VALENTINE’S DAY, 2011. A day-long blizzard. I sit on the last train from the City. It carries me toward him. Today, during work, while the 2-year-old napped, I baked two cakes. One for the family, my Healers, and one for my husband, both heart-shaped. I balance my husband’s cake on my lap, and read again the card the little boy I babysit gave me. He “wrote and drew” the card, which he and his parents presented along with a vegan muffin from my favorite bakery. On the front of the card is his little footprint in blue paint with the words “I love you Reemee” curved over it like a rainbow. I trace the sentence, reverently.
What a gorgeous day. I love my kids. Between my siblings, the slum kindergarten, orphanage, and my little New Yorkers, I’ve helped shape over a hundred kids. In the City alone, I’ve had the honor of being part of thirty-six kids’ lives.
The train arrives, depositing me onto the platform. I’ve been in the City for my weekly three-days. I’m happy to return with an occasion to celebrate, anything to interrupt our pain. He roars into the parking lot of the station, gravel spitting off the car tires, his grin whitely visible even in the night, pulling a giggle through me like a needle draws and directs thread. I carry his cake, wrapped in a blue and white cloth napkin. He pelts my face with kisses, rain claiming a patch of earth. I hold up his cake and he inhales the bliss of cinnamon, apples, and raisins.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.” I smile. “How was your day?”
We start driving. Eyes on the road, he answers, boasting that two female patrons at the restaurant tonight asked if he was on the dessert menu. He replied, “Well, that would make sense, ladies. I’m here to make you happy.” For the fifteen-minute drive, he describes in detail what the women looked like and the rest of their conversation. Sorrow grips me in its fist. I feel you nearby, my love, longing for this chapter to end.
We arrive at the Barn. He helps with my bags. I look to the spot on the snow-covered lawn where he’s plotted my future studio. In our home there is room for only his voice, at the expense of mine. We walk through the snow and over a plank of wood, the makeshift, rickety ramp into the house. The air smells like something dying.
He continues talking about the women. I arrange his presents on our bed, an ice cream maker (for ice cream is his favorite food) and two children’s books, The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden and Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney. Inside I have written dedications to him and the kids I still hope by loyal habit we’ll have one day. So much of marriage’s joy is its sincere, cozy habits and loyalties. Even if part of oneself has left or is ready to, the other part loves, gives, and moves by habit and loyalty. It is both sublime and heartbreaking. It is why endings arrive in pieces.
The house is blessedly warm. I change out of my jeans, sweater, and boots and into a satin and lace slip. It’s one of my favorites. The satin is pink, while white lace trails the neckline and hem. The slip is backless, tied by a single bow right above the small of my back and curve of the derriere. He plops down on the bed, tears open his presents, reclines and eats a generous slice of cake, using his fingers. I stand with the pan in my hands. It’s still warm. I hugged it to myself for the two-hour ride between there and here. Through mouthfuls, he brags he could be having sex with both those women this very moment. Thick tendrils of arrogance swirl off him like ink slinking through water.
To have one’s cake and eat it too. I feel hot despite the snow and lace. I watch him talk. I’m a bar of soap he’s worn to a sliver. If I let him, he’ll use me up completely.
“Why are you talking like this again?”
“I’m just being honest.”
“Honesty doesn’t require unkindness.”
“I can’t change. I don’t wanna. Maybe I don’t love you enough.”
“I’m sorry that’s the case, honey. I really am.”
A theme song from Sesame Street starts in my mind. “This Is Your Life.” I loved that sketch, a parody on game shows. The guest of the day is introduced to long-lost mentors. A teacher, relative, neighbor. The unsung heroes. Before they’re revealed, their voice comes through the speakers and you guess the name of the force that has shaped you.
I remember watching Sesame Street like it was this morning. I remember the shadows in our home and I remember thinking, This is not my life. I remember the man and woman and loud silence and thinking, This is not my life.
Yet here we are. Here we are, an eerie replica of the marriage I tried to solve my entire life, a sphinx without rhyme, reason, rescue, or answer, for it cannot be appeased. I look at him on our bed. It nests in the far left corner of the Barn, cocooned by small space heaters scattered like afterthoughts. Stacks of bricks blunt the echoes in this cavernous mouth. It is almost as dark inside as it is outside. We are lit by a few naked light bulbs strung from the rafters. I’ve memorized how to walk around them with my eyes closed, for the scorching glass promises to singe the skin if touched.
An elaborate ring of fire. I’ve encircled myself with forces that can hurt, believing such is love, such is home, such is what I deserve. The Boat, the Bus, the half-burnt Barn. Not once have we inhabited a solid structure. Along with instability and danger, I wonder if I’ve grown accustomed to pain. I’ve grown so adept at enduring, at subsuming my voice to honor another’s. Some nights, as last-ditch efforts, he and I bash our bodies together like shards of flint trying to reignite fire, to no avail. We fail, for we aren’t flint meeting flint. We aren’t need fusing need. We are wound loving wound.
He continues talking, devoted to the bite he clamps. I stand holding a heart in my hands, unable to think of anything I haven’t given him or been for him. I was 4 when I learned to read. After working so hard, one day the lines, curves, dots turned into letters, letters into sounds, and sounds into language. A sudden integration. I finally understood what others could. That feeling of everything coalescing into coherence, I feel now. I know now what you always have.
I am enough as I am. I don’t want to merely endure anymore. He is not my responsibility, failure, quandary, or purpose. I neither desire nor deserve punishing love that lands hard. I don’t want love that includes silence, abuse, manipulation, or captivity. I long for a loving love.
I will never bring children into this home. I would never subject a child to this.
Something cold and bitter fills my mouth. Adrenaline, my body, readying for flight.
The irrevocable has occurred. I, a cell denatured and unable to return to its previous state. The decades I’ve toiled to be enough, for him, him, her, and myself, to be perfect so we may be happy, gather to this moment before exploding, ricocheting light like the birth of a star. I’m not merely a girl devoted to caring and pleasing. I am also the child who didn’t like being separated from her brother at the mosque and said so. I am from a mother who stood by me. And, I am yours, you are mine, and we have an uncanny way of knowing what we always need. We know all I’ll get from biting my tongue is blood. We know the voice, without intimacy, will atrophy. Therefore, we also know the voice, if given love, even by oneself, will grow.
“Look,” he says, grinning, “They even wrote down their phone numbers.” He laughs, brandishing a dirty receipt. He eats another handful.
“No, thank you,” I say aloud.
“What?”
“This is not my life.”
“What?” He frowns.
“This. Is not. My life. My story is so much more than this.”
He gapes then laughs. He rises, begins to pace, yells. I saran-wrap the remains of the day. I wash my face, brush my teeth, get into bed. He follows and falls swiftly asleep, wine wafting from his skin. Is there anything more foul than the scent of alcohol sweated from human flesh, lain atop, beside, inside oneself? Realizing this, and many other things, aren’t qualities I have to stomach anymore, I fall asleep, smiling.
The following day we drive to his sister’s for the weekend. It’s what I wanted for my Valentine’s present, to be around our nieces and family. They are an enormous reason I have remained loyal to hope for as long as I have.
We spend two glorious, peaceful days, full of laughter and children. In the car home he starts again his tired tirade. I repeat, “No, thank you.” I exhale on the window, watch the condensation fade without my writing in it. No heart with initials today.
We drop off our things and leave for the train station. I’m scheduled to spend a few days with my Warriors. He sends dozens of voice mails, texts, emails, pleading I speak to him. He promises we’ll try counseling. Finally.
He senses a corner turned. Gone are the days I lobby for his love.
TWO DAYS LATER.
“Hey baby, can you talk?”
“Sure.” I’m pinch-sitting for a family I don’t usually work with. “The baby just woke up, but I have a few minutes. I’m warming up her bottle.”
“That’s fine. This’ll only take a minute.”
“Everything okay?”
“Don’t come home.”
“Oh, the septic tank again?”
“No. I just don’t feel like doing this anymore.”
“Doing what?”
“This.”
“I’m sorry?”
“This,” he repeats emphatically, like I’m deaf, dumb, or foreign to English. “Our marriage. I. Don’t. Want. To. Anymore.”
“All right. I hear you,” I reply. Feeling my pulse quicken, the baby grows restless. She whimpers.
“I’m holding you back,” he says. “If I love you, I have to let you grow.”
Surprise renders me speechless. It’s the most humble and selfless I’ve ever heard him.
“I love you, too.” I say, finally.
A pause.
“You can figure out a place to stay,” he says. “I have to go.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you . . . when I talk to you.”
I stare at the screen. The call lasted one minute and thirty-seven seconds.
The bottle has sterilized, the milk has warmed. The baby and I sit on the couch. Our breaths align. We inhale and exhale as one. I cradle her, she anchors me. As the milk moves through her, lulling her little body, the soft warmth seeps into me as well.
I don’t cry. I’m neither sad nor shocked. I angle my gaze on a pillar of sunshine spilling into the room. There in the light, I find my feelings.
I don’t feel rejected. I feel released.
“Thank you,” I whisper aloud. I have my backpack and laptop. I have $17. Last week’s earnings went toward our bills. I’ll make $60 today. I don’t have a place to stay tonight. The tenant in my husband’s sublet may be leaving though, in a few weeks. I can take his place. Until then, I have friends. Above all, I have you, and I now have myself.
With the help of scissors found in a kitchen drawer, I cut free our lavender-pink yarn of love. I rub the little indentation left on my finger. After mere minutes, it disappears.
FOR ABOUT FIVE WEEKS, I cry, in fits and bursts. I cry on the subway, while running, at night, on the phone with a friend or Momma. For most of my day, though, I’m blissfully happy. Calm. A memory of him will nudge me, I’ll start missing him and become sad and I’ll think, It’s all right. Would I love him again today, knowing what I do, as who I’ve grown to be? Worse things have happened and worse will. I was happy for twenty-five years without him. I’ll be happy for many more.
After those first few weeks, the tears completely vanish. I search myself for remnant grief only to realize there is none. There is purely gratitude, for our love, his courage in ending us, and all I learned.
From our first to final night of sharing a bed, I would sleep the way I always have, spine straight, flat on my back, with him tied around me like a knot. And during the nights we’d be apart for work, out of romance and love, I’d sleep on the right side of the bed, imagining his form on the left. The night following his final phone call, I realize I have a choice. The pain of memory or freedom. The past or present. I pray that he finds the woman who will curl and bend with him, finding this to be her most comfortable truth. I move to the middle of the bed and sleep in the shape that has always fit me best. It will take us a while to formalize the paperwork, but from that night on, he is in my heart my ex-husband.
I entered my first marriage a girl. I leave, a woman.