Chapter 5: The Signing

"Don't read the comments," Christian said.

I was already reading the comments.

"Imagine having that man and cheating with THAT."

"Gold digger got bored of the gold."

"She draws baby books? Keep her away from my kids."

He took the phone out of my hand and put it face down on the dresser.

"You have a signing at four," he said.

"I can't go."

"You're going."

"Christian, they'll eat me alive."

"Then they'll have to get through me."

"You have a board meeting on Friday you're about to lose."

"I have a wife at four o'clock." He picked out my green dress from the closet and laid it on the bed.

"The board can wait."

The signing was at a children's bookstore in Park Slope.

The badger book had come out two weeks before.

I had been looking forward to it for a year.

When I walked in, the room went silent.

Forty folding chairs.

Maybe twenty mothers with strollers.

A table with a stack of my books and a little sign with my name in glitter letters.

Somebody had already drawn a heart with horns on it.

The store manager, Dana, met me at the table.

She wouldn't look me in the eye.

"We had a few cancellations," she said.

I sat down.

I uncapped my pen.

The first woman in line came up with her daughter, about five, in a badger T-shirt.

She put a book down.

Then she picked it up again.

"Actually," she said loudly, "I don't want her name in my daughter's book."

She walked out.

Three more women followed her.

One of them stopped at the door.

"You should be ashamed," she said. "He's a good man. He donated a whole wing at Mount Sinai."

I hadn't known that.

I sat there with my pen in my hand and my face burning.

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