Annexing the contents of the house was easier than it should have been. Neither of us really wanted to draw it out, so the haggling ended up being pretty clinical. Precise. Almost embarrassingly easy.
We drove home silently one day, emotionally exhausted from the endless parade of brown board rooms, legal forms, and meetings. Eroding hours had left her consciousness sore. I felt a heavy weight knotting in my stomach as I parked the car and walked up the driveway in silence.
We had agreed that tonight I would sleep on the couch. I walked into the bedroom to grab my pillow and a set of blankets. I found her looking at her drawer of gifts I’d given her.
“Are you gonna keep those?” I asked. I felt a catch in my throat.
She was holding a plank of wood on which I’d drawn or written in Sharpie a whole slew of funny quotes and moments and memories we’d shared together. I’d given it a year after we’d started dating. I thought of the smile she’d worn as she’d first examined it; the ringing laughter as she read over each one and investigated the crudely-drawn cartoons.
She tilted it in my direction.
“Do you want it?”
I shook my head slowly. “I gave it to you. I meant for you to have it.”
She handed it to me anyway.
I took it.
I sat on the living room couch, staring at the piece of wood, thinking back hard to that first year of our relationship, trying to wrap my emotional fingers around all the moments we’d shared together.
Someone else might have described that moment as one of memories flooding back. But it wasn’t. It was more like fumbling in the dark, and dragging your hand over an invisible, yet familiar shape, then running your fingers along its edges and reminding yourself of its size, weight, and structure. Bringing it out in the light to examine. That’s what it was like for me that evening. For hours I read through quotes and traced my finger over cartoons.
What had happened to us?
I thought back to her words the day she had decided to divorce me. Fulfillment, she had said. She had married me looking for fulfillment.
What had I married her for?
It was dark by the time I wandered back towards the bedroom and stood in the doorway, looking down at her as she lay wrapped up in the bedding. I stared at her silently as her long, dark hair spilled over the side of the pillows, and the shadows contoured gently, elegantly down the edges of her face.
Even after all we’d been through, it was hard not to see how beautiful she was.
I’m not sure if it was a few minutes or a few hours before she moved, curving her legs up to prop herself forward, arms reaching over to flip on the bed lamp.
“Everything okay?” she moaned, squinting at the light.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“You’re not sleeping.”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
I leaned against the doorway and closed my eyes. A half-asleep chuckle spurted out of my lungs. I opened my eyes again.
“You are beautiful,” I said.
“Kev, we’re… we’re basically divorced. You say stuff like that, it’s only gonna make it harder.”
“It’s hard for you?” I asked.
“Well, sure it’s hard. Just because this isn’t what I wanted doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to let it go.”
I walked inside and sat down on a chair on the inside of the doorway.
“Will you marry me?”
She rolled her eyes, turned over on her side, and flopped back down on the mattress. “I think it’s a little late to save this marriage, Kev. We’re getting divorced. No going back on that now.”
I walked around the bed and knelt down on the other side.
“To save this marriage, sure. I asked will you marry me. Again.”
Her brow furrowed. But even in her stupor, I could tell a part of her wanted to smile. “What do you mean?”
“Sure, this marriage, this… game… it’s toxic. I figure you married me because you were chasing a fulfillment I couldn’t give you. Maybe wouldn’t give you. And I figure I married you because you fit well into my five-year plan. Like it would prove somehow that I’m a big deal.”
“A match made in heaven,” she said sarcastically.
“Yeah, hard to believe how that one could fall apart,” I chuckled. “That’s why I want another one.”
She propped her head up on her elbow. “But another one with me.”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
“What makes you think it’s gonna turn out any differently?”
“Because this time it’s not gonna be about the status I can get from you,” I said. “This time it’s gonna be about what I can give.”
She thought about it quietly. “Is this so that you don’t have to sleep on the couch tonight?”
I chuckled. “When you’re my size, it’s not a very comfortable couch.”
She half-smiled as her eyelids drooped low. “This sounds like one of those things that’s really easy to say and not mean,” she said. “Like you’re saying you want to give me something but really what you’re hoping is that I’ll reciprocate so that I’ll give you something.”
“We’ve been fighting for months,” I said. “I know saying this is going to cost me something. The same way I know it’ll mean ironing out some kinks.”
“Kinks are fun,” she said softly.
“Yeah they are,” I said, chuckling. “I’m not asking for anything, Lia,” I said. “But I’ll give you everything I can. Everything I have. Time, energy, focus—I’ll give it to you, Lia. It’s yours. I think—I think I wanna try not being selfish right now.”
She lay there, silently, and let out a long, tired sigh. I sat there in the light of the bed lamp, for the first time in a long time, comfortable in the same room with Lia.
“Hold me,” she whispered.
I walked around the bed, shut off the light, and snaked my way under the covers, my hand sliding gently over her smooth, arcing midriff. I pulled my body in close and felt the warmth of her back in my nose.
#
The following day I went to the hardware store after work to buy a huge block of wood and another Sharpie. I walked in the door and handed it to Lia.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I handed her the Sharpie. “I want us to fill this one in together.”
Pages: 1 2
