Habitual Exit

Amy placed the brown package along with the rest of the mail on the circular coffee table. She expected her five-year-old to grab and pull the parcel, but Janie remained in place, her cotton pajamas with pink and green frogs sagging off her tiny frame. Perhaps the basic brown mailer envelope—no color, glitter, or stickers—triggered Janie’s suspicions about the lack of fun it contained. As Amy examined the handwriting, she knew instantly who it was from. Although she’d received few written mementos from Renaldo, the compact script with letters squeezed together as though not wanting to risk being alone, was unmistakably his. His fake return address offering further confirmation: 666 Anyplace, Your town, U Suck of A.

“Mommy, is it for me?” Janie asked.

“Yes, jellybean. It’s for you,” Amy said, holding out the package for Janie to see. “It says right here. ‘To J-A-N-I-E.’”

Janie repeated the letters, confirming her name.

“Maybe it’s a birthday gift,” Amy said.

“But my party is over before yesterday.”

“You mean your birthday party already happened,” Amy said. “Two weeks ago.” No matter how times Amy went over the concept of time with Janie, her daughter failed to comprehend. On particularly challenging days, Amy wondered if Janie purposefully persisted in intersecting the past, present, and future, determined to smear them all together just as she did her finger paints.

“Is it my birthday again?”

“No,” Amy said. The last thing she needed was Janie expecting another load of cheap plastic dolls with garish makeup and oversized breasts. She handed the package to Janie, who, after a pause, took it in her tiny hands. Janie shook it, and when nothing clanked or rattled, she handed it back, asking her mom to open it.

No card, no wrapping. Typical. Amy scanned the envelope once more, checking the stamps and closure seal if there were any additional scribbles, any clues intending to be found. It had been over two years since she’d last seen him sprint away from the restaurant where they’d met for lunch. There’d been no further contact.

Inside, folded into the bottom of the envelope was a pink shirt.

“I see something pink,” Amy said, knowing anything pink would rev up Janie’s interest. Janie stepped closer.

“Ta-dah!” Amy said, smiling at the unexpectedness of his gesture. She imagined him clutching the gift at a crowded post office somewhere, shuffling forward in his black Doc Martens and purple laces.

Amy unveiled the grand surprise as Janie craned for a full view. There it was. Silk-screened across the front of the mini pink T-shirt was a glittery rainbow sprouting from heart-shaped clouds. Beneath the rainbow’s arc, two magical white unicorns were gleefully humping.

Amy had first met Renaldo fifteen years ago in a nightclub on the frayed outskirts of Washington, DC. It was the period in her life she privately referred to as her “lean years,”—she was four sizes thinner and her sense of displacement had made her feel nearly transparent with insignificance. She’d never wanted to be in DC, but when Bill, her fellow clubgoer and boyfriend, graduated college and landed his first job in the nation’s capital, he wooed her to accompany him. With this job, an entry-level position in financial planning with low pay, Bill had brimmed with pride at the prospect of what he envisioned as their future. He’d prepared Amy’s favorite dinner—potato pancakes with lemon meringue pie for dessert—and after he cleared the plates, he got down on one knee and had asked her to move with him. When she’d started giving him reasons why it was a bad idea—the heat, the distance from New York City, the heat, the distance from New York City—he brought up sacrifices made by famous couples throughout history: Cleopatra for Anthony, Juliet for Romeo, Nancy for Sid.

“Didn’t all of those end badly?” Amy had asked.

“But think of all the good years they had first.”

Bill had refilled their pair of unmatched...