“I didn’t smirk,” he said.
“You did so. Why?”
“You should do it. Write your little book.”
“Little? What the fuck is that, Ken?”
“I don’t know, Portia.” He smirked again, looking at me now. “Sometimes you just have to know who you are.”
“And who am I exactly?”
“You’re my wife,” he said, pinning me down with each syllable.
“So your wife can’t publish a novel someday?”
“You didn’t exactly grow up among novel-writing people, did you? And you’re not exactly among those types now.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You didn’t even graduate from college, Portia,” Ken said as he knifed his way through his chicken cordon bleu. “You and me aren’t exactly the book-writing types, am I wrong? I don’t want to see you get your hopes up for something that’s never going to happen. That’s all. I know how emotional you get. Anyway, you’re much too pretty to be a novelist.”
I hate you, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
It was our wedding anniversary, after all.
I even let him fuck me later that night the way he likes and I hate—from behind.
Hooray for feminism!
He’d belittled me so many times before, but for some reason on this night, as he got off inside me, something shifted.
The best part of me knew I had to escape Ken right then and there—that it wouldn’t get better, that he was slowly killing everything good inside of me—but it took a while to find the courage to give up financial security and make a break for it. Especially since Ken had me sign an airtight prenuptial agreement before we were married, so leaving him meant an immediate and most likely permanent decline in social status.
Why did I make a break tonight?
Why does a rotten tree branch come crashing down to earth one day?
Everything has its breaking point—even women.
And I’m courageously drunk too.
“I don’t think Maya Angelou ever earned a college degree,” I say as Alfonzo pulls up to the US Airways terminal. “But I read somewhere that she has more than fifty honorary doctorate degrees. Fifty.”
Alfonzo shifts into park and turns around to face me. “Are you okay, Ms. Kane?”
“What?” I say, blinking repetitively for some reason.
“I couldn’t help noticing that you’ve been crying pretty hard the whole ride. You’re still crying right now. I know it’s not my business, but this just doesn’t seem right to me, Ms. Kane.”
I look out the window at the cars and taxis pulling away from the curb. “Well, nothing worth doing is painless.”
He reaches back to hand me a few tissues, and when I take them, he says, “Are you sure you want me to leave you like this?”
I dab my eyes and say, “Do you know what happens when you do nothing? Nothing. My high school English teacher said that to me a long time ago. And he was right.”
CHAPTER 3
Next thing I know, I’m on a plane.
I stumble my way to the last row.
A tiny wrinkly woman is already seated in the window seat. She’s dressed in a nun’s habit. She even has her head covered, which makes her look absolutely adorable.
Present-day Sally Field reprising her Flying Nun role—only this time she’s old and wrinkly (and cute!) as a shar-pei.
Her spine is curved so that the middle of her back is touching the cushion, but there is a good five inches between the headrest and her shoulders.
She resembles the letter C.
When I sit down, the old woman says, “Hello, I’m Maeve. How are you doing tonight?”
It’s almost like she’s the hostess of our row.
I sit.
I buckle myself in, which proves a bit hard after the two blue martinis—which looked like Windex but tasted like Kool-Aid—I had at the airport bar.
I turn, look into her old eyes, and say, “Sister, I’m glad you asked, because I’m not doing all that well, honestly. And I could talk. Yes, I can. Talk all the way to Philadelphia. Because I’m in trouble. Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for Portia. My name. My curse-id stupid name.”
I offer my hand, and she shakes it with her eyebrows lifted.
Her hand feels like a branch ripped from a small tree, left to dry for many years, and then stuck inside a surgical glove.
If I squeeze hard, everything will snap.
Even though I’m drunk, I handle with care.
And then I start to cry again, because I have enough alcohol in me to fuel a small dump truck.
“Oh, dear,” she says, pulling endless tissues from her bag like she’s David Copperfield. “What’s the matter?”
“Seriously?” I take a wad of tissues and dab my eyes.
“Of course.”
“You really wanna know? Be sure before you answer, because I could just pass out here and let you be. I’m appropriately medicated. You don’t have to hear my depressing pathetic story.” The businessman seated across the aisle from us is staring at me, so I point my finger at his nose and say, “You, sir, can mind your own business!”
His eyes snap down to the magazine in his hands, and I feel like a powerful woman capable of making men in suits do whatever I say.
When I spin my face back toward the old nun, she says, “I’m happy to listen. What else is there to do on a flight? Half the fun of flying is learning the stories of fellow passengers. I collect them!”
I notice the wooden rosary beads wrapped around her hand and catch a glimpse of Jesus’s naked and well-toned body, which is meticulously carved.