SIX 

 

Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing is real. It's as if every memory of Nikki and me together has been erased. Every beautiful moment we shared, wiped out as though they never happened.

"She wants a divorce," I keep repeating as I walk in a zombie-like trance up the stairs and into my bedroom.

I'm in shock, like someone who's just witnessed the death of their whole family. In fact, this was precisely how I felt the night my sister, my last remaining family member, died. It's like an out of body experience, like the ordeal is happening to someone else and I'm merely watching from the sidelines.

"My marriage is over," I say, sitting absently on the edge of the bed. That's it, a dissociative state. Isn't that what you call it when a person loses all sense of reality, of time and place, and becomes so lost in their trauma that they can't think, or reason, or cry?

Now it hits me. I've been holding on to false hope, the hope of a fool. A fool who has, up till now, only been seeing what she wants to see; believing what she wants to believe. The truth is, and has always been, that my marriage was over the second Nikki walked out on me and our daughter. I should have known. Nothing would prompt a person like her to do something like that unless every fiber of her being convinced her it was the right move.

She was never coming back to me.

But to send her mistress – her whore – to relay the news, only a person with no heart would do such a thing.

My body shakes as I try to quell the tears. I try to blink them away, but they keep falling. They're so used to that by now; I couldn't stop them if I tried.

Then I do something that I've never done before. A bloodcurdling scream rips from my mouth and fills the room. It's so loud it burns my throat.

I'm like a mad woman as I shove everything off the dressing table, wrench open the closet and proceed to tear every item of clothing that Nikki left.

"I gave you my life," I scream, pulling at a cashmere sweater until it finally rips. "I've been nothing but loyal; I've done nothing but love you. And this is how you repay me."

I spot a small box in the back of the closet, and reach for it. It's been almost a year since I last looked in there, since we sat together and perused through the contents. We do it every year, without fail. On our anniversary.

A stack of folded papers lie inside, among them two ticket stubs for Desert Hearts. The local movie theater was doing a showing of some romance classics. That was our first date, and the first night we kissed.

I slump down on the carpet, pick up the stubs and look at them.

"You kept yours too?" Nikki had asked six months later, when we were in bed, and I'd casually brought up the fact that I still had my ticket stashed in the bottom of my underwear drawer.

"Of course I did. I couldn't throw it away."

She proposed to me shortly after that.

"When you showed me the ticket stub, I knew right then that we were meant to be together," she'd said. "I just knew you were the one."

Now her words echo in my head. Once they had meant everything to me, but now they mean nothing. As hollow as our vows; as empty as her promises to me. How callous it was to make them, to say those things, all the while knowing that her heart belonged to another.

Just like the divorce papers, I rip the stubs up into little pieces. Then I move on to the letters. Love letters. I'm not strong enough emotionally to read them before I shred them. That would be too painful. To see more of her words, more of her lies, telling me how much she loves me, and how hopeless she would be without me. Telling me, sometimes in cheesy verse, that nothing in the world means more to her than I do. I don't need to read them – I remember almost every sentence, word for word.

She would write them once or twice a month, at work, at home while I slept, it didn't matter where. Then I'd wake to find a new one on my nightstand. It went on like that for two years. Then Emily came along. But I never stopped feeling loved and cherished. She showed me, told me in so many ways.

I'm rabid when I tear those worthless pieces of paper. I leave them in a strewn pile on the closet floor. They represent all that we are now: torn, broken beyond repair, filled with lies.

I don't get up from the floor when I'm done. I lie down among the mess, cradling and crying myself to sleep.

 

"Faye? Are you in?" The voice – her voice – wrenches me from my slumber. I wake, disoriented, to find myself on the floor in the closet. I can't get up fast enough, and she catches me. "What are you..."

I pick myself up. She's looking at the mess I've caused, at the destruction of her things, of our memories, and there's a melancholy look in her eyes.

"Were those our letters?" she says.

I say nothing as I step out of the closet, stepping all over her things. I shoot her the most scathing look I have in me, and don't blink, making it all the more ominous.

"Why–" She stops herself abruptly, as though realizing how stupid the question is.

But I'm prepared to give her an answer. I square up to her, and for a moment she looks genuinely afraid, afraid of what she has led me to do. I'm not a violent person at all – at least, I didn't use to be; but she sees a woman on the edge, and it frightens her, I guess.

I look into those leaf-green eyes, not into the eyes of my wife but a stranger who has caused me nothing but pain, and then I say, "I hate you."

She flinches. She knows I mean it. I've never meant anything more in my life. Not even the I love yous. You can love someone deeply, but when they hurt you the way Nikki has hurt me, that hate cancels everything out. The hate is so immense, it consumes you.

"Don't say that. Look, I saw the divorce papers on the floor in the hallway. She shouldn't have come here. I didn't want you to find out that way."

She isn't telling me that Angel lied, that they're not getting married. She isn't telling me that it's too soon to even be thinking about a divorce let alone remarriage. Instead she's trying to apologize for breaking my heart.

"I don't think we have anything left to say to each other."

"Of course we do. We have a child together."

"No! I have a child," I scream, the rage enveloping me all over again. I don't care how callous what I'm saying sounds. This is her own doing.

"Emily is my daughter too, Faye. No matter what happens between us, that isn't going to change."

"We'll see about that."

She grips my wrist when I try to walk away. "I'm not just going to desert my daughter. You know that."

"Do I? That's not what your whore says. In fact, she made it very clear you won't fight me for custody."

She frowns, searches my face for signs that I'm lying.

"She wouldn't say that. She knows how much Emily means to me."

This comment makes me see red. I hate the fact that they've spoken about my daughter, about their future together with her. They were making plans while I was still moping around the house, bemoaning the breakdown of my marriage, and clinging onto false hope of a reconciliation.

"If you think I'm going to let that evil bitch anywhere near my daughter, you're as crazy as she is. If you think you get to play happy families with my child–"

"No one is trying to replace you."

I let out a sardonic laugh. "No? Seems to me that that's exactly what's happening. You couldn't even wait two months before you file for a divorce. Well, guess what, I'm not signing those papers, no matter how many times you send them."

She's trying to stay calm as she takes in a shaky breath.

"I know that you're upset right now, so I won't push you."

She's so cold, it's as if she's been replaced by a robot. How can she stand there so calmly and say these things to me? Even if she doesn't love me anymore, surely her humanity would act as a filter.

"Get out of my house," I say, eyes burning into hers. "And leave your key. You're not welcome here anymore."

"Okay, I'll go, but we're going to have to talk about this properly at some point."

I've already turned my back to her. I don't want her to see my tears.

"I really am sorry. I didn't want it to be like this," she says. Is it my imagination or did I hear her voice get choked up? No, because that would mean she actually has a soul, and everything she's done recently speaks to the contrary.

I hear the plonk of the key on the dresser, then she leaves. I watch her from my bedroom window as she climbs into her new car. She doesn't drive off immediately, just sits there, hands on the wheel. I would give all I have to know what she's thinking. Perhaps she's already regretting her actions. Maybe a part of her is battling with the other part to knock on the door and plead for me to take her back.

It wouldn't matter now, anyway. It's too late; the damage has been done. She can't come back. Not now, not ever.