Love Hurts (12 page)

Anna picked up the pen again. Thinking about Matthew often gave her clarity, and so her thoughts calmed from a whirlpool into a mere torrent.

I’m going to ask Rob for a divorce. I can’t be around him for another minute. Now that I’m sure he’s cheating on me, I wonder how I didn’t realize it long before. I guess like with so much of my life, I’ve ignored all the signs. I’ve been living in a bubble and it’s time to pop it and get on with real life, even if it’s painful.

With that decided Anna turned her thoughts to Jilly and all they’d talked about through the night.

My sister cut herself again. She hasn’t done it in a long time, but Mamma’s painting must have pushed her to that place again. I’ve never understood it. Why would giving yourself pain make the rest of the pain in your life go away. I guess it’s the same principle of stomping on your foot to take your attention off the pain in the thumb you’ve just smashed with a hammer.

Anna dropped the pen again and pressed her face into her hands. It didn’t matter how much she tried to rationally understand it, there was no getting around the fact that her sister had big problems. Problems with no real solution in sight. It made Anna crazy to think she could have killed herself that night and left Matthew without a mother. Mamma had done the same many times and almost left them alone. Though she couldn’t help but think that, in their case, moving on to a new family would have been the best thing for them.

While I don’t understand what Jilly does, I understand her pain. She’s looking for a way to let the pain out. I realize now that it’s not possible without confronting the source. The source is Mamma and we need to confront her. Jilly agreed to go back to Toronto with me. I’m glad. It just might be the thing that saves us both.
 

But what if I run into Chris?
 

As soon as she wrote the words, she dropped her pen. Chris was a subject Anna veered away from, even in her own head. Acknowledging it to herself opened a locked cellar door that smelled of mold and mildew, years without fresh air. It was painful and unpleasant. She’d screwed up. Chris had been the best thing that ever happened to her, and she threw him away. He loved her, loved her and treated her like gold, and instead she traded him in for a man who barely acknowledged her existence. She needed no further proof that she was completely messed up in her head.

I miss Chris like a piece of myself. He was the only boy/man I ever loved. I thought I loved Rob, but I loved what Rob represented. Peace, comfort and no conflict. I didn’t realize what a colorless existence that would be. I especially didn’t realize how unhappy he would make me. I wanted peace and I got total and complete boredom. How stupid could I have been?

The door closed behind Rob, and Anna breathed a sigh of relief. The air in the house felt lighter, less oppressive. She would tell him at dinner she wanted a divorce.

I’m going to sleep all day and then tonight I’m going to tell Rob it’s over. I think it will be the first time we’ve had any sort of a confrontation after ten years of marriage. How sad is that?

Anna put down her pen and closed the journal. Figaro chirped and looked up at her with a hopeful expression. Anna scooted her chair back to make room, and he jumped into her lap, immediately kneading her pants, his claws poking into her skin. She petted him, taking comfort from him while planning what she would say to Rob.

Anna woke up in the afternoon, while not refreshed, at least feeling like she could face the rest of the day. She needed to pack and get a few things for dinner that evening before she left the house for good. She climbed out of bed and headed for the shower.

The small market was filled with harried housewives shopping at the last minute before their husbands got home. Most of them pushed toddlers in grocery carts. Anna turned away before the jealousy could hit her. A cart nearly knocked into hers. She mumbled an apology and moved out of the way. The woman didn't even look at her. She wore sweat pants with a hole in one knee and her hair tied up, but falling out of its clip. She had an adorable child, with a sticky red face, sitting in her basket. The tot’s hand clenched a gooey white stick. Her face mirrored her mother's. They had identical irritated looks.

"Excuse me," said a sarcastic voice behind her. Anna realized she'd been standing in the middle of the aisle, staring after the woman and her little girl.
 

"Sorry." Anna moved her cart next to the family-size boxes of cereal, which she'd never purchased in her life. She picked up a box of All-Bran. It would last Rob a couple of weeks who was as religious with his cereal eating as he was about color coding his suits and ties. He even insisted Anna keep his sock drawer ordered according to style and color. There were times Anna longed to open the sock drawer and swirl her hand around in it, creating chaos out of order.
 

The store began filling up while Anna pushed herself through the crowd in order to finish the tiny list. She’d often wondered why she even wrote a list anymore. They ate the same things every week. If Anna attempted to make a small change, Rob did nothing but complain until they went back to the old routine. It had begun to feel like their house would collapse under the sheer weight of the future. Anna stared at her list and wondered what types of items she would buy for herself. It had been a long time since her tastes were the only consideration.

The basket looked the same as it had every week for the past ten years. When they first married, Anna would shop and imagine putting new things in the basket. Diapers, formula, pull-ups, fruit roll-ups and, before long, acne cream. All these years later, she shopped for the same items. After years of hoping, the thought of a baby was like a cactus in the middle of a daisy patch.

When Anna came to the check-out counter, the lines were full. Babies whimpered and children tugged on their mothers’ legs. The mothers looked desperate and seemed to wish they were somewhere, or someone, else. Anna wished she were one of them.

The little girl with the sticky red face sat in the cart just ahead of Anna. She tried not to look at the baby, but her gaze was drawn as surely as the mother's shirt to the gooey candy on the baby’s face. It had a big circle of red imprinted onto the white cotton. The tiny girl seemed riveted on Anna's face and they locked eyes. She smiled and Anna's face responded, despite the grief in her heart. It dawned on her how a person could snatch a child out of a shopping cart in the middle of a busy store. Desperation makes you do crazy things.
 

The baby lifted her arms to Anna and grinned. She had four teeth, two on top and two on the bottom. Her gummy smile did crazy things to Anna's lonely heart. The little child had no thought but that someone wasn't too busy to notice her.

"Up, up," she said to Anna.

The mother finally turned from unloading her cart and looked at Anna, wondering why her baby said her precious few words to a stranger. Anna felt guilt, despite having done nothing to feel bad about.

Anna gave her an apologetic shrug. The woman frowned and turned back to her child, blocking Anna's view with her broad back. Do I really look dangerous to her? One of those child-snatching crazy women you only see on television?
 

For the rest of her time in the store, Anna kept her gaze lowered.

At home, Anna didn't even have to think as she unloaded the groceries and packed them away in all the places they belonged. She straightened the cans so all the labels faced outward while she thought about the planned confrontation at dinner.

Anna closed the cupboard door and looked around the spotless kitchen with loathing. She and Rob had carefully planned out every inch of the space when they built the house soon after their wedding. The appliances were stainless steel, easy to keep clean. The counters were white marble with gold swirls running through. The cupboards were also white; the walls were white. In fact, there wasn’t a bit of color, real color, anywhere. The windows even had white blinds over them.

It would be called a designer kitchen, but she now hated it. There were no tiny hand prints on the refrigerator. There weren't any spills on the floor or milk trapped under the stove. A highchair wasn’t sitting beside the sturdy oak chairs at the table built for three generations. There were two captain's chairs at either end and the other ones were used only when they had company over for dinner once a month, usually one of Rob's favored clients, but once in a while Jilly and her family. Then the house burst with childish laughter and Anna’s heart felt light for a time. A child's laugh is the most weightless thing in the world.

"Why?" Anna whispered into the quiet room. "Am I not good enough to be a mother? Is it because I wasn’t a good enough daughter?"

She sank into a chair and let the grief spill out where no one could see a silly woman crying over an empty house.

Chapter 12

At eight o’clock, Rob still hadn’t come home from work. He hadn’t bothered to call, either. Anna sat in the living room, a glass of scotch in her hand. She contemplated the last ten years and how many such nights she’d spent alone, nursing her thoughts and waiting for her husband to come home. Hope didn’t have a thriving real estate market, so no matter how he pretended to be run off his feet, Anna knew the truth. It had suited her to keep her thoughts private, cherishing peace more than gratification. But now that she’d decided to end things with him, every hour he tarried was torture.

Three suitcases filled the trunk of her car. She’d stacked the back seat with a couple of boxes of her favorite things. The savings and checking accounts had gone down by half—she’d gone to the bank that afternoon after waking up, taken out the cash in a draft and walked across the street to the rival bank and opened new accounts. Everything she planned on taking from this life sat in her car, a pathetic offering to her new life. She knew the divorce would take some time. Rob wouldn’t grant one easily and would likely fight her on every point, especially the money. Until then, she had what she needed to start over.

Anna got up to pour herself another drink, her third, despite knowing it wasn’t a good idea to use liquid courage to ask for a divorce. She had gone beyond caring. Her careful plan went out the window two hours after the dinner she’d prepared for him had gone cold.

Headlights moved in an arc across the living room wall. Rob’s car pulled into the driveway. She picked up her now refreshed class of scotch and sat on the love seat facing the doorway to the living room. Her hand trembled as she brought it to her mouth. The glass rattled against her teeth when she sipped. She clenched her hand and rested the drink on her leg, her eyes fixed on the doorway.

Rob entered the house, and she could hear him putting away his coat and shoes. He stepped into the living room, saw her, and looked guilty for a second before he schooled his expression into indifference. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said without sounding the least bit apologetic.

“Where were you?”

Rob looked at her with surprise then irritation. “You’ve never asked me that before.”

“No, you’re right. I should have asked you that at least seven years ago.”

“What are you talking about? Are you drunk?”

Anna smirked and took a sip of her drink, her hand now steady. “No. Wish I was, though.”

“What’s gotten into you?” Rob actually looked concerned now. He walked farther into the room and stood in front of her.

“Have a seat.” Anna waved her glass at the chair opposite. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t feel like talking.”

Anna decided in that minute to rip a page from Jilly’s book. “Sit the fuck down, Rob.”

He sat, too shocked to do anything else.

Before he could recover his senses, Anna said, “I’m leaving you. You no longer have to sneak around with your girlfriends.”

Rob looked even more surprised, if that were possible.

“What?” Anna asked. “You thought I didn’t know?”

Rob actually looked ashamed. But he couldn’t exist in that place for long. His face took on the familiar angry cast. “If I was getting it at home—”

“Oh shut up, you asshole.” Anna slammed her glass down on the table beside her chair and leaned forward. “You could have tried harder to make me want you, but you didn’t. I could have tried harder to be interested in you, but I didn’t. I’m not blaming this relationship failing on you and your indiscretions only, but whatever the reasons, I have no desire to hash them out. I’m leaving and I want a divorce. That’s all.”

Anna sat back and waited for his response. All kinds of emotions flitted around his face as he considered her words. He ended up at sadness, to her surprise.

“I’m sorry to hear this, Anna.”

“What? Aren’t you happy? Wouldn’t you rather be free to sleep around in public?”

“No. I would prefer to have a happy marriage with you.”

She hadn’t expected that. She’d believed he would be angry and throw her out. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I didn’t want our marriage to fail, but I didn’t know how to reach you. You’re so closed off all the time. I do love you, Anna, but I’ve wondered for a long time if you love me. You’re right, I’ve had a few relationships, but only when I felt I couldn’t stand the loneliness anymore.”