Page 14 of Every Step She Takes
Some people chop off their hair after a bad breakup. I book international flights.
When my first love broke my heart at eighteen, I got on the next train that would take me to the Edinburgh Airport and booked a flight to France. When my undergrad girlfriend and Irealized we were better off as friends, I went on a solo road trip around Iceland. When I got dumped by my grad school professor, I trekked the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. I got cheated on, so I went to Patagonia.
Heartbreak doesn’t hit the same when you’re on your way to experience something brand-new. Most problems seem small when you’re standing at the foot of the Pyramids or the Colosseum or Chichen Itza. Nothing helps me forget an ending better than the new beginning promised by a boarding pass. Keep moving, keep exploring, keep focused on what’s next, never what’s passed.
So when Ruth dumped me a week ago, I knew what I had to do. Even if the breakup wasn’t actually the bad part.
I let myself get swept up in the current of Heathrow until my phone vibrates in my fleece pocket, and I look down to see Michelle’s face floating above the red and green phone icons.
“Mal, where the fuck did you put the colander?” Michelle screeches over the distant sound of pots and pans clanging. Closer to the phone, a baby starts crying. “Oh, no. Oh, shush shush, baby boy,” she coos softly. “I know, I know. Mommy shouldn’t have raised her voice. And she shouldn’t have used an adult word. But sometimes, Auntie Mal drives her to it.”
“Hello, Cedar.” I make kissy noises into the phone, hoping the baby can hear me. “Did Mommy look for the colander in the cupboard next to the oven?”
“Of course she did.Idid.” Michelle sputters in frustration. “And I’m not talking about the shitty—I mean,poopy—plastic one we bought in undergrad. I need the nice metal one. What kind of forest ecologist would I be if I usedplastickitchen utensils?”
“A tired one who is doing her best?” I try. “And aren’t Kwame’s parents coming over for dinnertomorrownight?”
“It’s called meal prep, Mal!” Michelle hisses.
“At”—I glance down at my phone again to confirm that it’s not even nine in the morning here in London, which means it’s—“two in the morning? Michelle, why are you meal prepping at this ungodly hour?”
Cedar cries out again, and Michelle makes a few more shushing sounds before she continues. “Cedar woke up and he won’t go back to sleep, and I have the submission deadline on that climate paper coming up, but I can’t work on my data sets with a baby strapped to my chest, so instead I’m getting ready for Kwame’s parents, because for some inexplicable reason, I told them I would make the yams!”
Her voice has become increasingly frantic over the course of this rant, and I can picture her so perfectly: she’s probably standing in the kitchen of her mom’s old house in Ballard, her three-month-old strapped to her chest in his Ergobaby carrier. I’m sure she’s bouncing up and down to soothe him while she throws open the ancient cupboards we painted white four years ago, when her mom bought a condo in Palm Springs, and Michelle took over the mortgage on her childhood home. I flew into Seattle from Guatemala City for the housewarming and ended up staying over a month to help her fix up the place. She was in the second year of her PhD, and she didn’t have the time or the money to fix the rotting front porch or replace the galvanized steel pipes.
Time and money are the two things I always have in spades.
That was before Kwame moved in with her, before I met Ruth and ended up staying in Seattle for over a year. Before a week ago, when Ruth kicked me out of the condo I bought her—the one I’d put in her name, like a lovesick fool—and I had to start crashing on Michelle’s couch.
Before I booked a plane ticket and fucked off, like I always do.
I’m sure the newborn exhaustion is evident in Michelle’s brown eyes, but her unwashed wisps of blond hair always look intentionally tousled, never greasy, like her years of campingfor forestry field research were the perfect gauntlet to prepare her for motherhood. She’s probably standing in front of the giant window behind the sink, where the sill is lined with dozens of plants. Some of them are connected to Michelle and Kwame’s research, some are herbs for cooking, and some are simply beautiful.
In a few hours, the sun will hit those yellow walls and turn the whole house honeysuckle, and the kitchen will smell like fresh mint, rosemary, and thyme.
A strange homesickness slices through me. Strange, because I’ve never lived in one place long enough to consider ithome, and I’ve never let anyone get close enough to be missed. Except Michelle.
And, by extension, Kwame and Cedar. Though to a lesser degree.
I take an audible deep breath and hope Michelle does the same five thousand miles away.
“Kwame’s parents aren’t going to know which colander you used at two a.m.,” I try to reassure her.
She sighs. “True.”
“And do youreallywant to be the kind of wife who bends over backward to please your in-laws?”
“Frack no.”
I smile into the phone at her censored curse. Overheard, a chime sounds and a pleasant feminine voice announces a gate change for a Lufthansa flight.
“I take it you made it to Heathrow, then,” Michelle notes in a quiet voice. Perhaps Cedar is falling back to sleep.
“Yes,” I say, equally quiet as I dodge a rogue wheeling suitcase.
“Have you eaten anything yet?”
“I’m on my way to find food,Momchelle.” The terminal opens into a hexagonal food court, and I beeline my way toward a cafeteria-style place I remember serving black coffee.
