Page 7 of Happiness for Beginners

“Seventy,” I corrected. “Or whatever the speed limit is.”

“Okay,” he said, still calculating. “You’ll be driving the speed limit, and I’ll be driving whatever gets us up to an average of eighty.” He turned and checked the backseat. “Yup. Duncan predicted you’d pack a cooler of snacks.”

I felt like I was being teased, but I wasn’t quite sure about what.

“So,” he went on, “we won’t have to stop for meals, which’ll save some time.” He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling while he did the math. “Eighty miles an hour into a thousand—and one—is more like twelve hours. Ish. Fewer if we pee in bottles.”

“Girls can’t pee in bottles,” I said.

He glanced over. “I bet you could. If you tried.”

Was he complimenting or insulting me? I shook my head. “That’s where I draw the line,” I said. “At peeing in bottles.”

He gave in with a nod. “Probably a good place for it.”

“But the rest of the plan,” I said, adding a tiny shrug as I realized it was true, “I love.”

He looked pleased with himself. “Thanks.”

So he had a can-do attitude. So he’d brought me a cappuccino. So he was willing to pee in a bottle to get me to my grandma’s on time. Also: I had to admit the morning sunshine around us was insistently cheery. Maybe the drive wouldn’t be so bad, after all. I lifted my coffee and took a sip just as he decided to strike up some more conversation:

“So,” he said. “How’s life without your dickhead ex-husband?”

My response was to choke on that coffee so violently that Jake had to take my cup in one hand and grab the wheel with the other.

“Sorry,” he said, when I’d resumed command of the wheel. “Guess that’s a tender subject.”

“No,” I said, defiantly pawing at my watering eyes. “It’s not a tender subject.”

Here, to underscore the point, I used another favorite teacher voice—the Mary Poppins. This one implied that every problem had a solution, that the world deep down made perfect, comforting, and pleasant sense, and that if you carefully maintained the right spoonful-of-sugar attitude, you might even one day find yourself traveling over London by the stem of your parasol.

The Mary Poppins was the only voice I ever used to talk about my failed marriage, and I sat up straighter to execute it properly. “The guy I happened to marry,” I went on, channeling Julie Andrews so hard that I almost went British, “later turned into a raging alcoholic. When his problem began to impact our marriage, I gave him several chances to pull it together. Unfortunately for everyone, he just couldn’t manage it.”

In conclusion, I took a successful sip of coffee, as if to say,End of story! Spit spot! And now I am enjoying a delicious hot beverage.

“So you divorced him,” Jake said.

“So I divorced him,” I confirmed. I did not add:After I lost our first baby at thirteen weeks pregnant. And he was nowhere to be found.

“A year ago,” he added, as if to say he was already up on all the details.

“A year ago,” I confirmed. Almost to the day. And I was fine now. Ish.

“And how that’s going?” he asked.

“How’s what going?”

“Being single.”

“Fine,” I said. “Great.” But I was hardly anything as adorable as “single.” I was just alone.

“You’re okay?” He was frowning at me.

“I’m always okay,” I said.

“Nobody’s always okay.”

“I am,” I declared. This conversation was beyond useless. Of course I wasn’t okay—not “always,” or, lately, “often.” But even if I had wanted to discuss the infinite ways I’d felt utterly broken this year—which I friggingdid not—Jake the bartender, inventor of “the forbidden drink of love,” would be the very last person I’d turn to.

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