The First Day of Summer Break Nothing happened the way it was supposed to happen according to novels and TV shows and the self-help manuals Jenn had gorged, naively, in the optimistic early years of mother-slash-wifehood. Or the magazines. A woman could Do It All , the magazines said. The husband, for example, was not supposed to file for divorce, because, as he explained over a series of text messages, in which he did not bother even to fix the typos caused by autocorrect, he did not feel actualized. He had not cultivated his innermost potential or activated his Power Nucleus . It was not, he insisted, because he had read that self-help manual-- Bond with the Man You Were Always Meant to Be by Danz Landry, motivational profiteer and CEO of the Male Actualization Society (MAS). It was not because of her . The book said he had to seize ownership of his actions.
But it was because of her. The husband was a salesman. He had a name that belonged to a salesman, or a mortgage broker, or a mid-level mob boss: Charles (Chuck) Lanaro. When she met him, he worked at a car dealership. He had a special talent for upselling. Warranties. Fake-leather leather seats. Sunroofs.
Her name was still Jenni Farrow when they met, but then she got married and became Jenn Lanaro. Then she wrote a book and became, in pen name only, Jennifer Lamour, New York Times bestselling author of the Philipia Bay series, now on paperback book number twenty-nine. Philipia Bay was not acclaimed, poignant, powerful, meaningful, or particularly well written. Philipia Bay was action smut. But the people wanted what the people wanted. Chuck Lanaro wanted to know: What were you trying to say when you picked that yodel for the book cover? Chuck Lanaro followed up with his own semi-answer: It was insulting. And then another: Just another thing to add to the List of Underminstances. Jenn could only assume that "yodel" meant "model.
" There was nothing yodelish about the man on the cover of Philipia Bay and the Castle of Castaways , with his resplendent hair and rippling abs. The mystery was why her husband''s autocorrect had converted model to yodel. What did this say about him as a person? She made a note for her future lawyer. Underminstances was not a word, except in MAS-speak. Jenn had looked it up on the internet. Catalog your underminstances , Danz Landry directed in his instructional video series. Catapult your awareness of events in which the fazemeister voice attempts to undermine you. Understanding is the first step on the road to control.
It was a fallacy, Jenn wanted to tell her husband, to assume that any of us could have control. After they got married, and the first Philipia Bay book appeared on the impulse-buy endcap at the checkout line at the Value Valley, and the first double line appeared on the pregnancy pee-test, Chuck Lanaro was glad--elated, over the moon--to give his two weeks'' notice to the dealership and trade his sales pitch for rubber dishwashing gloves and embrace the stay-at-home-dad lifestyle. He mastered sleep cycles and potty training. He met other baby-strapped dads for playdates at the park. As the children grew, he filled the school day hours with hobbies and projects--woodworking, drywalling, aerobic kickboxing, disassembling and reassembling the washing machine, cryptocurrency trading, stalking the backyard racoons with his BB gun. The racoons had been digging through the trash again, underminstancing his efforts to contain it neatly in its proper bin. Jenn should have known, when she spotted him hiding in the bushes, in camo, with night-vision goggles. Chuck had never gone hunting.
He had never fired a real gun. He had grown up in New Jersey, a subway ride away from Manhattan. He had, as a dealer of cars, professed to enjoy art museums and symphonies and duckpin bowling. Yet his hobbies bespoke a stereotypical masculinity, a reactionary pattern, as if selected in outlash. Against what? The rubber dish gloves? He was the one who said they protected his skin. He didn''t have to wear them. He didn''t have to hire a process server to serve her with his petition for divorce either. He didn''t have to start the ending chapter of their marriage by lawyering up.
He could have just conveniently disappeared, like her own biannual-greeting-card father. He could have waited at least until she''d finished edits on Philipia Bay and the Pirates of Pandago Cove. Or until the children had finished school for the year. Or until she had figured out what to do with her mother''s Pearl Island house, which was, after several years, no doubt overrun by dust mites, spiders, ants, palmetto bugs, and all the detritus left in the wake of sudden departure. But no. Chuck Lanaro rented himself a furnished town house, three bedrooms, two baths, in a gated community with a pool and tennis courts. In April, when Jenn Lamour flew to Las Vegas to attend a romance writers convention, Chuck Lanaro packed his bags and moved out. Jenn: Can''t we at least talk about this in person? Jenn: What about the kids? Jenn: You think you''re the only one who''s been unhappy? Jenn: Fine, I''m hiring a lawyer Jenn: I can''t believe you.
Jenn: You are so petty. Seriously. And after my mom just died. Chuck: That was three bears ago Chuck: I am noting that you have perpetrated yet another underminstance Jenn: Because I called you petty? Chuck: Don''t pretend you don''t know damn well what you did Jenn: What about the kids? Chuck: What do you mean, what about the kids? Chuck: I always take care of them. It makes more sense for them to live with me The kids were supposed to have reacted to the news of their parents'' divorce with anguish, angst, blame--self- and parent-directed--perhaps misconduct and shenanigans. A fist fight, for example. Biting, hairpulling. Intentionally neglected school assignments.
They were not supposed to passively accept their broken home fate. "So?" Jenn asked them, after she''d explained that sometimes mommies and daddies didn''t get along, but that didn''t mean that it was anyone''s fault. "So?" Evie replied. Mason put back on his cat-ear headphones and pressed play on the video-gaming talk show-esque program that he had begrudgingly agreed to pause for the divorce spiel. "So . we are getting divorced." "So?" "And I just wanted to talk to you both about, well-- Mason, could you please take those off again?" Mason tapped on his headphones to indicate that he couldn''t hear her with them on. "Is this because of the underminstances?" Evie asked.
"What? No. No. Is that what Dad said?" "He has the list taped to the fridge in his kitchen." "He--that is just--no! I have been nothing but kind and respectful to your father, and this is just, it''s--" "He asked me to report any trash-talking," Evie said. "For the list. But can I go now?" "Go? Where are you going?" "Just, you know, to the couch." Evie pointed to the couch, where the tablet and the console sat together without her. "This is--Don''t you want to talk about it? As a family? Evie? Mason?" Jenn pulled the earphones away from Mason''s ears.
Mason snarled. He yanked them back on and clamped his hands down over them. "You just told us," Evie said. "But we already knew, because Dad told us when he moved out, like, six weeks ago. What else is there to say?" These were children born into a world that was, according to every scientific measure everywhere, careening toward its own destruction. These were children that had heard their parents discuss, in hushed but drunkenly audible voices, the tragedies that permeated Modern Life. Hurricanes. Droughts.
Shootings. Etcetera. When adult-talk started up, these children put on their headphones, turned on their screens, and then complained at bedtime because six straight hours hadn''t been nearly screen time enough. She was supposed to say something heartfelt, something meaningful enough to permeate the child-screen bond. Something her own mother might have said, in the slim band of time between work and bed, or work and work. She should have held them in her arms and assuaged the doubts that, well, honestly the doubts that belonged to her. She had been, in her distraction, unwittingly lenient with the children. She ignored them, and this led to excess YouTube.
Too many snacks. Too often she let them subsist on plain noodles with butter. Now they were detached. She had sacrificed Quality Family Time for Mom''s Gotta Work. She had a flimsy excuse. Someone had to work, she had told herself. Chuck: It could have been me. But you insisted.
Had she insisted? Chuck:.