Chapter 7: The Statement

On Monday a courier brought an envelope to my clinic in Queens, and the receptionist asked me to sign for it.

The envelope was heavy cream paper with the firm's name embossed on the corner.

Inside were two typed pages, titled "Statement of Time."

I read the first line standing at the front desk with a patient waiting behind me.

"Since the date of separation, the following time has been allocated to the marital matter: six hours, forty minutes."

My hands went cold.

Below that was a table of dates and numbers: the diner, the counselor, the apartment morning.

At the bottom, in bold, was a proposal.

"To resolve the dispute, the undersigned offers a revised allowance of ten (10) free hours per year, effective immediately."

It was signed in Stewart's flat, upright hand.

He had doubled my allowance, and he thought that was a gift.

I folded the pages in half and put them in the pocket of my scrubs.

"Bad news?" the receptionist asked.

"A bill," I said.

I finished my shift.

I saw eleven patients.

For the last one, a boy with an earache, I sat on the stool beside the exam table for twenty extra minutes.

I let his mother tell me about her job.

It felt like stealing something back.

When I got home to Joy's, I took a notebook out of my work bag.

It was a small black one with a rubber band around it, and I had kept it for six years.

I had never shown it to anyone.

In it, in my own handwriting, was every night I had waited up.

Every dinner that ended early was in it, and every holiday that started late.

So was every time I had been left at a table or a door or a bedroom.

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