“Amber, what if this is it? What am I going to do with my life?”
She sits up straight, leans in, and speaks the words straight into me.
“You’ll live it.” She nods, reminding herself too. “You’ll do what you love. You’ll do what makes you happy.”
Happy. I think about it for a second.
“The only thing that makes me happy right now is Justin Timberlake.”
She laughs and claps her hands, but I’m dead serious.
* * *
In hardship, some people turn to Jesus, but I turn to Justin. He’s a better dancer.
It’s the second week of March. Justin Timberlake is releasing a new record and he’s going to be on Jimmy Fallon every single night for a whole week. It’s a Christmas miracle. It’s the opportunity, it’s Mrs. God throwing a bucket of ice water over my head.
My list has grown old and velvety under the mug, but as soon as I hear about Timberweek, I revive it. I write JUSTIN in letters that are twice as big as they need to be. I’m mortified that it took me so long to give him his spot there.
It begins the evening of March 13 in my living room. Justin is on TV wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket; I’m on the couch wearing my big brown slippers, an old T-shirt of Jack’s, and a pair of old cotton panties from college. There are purplish-blue lights, leather, and brass, a mass of beautiful people crammed into a too-tiny camera frame. I turn the volume up as loud as it goes and the sky-high ceilings of our big blue house fill up with soul. I’m finally having church here the way I wanted to.
The band and the dancers move together in their street clothes and the guitar moans along with them in long, echoey notes. Their reflections bounce off the bells of the trumpets and the saxophones, and they all cut up under the colored heat of the lights.
I know this scene. I sit straight up.
I feel like I’m looking in on a dance at West Feliciana with Pam and Miguel and Jamise. Justin’s crew moves like mine, not in sync, but in solidarity. They make space for each other as he sings to them and I remember showing off in our little circle. Even though I looked ridiculous, they loved me more and more every time my skinny butt hit the gym floor.
Justin hits the highest note and I miss being sixteen so much it could crack me open.
“Yes. Fuck. Yes.” There’s nobody here to tell but it needs to be said. I’ve never heard a man make that sound before. He’s a sexy jungle bird.
I close my eyes and I swim in his voice, his joy, his party.
Suddenly, I feel it. My chin starts bopping. The drummer is way back in the shot, and he’s bopping too. I think about Jack, about moving my body to his music on the side stage back in Austin, nerves shot, like the buzzing copper innards of electrical wire. I danced for him, desperately, with everything, just wanting him to see me and to remind him I was still there under the drug haze and the days spent in bed. He never did see, but of course he didn’t. I never saw myself either.
The drummer on TV comes down on the cymbal and I put my hands up.
The song stops being a thing that happens outside my body; it becomes my breath and my blood. I pry myself up. The comfort of the couch is an adhesive, but Justin won’t let me be stuck to something right now. Like a holy miracle on a big, carpeted church stage, I’m dancing, for the first time in years.
Percussion leads me ecstatically around the room and makes my feet light. I grind and make cursive letters with my butt while Ellie stands up on the couch and flicks her pom-pom tail. I smile big at her, I cry, and I hoot and sing until my lungs ache more than my back does. Every movement is a fight, but what a fucking fight! What a blissful rebellion!
The end comes. Way too soon. Horns begin to exhale, lights scramble back and forth. I join Justin for one last, euphoric scream, and I see her. I catch a wobbly glimpse of myself in the window, made by nighttime into a wall of dark mirrors.
There she is.
Joyful, silly, soulful. Radically sacred. Pajamas and sweat and freedom. There I am.
* * *
Springtime is filled with silence from Jack and loudness from the rest of the world. He’s everywhere in the big blue house. His clothes hang next to mine in our closet, and three pairs of big, boat-shaped tennis shoes huddle together by the front door, but I rarely hear from him. I call him; he doesn’t answer. I text; I’m not even sure he reads the messages. I don’t know if this is what it looks like when a marriage is over or if there’s some way we can begin again again. When the quiet gets too quiet, when the pain keeps me awake at night, and when I hunger for Jack’s body next to mine, I call on the new and old heartbeats—Amber’s, Katherine’s, and, of course, Justin’s—they stand beside me in song. We all gather together in the evenings for dancing and grieving and whiskey drinks that get hot in our throats. We fill up the empty spaces of the big blue house and I keep fighting to catch more glimpses of myself. By April, I feel a hundred years older than I did in March. Chronic pain, by definition, doesn’t really get better, but I try to live with it as best I can. I take care of my body by exercising it, dragging it along the sidewalks under the cherry trees, feeding it whatever it wants. I surround it with beauty, the single most effective medication I’ve tried. I find it in the daylilies opening up wide to receive the sun; in backyard dance parties; in dark, syrupy rum drinks and the feeling of fellowship. I find it hiking at Burgess Falls, where the rocks are electric green with moss and water sings to me louder than my broken nerves and broken heart can scream. Pain is big, but beauty is bigger. I make beauty my mission.
Looking for love on the outside to fill the pit on the inside, I start an Instagram account. I document everything that feels beautiful to me, from the biggest adventure to the smallest decorating project. My following grows and I use social media as a place I can go to lose myself and find myself all at once. The woman I am there is strong and pretty. Her life is fabulous. She has enough friends. Every “like” feels like love; every follower feels like an admirer. I post twice a day, three times a day, sometimes more. It’s a new addiction that’s impossibly easy to feed.
18 The Yes Thing
There’s a Walmart nearby that thinks it’s a grocery store. They sell two different types of lettuce and the cashiers wear green smocks. Even without the stretchy pants and plastic baby pools and polyester flowers, you still know exactly where you are. Sad gray lights are in cages, sad gray produce gets misted too much and hunches over, and people hunch over, too, preoccupied, irritated, wanting to get in and out without being seen. I started shopping there after Jack left, shuffling around in my sweatpants and looking lost like the rest, using it as a refuge when I didn’t want to feel so alone in the hardness of life.
The store is busy today. People are hurling packages of cheap pink hot dogs and jugs of neon Faygo soda into their carts. It’s May and everybody is grilling out: salt and smoke waft up and down the streets from 4 p.m. to midnight, and ketchup-stained paper plates peek out from too-full garbage cans. I love the early celebrations of summer, but I just buy a keg of laundry detergent, some peanut butter M&M’s, and a plastic container of berries. Jack is still gone and still silent, so I don’t need much to get by.