Long Division

Separating a life after divorce

“What about these?” my mom asks. I look over, my eyes settling on the large wine glass she is holding up in her hand. Olivia Pope glasses, we called them. I flash back to Crate & Barrel, wandering the aisles with a scanner. I can feel the joy still, radiating from our faces.

I nod, turning away, pushing down the tears that threaten my eyes. “Yeah. I’ll take half of them.”

Boxes and boxes fill the living room. Finn runs in between them, his dog toys scattered among the mess, his tail thumping against the cardboard endlessly as he weaves his way to his food and water. Within two days, the towels I had so meticulously folded and put away in the guest room closet week after week, year after year, sit flat inside boxes of sheet sets and pillows. Half of the towels, really. Half of the sheet sets. The queen-sized ones. The ones for the guest bed.

I look down at the lilac, king-sized sheets left in the closet, and pick them up, slowing bringing them to my face and inhaling as my eyes close. I know it will be the last time I feel them against me.

“Kel?” My eyes open at the sound of my mother’s voice echoing from downstairs. “Kel, I need you to tell me if you’re taking this.” I put the sheets down in the drawer, pausing as I look into the half empty closet in front of me. Two wedding dresses flash in my mind, hanging, worn, the bottoms shredded from hours of dancing, once thrown haphazardly onto hangers and stuffed into the mix of towels and sheets and blankets in the boxes beneath them. It suddenly hits me. They’re at the cleaners.

I see the irony immediately: they were taken to the dry cleaners only a few months before to be packed into dress storage boxes, that lingering “to-do” finally checked off the list mere weeks before it would no longer matter. No one tells you what to do with wedding dresses in a divorce.

I briefly close my eyes and open them to the emptiness once again. “Coming!” I call, gently closing the door.

When I was a teacher, I taught my students division. “Divide it in half,” I’d say while standing in front of the classroom, a pile of Skittles in front of me, my kids in two groups, thrilled that math class suddenly meant such a great treat. They’d race to count the Skittles in each pile, making sure their group got the exact same number that the other one did. Fairness, after all.

“How many does each group have?” I’d ask as they yelled out the answer, gleeful that they might just get to eat the fruits of their labor that day. We’d spend days in the mix of various candy: M&Ms and Starburst and jelly beans teaching them what it meant to divide something precious and whole into multiple even pieces.

The day I introduced the concept of a remainder was one of my all-time favorites. Used to the game by this point, my students would inevitably scream the second they discovered an uneven number of Skittles in the pile that they had been tasked to evenly divide. “WE GET THE LAST ONE!” they’d yell back and forth at each other, the room descending into pure chaos.

I’d hold it up, the last piece. “Remember when you asked me the other day what ‘remainder’ meant? The remainder is what’s left over when you try to divide something into equal parts.”

There’s nothing like watching the lightbulb of understanding go off in a student’s eyes. That lesson on division, on remainders, more than most, always gave me that rush of happiness, that feeling of hope, the thought that maybe I’m doing something right here.

It was always pure joy right up until the end, when each of them would inevitably try to argue their case as to why they should in fact be the recipient of the left-over remainders from that day.

Hopped up on sugar, I always knew it would only be a matter of time before the silliness turned into real anger (“it’s CANDY, Ms. G!”) so I would pull my last trick right before the bell rang: I’d take the pile of remainders and to a chorus of angry “NO’s”, I’d slowly and dramatically walk to the trashcan in the corner of the room and dump the pile straight in. I would always let the anger pour out of them for a full five seconds before I burst out laughing, teasing, “You really think I’d let you walk out of here empty handed?!” And of course I would make a great show of pulling out my handy stockpile of individually wrapped Skittles packets, the cheers instantaneous, everyone now assured they would be given their “fair” reward.

Remainders work in math problems. Not so much with sugar-crazy children.

My mind now blurs into hours and days spent dividing in two. “Leave the Bic lighter, take the matches.” “Leave the white blanket, take the brown one.” “Leave the rice cooker, take the Instant Pot.” The sentences that come out of my mouth, directions to my oh-so patient mother, sound foreign, the choices arbitrary to an outsider. Half of this, half of that.

But I know the hidden stories woven into the DNA of each item around me. I know the memories. I know the meaning. The only other person who knows is the one person in the world I can’t talk to right now.

Leave the Bic because she loves lighting candles. Take the matches because they don’t matter. Leave the white blanket because you sat together on it, holding each other while sweet Lucky took her last puppy breaths. Take the brown one because your best friend told you that you can’t leave everything. Leave the rice cooker because she uses it more. Take the Instant Pot because everyone knows it belongs to you.

I stay far away from the packing, my mom putting it all into boxes, following my instructions to a T out of a dislike for messiness, a happiness to be doing something useful, and the deep well of a mother’s love.

Forty-eight hours later, I tape the last box shut. “Here,” I say to my mom, handing her the roll. “I think we’re all set.” She slips the tape into her purse, handing me a bag with a chocolate croissant inside.

“Eat,” she says, her eyes watching me carefully even as her long face radiates calm. “Everyone’s going to get here in fifteen minutes.” I take the bag and sit down gingerly on the couch. I look around, boxes filling every line of sight, a life folded and tucked and taped shut into darkness. A sharp pang suddenly hits deep in my gut, my throat constricting the second my arms have nothing to do. I know what’s coming.

“I’m going to take a few minutes to myself,” I say, standing back up again. “Let me know when people start to get here.” I walk up the stairs, the click of Finn’s long nails following behind me with every step.

I turn left, instinctually, into my bedroom. Our bedroom. Sit down on my bed. Our bed. My eyes blur as the tears well, spilling over and down my cheeks, weaving down the well-worn paths that seem to be creased into my skin at this point. Finn jumps up beside me, lying down in his usual spot, tucked right down the middle: the center, as always, of the family. I look over at his speckled back, reptilian paws, soft ears, sweet eyes, the blissful unawareness in his peaceful pose, the long tail wrapped around his bony frame.

“Hi buddy,” I whisper, my eyes filling. “Hi.” I lay down next to him, my body tucked around his spine, little spoon always. The tears feel like they will never stop. I hold tight to him, burying my face in his neck, my body wracked with sobs. Is this really happening?

They arrive, bringing coffee and hugs, laughter and hands. They stack boxes and boxes in the U-Haul, a human game of Tetris to fit it all inside. Briana and Ben disassemble the couch. Dan and Lili wrap the headboard. Cam and Ezra and Zuri carry it down the walkway. I watch my life begin to split in two, the crack growing deeper with every box and item tucked away into the truck. Finn weaves around each of them, his ears scratched endlessly, his tongue licking the sweat off of everyone’s legs. They laugh and play with him, throwing toys and wrestling on their breaks from trips to the truck.

I silently thank god for them, my chosen family. They don’t know it, really, but they’re holding the broken pieces of my heart in their hands: the wedding gifts and art from our honeymoon and copper mugs that held our Moscow Mules as we cuddled together on the coach on cozy snow days. They pile up in the truck, disparate pieces of a once-whole life. How is this happening?

“Just a little farther in,” Briana says as I push the TV deeper into the trunk of my car. “Almost there.” I slide it a little more, the packing tape helping it glide easily across the carpeted floor.

“All set,” she says, as I step away. She closes the trunk of the car carefully. I look over and see everyone gathered around the U-Haul, drinking water and resting, the truck packed up and ready to go. I feel strangely empty. Is this how it happens?

“Are we good?” I ask my mom, my mind running endlessly over the list, again, and again. “Do we have everything?” The wind blows a bit, cooling my flushed face.

“I think so,” she says, handing me my bag and looking at me, her eyes searching to understand where I am. “I think we’re good.”

Everyone disperses, caravanning down the road for the half mile trip. I get into my car, swinging my feet into the driver’s seat and shutting the door behind me. I sit, still. Inside my head, a back and forth conversation in the span of a millisecond. Should I look?

After a long pause, I look to my right.

10 years ago, I threw away those leftover Skittles in the name of fairness. As I sit in the car, looking at that speckled, handsome, sweet face staring back at me through the glass door, I learn that sometimes it’s not that easy.

The remainder. The one thing left behind.