Signing Gone Awry

tears were definitely had

“I brought tissues!” I bellowed between bites of Crunchwrap Supreme. Holding up a package of Kleenex in one hand and embracing Jordan in the other. She laughed a punctuated “Ha!” We looked at each other. A quick beat. A check-in.

In hindsight, wolfing down that Crunchwrap Supreme may have teetered on disrespectful. I was shoveling deliciously artificial food down my gullet in a moment that felt like it should be heavy. But I had “fallen behind the hunger” and Taco Bell was around the corner from our meeting point.

“How’s your soulspirit?” I asked.

My best friend of 20 years responded with something between a meh and a let’s-just-get-this-over-with. A resignation, a feigned okayness. It was time to pull the bandage off, or so was her argument. Mostly I think she was numb. I reiterated to her for the 1,000th time that we could abort mission at any point. We could turn around and do literally anything else. We could save this bullshit for another day or week or month. She held all the power.

She shrugged. We were already here.

I threw my Crunchwrap Supreme detritus in the trash as I followed behind Jordan into Navy Federal Bank.

The florescent lighting was dystopian, as it always is. The lobby was awash in aged beige. A woman behind a desk just to our right asked how she could help us. Her voice indicated that she did not, in fact, want to help us. But we clearly looked like we didn’t know what we were doing there.

Jordan, in her most adult-sounding voice, responded, “Hi, I’m looking for a notary.”

“What’s it for?” The unhelpful desk woman wanted to know.

Jordan was unprepared for the question. As her sidekick and silent observer, I also found the question odd. Does it matter? Jordan leaned in slightly and lowered her voice.

“Divorce papers…unfortunately.”

“Oh we can’t do those. Those are the only papers we can’t notarize. You can try the UPS Store,” the woman said, nonchalantly pointing in the general direction of what we assumed to be a UPS Store.

The sunlight was a violent assault to our eyes as we stepped outside. Having only been inside Navy Federal for 45 seconds, I was surprised at how I’d acclimated to the florescent eyeball bath. I turned to Jordan. She looked shell-shocked and confused. I certainly was. That was decidedly not a part of the plan. Was that allowed? Is that legal? Being chronically prepared, Jordan looked online in advance to make sure her bank would notarize these papers. Online it specifically said they would do divorce papers. How did we just get rejected?

As though we were floating through a not-so-great dream, our feet carried us in the direction of the UPS store across the parking lot. Neither of us could decide if we were mad or just confused. What a weird moment. I checked in again. Was this a sign to stop? Should we pause? Jordan said we might as well try the store. She desperately didn’t want to go to the courthouse just to get a notary.

It turned out that I had unconscious expectations for the day. It wasn’t until those were burst that I even knew I had them. Leading up to that moment I envisioned me and my best friend sitting at a desk in a clean but comfortable bank office. Some sympathetic bank manager across from us. I imagined Jordan struggling with each signature. We’d be holding hands under the desk. Or maybe I would just pat her back. Sympathetic bank manager would ask if Jordan wanted some water. Maybe I would join Jordan in her tears. My own recent grief being triggered by my friend’s nightmarish circumstance. After all the signing was done, she and I would walk out into the light, arm in arm. We’d take a deep breath as we let the gravity of what just happened wash over us. Maybe we would get some coffee and debrief. I’d crack a joke or two just to lighten the air. Or instead of coffee maybe we needed a glass of wine. 5 o’clock be damned.

Instead we found ourselves standing in a nearly-silent UPS Store as a handful of customers returned Amazon packages and asked about shipping rates. Once again, heinous florescent lighting rained down on us.

One of the clerks, a woman who barely looked old enough to drink and donned in an oversized polo, waved us over. She asked what we needed with the same level of non-enthusiasm as the Navy Federal desk woman. Perhaps they went to the same school of customer service.

Jordan, a little more confident, leaned in, “Do you all have a notary?” The non-enthused clerk said they did. “Are there any restrictions on what you’ll notarize?” Fool me once, I thought. Jordan wasn’t going to be caught unaware twice in one day.

The clerk, a little confused, asked what we needed notarized. It felt like an accusation. Jordan glanced at another customer who was asking about postage. She shrank just the tiniest bit.

“Divorce papers…unfortunately.”

I suddenly found Jordan’s “unfortunately” to be one of the funniest things I’d ever heard. Maybe it was the fact that she repeated it exactly the same way as 2 minutes earlier in the bank. Maybe it was the fact that she felt the need to pad the news for these practically-robotic employees. Maybe it was the fact that she wanted to subtly indicate to this Gen Z UPS Store clerk that she, in fact, did not want to be ending her 8-year marriage. To tell this woman that none of this was her idea and she would have it literally any other way if given the chance. Maybe it was just the absurdity of it all.

I quickly covered the laugh bubbling up inside my throat but shoving my mouth into my collar. This was not the time for laughter.

The clerk slowly, and I mean slowly, excruciatingly slowly, turned her head toward the employee next to her. She asked if they would notarize divorce papers. It felt like her voice boomed and reverberated off the walls. My sniffled laugh grew inside my shirt. This was not good. The church giggles were descending. I turned my whole body away from Jordan. It was too late. She’d already caught a whiff of my chortle.

Quick note: Jordan and I have a pavlovian response to each other. Our baseline is utter ridiculousness and doing ‘bits’. When one of us is laughing, we’re both laughing. After 20 years, our brains have been hardwired for this. We can’t override it or fight it or avoid it. Not that we’ve ever tried.

With one look at my chortle, Jordan was suddenly suppressing her own imminent guffaw. In an instant we were on the same page about the ramping up of this lunacy. The day, this moment, this act, was getting away from us.

The male co-worker, also donned in an oversized polo, looked at the clerk like duh. He seemed to be disgusted that she would even ask such a question. Why wouldn’t they notarize divorce papers, you idiot! I can only assume these two had a long workplace history. Perhaps they were lovers in the middle of a tryst gone wrong. Or maybe they were siblings. Or maybe they just didn’t like each other.

A manager showed up somehow. I didn’t see him swoop in because I was fully turned away from Jordan. Laughter sounds were pushing their way through my nasal passages. Jordan’s shoulders were bouncing. She was vibrating a little. We were about to cause a scene if we didn’t control ourselves

Before we knew what was happening, Jordan was signing her divorce papers. I had retrieved those papers from her soon-to-be ex husband in the parking lot of Indian restaurant a few nights earlier. There was no desk. No office. No sympathetic bank manager. No tears. There was just standing at the counter of a UPS Store, under the hum of florescent bulbs, signing line after line. Next to us was a shelf of Skittles and Hersey’s bars. Impulse purchases. A customer asked the young clerk about shipping insurance.

That’s when I saw it. The single most perfect object that would cement the entire experience. The explosive nature of this opportunity crashed through my brain. Lightning went through me. The manager stepped away to photocopy Jordan’s license. I tapped her on her shoulder and pointed. Behind us was a wall displaying all the cool things that the UPS Store could print. Giant poster boards for presentations. Glossy print-outs for quarterly reports. Invitations and announcements.

And there, right at our eye level, taunting us, was a sample poster. “JUST MARRIED” it said in elegant white font against a decorative teal background. Jordan slapped her hand to her mouth. I grabbed my stomach. We were definitely losing our fight to stifle any laughter. We were getting audible. Jordan was shaking all over as she turned to hand the manger her credit card. The whole thing cost exactly $12. She gripped my arm. Maybe if we grabbed each other tight enough, we wouldn’t completely dissolve into uncontrollable laughter. We needed to keep it together.

We were outside. The fresh air hit me like a tidal wave. I let out a whole-body laugh. Soon I was doubled over, tears streaming down my face. Jordan was clinging to a pillar as she expelled each laugh out of her body. Like she was bailing out water. Staccato little bursts. I couldn’t breathe. We stumbled past the Dollar Tree and Fortune Cookie Chinese Restaurant. It felt like we were in high school again. Our antics filling up any and every public space we found ourselves in. That parking lot might as well have been the picnic tables at Druid Hills High School.

And just like in high school, this moment was so completely hilarious because it was entirely baffling. The joke, the source of the funny, was that life had landed us both here. Two best friends holding each other as they wade through the impossible muck and gut-punching devastation. No solemnity. No reverence. No pomp and circumstance. Only reality. Only the stone cold truth that ending an 8-year marriage can be done in under 4 minutes standing at the counter of a UPS Store in front of a sign that says “Just Married” and cost only $12. It was absurd.

But that’s life in a nutshell. It’s the thing that happens in between making plans. I had made plans that day. I’d planned on tears. We definitely got those. Jordan and I had those streaming down our faces. They just happened to be tears of laughter.

How ludicrous and absolutely perfect.