Nobody’s Perfect

Chapter 12

When I got home, what did I see? Mitch s car sitting in the open garage. He d been gone when I woke up, so what was he doing back at the house?

The minute I stepped through the garage door, I heard shuffling and rustling.

And cursing.

Mitchell? What is your problem? I asked when I came upon him in my craft room, dumping boxes of fabric on the floor and then spilling a container of beads.

My problem? He laughed, but it came out as a mirthless bark. What s your problem? Are you trying to destroy my life with that damn video?

The world spun around me. I grabbed the doorframe for support.

But I wasn t about to back down.

Why d you have to destroy my life by divorcing me?

That s not the same! he bellowed.

Well, if you don t stop tearing up my things, I m going to call the police. I took out my phone to show I wasn t playing.

You wouldn t. His words might have been harsh, but he did that thing where he looked down and to the left rather than meet my eyes, so I knew I had him.

Oh, I would.

Where is your damn computer?

I swallowed hard. I had almost promised to take the video down, but now my stranger-husband had trashed my craft room.

It was all about him. It had always been all about him.

The video had been something for me, so of course he wanted to obliterate it.

Vivian? The laptop? I know you have all your passwords saved on some app because you can t remember shit. Where is it?

I put my phone in my pocket and stepped into my craft room. Then I took my laptop off the shelf where it had been resting under a legal pad.

Give me that!

No.

I ll take it, he said, his eyes crazed enough that he might give it a try.

You do that, and I will call the police.

Lucky tried to rub around his legs. He used his ankle to harshly shove her away.

Don t hurt my cat, I said.

He drew his foot behind him as if he might kick her, but something about the look on my face told him it would be the last thing he did. He put his foot down. Lucky retreated to a spot under my desk. She hissed at him.

Good girl.

He brushed past me, and I blinked at the cat. I love you. Solidarity. The cat blinked her one eye back. I love you. He s an asshole.

I should change the locks.

Dammit, he s probably right about establishing residency or whatever mess he was talking about.

I d have to get even more creative than I d originally thought to get rid of him. My makeshift alarm clock would be the least of his problems.

I crossed my arms over my laptop. At the very least, he wasn t getting that.

He flexed his hands into fists, as if itching to take it away from me. Are you trying to ruin me? My dental hygienists are giving me grief, and one person canceled her appointment because she said she didn t want a dick dentist.

Oh.

Maybe the video was a bigger deal than I had imagined.

Well, don t be a dick, then.

His eyes went wild. If looks could kill, I d be dead. Fortunately for me, Mitch realized he d run out of options.

I ve got to get back to the office, but you will take that video down.

No, I won t. Not now I won t. It s going to live on the internet forever.

Vivian.

Mitchell.

He was halfway to the door when he turned to point a shaking finger at me. My lawyer was right about you, about how you d want to take me for all I m worth.

I hugged my laptop tighter. No, Mitchell. I only want what I m worth.

God, I should ve served you months ago.

Months? I knew he d been thinking about divorce for four years, but how long had those papers been in his sock drawer? And how long had his lawyer been bleeding him for money?

You d better watch out for your side chick instead of me. How much have you already paid her?

She s not like that. His words didn t correspond with the question in his eyes. Was he sleeping around with his divorce lawyer?

My left eyebrow shot up of its own accord. I sure as heck didn t mind planting a seed of doubt in his mind, but I didn t need any more. I already had enough doubt seedlings for a mighty forest.

Well, she s a nicer person than you are.

I m sure that s what she tells you, I said, glad my arms were crossed over the laptop so he couldn t see my own shaking. Don t you have to get back to work?

He stomped to the garage, muttering the whole way, then slammed the door behind him.

I melted onto the couch, exhausted now that the adrenaline had left me.

He was right about the passwords on my laptop. I would need to change all of them as a precaution and not keep any of those passwords anywhere near the laptop.

The doorbell rang, and I jumped out of my skin.

A quick glance through the peephole reassured me that it was Parker.

Are you okay? he asked the minute I opened the door.

I m fine. Liar.

Such a liar. I fought off the irrational urge to run into his arms.

He shifted from one foot to the other and shoved his hands into his pockets. Your husband almost ran over me backing out of the driveway. Are you sure you re okay?

Oh, I m sorry about that. We had a fight.

I stopped short of telling him about the divorce. Who was he to know my business?

I put out a foot to keep Lucky from darting outside.

I m sorry if I intruded, he said, taking a step back.

No, that s okay. Sorry about my idiot husband.

Uh, I work from home, so I ll be just one yard away if you need me.

Thank you for that, but I can handle it.

Neither of us knew what to say, so he nodded and turned toward his house. I closed the door and leaned against it, sliding all the way down to the floor. Lucky rubbed around me, then nipped at my elbow as a reminder that the later I d promised earlier had come and gone, but the bottom of the food bowl could still be seen.

I picked up the cat and hugged her. She tensed but then settled into my arms, purring loudly as if she knew her human needed support. After she deemed I d had enough purr therapy, she lightly bit the hand she wanted to feed her.

Oh, all right, I said as I got up to feed the cat, which was apparently the first step in putting my life back together. Once I d poured out some kibble, I did something I never, ever did: I left a mess rather than immediately jumping in to put things to rights. I was about to put my phone on Do Not Disturb and go back to bed when the radio station called.

Well, well, well.

Maybe I did want to go on that morning show after all. Dick dentist be damned, I told Yvonne that I would happily join their radio program tomorrow.

Then I called the first person on Mom s list of lawyers: Paloma Carter.

Once I d made an appointment with a lawyer and cleaned up the wreckage of Hurricane Mitchell, I finally found the courage to see what was happening with my video. I sat down at my desk and opened the laptop. I leaned back with closed eyes and muttered something akin to a prayer before checking the number of views.

The numbers increased steadily with each blink. At this point, my video had over two million views and had just popped up under Trending. I looked at my phone, wondering why it had stopped buzzing.

Oh, yeah. I had put it on Do Not Disturb.

With a deep breath, I turned on my phone: over a hundred missed calls.

Five were from Mitch, one voicemail.

Well, that was one message I didn t need to listen to.

I started to put the phone back on Do Not Disturb, but I hesitated. Instead, I went to YouTube to see if they were reviewing my account for monetization.

They were.

But everything I d read before said I would need more content, probably a lot more videos.

And what if my sober videos didn t generate any views? What if I d already peaked in my brief YouTube career?

No way to find out other than to try a few more videos.

I absently scrolled through the comments. Most of them were some variation of You go girl! or You re better off without him. My eyes misted up, and I sat up a little straighter. People I d never met were encouraging me. Except for some asshole named Chad, whose comment on my video was, Maybe if you were a real woman, your husband wouldn t be leaving you.

Go kick rocks, Chad. Put on sandals before you do.

Then there was Penelope: Back in my day young ladies knew how to keep their private business private. Why had Penelope chosen to watch my videos since everything was clearly much better back in her day?

You could keep scrolling, Penny, I muttered.

Then a new comment popped up. Solidarity, sister. I already have the Divorce Badge, so what are we Mom Scouts going to do next?

Something about having someone else look to me caused a swell of pride, a feeling of . . . worthiness.

Another scan showed that a lot of other women wanted to join my mythical troop, and a warm happiness of belonging, of being looked up to, bloomed within me. I could think of a hundred badges that I would like to earn, but this channel couldn t just be about home economics projects.

Not anymore.

This would have to be about what it really meant to be a woman. Today I d stood my ground instead of caving to Mitch. That should be a badge. I d protected Suja from the clerk. I d held my tongue instead of telling Parker more than he needed to know. Those were the sorts of things that I needed to do in order to heal, and they might be the things other women needed to hear.

God knew I could use a road map.

Well, Vivian, making plans is what you do, and you really need to make some plans for all of this to work.

Another comment popped up with #MitchIsADick , and I felt a stab of remorse. Just because he wanted a divorce didn t mean he deserved to have me airing our dirty laundry online.

Then again, the woman who d been doing his laundry for almost twenty-five years didn t deserve to be yelled at or to have her drawers emptied. He d made his bed on the futon, and he could lie there.

At least for now.

I d already put into play a plan to get him to voluntarily move out.

For the first time since I d found the folder with Mitch s divorce plans, I felt a pinch of optimism. Maybe . . . well, maybe this would be better for me in the long run.

Maybe?

Masochist that I was, I went back to the comments, hungry for more of that approval. Many were a variation of LOL or He had it coming! Some sported the hashtag #MitchIsADick .

No arguments here.

Of course there were the variations of I bet you were never actually married. You re probably an old cat lady who ll die alone.

First, I felt a pinprick of shame from the disapproval, but the idea was so ridiculous that I eventually rolled my eyes and let the mean words roll off my back. Disparaging comments from random men were par for the course on the internet, but when I saw one that said I m single and I know how to appreciate a fine woman , I groaned.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that anything a woman said or did that became popular would bring creepy men out of the woodwork to tell her she was wrong, to hit on her, or, most perplexingly, both.

But then another comment: Vivian, I know who you really are. Be careful.

A chill flash-froze me from inside out. But what did OneBadMother49 know about me? I shook off the oddity of a statement that neither praised me nor truly condemned me. And what about the eerie addition of Be careful ? Was someone after me? Had Mitch come up with a creative way to get back at me? Was he this OneBadMother49? He did like to occasionally refer to himself as One Bad Mother, then add a word that rhymed with trucker. Recently, he d been using 49 in all his passwords because he loved former Atlanta Brave Julio Teher n.

To create a YouTube account would be so much work for Mitch, though. Too much alcohol and not enough sleep had to be making me paranoid.

Then again, this was the man who d somehow sought out a lawyer despite not having made his own dental appointments in over twenty years.

And he was a dentist.

My phone rang, and I welcomed the distraction. It was another radio station wanting to know if they could speak to the Mom Scout of the ah-mazing chicken salad. I had tons of voicemails and emails from people who wanted to speak to . . . me.

Moment of truth, Vivian. Do you want to lean into this or hide?

I chose to lean in.

I opened my laptop to my calendar and started making appointments for these calls. While listening to my voicemails, I spent the rest of the afternoon researching which radio stations had the biggest markets and returning call after call. Adrenaline surged while I was on the phone and abruptly dissipated the minute I was finished.

My phone pinged with a text from my mother: ETA 4:32

Good.

Phase one of Operation Get Mitch Out of My House was underway, and phase two was about to begin.