Sing You Home Read online

  "How old are you, Mr. Baxter?" the judge asks.

  "I'm forty."

  "What's the highest grade of school you completed?"

  "I got through three years of college before I quit and started my own landscaping business."

  "How long have you been a landscaper?"

  "For ten years," I say.

  "How much money do you make?"

  I look into the gallery. It's bad enough to have to say this to a judge, but there are all these other people in the courtroom. "About thirty-five thousand a year," I say, but this is not really true. I made that one year.

  "You allege in your complaint for divorce that certain differences arose between you which caused your marriage to fall apart, is that true?" the judge asks.

  "Yes, Your Honor. We've been trying to have a baby for nine years. And I . . . I don't want that anymore."

  Zoe's eyes are glittering with tears, but she doesn't reach for the tissue box beside her.

  We got together two months ago--after she was served with divorce papers--to hash out all the details the judge was going to need. Let me tell you, it's a strange thing to go back to the house you used to rent, to sit at the table where you used to eat dinner every day, and to feel like you're a total stranger.

  Zoe, when she'd opened the door, had looked like hell. But I didn't think it was right for me to say that to her, so instead, I just shuffled at the threshold until she invited me in.

  I think that--at that moment--if she'd asked me to come back home, to reconsider, I would have.

  But instead Zoe had said, "Well, let's get this done," and that was that.

  "Do you own any real estate?" the judge says.

  "We rented," I say.

  "Are there any assets that are worth some monetary value?"

  "I took my lawn care equipment; Zoe took her instruments."

  "So you're asking that you be awarded the items in your possession, and that your wife be awarded the items in her possession?"

  Isn't that what I said, but more clearly? "I guess so."

  "Do you have health insurance?" the judge asks.

  "We've agreed to each be responsible for our own insurance."

  The judge nods. "What about the debts in your name?"

  "I can't pay them yet," I admit. "But I'll take care of them when I can."

  "Will your wife be responsible for any debts in her name?"

  "Yes," I say.

  "Mr. Baxter, are you in good health?"

  "I am."

  "Do you understand what alimony is?" I nod at the judge. "It states here that you're asking the court to allow you to waive alimony today?"

  "You mean, so Zoe doesn't have to pay me anything? That's right."

  "Do you understand that it's a permanent waiver? You can't go back to this court or any other court and be granted alimony?"

  Zoe and I had never had much money, but the thought of having her support me is completely humiliating. "I understand," I say.

  "Are you asking for an absolute divorce today from your wife?"

  I know it's legal lingo, but it makes me stop and think. Absolute. It's so final. Like a book you've loved that you don't want to end, because you know it has to be returned to the library when you're done.

  "Mr. Baxter," the judge asks, "is there anything else you want to tell the court?"

  I shake my head. "Not the court, Your Honor. But I'd like to say something to Zoe." I wait until she looks at me. Her eyes are blank, like she's looking at a stranger on the subway. Like she never knew me at all.

  "I'm sorry," I say.

  Because we live in Rhode Island, which is a predominantly Catholic state, it takes a while to really get divorced. After the seventy-seven days we waited to go to court, it's about ninety-one days before the final judgment, as if the judge is giving a couple just one more chance to reconsider.

  I admit, I've spent most of that time shitfaced.

  Bad habits are like purple loosestrife. When that plant pops up in your garden, you think you can deal with it--a few pretty purple stalks. But it spreads like wildfire, and before you know it, it's choked everything else around it, until all you can see is that bright carpet of color, and you're wondering how it got so out of control.

  I swore I'd never be one of the eighty percent of recovering alcoholics who wind up making the same mistakes all over again. And yet, here I am, stashing bottles up in the ceiling tiles of Reid's bathrooms, behind books on his shelves, inside a corner I've carefully slit open in the guestroom mattress. I'll spill full cartons of milk down the sink when Liddy's not home, then gallantly volunteer to run out at night to get more so we have it for breakfast--but I'll stop at a bar on the way home from the convenience store for a quick drink. If I know I have to be around people, I'll drink vodka, which leaves less of an odor on the breath. I keep Gatorade under my bed, to ward off hangovers. I am careful to go out to bars in different towns, so that I look like someone who drops in every now and then for a drink, and so that I don't get recognized in my own backyard by someone who'd narc to Reid. One night, I went to Wilmington. I drank enough to get the courage to drive by our old place. Well, Zoe's current place. The lights were on in the bedroom, and I wondered what she was doing up there. Reading, maybe. Doing her nails.

  Then I wondered if there was anyone else there with her, and I peeled away with my tires screaming on the pavement.

  Of course, I tell myself that since no one seems to notice my drinking, I don't have a problem.

  I am still living at Reid's, mostly because he hasn't kicked me out. I don't think this is because he enjoys having me living in his basement, really--it's basically Christian charity. Before marrying Liddy, my brother got "born again" (Wasn't the first time good enough? Zoe had asked) and started attending an evangelical church that met on Sundays in the cafeteria of the local middle school; eventually, he became their finance guy. I'm not a religious person--to each his own, I figure--but it got to the point where we saw less and less of my brother and his wife, simply because we couldn't get through a simple family dinner without Zoe and Reid arguing--about Roe v. Wade, or politicians caught in adultery scandals, or prayer in public schools. The last time we went to their house, Zoe had actually left after the salad course when Reid had criticized her for singing a Green Day song to one of her burn victims. "Anarchists," Reid had said--Reid, who listened to Led Zeppelin in his room when we were kids. I figured it was something about the lyrics his church objected to, but as it turned out, it was the character of the songs that was evil. "Really?" Zoe had asked, incredulous. "Which notes, exactly? Which chord? And where is that written in the Bible?" I don't remember how the argument had escalated, but it had ended with Zoe standing up so quickly she overturned a pitcher of water. "This may be news to you, Reid," she had said, "but God doesn't vote Republican."

  I know Reid wants me to join their church. Liddy's left pamphlets about being saved on my bed when she changes the sheets. Reid had his men's Bible group over ("We put the 'stud' back in Bible study") and invited me to join them in the living room.

  I made up some excuse and went out drinking.

  Tonight, though, I realize that Liddy and Reid have pulled out the big guns. When I hear Liddy ring the little antique bell she keeps on the mantel to announce dinnertime, I walk up from my guestroom cave in the basement to find Clive Lincoln sitting on the couch with Reid.

  "Max," he says. "You know Pastor Clive?"

  Who doesn't?

  He's in the paper all the time, thanks to protests he's staged near the capital building against gay marriage. When a local high school told a gay teen he could take his boyfriend to the prom, Clive showed up with a hundred congregants to stand on the steps of the high school loudly praying for Jesus to help him find his way back to a Christian lifestyle. He made the Fox News Channel in Boston this fall when he publicly requested donations of porn movies for day care centers, saying that was no different from the president's plan to teach sex ed in kindergarten.