The Receipts

When Omar and Giselle exited the church, they beamed at their guests, who pelted them with the biodegradable confetti the wedding planner had chosen as an affordable and humane alternative to flower petals or rice grains. 

“It’s colorful, fun, and much easier to clean up after in the end,” Dyanne had said, as she had gone over their budget.

It had been so important to save, to invest their money in something worthy of them, that both of them had rented their wedding clothes. Their twenty - five guests fit in the patio of a new trattoria that had opened its doors a mere two months before the wedding. Luckily, the family style entrees were good, as was the cannoli cake, which was distributed in thin slices to each of the six small tables. 

They moved into a cramped studio apartment which allowed Giselle and Omar unobstructed views of the Gowanus canal, and the occasional contact high from their cannabis enthusiast neighbors during the winter. Their first year of marriage, Giselle and Omar saved $20,000, and learned the various culinary nuances available to them with ramen noodles and potatoes as their tools. 

The second year of their marriage, Giselle attempted to expand her palate. “Sometimes, I just want to go to a restaurant for dinner, ok?”

 Omar’s response was to shut down for nearly three days.

“I’m not even angry. I’m just so disappointed,” he had said, his brooding dark eyes piercing her heart with guilt.

She began to hide her receipts and exclude them from the “money out” tally at the end of each day. While she brought lunch from home, she began to give her sandwiches away to coworkers or the homeless, and tucked into three course prixe fix(she wasn’t that reckless) lunches that left her almost sobbing with relief. 

One day, she called in sick and spent the entire morning shopping, sitting in the Russian Tea Room with her trophies, going so far as to wear one of her purchases to lunch, careful not to get any stains on it before changing out of it in the restroom, gathering up her purchases and beginning the laborious task of returning each item before the shops closed. Back in her brown sensible rubber soled flats, she rode the subway to Brooklyn, her hands clammy and her eyes bright.

Omar was doing yoga when she arrived, his body in wheel pose, a backbend with his fingers and feet both facing the window, his face toward the front door. His cell phone was propped up against their futon next to him, as he followed along on Youtube.

“Sorry I’m so late.” Giselle said, shaking out her umbrella over the welcome mat. “There was a stalled train in front of us, and it took nearly twenty minutes in the tunnel before we could move again.”

“Weird. There was no alert,” he replied, attempting to lift one leg up toward the ceiling. 

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Giselle replied, opening the refrigerator and wincing at the state of it. A glass jar of homemade almond milk, a stack of meal prep Tupperware she refused to eat for a fourth day in a row, peanut butter, and a bag of apples. 

“Dare I ask what’s for dinner?” She muttered, more to herself than her husband. 

“No MTA travel alerts. I checked, and it looks like all the lines were running on or close to schedule.” Omar brought his other leg up until he was doing a headstand for a moment, then ended the pose in Downward Dog.

“Nothing’s for dinner,” he concluded, finishing his routine and placing his cellphone on the floor next to his mat. “We’re fasting.”

“Excuse me? You were supposed to stop by the supermarket for a rotisserie chicken and some potatoes,” Giselle gaped at him quizzically. “So you’ve been here for hours sitting on your little yoga mat, just timing my arrival so you could tell me that what, we’re breatharian now?”

“Don’t be so overdramatic. There are millions of people in the world who are going without food tonight. I think it will help us gain perspective on our own privilege.”

Giselle pressed her fingertips between her eyebrows and took several deep breaths. 

“Ok. It’s fine. You want to be funny, and you chose this specific moment when I’m coming home at the end of a long day and I’m starving, to try to prank me. I’m not in the mood, Omar. So you can turn off the fucking camera.”

“There’s no camera, honey. And why are you getting  so angry? There’s no need to exaggerate.”

“Me, exaggerate? What is there to exaggerate about? The amount of empty space in our refrigerator? The fact that we haven’t had sex in over four months because there’s a spring loose in our futon and you refuse to buy a new bed? Or the fact that every single thing we do in this ridiculous shoebox of an apartment needs to be filtered through our household expense spreadsheet?”

Omar sat on his mat, legs bent at the knee, toes tucked underneath them. He steepled his fingers under his chin, and she noted absently the way his bristly beard reached past the edge of his wrists. He had stopped shaving because it was “a waste of water” and required “too much expensive upkeep.”She hated that beard. It scratched her and lately had begun to take on a perpetual odor of sweat.

“You’re exaggerating being starving. I think it’s very offensive to people actually going through genuine food insecurity. And as for those other things you mentioned, they’re rather inconsequential. I’m really surprised at you, Giselle.”

And I’m surprised I haven’t rammed a screwdriver through your temple and danced over your corpse while chomping on Popeye’s drumsticks. 

But instead of all of that, she packed her bags and left. 

She knew there was no working this out. She was exhausted, weary from having to account for every penny she spent, of denying herself things she needed like a new coat, instead of layering sweaters on under her old one. Or lining her rain boots with plastic bags so her feet wouldn’t get wet from the hole in the toe box.

She was done making excuses for why they could never have company over, because Omar refused to offer anyone food or refreshments. They had yet to discuss the end game of their extreme frugality: a house? A condo? When would their spartan living reach its end? 

They communicated through a mediator until the day of their divorce proceedings. It was impossible to reason with Omar, who, sensing a change in her, had been tracking her phone for weeks before her departure. Worst of all, his suspicions had led him to donate part of her savings to an ashram in Kerala. 

As they climbed the stairs to the courthouse, the same one in which they were married two years before, they clutched their umbrellas against the onslaught of heavy rain, the thin nylon canopies barely shielding them from the downpour. 

Alone with their thoughts, they made their way up the slippery steps, and glanced back at one another from across the arch of the domed entryway. 

“I regret not keeping those receipts. It wasn’t about the money.  It could have been pizza and a movie. It was that I finally let myself enjoy something again just for the sake of it, instead of being miserable every single day when there was no reason to be.”

It was the first time she had spoken to him directly since the night she walked out. 

Unable to keep it in for another second, she had looked into his self-righteous face and said:

“I spent money today. I had a $100 lunch. It was a caviar tasting followed by a plate of sea scallops,  and after that, I went to Bloomingdales, Saks, Henri Bendel and then I stopped by Cartier. I put all of it on our credit card from our joint account. It was the best day I ever had. I was happier than on our wedding day. I’d love to say that I have no regrets because it really was perfect, but…I do.”