Page 28 of August
“It wasrelativelyeasy. I didn’t fight to keep our marriage or anything. How could I when she already had someone else and told me our life together was boring? Had she told me she was unhappy, I would’ve at least tried.”
“Couple’s therapy?” Elisa asked before taking a sip of the beer she didn’t really want.
Since she left Archie, she had been trying not to spend frivolously and hadn’t bought a lot of alcohol, but she had wanted beer in the house just in caseMyrawanted one because she seemed more like a beer than wine kind of woman, even though she’d had the wine the previous night and hadn’t seemed to have an issue with it. Elisa had gotten this beer at the grocery store, and it had been one of the cheapest they’d had. Myra was almost finished with her first one, so maybe she liked it or, at least, wasn’t complaining about it so as not to be rude.
“I guess. Had she said that she needed that or thought it would help us, I would have gone. I swear, Elisa, for years, she didn’t complain about anything. I mean, taking out the trash? Sure. But not a word about any of the big stuff. We got married, bought our house, the company was doing well, and she liked her job. I thought we were good, so it felt like she went from being the woman I married to this completely different person overnight. Suddenly, she’s moving out of our house and into a place with her now-wife. That woman is leaving her husband and filing for sole custody of their kids. Then, they’re all moving to Jersey, and now, they’re married to each other and raising those three kids she’s always told me she never wanted.”
“Was it that you didn’t want to raise kids?” Elisa asked.
“I’ve just never felt that motherly urge thing that some women do. She didn’t, either, so it wasn’t a problem for us, but I wonder now, since she left me, if maybe she just didn’t want to have them or maybe didn’t want to deal with babies because those kids were all six and older when she left me.”
“Babies and toddlers are a lot,” Elisa said. “I had two at once, so I’d know.”
“Yeah, so… Maybe she wanted to adopt an older kid or something, but she never told me that. I don’t think she really wanted kids withme. I think she wanted kids with someone else.”
“It could be that she didn’t want kids at all still, but she wanted to be with her, and she came as a package deal, so your ex went with it.”
Myra nodded and said, “I’ll never know, I guess.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“No, we haven’t talked since the divorce was finalized. She told me they were moving and that was the last I heard from her. Without us having kids to worry about, the divorce was pretty simple. She had her car. I owned my truck. We split some things, and that was it. How was it with your ex?”
Elisa laughed and said, “Not easy.”
“No?”
“No,” she replied, wondering how much she should tell Myra as she took a drink to stall. “There’s more to it than just a wife leaving a husband, but the truth is that I never loved him. I kept thinking I would. I thought we’d have the kids and get married, and it would be like one of those arranged marriage things where people tell you they weren’t in love in the beginning, but they fell in love over time. I kept waiting for that. I’d look over at him in bed and think that it wasn’t there yet, but it would be one day. I just had to wait for that moment.”
“That sounds terrible,” Myra replied.
“It wasn’t all bad, and he wasn’t around much unless he wanted something, so he left me alone. For a whole year before we got separated, he slept in another bedroom.”
“Really? Why?”
“He claimed that I snored and that it was keeping him up, but I don’t snore. I’ve recorded myself to check. He just wanted to be alone, and that was perfectly fine with me because so did I.”
“What about…” Myra began but didn’t finish.
“Sex?” Elisa guessed.
“Sorry. Too personal?” Myra asked.
“No, it’s okay,” she said, clearing her throat as she set her beer bottle on the coffee table. “Well, that wasn’t happening all that much by then, but it wasn’t really all that regular before that, either.”
Myra didn’t say anything, but she nodded and finished her beer.
“Let’s just say that he wasn’t… good. Yeah, he wasn’t good.”
Myra laughed then, and Elisa wondered if that half a beer she had drank without having had any food since lunch had gone to her head.
“I can’t believe I just said that,” she added.
“No, keep talking. This is just getting good,” Myra replied, turning to face her on the couch.
“He was fast.”
“Fast?” Myra laughed a little.
