Divorce: A Love Story

“Our ex-wives always harbour secrets about us that make them irresistible. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we are not married anymore.” ―Richard Ford

I was cooking breakfast, which is odd since I don’t remember that we usually ate things that were cooked for breakfast, and I could swear neither of us ate eggs. Nevertheless, I was cooking breakfast. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

I thought he meant wait for breakfast, or maybe he had started something handy, and it was backfiring like changing a light bulb or building a wall. “What?” I said, looking up from the frying pan, I remembered that frying pan, so it must have been eggs or bacon or pancakes or French toast.

“Stay married,” he said, or “be married,” or maybe he said “marriage.” He’s a journalist; I am a lying fiction writer. I tell great stories. He bores people senseless with all the right details. But this is what I remember.

And then I ducked. I crouched down on the floor like something was crashing through the roof, a meteorite or a rogue airplane or a huge bird. I crouched down and started to scream into my thighs. We had a child, a happy, beautiful, perfect child who didn’t like to see his mommy unhappy, certainly not screaming and crouching and saying “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again.

photo by Shayne Carpenter

Then I told him to leave, then I told him to stay, and then I told him I hated him more than any human being on earth. I could not believe we had actually done it; actually lost this incredible race, this attempt to outrun our pasts, our childhoods, our narcissisms, and our fear.

“You,” I said, shaking my finger at him like a mad Irish witch, “you terrible, terrible man.” I considered hitting him with the frying pan in which whatever I was cooking was no longer viable like our marriage. But I was too weak. My entire body was boneless, tired, finished. I lay down on the floor of the kitchen, noticing crumbs and one of my son’s lost metal soldiers and I sobbed for fifty seconds. But then I jumped back up and said, “Go away. Go away. I’m fine. We’ll be fine. Go away.” So he did.

And then my son came in. “Where’s Daddy?” he asked.
“Daddy’s gone for milk,” I said, scraping whatever it was I had destroyed into the garbage can. Gone for milk. It sounded like that thing people said about men in the sixties who went for cigarettes but then never came home. But he would come home. Men had changed. They wanted joint custody and to share everything but themselves. They didn’t leave, they moved next door or, in our case, downstairs. They parented, they just didn’t have a husband.

After breakfast, I took my son to the small playground near our house. We had been in Chicago only a few months, and I had one tenuous mommy friend. “I think my husband’s left me,” I said while our children fought over the superior position on the jungle gym. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And then she stood, called her daughter over and said she had to leave. I didn’t see her again for eight years when I ran into her in Trader Joe's, and she acted as if she’d never been so happy to see someone.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Divorced,” she said.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “We should get together.”
I nodded.

First, don’t hit him with that frying pan. Try to listen as he tells you how unhappy he is and how he thinks you are also unhappy. Resist the impulse to suggest the world is unhappy, and he should grow up and stop whining. Ask him what he wants. When he says he wants “out,” begin to scream.

As he is going down the stairs, ignore the neighbors and continue to scream that he is a total loser, and you will be better off, and he should go get a really good lawyer because you will take him for everything, but there is no everything because he is such a loser. Tell your child that Daddy is going to get milk. Call your best friend and tell her you want to die. Call your mother and say you are coming home. Tell your mother that she has to stop asking what you did wrong. You did nothing wrong. You are perfect. Tell her to stop calling you “honeybun.” Tell your father what a big loser jerk you married. Accept all offers to send money. Hang up the phone and lie on the floor. Let your child crawl all over you and pretend it’s a game. Stare into his blue eyes and see the same orange circle that you have in your eyes. Be strangely comforted that your soon-to-be ex-husband will never escape your eyes.

Give your child an enormous amount of cereal. When he says “Daddy” instead of milk, you say, “Daddy’s gone.” When your child stops crying, apologize. Tell him that Daddy isn’t gone, but he won’t be back with milk. Give your child a Popsicle and turn on the cartoons. Watch part of the cartoon about Little Bear with your child and sob silently into the back of his head when Little Bear’s family eats breakfast together.

Go into your room and take off all your clothes. Turn around slowly and remember the perfect body you had at nineteen and hated because you hated everything about yourself. Say positive things about your body. Imagine anyone besides your husband seeing you naked and find your gym clothes. Go to the gym. Tell the guy who checks your ID that your husband wants a divorce. Tell the ladies in the gym day care that your husband wants a divorce. Tell the person on the elliptical trainer next to you that your husband wants a divorce. 

Watch a rerun of Dawson’s Creek and try to remember high school. In high school, you were never going to get married. You were going to be a Hollywood screenwriter and live on the edge of a cliff. You didn’t know anything about the Midwest, and you were always the one who left first.

Go home and call your sister. Listen while she tells you all the reasons her life is harder than yours. Then congratulate her on her new high-paying job. Give your child a Popsicle and let him watch the show with the car crashes and the trailer park. Recall your situation, call your husband’s cell phone, and leave a message about his white trash family and how you never should have married him. Call back two minutes later and beg him to forgive you. Sit and stare into space and remember how he met you at the airport when your plane got stuck in Iceland. He wore a beautiful suit and folded you into his arms. He asked you to marry him and put a small diamond on your finger. You loved your diamond. You were pregnant, and everything was so emotionally charged that you cried when someone turned on the light. You told your mother you were losing your identity and she said, “Just wait.”

Your baby was born, and something inside you shifted and moved. “You have fallen in love,” your mother said. “Nothing will ever be the same.” You are part of the world, and when bad things happen, you feel devastated. You have experienced tragedy, and this is not a tragedy. It’s a temporary setback. You call your husband and tell him to get a lawyer. You promise him you will never take away his son and that the only thing that matters to you is that your child is happy. You listen to your husband cry, and you can’t imagine hitting him with a frying pan. You mention joint custody and the hope that both of you will be happy again. You remind your husband that his son has your eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and you hang up gently.

–Molly Moynahan