Another Woman
Three years after Danny created a Facebook profile, I filed for divorce. I didn?t want to. But what could I do? My husband was a married man in the throes of a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of thirty-five.
What happened to the good old days of those hidden furtive affairs in motels and parking lots. Or in some lovers lane, grinding on each other to Bob Marley or the Beatles.
When you are from the Islands, like we are, you called it commonness. Here in good old Brooklyn, we call it love making. I sometimes jokingly call the act intercourse or when I felt naughty I would say fucking, or when I felt grateful for the connection or for the momentary rush of addicting pleasure, I called it rom pom. In this place, a concrete jungle, as young and hungry as we were, we were doing it at the back of the theater, or at the back of Met grocery store, or on the L train at midnight.
We had a good life. Married for ten years. No children. Busy with our careers. Most of my extended family live in Brooklyn. His family now live in upstate NY. Their suburbia. Albany. Cold in the winter. Hot in the summer. And green in the spring. It is there he now wants to visit. It would be my first time. I don?t know what to expect. I?m fed up. We are now done.
?We need to talk.?
Those were the first words he grunted to me in more than a week. He was the one who cheated. He was the one who was on social media pretending he was single. Why do I now feel hurt, ? should I have taken the higher road and confronted him. No. he should not have waited so long after I sent him the screen shot of the text messages I found. Is it my ego?
We are in the car and going to Albany. His mother wants to talk to me. He mummur something about the city, our jobs, and us needing time to reconnect. We hadn?t had sex in over six months. Well, now I know why.
With the city a long way behind us, the interstate now late spring was sparse of the traffic I expected.
The early morning sky was clear and cloudless. With the windows down, the cool and refreshing air sauntered in like the Beatles down Abbey Road. The soothing tones, the lyrics interwining in my brain with the tumultuous feelings and musings of fidelity, loyalty, infidelity, and hope. All germinating, the echoes of emotions trickling through my veins, hot and cold, hidden, secretive, new, and faltering, changing. The classic created a heady feeling sinking into my bones with nostalgia.
I am not sure when I began to feel less angry and more anxious. My heart was still filled with seeds of discontent and some pulsations of regret. A little less angry and a sudden longing for the days when we were breathing for each other, breaths mingling, gazes enthralled.
I am now fuming that this is his plan, he is always purposeful not excitable to the ups and downs of life's challenges. He knew what he was doing. I need to focus more on what makes me happy. I am willing my thoughts away from the music, his perfect eyebrows, his plump upper lip, and the casual ease with which he handles the steering wheel and this powerful car, strumming with his fingers, a remembered strength to my cares.
I met your friend Susan on Wednesday. We had a long conversation.
I did not answer right away. My heart hammered in my chest. Convulsing in preparation for the words I must utter, singular and dismissive, prohibiting that I must tell the truth.
Yes
She came on strong. Told me her truth. Is there something I missed.
Susan started working at JTL LLC about a year ago. We became fast friends and before I knew it. We had kissed.
I love my work, the close friends who really know me and my new best friend Susan.
The soft lyrics breathe into the silence.
The lush greenery lightens and darken on both sides of the road. Danny?s mouth clenched. I know he is angry. His personality is not one to display his emotions readily. He is what we call a slow boil. It takes him long to display any semblance of how he feels. This is going to be a long drive.
I still did not answer him when he reached and gently grasp my left hand with his right. I could not look at him. I fed my anger with rememberances of his text messages and social media posts. Rehearsing comments to retaliate.
He switched to Bob Marley. The soothing tone singing One Love. Tears ached behind my eyes. I sniffed and turned my face to the receding foliage, billboards, and traffic signs. I cannot bear to look in his direction. He is now singing along. His gaze towards the road, his mouth curling tasting the words and caressing the rhythms. How dare he be happy. This ride this going away to talk, he said was not his idea. Who was he listening to?
We turned into the long driveway of his parents four-bedroom bungalow. The two-acre expanse a glorious abstract. A warm release besieged my limbs. Tears again pushed against the reservoir.
The cabin was surrounded by white flowers, contrasting with greens, thick underbrush with an old barn or a large hut in the deepening brush and trees. Danny?s family?s cabin. I had heard about it. His boyhood spent running, building treehouses, canoeing on the adjoining lake, and the nighttime campfires. This is my first time. Ten years of marriage right out of college and now we are here.
His parents visited Brooklyn twice a month and with the busyness of life, I was always too engaged to reciprocate. His mother now answered the door and enveloped me with a breathy hug, carrying the familiar smells of curry and cumin and geehra. She prolonged the hug and I dug my face into her salt and pepper braids, not looking at Danny or his dad or even his sister as they all stood watching and pretending that I was the same person I was five years ago.
I?m hungry, I said looking at my mother in law. I called her Aunty in that honorary way Island folk called an older person. She smiled and touched my face, the smoothness of her thumbs erasing the tears I had tried for hours to anesthetize as they trickled from the corner of my eyes. I blinked furiously as the realization that this family, Danny, and I? They are my family?
Topic: First Draft - Another Woman (Read 862 times)