Hellgoing by Lynn Coady

surrendered.
    SEAN GOT DIVORCED at a Starbucks. He and The Beast met every week at the Starbucks at the West Edmonton Mall, the biggest mall in North America. They had a DIY divorce because Sean was still, at the time, his own special kind of idiot. Why not part amicably, he thought. There was no need for a lawyer — a lawyer was cold and impersonal, a lawyer would introduce an unnecessary adversarial element to the proceedings and why do that? Hadn’t they had enough of being adversaries? Good faith, therefore. Plus it wouldn’t be fair, because he could afford a lawyer and The Beast could not. So he and The Beast hashed a deal out together, at Starbucks, using documents from the internet. She drank Frappuccinos and he drank whatever the featured brew happened to be that day.
    The Beast was unemployed except for the knitting lessons she gave and the crafts she sold every summer at the farmers’ market and online. She came up with some impressive stuff — The Beast could knit food, perfectly recognizable olives and hamburgers and ice cream cones. Years ago, he had encouraged her in this; he made good money at UPS, so why shouldn’t she follow her dreams, quit her soul-killing administrative job and knit food all day?
    And now, therefore, it was his fault she had been out of the workforce for so long. Out of guilt, and a desperation to get away, he gave her everything.
    DON’T BE SO hard on yourself, Erin told him, on the plane back to Canada. It seemed like there was no other way of dealing with the terrible wedding on the fake white sand against the swimming-pool ocean, not to mention their hangovers, but to talk about how terrible their previous relationships had been.
    They’d heard each other’s stories many times before. They always ended up, these stories, with one of them telling the other: Don’t be so hard on yourself.
    But you guys weren’t miserable, argued Sean. You and Ames. You didn’t cohabit in complete and utter misery for ten years and just, like, stick with it because you figured it was the right thing to do. You stayed together because you were happy. And then you broke up once you weren’t happy anymore, like reasonable human beings.
    No, said Erin.
    Yes, said Sean, who had heard about it enough to feel comfortable contradicting her. Ames just came home one day and said he wasn’t happy.
    Yes, said Erin. But it doesn’t mean we were happy right up until that exact point.
    Well, that’s kind of how you’ve always described it.
    Erin looked past Sean out the window. It showed a wall of cloud the colour of cement.
    But I knew that he resented me, she said. For a long time. I just didn’t know what to do about it. And when he came home that day with the sunglasses, one of the things he said made him mad was how I resented his acting career. And I couldn’t figure that out, because I was the one who helped him get his resumé and headshot online, I was the one who found him an extras agent. I was always trying to find him work. So I didn’t understand what he was saying. And it wasn’t until quite a few months after he moved out that I got it. He wasn’t mad because I resented his career, he was mad because I was the thing that wasn’t his career — I was the anti-career. So he couldn’t imagine me doing anything but resenting it. I was the thing on the other side of the ferry crossing that had nothing to do with what he wanted anymore.
    Sean was beginning to fall asleep. He’d made the mistake of thinking this was another one of their lazy conversations.
    But you guys were happy, he insisted with his eyes closed. Up until then.
    I was, said Erin. I was the one who was happy.
    She seemed to sneeze in slow motion into her hands. Sean opened his eyes and sat up. The whole time he had known Erin, she had never done this. She wasn’t a crier.
    It’s just this whole past week, she told him. The wedding