Status Updates From Definitely Thriving: A Novel

"It's hard out there for an indexer," she says. "Just like bank tellers and grocery store clerks. Going the way of the dodo."
"I didn't know if it's as bad as that," says Clemence.
Dr. Penelope says, "The dodo didn't either."

Clemence tries to keep the cat out, but he scratches at the door, imploring her through the window with his single steady eye. Bailey, now accustomed to tinned fish, refuses to quit her, and Clemence is not sure what she'd do if it came down to an ultimatum: him or Toby. The cat is less trouble and way better groomed.

She takes the set of knives in the other box, though. Mrs. Yeung urges her to, in compensation for her volunteer service, and also because they'd had to instate rules about selling knives as jumble since the year someone was nearly stabbed in an altercation about whose turn it was to refill the coffee urn. Church basements were tense places--it was best to avoid weapons altogether.

She has always found it difficult to have conversations in these spaces, to not be looking over someone's shoulder at the beautiful book on peonies high up on the shelf, but Clemence is a far cry from Toby, who struggles with conversation everywhere. Get him in a closet, though, and he really comes to life.

And then it's finished, and before Clemence has even a moment to process what's happened, Toby is gone. Leaping up the street like some untamed gazelle, arms flailing, running like somebody who's being chased.

"Sadly, being divorced means I don't get to be a spinster," says Clemence. "Which I think is one of the great tragedies of my life."

It's strange that during the years Clemence was miserable, nobody was concerned, but now that she's broken free, everyone seems to be on her case.

Her intention is to begin a very different kind of story, one that doesn't end with a wedding. She desires to become one of those excellent women that Barbara Pym wrote about in her mid-century novels, helping out at church bazaars, fortified with a nice mug of Ovaltine. A woman of substance, of character, who isn't defined by her relationship to a man.

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