I’m driving the boys to a birthday party
about 20 minutes from home. M. was supposed to come along, too, but at the last
minute he backed out – he had errands to run. Ai a stoplight a block from the
party I happen to see a man who walks like M. emerge from the door of an
apartment building. He holds a sheaf of rental literature. I see, but I don’t
really see, that this man is wearing the jeans I bought him last month. The car
behind me honks. My foot somehow knows to press the pedal.
December 7, 2009
M. comes home from work early so we can get
the legal separation agreement notarized at the bank. He’s agreed to almost
everything I asked. We split our assets; he’ll financially support me and the
boys, then 5 and 8, until they graduate from high school. He’ll pay for
college. Essentially, he honors the pact the two of us made during our happier
days – that I’d be a stay-at-home mom until the kids grew up.
We
split our assets & share legal custody
We share legal custody. I get sole physical
custody, but the boys will spend three nights a week with him. M. gets to work
around the clock to support two households instead of one. His every moment s
accounted for; meanwhile, I get free time while the kids are at school and when
they’re with him. “All this,” I inform M., with too little appreciation for
what it’s costing him to do right by me and our sons, “is the price you’ll pay
for your freedom”
December 23, 2009
We deliver The Speech to the kids as we
rehearsed it yesterday with a therapist. Our story is that the divorce is not
M.’s fault. Nor is it mine. We simply failed, together. Fate handed us lemonade
and we somehow turned it into lemons.
Our
story is that the divorce is not M.’s fault. Nor is it mine. We simply failed,
together
Later we take the boys to M.’s new
apartment. I’m shocked at what a great job he’s done decorating. There’s an
exquisite leather couch in the living room, the kind I always vetoed because it
was too expensive.
Tonight M. will spend his first in his new
home. Tomorrow morning he’ll pick up the boys from my house and take them to
spend their first night with him, in the new apartment that Santa brought our
family this year.
December 29, 2009
In an attempt to pull myself together I
decide to go work out at the gym. I get in the car but it won’t start. The
battery is dead because I left the interior light on. This is where I’d
normally call my husband, but this isn’t his problem. Also, I don’t have a
husband.
I walk next door, where four recent college
grads – Dave, Nate, Larry and Laurence – live. Laurence is home and sweetly
offers to jump the car. Between tries, we stand facing each other, and for some
reason I blurt out, “I’ve never had to deal with this alone before. My husband
just left me.”
In
an attempt to pull myself together I decide to go work out at the gym
Poor Laurence is stunned. We have exchanged
just a few smiles and hellos in the six months we’ve been neighbor. He
reassures me that M. will certainly be back. When I shake my head, he become
more determined than ever to bring my car back to life.
Later, during the record blizzards of 2010,
Laurence and his roommates, unbidden, shovel me out after every snowstorm. They
accept nothing in return but some meager offerings of homemade chocolate-chip
cookies.
January 5, 2010
One of the first things I do to flex my
independence is to cancel my TV service. I’ve been a fan, but with another
adult in the house, you can hardly make such decisions unilaterally. Now I can,
so I do.
Many friends exhibit more disbelief over
the end of my TV series than the end of my marriage. Makes sense, I guess. Half
of us eventually ditch our spouses. But who gets rid of her TV?
January 27, 2010
I’m at the Gap, where I stumble upon a
clearance rack with a dozen pairs of men’s pants marked 90 percent off. Five of
them are in M.’s size.
I’ve been buying his clothes since we were
engaged. The day M. showed up at my parents’ house to ask them for my hand in
marriage, he was wearing acid-washed jeans with a matching jacket. After that
day he let me take over his wardrobe.
The pants are $4.99 each. I take them off
the rack. I take them off again. What’s the etiquette of buying clothes for a
man whose earnings pay your credit card bill; who is still your husband, but
not really? I take the pants to the register.
Later I call a friend and tell her what
I’ve done. I ask her if it’s weird. “Yes,” she sputters. “Don’t give them to
him.”
“I couldn’t not buy them for $5!” I reason.
“If I hadn’t bought these, then next time he needed pants he would have bought
them for $50 each, and that would have been $250 less that could have been
spent on our kids.”
Silence. “Okay,” I sign. “It’s weird.”
In the end we decide that the kids will
give the pants to M. for Father’s Day.
