To My Ex-Husband Read online

  Anyway, Edward had to talk about his vasectomy the way women discuss their babies’ deliveries. Rudy was fascinated, first and foremost by the fact that Edward had fainted. I could tell that Edward was sorry that he told him, but he never keeps anything from Rudy. It would be like lying to himself.

  Rudy said he had never actually been able to go through with a vasectomy. He had too many friends who had problems. One of them had undergone two vasectomies. He had his seminal fluid tested after the first one, and the sperm were still swimming around. Rudy’s friend was convinced that it hadn’t worked because his surgeon was Catholic, and didn’t believe in what he was doing. Another friend developed a huge mass on his testicles. I forget what that was all about, probably because Edward insisted on repeating this conversation to me at dinner and running the risk of ruining my appetite for grilled swordfish marinated in sesame oil and tamari.

  I wish Melissa had been at home that night. She would have done me the favor of stopping Edward in mid-sentence by yelling, “Oh, gross!” and running to her room. And don’t think Melissa’s presence would have deterred him from discussing it. Ever the scientist, there is no subject that is off-limits to Edward, even with his children. I couldn’t wait to tell Melissa that her father fainted, lest she think him impervious to the weaknesses of mortal men.

  SEPTEMBER 26

  Peter was sweet to try to break it gently to his grandmother that he and Sarah were living together, but that they really did plan to get married one day. My mother was actually funny about it, apparently. “Peter,” she said, in that earnest, crackly little voice, “I hope you don’t expect me to get married one day.” Three generations all living in sin. Oh, that’s right, I forgot. We don’t have sin anymore. What could anybody say, anyway? It’s really something when your grandmother is so outrageous that she paves the way for you. Next thing you know, she’ll be backpacking her way up here from Florida on a moped.

  One thing that Peter might not understand that the rest of us do is that not being married doesn’t protect you from the pain if it doesn’t work out. There is no shield from the ravages of love. There is only the strength to pick up the pieces.

  Quite apart from love, there is something always to be said for pooling your resources. Annie certainly had mixed feelings about Edward’s moving in and giving her room over to Melissa, although overall she’s thought of it as kind of fun, like “The Brady Bunch.” But you’d never believe how coldly practical she is. When I told her that Edward and his ex-wife were putting their house on the market, and that it was time to make a decision about whether he and I would live together, she said, “Do it, Mom. He has a much better television, a VCR, and a KitchenAid. It’s a good deal.” Where did we get this kid?

  She reminded me of your mother talking about the men in her retirement community. The ultimate qualification for eligibility was owning a car. He didn’t necessarily have to be ambulatory. If you saw him actually move while sitting on a park bench, that made him an okay kind of guy.

  If nothing else, I seem to have taught my daughter some survival techniques. A working dishwasher (with a brand name, yet) isn’t the worst way to begin a new life.

  Annie should only know what went through my mind when Edward and I were on vacation. Perhaps it was only cold feet, but I felt suddenly horribly trapped. Our days of being alone together were about to end. Melissa had decided not to divide her time any longer between Edward and her mother, which was certainly easy to understand. It isn’t just that they don’t get along; it’s a jarring system. Joint custody is a fine notion, but the reality is unsettling at best, and the kids do all the adjusting. I remember Annie’s saying to me, when all of her friends were packing up every other week and shuffling off to their other parent’s house, that that was the one thing she refused to do.

  I had always assumed that Edward and I would at least have alternate weeks to ourselves. But much of my anxiety had nothing to do with Melissa. It had to do with the loss of autonomy. I really had gotten used to doing things my own way, whether it was the order in which I ran errands on Saturdays or packing the car for a trip. There was no order; that was my order. A prerequisite of my life was that nothing could be planned. And if I blew it and lost out, that would be my problem. There wouldn’t be anyone saying, “You see? Now look.”

  After you left, I did look, and I rather liked what happened. I had fun making my own mistakes. No one likes to be alone all the time, but after I met Edward, I had the choice. I could be alone or I could be with him. Now I would be with him. So who was sitting on the beach in August with her head in her hands and saying, “You see? Now look.” I was.

  OCTOBER 21

  It’s the first thing everybody thinks of when this happens, that it must be a car crash or a gas explosion. The house shakes, the dog runs under the bed, and you wake up and call the gas company. Hundreds of people do it. But not us. Not this time. This time, we were smart. We knew it was an earthquake.

  Wrong. It was a crash, and it was a car. But it didn’t hit another car. It came through the yard at 1:47 in the morning, demolished the gate and a portion of the fence, uprooted several shrubs, and sliced a sizeable chunk out of the dogwood tree.

  And then it backed up, leaving a thick, black cloud of exhaust, and took off. Edward and I got to the front door just in time to see the left rear fender of Pamela’s car going around the corner. But of course we can’t be absolutely certain, although how many bright-yellow vintage Beetles do you see? Pamela the ex-wife. Pamela the alleged vandal.

  Why did I have the feeling that she had gone around the block and was now parked in the dark, watching as we climbed over the debris, open-mouthed and stunned, in our night clothes? Surely, you wouldn’t take that kind of risk without wanting to see the reaction. Such a violent and dramatic act deserved an audience. What an incredible letdown it would be just to go back to your apartment and go to bed.

  If it was Pamela, how can I sleep comfortably in this house? How can I come and go, or let Annie and Peter stay here when they’re at home, if the ex-wife of the man I live with is crazed? And what about Pamela’s own children? They’d be in danger, too. They’re traitors, after all. I have to believe that if it was Pamela, this is an isolated incident, an aberration. Still: I wait for the other shoe to drop. I go to bed at night and think, today she uses a car; what will it be tomorrow, a gun? Will she move from property to people?

  Pamela has become an idea, a demon that runs rampant in my mind, simply by being an unknown quantity. I want to have lunch with her; I want to talk. The children of a woman I’ve never met move into my house and change my life. I want to give her a face.

  If I could talk to Pamela, I could judge for myself. I’d know whether to be frightened or not. I’d know whether to worry that one morning Edward and the kids and I will be front-page news: DENTAL HYGIENIST SETS FIRE TO HOUSE OF EX-HUSBAND, LOVER. It’s scary, isn’t it, that one day you fall in love with this petite and rather elegant woman who happens to be your assistant. And then, on another day, this very woman, the one you adored, decides that you’re the enemy. She turns on you, wants to destroy you and everything connected with you.

  I don’t know any violent people; but if I had to think of someone capable of violence, it would most likely be a man. But I never expect violence from anybody. I think that’s why I was so upset by the ending of Shoot the Moon. It wasn’t out of character for that man, perhaps, but it was out of character for the men I knew. But I remember the anger building up, rolling to a pitch, like a summer storm. And then Albert Finney, as the estranged husband, taking his car and smashing the new tennis court and all its trappings to smithereens. Even he seems surprised by what he has done.

  But women don’t do this. Diane Keaton’s lying in the bathtub and singing a Beatles’ song—“… But I couldn’t stand the pain …”—struck me as a much truer chord. It was something I would do, something I have done.

  As I said, I don’t know Pamela, but this isn’t the Pamela I’v
e heard about, sweet, vulnerable. Angry, yes. But far more self-destructive than violent. I’m sure Tony and Melissa wouldn’t believe she would be capable of doing anything like this, nor would Edward. But for having seen the yellow car that has given such fuel to my imagination, it would never occur to any of us that it was somebody we know.

  Meanwhile, in my head I have this portrait of a marriage between a healthy, level-headed man and a hysteric that may have no bearing on the truth. And if I think about what happened not as an act of violence, but one of passion, I see it differently. And I see anybody, anybody at all, passionately wanting to do something insane and satisfying. And why not do it to the one we think destroyed our life?

  We live with a person for ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. We know all that person’s weaknesses and failures. What is it about that knowledge, being known, that eats away at us and turns to poison? It’s because that knowledge reflects. Your spouse becomes a mirror, and the closer you get to him, the more you see yourself, and the more you hate what you see.

  NOVEMBER 3

  Leon Fine called yesterday and said, “Congratulations!”

  I thought he was being sarcastic. He knows I wouldn’t have voted for George Bush. Then, because I didn’t get it, he said, “Emily, you’re a divorced woman.”

  It sounded all wrong to me. Congratulations are for things one can be proud of; I was anything but proud. The reality is emotionally devastating and shameful. I’m ashamed. Then, this afternoon, the papers came. There is this phrase, “Irretrievable breakdown,” printed in the upper right hand corner of the decree. It sounds like a rude and incorrect diagnosis that belongs to some other couple. Is this really us?

  We’re just another statistic now, just another failure. But there’s something else about the fact of the divorce that deeply disturbs me, something I hadn’t adequately prepared myself for. I don’t like the word “divorce” or the image it evokes, though there was a time when divorce—and divorcée—had a chic, Wallis Simpson ring to it. Now I’m appalled. It’s just not how I see myself, as someone who gets divorced.

  I like to think, as I guess everyone who goes through it does, that our divorce isn’t one of those, that it’s different. I continue to believe that I had the right instincts, married the right person. For two decades you were someone I looked forward to seeing every day. A woman once said to me, “If you are what you choose, you choose something different at forty than you do at twenty-five.” It’s true that I might not choose you today; but there is no question that I would, that I have in many respects, chosen the kind of man that you are. You’re not reaching into a different drawer when you settle in with a second person. You’re still looking for some level of integrity and sensitivity and humor. If we can’t live together happily, that doesn’t mean that you aren’t still important to me as any man, any person, could be; you’re the one who gave me my connection to the world.

  I don’t know if you remember my old high school friend Louise. She wrote me a letter recently that contained the usual catch-up data, the work she’s doing as the new pastor of her church, news of her children, what their interests are. Then there was this paragraph that began, “John and I still manage to find each other exciting and interesting …”

  With those words, I felt the enormity of the loss all over again. I haven’t been able to write back. I can’t face our relative positions. Here’s a woman who would never be separated, never be divorced. She always had such clarity, such personal strength, that that kind of failure would always be outside her.

  Nor have I written to either my high school or my college alumnae office to tell them my newest news, that I have just received congratulations on my divorce, that the life I have led since my school days could be summed up in a single, tight-lipped exchange between confidantes: Did you get the house? I got the house.

  Not that anyone would be surprised. Sometime on a visit home from college during my freshman year, I went back to my high school, and was talking with a former, and formidable, teacher. I was on academic probation at the time, an apparently unstartling development to this woman who met my announcement with an indifferent silence, borne, I believed, of abject boredom. To ease my discomfort, I quickly added, “But Louise is doing very well.”

  “Yes,” she replied curtly, “one would have expected her to do well.”

  Now I imagine meeting that teacher once again, in just that way, standing awkwardly in the same hallowed hall and telling her of Louise’s entrance into the ministry—and my divorce. “Yes,” she would say, as though she already knew. “Of course.”

  Was it an illusion—tell me it wasn’t—that we did some things effectively? Last spring, at Peter’s graduation, as we were sitting out on that lush lawn and holding hands, waiting for him to walk across the stage and collect his degree, I thought that despite the upheaval and all its attendant misery, we had managed together to raise two very fine people; that there was a rightness in these events that is mercifully both reassuring and irrevocable. I also thought that there was no one else I would have wanted beside me but you.

  NOVEMBER 17

  It just ruins a meal to try to talk to Nina about you. She refuses to participate in the post-mortems. She says I’m boring on the subject, that I make her crazy. She makes a decision. Snap, snap. She doesn’t look back, whereas I look back every day. I need to see where I’ve been. This is not to say that I live in the past, but that the past is the only way I can understand the present.

  Somebody once told me (I have no idea who, but I guess we know it wasn’t Nina) that there’s a year of mourning for every three years of marriage. Her point was that we must go through the process. Otherwise, it’ll catch up to us one day, possibly even years from now, and we’ll be paralyzed by guilt and remorse. I don’t know whose formula this is, but if it has any validity, we have a few years to go.

  DECEMBER 1

  I never thought that I would come to a point in my life in which there would be piles and piles of lovely, lacy bras in a rainbow of seductive colors emerging from the “delicate” cycle of my washing machine. If Whirlpools could talk! This is serious lingerie, with underwire supports and cups in a size that is a little farther along in the alphabet than I’m accustomed to. It’s like living in a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  Nick, there is a nymph in my house. Melissa looks like something out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but, unfortunately, she has all the earthly qualities of the quintessential teenager. Just taking a shower is a trial. You can’t get to the water without fighting your way through seventeen different kinds of shampoos and conditioners, disposable razors that never get disposed of, facial sponges, brushes, henna rinses, and the hair itself, which gathers, like a cough ball, on the screen over the drain. The nail supplies have been summarily removed (by me) and put back in her room. Soon it will be necessary to build an annex just to contain the beauty products.

  I begin to see Pamela for what she is—smart. Really smart. Would that I could see Melissa every now and then and take her out to dinner. Every time her door slams or the volume goes up on her stereo, or six of her friends come home with her at 2 A.M. after a party, I think, Pamela must be laughing herself sick. How silly of me to think she’d be concerned about how I deal with her daughter, or how her daughter deals with me. All she’s thinking is “Better her than me.”

  I enjoyed Annie and Peter’s adolescence, although a universal exception could be made for thirteen-year-old girls. Nina and I were always calling each other on mornings that had gotten off to a bad start. Invariably the conversation would begin with, “Don’t you just hate them?”

  Melissa’s seventeen, not thirteen, thank God. But Annie will be graduating in the spring. Had I arranged my life differently, I might have been free to take a deep breath and enjoy the solitude while sitting around waiting for the grandchildren to come. Instead, I’ll be here, escalating the aging process. For sure, I’ll be deaf in no time. (By the way, it wasn’t Pamela who drove through the
yard. Melissa happened to mention some time later that her mother was hiking in the Northwest with the Sierra Club at the time. Such a wholesome activity. I should bite my tongue.)

  I wonder whether you worry about Dickens, how he fares as the pet of another man. The truth is, he’s having a big sulk. It hasn’t been easy for an old dog, all these changes. Tony has been his pal, but Tony won’t be at home until Christmas. Edward is Dickens’ pal, too, but his is an old-fashioned devotion, with a built-in this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you kind of discipline. This, as he removes Dickens’ two front paws from the table, plopping him back down on all fours. Edward has what some people would call an “attitude” about dogs, which is that they are dogs.

  As you and I know, this has never been Dickens’ position. We were a democratic unit here, once upon a time. The law of the land seems grossly unjust these days; so much is done to ease the transition for Melissa, who parades around the house talking on her new portable telephone. She brings it to the dinner table, where it is placed squarely to the left of her plate, along with her fork. We would not have allowed this. I tell Edward that if he had the same standard of behavior for Melissa that he has for Dickens, life would be a lot more pleasant. If Dickens doesn’t like what he gets for dinner, he has the option of rejecting it until he starves to death. “When he gets hungry, he’ll eat it,” says Edward. Melissa, on the other hand, is free to fix herself something else. And if she doesn’t feel like it? Edward will fix it. So she doesn’t starve to death.