He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Couch
Elise finds Stuart leaning toward the actress on his studio couch, a positive test in her pocket. She walks to the courthouse and files, and the clerk says he must be served in person. She decides to serve him at breakfast.
I climbed the stairs above the print shop with a pregnancy test in my coat pocket.
Stuart's studio door was unlocked, so I pushed it open.
My husband was on the couch, hunched over a coffee mug I had packed for him that morning.
Beside him sat a young woman with her knees pulled up.
I knew her face from the poster downstairs in the print shop window.
She was the actress cast as the heroine in the film of his book.
They did not hear me.
A yellow legal pad lay open on the cushion between them, and she had a pen in her hand.
Stuart was talking low and fast, and he was looking at her.
He had not looked at me like that since our second year of marriage.
I stood in the doorway with my hand closed around the plastic stick.
Two pink lines.
I had taken it in the bathroom at six that morning, after six years of not trying.
I had planned to tell him over dinner, with candles.
Fourteen years of marriage.
I had been about to give him the best news of our life, and he was on a couch with the girl who played his heroine.
I did not scream.
I did not cry.
I turned around and went back down the stairs.
Behind me I heard the actress, Sydney Lundy, say, "Wait, did someone come in?"
Stuart said, "No. Keep going. Tell me again what she does with her hands."
I did not stay to find out who "she" was.
I walked out onto Main Street and kept walking.
It was a Tuesday in October, and the sun was out, and nobody on the sidewalk knew anything had happened.
That morning I had made him eggs, like every morning.
I had put the yellow card under his plate, like every morning.
Today's card said: 6 x 7 + 3 = ?
Stuart had pocketed it without reading it.
Then he had looked up for once and said, "Which hand do you write those with, anyway?"
I had said, "My right. For fourteen years."
He had said, "Huh," and gone back to his phone.
I had laughed about it in the car.
I was not laughing now.
The county courthouse stands two blocks from the print shop, with a flag out front and a long set of steps.
I had walked past it a thousand times on the way to buy his printer ink.
I went up the steps and pulled the heavy door open.
A clerk behind a glass window looked up from a stack of forms.
"Can I help you?"
"I need to file for divorce," I said.
My voice came out steady, which surprised me.
She slid a clipboard under the glass.
"Fill out all three pages. Names, date of marriage, address, and what you're asking for."
I took a pen from the cup and stood at the high counter.
Name: Elise Harmon.
Date of marriage: June 14th, fourteen years ago.
Under "Reason for filing" I wrote, in my small, careful teacher's hand, that the marriage was over.
I wrote a seven with a bar through the stem, as I always did.
Then I stopped, because my hand had started to shake.
The test in my pocket pressed against my hip.
I could keep it a secret.
I could take it to a doctor, and have the baby, and let Stuart go on typing in his room above the print shop.
Or I could stand here in the cold marble hall and decide that this child was not going to learn from its father how to be invisible.
I finished the page.
I signed my name at the bottom.
The clerk stamped all three pages and tapped a date into her computer.
"That's filed," she said. "The court will mail a notice, but nobody has to wait for the mail."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning the other party must be served in person. Someone hands him the papers and he signs for them."
I looked at the thick envelope she pushed toward me.
"Can I do it myself?"
"No, ma'am. Not the filer. A process server, a sheriff's deputy, or any adult who isn't you."
I thought about Stuart's face at breakfast.
He sits at the head of the table with his phone propped against the sugar bowl.
He eats whatever I put down, in the order I put it down, without looking.
He had not once noticed where his food came from.
"Anyone over eighteen who isn't you," the clerk said again, softer. "Do you have someone?"
"Not yet," I said.
I took the envelope and walked back out into the cold.
I did not go home.
Across the street was a diner with a green awning and a chalkboard that said PIE.
I was starving, and I hadn't eaten since the toast I made for him.
I crossed the street, and when I reached the door I decided something.
Tomorrow morning, at his own table, someone would hand him these papers where the card always goes.
And I wanted to watch whether he looked up.
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