CHAPTER SEVEN - MO MONEY

Life just got a whole lot more expensive.

Dearest Nurse,

It is getting harder to write these days, for no reason other than time. There just never seems to be enough of it. Between writing to you, the kids, keeping up with work, life, and the ins and outs of untangling my life from Paris’s - or untangling Paris from mine - I feel like a circus ringmaster… and every act in the god damn show.

Paris had the girls last night, so first thing up today was walking the dogs. Puppy didn’t poop… awesome. Go for a run. Lightning fast shower, and shoot over to physical therapy. (Years of writing with bad posture really gives you a crick in the neck… that and I’m getting fucking old.) Then, I shoot back home, answer as many questions as possible on my LegalZoom divorce interview, walk Puppy again until she finally poops, then speed off the the gynocologist.

This is a new doctor for me, so I had to wait months for the appointment. By the time the day comes, of course, I have my period. But I’m not giving this chick a choice. She’s doing the goddamn pap, and I don’t want to hear diddly about it.

The doctor is young, younger than me. She has a bit of that weird, vocal fry thing going on, so behind the mask, I’m imagining my lady bits are now in the care of Kim Kardashian. But hey, she got Trump to implement criminal justice reforms, so she can probably handle swabbing my cervix with an oversized Q-Tip.

But she’s annoyed that I have my period, I can tell.

“You want me to take the tampon out now?” I had been waiting for the last possible moment so things wouldn’t be too messy down there. Now that the long, first visit questionnaire about my entire sexual history was over, I thought this might be a good time. She kind of sigh-whined…

“Ugh… I can just take it out for you.”

Eew… But fine, if that’s how you want to do this. Maybe she didn’t want it out yet? Maybe she wanted to get more in-depth about sexual partners (I told her I didn’t have any. We still don’t know if Romeo’s going to show up, after all.) who I anticipate having sex with, (I said both men and women. Why not, right? I’m single, biatch!) or the regularity of my period. (I barely managed to have one this month after dropping ten pounds in two weeks. Divorce is a fabulous diet.)

Then, I said I had to use the bathroom, came back, and pulled out the gals.

My breast exam was normal. Fantastic. Then she moved on to the pelvic exam.

Another sigh-whine.

“When I said I could take your tampon out for you, it wasn’t like I wanted to.”

Huh? What was she talking about?

“I thought when you went to the bathroom you took it out.”

“Oh… I thought… sorry…” I was mortified. I was trying to leave it in for her convenience. So when she did take it out, it would be relatively dry in there, and not a bloody, murderous hell scape she’d have to swim her way through with a speculum. I certainly didn’t relish another woman pulling a cotton plug out of my twat.

“It’s fine.” She said like it wasn’t fine, and pulled it out.

Great. My new gyno and I were clearly going to be besties.

After leaving doctor Kardashian’s, I rushed back to my neighborhood to do something I hadn’t done in a very, very long time. I had lunch with a friend.

When Paris and I were together, I stopped seeing friends almost entirely. And not just because I wasn’t supposed to see people I had slept with - I haven’t screwed ALL my friends, I swear. So, what was the reason? I don’t know if I can fully say…

I think part of it was that the idea that taking time out of my day to have fun became unthinkable. As I said, my work is demanding. I work full days, every day, and sometimes I have to pick up the slack on weekends. Paris often made me feel that my work schedule got in the way of his. He had to work around me. He had to sacrifice to take care of the kids, which was part of his explanation for why I had become more successful than him. Plus, because I enjoy my work, to him, it didn’t really count as work. So not only was I spending time away from the children, I was having a good time, and unless you’re suffering, apparently, that’s just not good enough for Paris. So, with all this nonsense going on, the idea of leaving the house for any real, non-money-making fun, was almost blasphemous.

Secondly, it is hard to be with friends - friends who have known you since your teens and twenties - and withhold from them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at gatherings, just dying to go on a tirade about Paris’s treatment of me, his treatment of himself. But I never did. I was holding out hope that Paris would pull himself out of his funk, and when he did, I didn’t want my friends looking down on him. Which leads me to the third factor in this equation:

I was living a lie. When I was talking with friends or family, I avoided the topic of Paris, or made it sound like he was doing fine. That we were just peachy. And I did this with everyone. Even my parents, though my mother to a lesser degree. But I still couldn’t be fully honest with her, because even though she liked Paris, she never thought he was good enough for me in the first place, and I didn’t want her to be right. I just didn’t want any of it to be real.

But this is why I love women, and why the special ones in my life make me want to cry tears of joy all over the place. I have been an absentee friend for over ten fucking years, but the minute I call, tell them I’ve left Paris and I need them, they are all right there. Right. fucking. there. I swear, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve them.

Today’s pure-fucking-enjoyment lunch was with Tybalt. She’s a little thing, but always the biggest personality in the room. She’s got that Chicago take-no-shit attitude, and the most loving heart I’ve ever known in another person my age. I probably would have pinned her for godmother of one of my kids at least, but her other friends got to her first. She has, like, thirty godchildren, and she loves the shit out of every single one of them.

I pull up to the address Tybalt sent me for our lunch reservation, and my blood runs cold. The restaurant is at the same fucking hotel where Paris has just gotten a job two weeks ago. Suddenly, old Western cliches - this town ain’t big enough for the two of us - start running through my head. What are the chances? But fuck it. I’m not doing anything wrong by having lunch with a friend in the middle of a Monday. (I’m not. I have to keep telling myself things like this. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.)

Thankfully, Paris did not make an appearance. Even more thankfully, Tybalt did, and greeted me with a powerful hug.

“I’m shocked. I’m shocked!” She kept saying once I broke the news.

I’ve gotten used to hearing this, though it was a surprising at first. My honest expectation - and my fear - was that when I did finally leave Paris, everyone would say, ‘Well, I saw that one coming.’ Look, maybe some did and were just being nice, but I genuinely think most people in my orbit thought we were doing just dandy. We are both, as it turns out, very talented actors.

“I think what took so long, in part, was that I really didn’t think I could make it on my own.”

Tybalt cocked her head, the words not computing.

“But you’re… you do everything!”

This is the strange dichotomy of me. I am an incredibly hard worker, my career has traction - not as much as I would like at times, but it’s moving. I am a survivor. I have always survived, and it’s never been too shabby. Even at my brokest, I always got by. And like I said in chapter one, my work is out there. I’m published. I even have some fans. People have always looked at me and said, ‘she’s going places, you betcha!’ And I am.

But still, I am terrified of instability.

Not having enough of certain things freaks me out. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe it was because when I was growing up, Lady Capulet was always running out of toilet paper, and we’d have to wipe ourselves with rough paper towel until one of us went to the bodega. Maybe it’s because Lord Capulet was always complaining about money - or his lack thereof. Having more was obviously preferable. Having less, well, that's a pain in the ass, literally.

When I first moved to L.A. I used to fear the homeless people begging at the freeway offramps. Not because I thought they would hurt me or anything, but because I felt I was only one step away from them. One wrong move, and I would be on the opposite corner, competing for sticky, pocket change and crumpled bills from the dirty consoles of passersby. It’s not a rational fear. I have parents who love me. They’re not rich by any means, but they would never let that happen. I know this, and yet, I worry. I worry about money a lot.

Again, Paris never made a lot of money, but again, he always covered his portion of the living expenses, even if he had to ask his mom for help. (I know. I fucking know, okay?) That only came to about $2300 per month, but that was rent. If all else failed, if all my deals shit the bed and I never got another writing gig again, at least I knew my children and I would have a place to sleep that wasn’t under an overpass.

I didn’t know what “belief in scarcity” was until about a year ago, but don’t look it up in the dictionary, please. If you do, you’ll find a picture of me, and I don’t want you to know who I am.

I have been ingrained with the belief that artists don’t make money. And that’s absurd. I’ve already made more in one year than my father ever did. But it’s not always consistent, and I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The truth of the matter is, artists can absolutely make money. They can make a shit ton of money. I make money. Not only do I make money, I know how to manage money. I am a kickass writer and a businessperson, and I can. do. anything. I just need to have faith in myself.

Nonetheless, it was, in part, this fear of instability that kept me with Paris far longer than I probably would have otherwise. That’s so crazy to think about. 2,300 dollars a month. On really bad days, that’s what it came down to. That’s what my marriage was worth. What I was worth. That’s what I was afraid stood between me and the poor house. 2,300 fucking dollars a month.

I wanted to have deals in place before leaving Paris. I thought about it often. But once those deals would happen, I’d be happy again. I’d be working, and I thought, hey, it’s not so bad. And if the deal fell through, I’d feel like shit, my head would balloon with terrible thoughts of cardboard signs and food stamps, and I’d loose my nerve. But in the final weeks of July, the dam broke.

We had driven cross-country for the summer, staying with my godmother at her farmhouse in the Catskill mountains. It is quite literally the most beautiful place in the world. It’s where Paris and I got married. It’s where I spent every glorious summer of my childhood. I was in this fantastic, magical place, and I was losing it. Losing my motivation, losing my drive, and losing patience. Everything was setting me off, and I was getting sick of work. I didn’t want to write anymore. I was forcing myself through each and every day, fear of failure the only gas in my faulty tank.

And then the trip back home was awful. Constant bickering. Paris shaking his head at me every time Little got fussy and I didn’t immediately drop what I was doing to tend to her. Bitching about the rooms I booked. The places we ate. Bitching, bitching, bitching. I was stuck in the car with a sullen, angry, combative driver for six. whole. days. My essence, the light that is who and what I am was dimming dangerously, I could feel it. But Vegas is what pushed it over the edge.

It just worked out that our last night on the road plopped us right in the city of lights. We thought it would be fun, and, in spite of the fact that she can’t really do anything there, Big was all about it. Problem was, it was a Saturday night, and I was having trouble finding a place anywhere near the strip for less than three hundred bucks. Paris, however, thought I clearly doing something wrong, and decided to book the room himself. And he did. At Vegas’s Roadway Inn, for - you guessed it - three hundred bucks for the night. It was by far the most we had spent on a room the entire trip, both ways.

When we arrived, it was ghastly. Crumbling, old facade, sunburnt rednecks carousing in the parking lot, and a hallway that looked like it had seen more death than The Shining. And we hadn’t even gotten into the room yet. Grey, filthy carpet with burn holes that left our bare feet brown. Stained walls, sticky, chipped dresser, and melted pockmarks where someone had put lit cigarettes out in the bathroom sink. It was horrifying.

But it was our last night on the road, and I didn’t want to make Paris feel bad, so I laughed. I made light of our sad, overpriced lodgings, and Big followed my lead. We giggled, bounded from bed to bed, and had a dance party around Little in her popup crib while Paris unloaded the car.

Paris, however, didn’t think there was anything funny about our circumstances. He was pissed. But rather than take it out in a nasty Yelp review like any other self-respecting, White American would do, he took it out on me. I can’t even remember what he was bitching about specifically, but it was completely out of line. In the past few years, I had become very sensitive to the way Paris spoke to me in front of our daughters, so I fired back, defending myself against the onslaught. Big watched the whole thing from one of the beds like a spectator at a ping pong match.

Paris stormed out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and the minute that door closed, the last lingering ember of love I had for Paris went up in smoke.

I looked down at Big. Right in her big, beautiful, almond shaped eyes. I never wanted a man to speak to her that way, especially not one she had devoted herself to. I needed her to know what had just happened - what had been happening - was not okay. That this might be her beloved father, but not a model of acceptable behavior, and that she should never, ever settle like I had… fuck, that was a hard moment.

So I said something I probably shouldn’t have. I probably shouldn't have said this, but I did.

“[Big], would you stay with someone who treated you like that?”

I was trying to warn her. I was trying to tell her without telling her that I was going to leave her father. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when, but I was going to, and her seven-year-old life was about to change forever.

She stared at me for a moment, and then…

“What are you saying, mom?”

“I don’t…”

“What are you saying?”

I sighed. I couldn’t tell her. When my mother left my father for the second time, she told me her plans before she broke the news to him. That was a terrible burden, and I couldn’t put that on Big.

“I don’t know.”

But I did know, and so did she. If I wanted her to be a strong, fierce woman, determined to live her best life, I had to be that example. I had to. No matter what.

So, the next day in the car, while Paris drove the last leg of our journey back to L.A., I made a decision. I wasn’t going to let money get in the way of my life anymore. I knew it would be hard, and stressful, and scary, but I would find a way. Find a way to cover everything I already paid for, plus that fucking 2,300 dollars a month. And it would be worth every cent, because not only would I be free, I would be the mother I always told myself I would be. One who talked the talk and walked the walk, and still found time to make banana bread before school.

“I finally got up the courage to add up all the expenses.” I said to Tybalt over a green juice and salmon salad, “And just base, base survival is five grand a month.”

She sat back in her chair, taking in the roundness of that number. But then she looked at me, her old friend who never backed down from anything. The chick she had so much faith in, always, and she smiled.

“You got it, babe. You do. I am not worried about you.”

And she’s right. As I mentioned, I have a lot of deals coming down the pipeline. Deals that haven’t closed yet, but I have no reason to think they won’t. I’ve never been very good at trusting anything, but I have to at least start trusting myself. Even if every one of these gigs fall through, I will still find a way.

And Tybalt knows this, even if I don’t always. Not just because she knows me and what I’m made of, but because she has noticed something during this mid-Monday lunch: she recognizes me again.

“I feel like you’re back.” She said, and I swear, I almost cried. “My old friend is back.”

So, I make this pledge to you, Dear Nurse, I make it to Tybalt, Big, and Little, but most of all, I make it to myself. I got this, and if base survival is five grand a month, I’ll make six. Fuck it, I’ll make eight. And I can do that, because I am powerful, I am strong, I am an artist who makes money, and I am back. I. am. back.

And I swear to fucking god, I am never going to let money dictate how I live, who I share my life with, or how I feel about myself ever again. It isn’t going to be easy, but mark my words. That part of my existence is done.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet