This sucks, he writes.
He writes, I love you.
Please don’t feel like you can’t change your mind.
He writes, Think about staying, e.
Think about staying.
He writes: Fuck You.
Give me my fucking key back and..Get…The Fuck…Out.

She’s moving back to Brooklyn. It didn’t work out. What a mess, she thinks. She needs to find a place to live. Can’t believe she gave up her rent-controlled apartment. So glad she kept her job. Fuck. She needs to find a place. She needs to find a mover. She needs to tell her boss. She should tell him after she has things sorted. Christ, she thinks: so embarrassed. Didn’t she just make a heart-felt plea to work from Connecticut? She asked everyone to get behind her like she knew what she wanted. She just asked.

And Steve won’t let her say goodbye to Corrine.

A baby, just 6-months old, she held Corrine in her arms. Baked her first birthday cupcake, watched as she dove in with both hands, purple frosting becoming the first blush and lipstick Corrine would wear. She picked out Corrine’s second Halloween costume, painted on her whiskers, and watched Corrine become a black cat, circling her brand new tail, mesmerized by her own transformation. I have a tail, Er-in. I have a tail! She taught Corrine to say Peace Out, Er-in!, snapping fingers in a wild Z; taught her to say Obama and held her hand as they walked the neighborhood; listened as Corrine ‘counted’ the yard signs: One O-ba-ma, ‘nuther O-ba-ma….there’s a ‘nuther ‘bama, Er-in! She dressed that two-and-a-half-year-old-miniature-self in leopard skin stretch pants and hot-pink patent-leather Chucks, and caught Corrine when she jumped, without notice, from couches and stairways and beds, yelling SUUUU-PER-Cor-ry! Corrine, not at all understanding that she couldn’t actually fly.

She’d never be the one to break the news.

She’s moving to a new house. That’s what Steve’s told Corrine. And he won’t let her say goodbye. My daughter, he says. Who you’re abandoning, he says.

He’s keeping Taco-The-Cat-That-Fetches. Taco, who would trot back, string in mouth, and patiently wait, tail twitching, for her to throw the string down the wooden stairs one more time. She loves that cat. She fucking loves that cat. That cat would climb into her mouth just to get a little closer to her.

The thing was, she had already told her best friend, Jake, walking down 14^th Street. It was exactly three years ago. Right on the corner of First Avenue, as they waited for the walk symbol, which was weird because when did they ever wait for the walk symbol? Never.

She told him: He’s Trouble.

Trouble, she said.

When I come back to you in two years, crying, she said, don’t feel sorry for me.

She actually said that, for Christ’s sake. She should listen to herself. And: Sooner. Right away. Jake shouldn’t listen to her, though, because now she needs him to feel sorry for her a little.

But she was right. Even in the timing. So: she’s got that.

She was right.