I was doing fine without Jimmy. I’d been without him for almost three and a half years, but had managed not to think about him too hard, or cry over the guy for at least two months. And that’s a start. What is it the alcoholics say? One day at a time?
Only someone who has been through this amount of torture can really appreciate how tough it is to just “get over it.” Maybe we should have our own support group.
“Hello, my name is Rebecca and I’m a love-aholic.”
“Hello Rebecca.”
Anyhow.
Spring had made a brief visit to Manhattan that year. Rather, we had been plunged directly into summer, with no regard for our clothing storage situation. Despite this nagging sense that it would snow as soon as I had pushed all my cashmere to the back of the closet and reinstated my shorts, I went through the bi-annual ritual of clothing reorganization.
It was a cleansing ritual I rather enjoyed, particularly as I had been numb with pain during the previous six or seven closet-switches.
I separated the clothes that I had held onto at least five years too long in the hope that I would have an excuse to wear them and miraculously lose thirty pounds (was I ever that skinny?), and divided that pile into “take to thrift store” and “donate to homeless.” Crinkling my nose in disgust, I vacuumed out the closet, refolded everything, and stood back to enjoy the view: for a whole two days, my closet would look like Martha Stewart had hired a team of WASPy elves to organize me.
Bagging the donations, I set out to a church on 86th Street that I knew clothed the less fortunate, and then schlepped the other bag to my favorite thrift store. Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks and stared. Just stared. An arm-waving, cell-phone user tutted loudly as she ran into my back, but I barely noticed.
Somehow, miraculously, there was Jimmy, walking right in front of me. I recognized his swaggering walk, the way his hair plummeted down his square shoulders, and his North Face backpack. What was he doing here, in a city he despised? Looking for me, maybe?
I waddled as fast as I could to the thrift store entrance on the block, and almost hurled the bag at the blue-haired lady manning the shop. There was no time for the luxury of a tax-deductible receipt. I ricocheted off the door and ran the distance that separated me from Jimmy’s retreating form. About four yards from him, I slowed to a reasonable, confident strut, and prayed that I didn’t look as disheveled as I felt.
Almost parallel now to this body that I knew as well as my own, and now one step ahead, I brushed shoulders deliberately and turned to apologize and look calmly surprised.
“Jimmy! Fancy seeing you here! What a coincidence!”
The words were almost formed in my mouth when I caught the face belonging to the neck that adjoined the shoulder of my Jimmy. It belonged not to my long lost lover, but to a rather butch woman with a lapel pin that read “A Woman Needs A Man Like A Fish Needs A Bike.” She was not amused.
“Jesus!” she griped, “Ain’t the sidewalk big enough for your ass?”
Apparently not.
I apologized profusely and shuffled back to the thrift store to grovel to the blue-haired Brun Hilda in the hope of still getting a receipt for my donation.
Later at home, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s swiftly disappearing down my fast-closing throat, I wondered how I could have been so deceived. Could I no longer tell the difference between a rather butch New York chick and a lithe Californian male? And what about having gotten him out of my system? Clearly, even though I had reluctantly started the dating rituals again, Jimmy was lodged somewhere between my stomach and my heart.
A wise friend of mine had once said that getting over a man is like having a baby: all your friends gather round you and say, “You’re doing so well! Push!”
Certainly, there were going to be more contractions before this particular afterbirth was out of my system.
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