She couldn’t even be sure of the setting, since Roger had yet to agree to move out of the house. Glancing around the kitchen, Laura tried to imagine leaving it behind. Right now, giving up something so familiar was unimaginable. With everything else in her life shifting beneath her feet, she clung to whatever constants she could find.
As for the cast of characters, she’d been slowly working down her checklist of those who had to be told. While she’d been certain Julie and Claire would be supportive, she wasn’t as sure about her parents.
“Mom, Dad, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
When she had told them, sitting on the living-room couch in the house where she’d grown up, Laura had felt ten years old again. It was as if she were confessing to her parents that she’d been sent to the principal’s office for passing notes. Only this time, not only was she bringing herself down, her actions affected her child, as well.
The tense, somewhat confused look on her parents’ faces prompted her to lower her eyes. Quickly she replayed in her mind the speech she’d carefully planned: “Mother, Father, Roger and I are splitting up. Yes, I know it’s a big decision, but I want you to know I’ve given this a great deal of thought....”
“Oh, Mom!” Laura gasped instead, bursting into tears. “I’m getting divorced!”
She braced herself for a barrage of “I told you so’s.” At the very least, her parents were entitled to indulge in a little tearing down of Roger. Yet her mother came over and put her arms around her. She hugged her for a few moments, then smoothed back her hair, just as she’d done whenever Laura came to her after suffering a scraped knee or a slight at school.
“Honey,” her mother told her, “whatever you decide to do is right.”
Taking a sip of coffee now, Laura forced herself to confront the painful fact that things wouldn’t go nearly as smoothly with Evan. In fact, the prospect of telling her son his mom and dad were getting divorced was what had kept her awake all night, tossing and turning like a wooden ship in a storm. Of everyone concerned, an eight-year-old boy who’d done nothing to create this situation was going to suffer the most.
When she heard Roger coming upstairs from the basement where he’d begun sleeping on the foldout couch, she tensed. Simply being in the same room with him was difficult. And this morning she had something much more important to talk to him about than whose turn it was to take out the garbage. The coffee sloshing around in her stomach picked that moment to turn to acid.
“You look terrible,” Roger commented, glancing at her before he headed over to the coffeepot.
Laura wondered if she was imagining the gleeful undertone to his words. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Join the club.”
“Roger, we have to tell Evan.” Laura swallowed hard. “And we should tell him soon. I don’t want him finding out from someone else.”
Roger cast her a stony look. “All right,” he said slowly. “Why don’t we tell him tonight?”
‘Tonight?”
“You said we should tell him soon.” Roger’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Tonight’s not a good time for you?”
Her stomach churned. ‘Tonight’s fine.”
Laura yearned to point out there would never be a good time to tell their son his parents were getting divorced. Instead, she picked up her coffee cup and retreated to her bedroom.
* * * *
Sitting on the edge of her bed, staring out the window at the colorless sky, Laura attempted to will away her sick feeling. She wanted so badly to make sense of it all. Over and over again she replayed scenes from her life with Roger, trying to figure out what they could have done differently.
Almost from the very start she’d recognized that something wasn’t right. Early in their first year together, when she was still insisting to herself that anytime now her new husband would tire of the “break” he was taking and get a job, she had casually opened a bank statement that came in the mail. She froze. Of course, she was aware that she’d dipped into her savings account several times since the wedding, anxious to support the freewheeling lifestyle she and Roger were quickly adapting to. Yet it wasn’t until she was forced to confront the bottom line on a page of computer printout that she understood just how badly off they were.
She found Roger in the bedroom of their small apartment. He was clipping his toenails, using the classified ads of
The New York Times
as a catchall.
“Roger,” she said as evenly as she could, “I just got a statement from Citibank. I must admit, I haven’t been paying very close attention to how much money we’ve been going through.”
“Yeah?” He paused, his nail clipper poised in midair, the toes on his right foot fanned out. “And?”
She took a deep breath. “My savings account is almost wiped out.”
He looked at her expectantly. “What’s your point?”
“I think you should get a job!”
Roger resumed his nail clipping, shaking his head. “I’m too busy. I’ve got too many other important things to do.”
Laura stared at him. “All I want,” she said, still trying to remain calm, “is a little bit of security. Some money coming in on a regular basis. Some savings in the bank for a rainy day. Maybe it’s even time to start tucking something away for our future.”
“If that’s what matters to you,” Roger shot back with an air of finality that sent chills down Laura’s spine, “then you’re ordinary.”
Was it that early on that he’d closed off to her? Laura wondered. She stood up, listlessly tugging at the sheets in a halfhearted attempt at making the bed. Was it at that point he’d begun criticizing everything she did? Fifteen years worth of incriminations played through her mind like a tape. She ate too much sugar. Her friends were uninteresting. Her housecleaning wasn’t up to his standards—at least his theoretical standards, since he rarely got involved in any household chores besides depositing his dirty clothes on the floor of the closet.
The criticism that hurt the most was his insistence that her skill at lovemaking simply didn’t measure up.
By the time they’d reached their six-month anniversary, Laura was already pouncing upon magazine articles like “Celebrities Speak Out: Surefire Tips That Keep the Fire Burning.” Roger had no qualms about telling her he wanted their sex life to improve. And according to him, it was always Laura, not he, who needed remedial work. Afraid that she was letting him down, she became more and more determined to live up to his expectations.
One Friday evening, as she waited for him to come home from a freelance job, she anxiously surveyed the scene she’d set. A cream-colored linen tablecloth covered the dining-room table, an attractive complement to both the pair of tall, slender candles and the bouquet of fresh spring flowers, their colors as intense as their fragrance. As for the menu, she’d carefully included all Roger’s favorites: spareribs, herbed biscuits, a bottle of wine.
Her heart was pounding as she heard his key in the lock. Roger paused in the doorway, his expression changing from haggard to surprised. “What’s this?”
“Oh, just a little something I cooked up.” Laura didn’t bother to mention that the inspiration for her romantic evening
a deux
was rooted in the latest issue of the
Ladies’ Home Journal.
“I thought we deserved a quiet evening all to ourselves.”
“Great.” Roger sat down at the table, peeking under the cloth napkin that covered the basket of rolls. After casting her an appreciative glance, he grabbed a biscuit.
By the time Laura had served the Boston cream pie, the candles were burned halfway down, the wine bottle was empty, and her bare feet were in his lap.
“Let’s go into the bedroom,” she murmured.
This time, she told herself, shuffling down the hall with her arm slung around his waist, Roger and I will connect. We’ll be closer than we’ve even been before. I
know
we can. I can make it happen.
Lying with him in bed, she forced herself to shut out every defense, every reservation, every thought of anything besides the here and now. She even put aside her usual self-consciousness about her body. She knew Roger wished she were thinner, more graceful, more agile ... freer. Tonight she refused to worry about any of that.
Instead, she concentrated on the sensation of the taut skin on the familiar curves of his shoulders. She pressed her breasts against his chest and felt a rush of excitement when she was rewarded with a satisfied smile. Her body responded to his in a way it never had before. As he pushed inside her she moved against him hard, giving in to the longing to have him as close to her as possible.
Afterward, Laura lay with her head on his stomach, her hair splayed out on his chest. One arm was flung across his waist while with her other hand she caressed him. When she heard his breathing turn heavy and even, she, too, fell asleep.
She woke up alone. Yet she was still glowing as she followed the sounds of coffee being made and found Roger in the kitchen.
Coming up behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Hmmm,” she purred, nuzzling the back of his neck. “That was nice last night, wasn’t it?”
“Well,” he replied matter-of-factly, “it was better.”
* * * *
As she finished making the bed, Laura sank down onto it. Whatever energy she’d awoken with was already sapped.
“I was never good enough,” Laura said aloud. “No matter what I did, it was never enough.”
Tears stung her eyes. Annoyed, she wiped them. Desperate for an antidote to the ache in her heart, she switched on the radio on the night table.
Bonnie Raitt was mournfully singing “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”
“Listen to that,” Laura muttered. “They’re playing our song.”
She let out what was meant to be a laugh. Instead, it came out a sob.
* * * *
There was an unreal quality to the scene that Laura found herself in that evening: three reluctant participants gathered in the kitchen, Laura and Roger sitting at the table, Evan standing in the doorway, impatient to get back to his Nintendo game. Part of her was shrieking, No! I don’t want this! I can’t do it! Yet she knew this was just one more part of the roller-coaster ride. She had to hold on. If she could only hold on ...
“What, Dad?” Evan said, his body present but his mind clearly in the living room with the Mario Brothers.
Something in Laura switched off. What she was experiencing was like an out-of-body episode. Her flesh was here, but her mind had departed, unable to accept the fact that this horrible moment was real. She felt as if she were watching a movie. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Above all, she felt the urge to run away, or at least to do something—anything—to stop what was about to unfold.
We don’t have to do this, she thought. Roger and I can put our arms around each other and laugh and tell Evan to go back to his Nintendo game. We can say that Mom and Dad were just kidding....
But it was too late for that. Mom and Dad
weren’t
just kidding. And so there was nothing she could do to set time back to its normal speed. Or make the wrenching pain in her gut go away.
“Evan,” she heard Roger say, his voice sounding very far away, as if he were at the other end of a tunnel, “your mother and I have decided we can’t live together anymore. We’re going to get a divorce.”
Through the tears welling up in her eyes, Laura watched her son. He looked so small, standing in the doorway in me bright red shirt he’d picked out himself to wear that morning, his idea of an antidote to a gray, cheerless autumn day. He looked so alone.
“Can I go back to my game now?” he asked, his voice thin.
“Sure,” said Roger.
And then, still standing in the doorway, Evan’s face crumpled. He began to cry. His shoulders shook. The entire house seemed to tremble from his high-pitched, plaintive wail.
Suddenly Laura’s tears were flowing freely as well. This is the worst, she told herself, her arms wrapped around herself. This is the worst moment in the whole process. It will never be this bad again. Nothing in my entire life will ever be this bad.
She longed to take Evan in her arms, to cry with him. But Roger had already grabbed him, holding him in a crushing embrace, his head next to Evan’s, almost humorously large by comparison.
“It’ll be all right, Ev,” Roger assured him, his own voice cracking as he, too, let his tears fall. “Mom and I both still love you. That won’t change. That’ll never change.”
“No-o-o-o!” Evan wailed, “I don’t want it! No! You can’t do it!”
Laura closed her eyes tightly, wishing she could banish this scene from her mind forever. She knew she never would. Evan, his small shoulders shaking, his wispy blond hair falling into his eyes ... He was really still just a baby. It was unfair that the foibles of grownups could inflict so much pain on someone so innocent, so powerless.
She wondered if he, too, would remember this moment forever. She wondered if he would ever wear that shirt again, having learned that even the brightest, reddest garment was, in the end, a useless weapon.
* * * *
Walking into the Divorce and Separation Support Group for the first time, Laura felt the way she had on her first day of junior high school. Would everybody else already know each other? Would anyone talk to her? Was she dressed appropriately? Would she turn out to be younger than everyone else—or older or quieter or louder or taller or shorter or any number of points of comparison on which she had the potential to fall short?
Despite her fears, she knew she had to rise above her own sophomoric concerns. The trauma of telling Evan that his family was about to fall apart had left her completely deflated. Walking around with a weight on her shoulders and a sick feeling in her stomach, she was desperate for relief. A way of putting everything into perspective. Perhaps even some answers.
She’d held on to the newspaper clipping Julie had given her, keeping it in one of the piles of papers that ended up occupying seven-eighths of her desk no matter how many times she pledged to get herself organized. Finally, sitting alone in her bedroom a few days after she and Roger had had their little talk with Evan, listening to the rain pound against the windows, she remembered it. Suddenly crazed, she began rifling through invitations to speak at local libraries, bits of dialogue suitable for large mammals scrawled on the backs of memos from Evan’s school, and telephone numbers without any names attached to them, until she finally found it.