“What about Nicole?”

My graduate thesis is a memoir. The epigraph reads, "For me and you."

It's the story and backstory of my marriage and divorce and its aftermath, offered as raw data, in case my kids want to analyze it some day.

The opening note to the reader explains my creative process and how I think in pictures. Verbally, it takes about a thousand babbling words to explain one of the images. The process is energetically taxing, though, for me and the listener. I'll start and stop the story and sometimes give up mid-sentence as their attention wanes.

"I make more sense in writing," I say to my reader, integrating myself with the text. It's memoir - I lived each word.

I wrote the stories of the images that burned my writer’s retinas until they existed - tweaked to perfection for someone to read. Compared to speaking the words, it takes more energy to write them. More time, more effort, more thought, more reflection. More waiting for the words to come, but more of a chance the reader will sponge them up.

I conclude the note with a geographical foundation for the story. When I wrote it, I lived in two states, New York and Florida, and traveled between them every couple of weeks. My daughter was nine and understood everything. My son was seven and felt everything. Our living situation changed five times in four years throughout the course of marital separation and divorce. Those same years were spent developing the memoir.

I sign the Author's Note, "Niki." My given name is Nicole. I grew up Nickie, then Nik, and now write as Nicky. Versions of versions.

Niki is me. I sign it from me, the writer, narrator, and protagonist.

Then, 46 chapters split into 5 sections: Slurry, Pavement, Footprint, Detour, and Finish Line. It starts in maelstrom and moves toward a goal. It is pure potential. It changes from a raw, unformed state of disordered confusion, transforming into a structured, laid-out path to follow. It leaves a mark but leads to glory.

Slurry takes the reader through the wet cement of the ethereal, the space where things become. The chapters relay a lucid dream, a palm reading, a magic spell. My grandparents, my parents, my psychology - laid bare. Then I tell the exhilarating and binding tale of first love, first loss. Deception and disappearance.

It's memoir. I chose the bits to include, the themes of identity and expectations. Love and devotion, growth and legacy, and the battle of fate vs. choice.

Up until this point, it's a pretty standard memoir: linear, expository, descriptive, and dialogic with emotional truth and thematic depth. Then comes the chapter, "What about Nicole?"

Its placement there at the end of the first section implies that it is both a thesis and transition.

It is a syringed drop of chaos.

A new character is abruptly introduced, and it's confusing. The reader doesn't know if Nicole is a version of Niki or another person.

She's another person.

In 36 words, Nicole hijacks the narrative.

[What about Nicole?]

What about Nicole?

[You’re not going to mention her?]

I wasn’t going to. No. Not here.

[Not where?]

Not here at this part.

[But you are going to mention her, right?]

In time.

There are no quotation marks, only brackets. It's not a dialogue. It's Nicole, tearing through the narrative wall, demanding to be known, now, when she wants to be known, not "In time," as I, the author, get to choose.

It's a painfully accurate description of what happened. The specificity with which this chapter parallels reality is uncanny.

Before she became this character, Nicole was my friend. At some point, we were in love. She embraced her identity, came out as a lesbian, and left her marriage.

I did not.

It's not a conversation. It's her, ripping through the pages, calling me out - my denial and fears. It's her, reading from inside the story, fact-checking and interrogating me, forcing the reader to see her there, behind the wall.

Disembodied and unattributed, her bracketed words appear throughout the story.

I kept her there, safely, where I had some control as she tried to get me to tell the story another way.

Her way.

By the time I met Nicole, I knew how to relinquish control when I felt uncertain. I knew how to hold the highest intentions for all involved without needing to know exactly how it would unfold. What came, I let happen.

I gave her control.

"What about Nicole?" is not a hijacking but an act of narrative surrender.

The thing is, my writing grew up on the scientific method. This chapter is not a thesis statement. It's not the main idea. It's not the foundation or the expectation, nor does it serve as a transition to the next section.

"What about Nicole?" is a hypothesis.

Nicole is going to barge into my life and uproot all falsity. The tower of life will crumble, and we will shelter each other through to our separate ends. The guiding question is whether or not I can put her in the story without putting her in the story.

I could not stop what came, nor did I wish to. I only wished that the outcome was best for me and my kids, her and hers, and the men, blindsided and betrayed.

In hindsight, it was cruel, but at the time, it was necessary.

The reader traces her scent to the final chapter, where Nicole acknowledges that she has been relegated to brackets. I leave her there, and it's up to the reader to pass judgment.

In my defense, the epigraph, "For Me and You," is really a secret between me and her.

It was our blanket answer to why we did anything at all in the first place. Meet and fall in love, end up divorced and apart, and then finally happy and free.

We shortened it, though, to "Me n U."

See? About 1,000 words.