Suzanne Finnamore

My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.

Together we agree that there are few tableaus more pathetic than a woman poring over a plethora of self-help books, while in a small café across town her husband is sharing a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and fettucini Alfredo with a beautiful woman, fondling her fishnet knee and making careful plans to escape his life.

I think: I would like to take N back to a story right now, like a rake. I would say, "Oh, this rake is uneven. Do you have any where the tines go straight across?" I would like to do a straight exchange. But there are things that cannot be returned. Errant husbands are one of them. Wives are not. Wives can be exchanged; I have always known this.

Conversely, I though humiliation would be everything, but it´s such a nothing.

People told me not to get married; I didn´t listen. No one ever listens, it seems to me now. Perhaps people should stop trying to communicate. N was not a communicator; early on, I´d insisted on communication. Now I see his point acutely. I would love to have him back to not communicate with me. I would never ask for communication again, I would simply go elsewhere for the deep fish. Also, I´m not at all sure I want to hear what he has to say in this new vista. This works out well.

I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it__ thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.

They ought to do away with divorce settlements. Instead, both parties should flip a coin. The winner gets to stay where he or she is and keep everything. The loser goes to Paraguay. That´s it.

The real genesis is forbidden to me, vis-_-vis N´s inability to confess even the mildest transgressions.

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference. People should be informed, as adopting a cat and becoming married take about the same amount of time and money and yet have such drastically different results. Indeed, except for the similar price($28)and the average time spent together, all similarity between pet adoption and marriage ends nastily.

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time.

I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference.

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

This is much easier than when N left. Our son is unable to grasp and simultaneously turn doorknobs yet. If only this trick could be unlearned by men over thirty, many more families would celebrate Christmas together.

The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.

Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

This people know where their husbands are. I would like to vomit. I would like to vomit my soul out.