells her lover she is the possession of no man.

Reminds me of what Audre Lorde said about how we begin to grow weary of self-sacrifice and suffering once we get to know ourselves and our desires intimately.

The book is thrilling until the end, when she commits suicide, convinced this is preferable to living less than a fully human existence.

The book created quite the scandal when it was published. It was condemned universally, banned in Chopin’s hometown of Baltimore and elsewhere. The criticism ended Chopin’s career and then her life. She committed suicide in 1904, and her work remained in obscurity for more than half a century.

Now it is taught in college literature courses.

Life is stupefying.

Edna drowns herself, which sounds horrifying. If I were to commit suicide (and it does occasionally pass through my mind as a last-resort kind of option), I would drive my car off a bridge. Rob could tell Nicole that it was a car accident, which is probably what it would appear to be anyway.Lost control of the wheel,the newspaper article would say.

As should be obvious, I am feeling despondent.

Nicole is calling for me. Just a twenty-minute nap today, a twenty-minute reprieve for me. Considering my thoughts of driving my car off a bridge, it would have been nice to have a bit longer.

Must go.

Chapter 18

Nicole

I face absolutely zero repercussions following my somewhat-risky trip up north with the girls. They had no complaints about the sleepover with Merry. They asked no questions about my whereabouts. And they said nothing to Kyle about Mommy leaving them. Kyle’s stomach bug has passed, and he has been kinder than usual, probably because he enjoyed a weekend by himself in a quiet house. Elijah and I continue to text our way to a deeper connection than I thought possible. My latest daydream is divorcing Kyle and carrying on my relationship with Elijah whenever I don’t have the girls. Kyle will blame my desire to separate solely on grief-induced madness, and I will say, “You might be right.” That will be the easiest pill for him to swallow. I keep reminding myself that I was daydreaming of leaving Kyle before I even met Elijah. Elijah is just the catalyst.

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