How to think about divorce in a small-town supermarket

If you live in a small town and are going through a divorce, God help you.

That is, if God is not on one of His famously long coffee breaks, shootin’ the shit with the angels behind the counter at heaven’s Dunkin’ Donuts. They treat Him like a cop (good cop, natch), and He gets all the jelly donuts He wants for free.

You can’t blame the Guy. He created this world with love in mind, and with the exception of Adam and Eve, who were too busy tripping out on LSD apples and playing with Adam’s Wacky Wonder Snake to argue, this world of His is full of sad divorces and broken plates and tears.

God is bummed out, man. This was not the Plan.

God talks it over with the angels. He sighs heavily as He wipes a smear of raspberry jelly off His chin with a Heaven’s Dunkin’ Donuts napkin.

“They’re doing their best, I think,” He says thoughtfully. The angels agree, nodding.

“Maybe I made the game too hard,” muses God.

“I don’t think You’re to blame, Sir,” says the taller angel, whose wings are already covered in powdered sugar again. Not even Xipql O’Clock there, and already her wings have been full of powdered sugar three times today.

“Blame is just shame turned inside out,” the shorter angel pipes up. When God and the taller angel stare at her, she says, “I saw it on Oprah.”

A crackling noise comes from the drive-thru window speaker.

“No one is to blame, with 1% and Splenda,” mutters Howard Jones into the drive-thru speaker, before he realizes it’s not his time—not at all—and goes back to sleep to wake up at dawn in his cluttered but gorgeous London flat.

But aside from God, the angels and Howard Jones, there will be a few people wondering whom to blame. It’s not their fault. Like God, they’re bummed out and can’t make heads or tails of the scene. A few will be looking to blame the decent man you can’t imagine calling anything other than your husband, and a few people will be looking to blame you—the decent woman your husband can’t imagine calling anything other than his wife. (You never did seem right in the head—too exuberant, too melancholy, too much of everything, really. Certainly not the kind of woman anyone should have married. And two artists! THEATRE, no less! Really!)

Someone could be to blame. Your big dog does have an anal leakage problem. It could be his fault, Irretrievable Breakdown of a Marriage Caused by Canine Anal Leakage on the Sheets of the Marriage Bed. Who can live with that?

Know that your character will be revealed most clearly in the supermarket. Pay attention. There are the divorce Shufflers, who hang their heads as low as bloodhound ears, nearly touching their chins to their carts as they creep along. If at all possible, avoid being a Shuffler. It reflects badly on you, the same as the terrible fluorescent lighting at the supermarket, the lighting that makes you look even more wan and pale and distraught than you actually are.

Yes, the Shufflers invite gossip. Of course, the Shufflers tend to also invite pity, so if you are hankering for some of that, then Shuffling may be your game. They will assume (incorrectly, always incorrectly) that your husband made love to three local co-eds as part of a groundbreaking (and bed-breaking) post-modern theatre experiment, or something similarly clear and defined in its appallingness. But that is not what you are after (and, admittedly, not at all what he is after) and you know it. You just want your Dublin Mudslide ice cream and perhaps one variety of fruit that your children will agree to eat. That is what you really want at this moment.

Your husband-to-not-be also just wants Dublin Mudslide ice cream and a variety of fruit that the children will eat. You will always have very much in common, you and he. You each want to be happy, and you each want the other to be happy, and you each want the children to eat fruit that does not come out of a tin can.

Notice a quick-moving cart ahead of you. A blur, really. Can’t make out the face attached to the shoulders attached to the the arms pushing the cart. Ah ha. A Darter.

The Darters are the ferrets of marital breakdown at the supermarket, holding their breath as they fling frozen pizzas in their cart for dear life and fly through the checkout line leaving skidmarks all the way to the parking lot. But the Darter approach is very dangerous when it comes to small-town divorce. It is not good to be slippery. It makes you seem shifty, although you are anything but. You just haven’t figured out how to get people to ask you the right questions. You have seemed slippery for several years now, out of sadness, and people have wondered about you endlessly. Slow down. Choose your frozen pizza, your bag of frozen ravioli wisely. Breathe. Smile at the people you recognize, smile at the people you don’t, smile slowly and deliberately. Aim for Chinner Upperness.

Chinner Uppering is your best bet, all things considered (and you have spent the last few years doing nothing but considering). If you opt for Chinner Uppering, take care to not be too bouncy about it. Do not prance too gaily or smile too widely, lest stinky blame be flung upon your shoulders like pigeon crap on a too-proud statue in Central Park. There are already possibly four people in this supermarket and across North America who believe you to be a mentally unstable harlot. Keep those numbers to a bare minimum. Chin up (steady, steady) as you choose your laundry detergent, select yet another brand of bread your children will refuse to eat, snag the latest People mag featuring an article on the grieving sort-of-widow Michelle Williams, who never married Heath Ledger, but had his child.

Think, “Well, at least Michelle Williams didn’t have to go through a divorce. And she probably has very nice bathroom and kitchen flooring,” then realize Michelle Williams is not a fortunate soul at this moment, not at all—having to raise Matilda Rose without Heath, who is just now ordering black coffee at Heaven’s Dunkin’ Donuts and discussing the baffling (from their point of view) elusiveness of world peace and domestic peace with the Lord.

Consider asking Michelle and Matilda Rose to move in with you. You do not have the room, but you could all make do somehow.

That’s the attitude of a good Chinner Upper. Caroline Ingalls was an exceptional Chinner Upper. She and Pa just joined the world peace and domestic peace conversation with God and Heath Ledger at Heaven’s Dunkin’ Donuts, and God and Charles and Heath defer to her wisdom. In heaven, a female Chinner Upper is on par with cherubim, seraphim, anyphim—especially the ones like Caroline Ingalls, who Chinned Up while they scrubbed laundry in silty creeks and protected their young from the world with rifles and sampler-sewing lessons, depending on what was necessary at a particular moment in time.

Ask the checkout clerk which aisle they keep the ABC samplers and Bible quote samplers in, for your next visit. When she ignores you (or did she not hear you?) and adjusts her nose ring and turns to the guy bagging your groceries to ask when he’s off tonight, say, “Hey! You two ever think about getting married? That would be a cute story! The best man would be all over that one! Terrific material!”

Okay. Do not say it. But think it—and anything else—as much as you wish. Imagine these teens and the pierced, tattooed toddlers they would have. Imagine how long that marriage would last. One in two marriages end in divorce. These grungy, sebaceous teens might have just as good go of it as you did.

Observe the checkout girl’s tattooed arm: a thorny rose. Realize now that there was no reason to avoid that tattoo of your first dog at the nape of your neck. Maybe, just maybe, you will get that tattoo after all. There is no reason not to. There is also no reason to get the tattoo, but these are dire times, and if you don’t find something better to do than grocery shopping and laundry, you may squander your window of opportunity for a perfectly good midlife crisis. A red-and-white, racing-striped Mini Cooper is out of the question, but a tattoo portrait of your first dog? Nape of the neck? Priceless. Hope the autopsy people will flip you over at the morgue and notice it on your 90-year-old future self, and think with admiration, Didn’t see that coming.

No one can stop you from thinking these days, although some may already wish you would not think so much, because now look where it’s gotten you. You’re both bummed out. This was not the plan. You were doing your best, you think. Maybe you made the game too hard.

You do think a lot, and it is a good thing some kind person invented a tiny brown pill that lets the thinking stop and the sleep come at night. You would totally make out with that person, in gratitude, if you knew where to find them. Maybe they are waiting for you in the sampler aisle.

Of course, these days, Whitman’s Samplers are the only option at the supermarket. Caroline Ingalls doesn’t like it, and neither do you, but it is what it is.