“We’ll have to do something different next time,” Louie said.
Thankfully, he was holding his two bags, so there was no chance of a hug.
“I think we’re done, but it was nice meeting you.”
“OK,” Louie said, shuffling off to his car.
Note to self: Next time I feel the urge to bowl, go with the kids.
How had I gotten to this awkward stage in my life? The only way to tell this story is to go back and start at the beginning.
2
Bryan and I took turns crying as we went through our closet, then his dresser drawers and his shoe pile. We tried to stay calm as we sorted out his summer clothes, the ones he would take when he moved south.
He was looking for his golf shoes, which had never reappeared after we moved into the house three years earlier. I hoped there would be plenty of sunny golfing days for him in North Carolina. Our marriage was over, but I wished him a better life after he went south.
Bryan’s daughter, Cassie, who’s twenty-four, and toddler-age son, Ben, lived in Wilmington. Every month, Bry made the twelve-hour trip south to visit them, leaving after dinner and driving through the night. While he was in North Carolina, he’d text me pictures of himself with Ben on the beach, jumping waves in his little blue surfer swimsuit. He made sand sculptures of giant turtles, pirates having elaborate swordfights, sunfish. Bryan was teaching Ben how to throw a Frisbee. He would carry Ben past the short, spitting waves and stand facing the surf, while Cassie took photos of them in silhouette. She had the pictures made into a collage that Bryan kept on our dining room wall.
There were times we had talked about moving to Wilmington together. For me, it was speculation, wishful thinking about how great it would be to live near the beach. For Bryan, I began to realize, it had become almost a necessity to flee New York winters and be closer to his family.
“Guess you won’t need these,” I said, tossing his thermal long johns into the donate pile.
It was my turn to cry.
We stood in the bedroom near the half-empty closet and he pulled me to his chest. We held on to each other for what felt, more than anything, like we were saying I love you, and goodbye.
3
I knew that one word, a single word, “stay,” would halt the course of the runaway train. Stay.
It had been months since Bryan and I agreed we were both miserable in the marriage, that the many, many ways we’d tried to fix it hadn’t done any good at all. I’d actually made a pro/con list, and the only thing on the pro side was that I loved him. We genuinely loved each other. We just didn’t love the life we had together.
We wanted to keep things normal, just for a little while, maybe until the start of spring. It was February in New York; who knew when spring would arrive. Sometimes it was early April, other years the end of May.
That night, we went to the home goods store and bought black and white bath towels and a rose-scented candle for the coffee table. He wanted to go to the mall and look at jeans because he thought they were on sale. I went with him, and he bought two pairs for $30—a great deal, really.
That night, we curled up so far away from one another in bed that my arm dangled off the side. I couldn’t bear to see Bryan, the way he slept with his hands under his face like he was praying, how he kicked at the covers when his feet got too warm, quietly mumbled on occasion, as if trying to tell me something in his sleep.
My five-year-old little Yorkie, Penny, small and confused, lay between Bryan and me in the wide, king-sized bed. Her sleeping spot was usually at our feet so Bryan and I could reach for each other. But it had been a long time since either of us moved closer to the other in bed.
We had been together since right after my first divorce. I hate the way people refer to it as getting “remarried,” announcing to the world you failed the first time around. We’d been married three years; two of them were really good. My first husband, Adam, was my college sweetheart. I’d met Bryan right after Adam left. I never really took the time to pause and reflect on the good sense of stringing one relationship into another. More than once, the word “rebound” came to mind.
Bryan and I had some very good times and some very bad ones, but in the end, it was time for it to be done.
I realized it was time to tell my kids what was going on between Bryan and me.
“So, I hope you’re all right with this… I don’t want to upset you, but Bryan and I are separating,” I told my daughter, Madison, who’s twenty-five, the next morning when she came over for scrambled eggs. She had her own apartment ten minutes away, but dropped by for things like breakfast, laundry, and long debates about the meaning of life.
“Yeah, well better that than stay unhappy—morose, really,” Madison said, opening a box of raisins.
“You could tell things weren’t right?”
“I know you, Mombo,” Maddy said, staring me down with her pretty green eyes and expertly applied black eyeliner. “It’s been like the plague around here since Christmas.”
So I hadn’t done such a good job of making things seem normal.
“You think Ian will be OK?”
My son Ian was twenty-one and lived with Bryan and me.
“Ian’s pretty tough, and it can’t possibly be as bad as when Dad left.”
“Yeah, I was worried about that,” I said, looking around for Penny, because everything felt better when she was on my lap. At night, before we fell asleep, I always thanked her for saving my life every day.
“But still, Ian
