But it’s a chance to carve out time for myself.
It’s a chance to use my evenings to write.
I accept.
At first, I attempt to refine my short stories. Gabe, after all, convinced me they were my path to literary glory, and for all his faults, he’s a card-carrying member of the publishing elite.
But when I reread them, they’re unconvincing and pretentious, with an affected point of view emblematic of a person I was trying to be, not the person I actually am.
I’m determined to do better.
It’s not easy.
I flounder for weeks, spending my nights coming up with bad ideas, stopping and starting, losing confidence and then reconvincing myself the effort will be worth the frustration.
That this—writing fiction—has always been the thing in the world that I’m best at.
That I owe it to myself to try.
And then, late one night, a tiny glimmer comes to me.
I open my laptop and type three words in bold twenty-four-point Times New Roman font:Doomed Bourgeois Marriage.
It’s not a plot. It’s not even a full idea. But the title gives me a little shiver every time I reread it.
I know there’s something there.
On the third chilly fall night I spend staring at it, the story finally comes to me: a professor of nineteenth-century British literature has spent her life studying the canon of her field in hopes of pushing scholarship around the marriage plot infinitesimally forward. But she’s disillusioned with her dwindling humanities class sizes in the age of STEM, a body of work that increasingly feels like pedantry, and cutthroat palace intrigue among her university colleagues, who circle like sharks around an ever-shrinking number of tenured jobs.
She decides to put herself at the center of a one-woman ethnographic study. She’ll marry someone solely for money, and examine the subtle tortures of the heroines she has studied from the inside of the story, rather than from the pages of a book. The results, she hopes, will form the substance of a memoir that will bridge scholarship with lived experience, and transform her from an obscure academic to a literary star.
But when the book doesn’t sell, she must grapple with the fact that she’s done what so many doomed heroines have done before her: attempted to use a relationship as a means of escaping the disenchanting confines of her life, and ruined what happiness she had in the process.
It’s inspired by what might have become of me had I stayed with Gabe—a hard-won theme about which I have something vital to say.
I paste the synopsis into an email to my old agent. I don’t know if she’ll even reply, it’s been so long since I’ve been in touch. But she writes back the next morning:Very compelling.Send me pages when you have them.
It’s the boost of confidence I need. The words begin to flow.
Despite not being a morning person, or even a midmorning person, I drag myself out of bed every day at five a.m. to write for an hour. Every evening, when I have more time, I reread what I’ve written, edit it, and jot down notes about what to write the next day.
That’s all the time I can afford. With work, I barely have a minute to think. And that’s good for me, because if I had any slack in my day, I would spend it ruminating about Felix.
Three weeks ago, a huge box arrived in the mail. It was so heavy I had to ask my super to help me carry it into my apartment. Inside was every single product made by Maquille. Moisturizers, serums, tonics, sunscreen, masks, even four different flavors of lip balm.
It came with a note.
HI HOPE!
SENDING ALONG OUR NEW PRODUCT LINE, AS WELL AS THE CLASSICS. THE VITAMIN C SERUM IS ESPECIALLY BRILLIANT. THANK YOU FOR TAKING CARE OF MY DEAR BROTHER IN THE BAHAMAS. DO DROP A LINE IF YOU MAKE YOUR WAY TO LONDON! WE’DALLLOVE TO SEE YOU! PEAR XX
The skincare products are lovely, as is the gesture. But what floored me is that they arrived at all. Because she had to have gotten my address from Felix. And if she was feeling friendly enough to send them just because she knows I like the brand, she must not know what happened between us.
It’s such a scant thread, but I feel connected to him, knowing he must know about this, and did nothing to stop his sister from getting in touch. I examine her last line—we’dalllove to see you—and wonder if that’s a hint.
I know this is my pattern. I brood over people I cared about, even when they’ve hurt me. It’s like my heart can’t catch up to my head.
But also, my anger has mellowed. You see, I think Felix was a little bit right about me.
