To My Ex-Husband (20 page)

AUGUST 24

Edward moved in last weekend. I had been looking forward to living with him, but it was easy to look forward to living with Edward when all but the man himself was tucked safely away in another part of town. I had not considered his personal effects, which included his son and his daughter and their belongings, which, in turn, included some, but not all, of their friends and, in part, their friends' belongings.

The transition has not been smooth. But in terms of trauma, little could compare with the day itself, complicated by the fish. I did mention, didn't I, that Edward has fish? They live in fifty gallons of water, and moving arrangements can be unnerving. I pictured a major traffic tie-up as the fish slid off the dolly and out of their garbage can to flop around on the street, gasping for their beloved air stone. Nothing so dramatic as that happened, but two clown loaches were dead on arrival, or so Edward thought. They were only playing dead, though. They do that, on occasion. Hence, the name. Cute, huh?

It was tense getting them squared away. Edward tore around frantically with little nets and flexible tubes that looked like intravenous feeders. We had our own ICU. My concern was not that the fish would go belly up, but that the tank clashed with the couch. All that pastel paraphernalia—it's much too bright for an environment dominated by earth tones. I could see I would have to keep my aesthetic qualms to myself; Edward was dealing with life and death.

Both the fish and the children had to leave the home in which they were raised. Thus, the overriding atmosphere was one of resentment, relieved only by occasional moments of overt hostility, primarily on the part of Melissa, whose own telephone line had yet to be installed. Melissa is generally mute in my presence, unless speaking into a telephone. The phone is a social facilitator, the adolescent equivalent of a glass of wine. It has occurred to me, actually, that Melissa's voice may be activated by the phone, that words begin forming as the telephone comes within a range of perhaps three or four inches of her mouth. I'll have to watch more closely to see how this works.

Tony's grievance was mainly one of inconvenience. He was to leave for college in a few days, and this move meant an interim pain in the neck. It's stunning to see Peter's old room being converted into a gym; his old basketball hoop, still taped to the closet door, pales in comparison. Tony bench-presses. I knew this but, in a lapse of imagination, I hadn't seen in my mind's eye the equipment coming up the stairs, the duffle bags of sweats, the hundreds of weights—innocent-looking little disks until you bend over to pick one up and your fingertips get pinned to the floor. I guess he's not taking them with him on the plane.

By the end of the day, I was locked in the bathroom and crying into a gin and tonic, wondering,
What have I done?
It was like a bad dream in which you arrive at your front door only to find it altered to the point of being unrecognizable, a fun house, a horror of distorted images and mean laughter.

Everywhere there were piles of things that were not part of my life, children who had not been part of my life. We had no history together. How could I make them feel comfortable in a house that had been defined by the presence and the personalities of other children? How could I
comfort
them? I was not even their stepmother. Annie and Peter seemed suddenly to have been replaced. I wanted them back.

If this was difficult for me, it must have been torture for Melissa and Tony's mother, Pamela. What could a woman possibly feel when her children prefer to live with their father and a woman who is an almost total stranger? How could she possibly survive such a choice? It's like saying, “Mom, I can't be with you anymore. I love you, but Dad takes better care of me.” Isn't that what it means? If you're a mother, you have failed at your job.

I've never met Pamela. I'd love to talk to her, but if I answer the phone when she calls to speak to Melissa, she hangs up.

Tony, meanwhile, has escaped to school on the west coast, where he spent exactly one day before buying a surf board and a wet suit.

SEPTEMBER 7

One of my first official acts as Edward's housemate was to pace back and forth at Jefferson Hospital last Friday morning, waiting for some young doctor to stem the tide of Edward's fathering potential. It should make a
vas deferens
in our sex life. Sorry; this experience has made me a little light-headed.

But if I'm light-headed, that doesn't begin to describe Edward. This is supposed to be a quick and simple procedure, “minor elective surgery.” And yet, it seemed to be taking the longest time. I was getting nervous that they'd given him the wrong operation, that somebody had messed up the paperwork and he was having a lung removed.

My mind was alive with possibilities. It didn't help that I had read of a study in which monkeys fed a high-cholesterol diet showed that those that had also undergone vasectomies were more likely to develop clogged arteries. Maybe the clog was actually sperm. It has to go
somewhere
. Besides which, fettucini and cream were staples in Edward's family. No doubt, had Edward been a monkey, he would have suffered a heart attack years ago, and the terror of a Novocaine needle would definitely have been a contributing factor.

I recall your being opposed to the surgery yourself because you'd read all these nightmarish things about what could go wrong. Women, of course, are used to nightmares; they're doing things to their bodies all the time. Diaphragms, hormones, intrauterine devices, sponges, tubal ligations—always another thing to try. But we did it; we did it all. It was our job. But men? Well, what can I say? They're not so brave. Smarter, maybe, not to endanger their health, but brave, no.

I was thinking about what I might say at the memorial service when I spotted a man in a green surgical suit wandering around as if he were looking for someone. He spotted me, looking properly mournful.

“Are you Emily Moore?” he asked.

I nodded. This was it. Edward really had died. He had not awakened from the anesthesia.

The doctor put his hand on my shoulder and bowed his head. It was written all over his face, the shame. This was the worst part about being a doctor, he was thinking. Facing the family, the loved ones. Poor Anthony and Melissa, semi-orphans. And Edward's father, Mr. Ventura, seventy-one, widowed just a couple of years ago, and now this.

“I don't know how to say this,” the doctor said. “Dr. Ventura passed out.”

I thought,
Passed away, you mean
.

“He fainted just as we were giving him the Novocaine. He didn't want me to tell you, but I knew you'd be concerned. We got a late start because we had to be certain that he was stable before proceeding.”

I was incredulous. My boyfriend, a wimp. I thought of all the times Edward had injected me with Novocaine during the days of my curettage, sometimes as many as four shots at one sitting. “This will sting a bit,” he would say, dismissively. “But it's nothing, really.” That phoney!

“Don't be too hard on him,” the doctor cautioned sweetly as he walked away. “It happens all the time.”

Edward was so thoroughly humiliated that it would actually have been more cruel than amusing to be hard on him. And, as a matter of fact, he restored himself in my esteem when, only a couple of hours later, he wanted to make love. He was tentative, naturally, but only because he felt funny without the full complement of his pubic hair. It was I who decided that we really should wait at least
one
day. I didn't want him to faint again, even in ecstacy.

What I did not realize at the time was that this procedure would turn Edward into something of a local hero. For the first hour that he was at home, he sat with his icepacks between his legs and talking on the phone with his friend, Rudy Nemerov. Rudy is Edward's Nina equivalent. They have always reminded me of Frog and Toad of
Frog and Toad Together
. Divorced at about the same time, they spent their early bachelorhoods giving dinner parties for all the women they knew in the neighborhood. They didn't ever really date these women; they were just friends they rounded up for some good food. Rudy was the creative force behind all the menus; Edward went by the rules, so if something didn't taste right he could always go to the book and see what he did wrong. It drives me crazy sometimes, and it drove Rudy crazy, too. But I figure it's an occupational hazard. I mean, you don't mix a little of this with a little of that in dentistry. You don't say to your patient when it doesn't work out, “Next time, maybe I'll put in more of the cement.”

Anyway, Edward had to talk about his vasectomy the way women discuss their babies' deliveries. Rudy was fascinated, first and foremost by the fact that Edward had fainted. I could tell that Edward was sorry that he told him, but he never keeps anything from Rudy. It would be like lying to himself.

Rudy said he had never actually been able to go through with a vasectomy. He had too many friends who had problems. One of them had undergone
two
vasectomies. He had his seminal fluid tested after the first one, and the sperm were still swimming around. Rudy's friend was convinced that it hadn't worked because his surgeon was Catholic, and didn't believe in what he was doing. Another friend developed a huge mass on his testicles. I forget what that was all about, probably because Edward insisted on repeating this conversation to me at dinner and running the risk of ruining my appetite for grilled swordfish marinated in sesame oil and tamari.

I wish Melissa had been at home that night. She would have done me the favor of stopping Edward in mid-sentence by yelling, “Oh, gross!” and running to her room. And don't think Melissa's presence would have deterred him from discussing it. Ever the scientist, there is no subject that is off-limits to Edward, even with his children. I couldn't wait to tell Melissa that her father fainted, lest she think him impervious to the weaknesses of mortal men.

SEPTEMBER 26

Peter was sweet to try to break it gently to his grandmother that he and Sarah were living together, but that they
really did
plan to get married one day. My mother was actually funny about it, apparently. “Peter,” she said, in that earnest, crackly little voice, “I hope you don't expect
me
to get married one day.” Three generations all living in sin. Oh, that's right, I forgot. We don't have sin anymore. What could anybody say, anyway? It's really something when your grandmother is so outrageous that she paves the way for you. Next thing you know, she'll be backpacking her way up here from Florida on a moped.

One thing that Peter might not understand that the rest of us do is that not being married doesn't protect you from the pain if it doesn't work out. There is no shield from the ravages of love. There is only the strength to pick up the pieces.

Quite apart from love, there is something always to be said for pooling your resources. Annie certainly had mixed feelings about Edward's moving in and giving her room over to Melissa, although overall she's thought of it as kind of fun, like “The Brady Bunch.” But you'd never believe how coldly practical she is. When I told her that Edward and his ex-wife were putting their house on the market, and that it was time to make a decision about whether he and I would live together, she said, “Do it, Mom. He has a
much
better television, a VCR, and a KitchenAid. It's a good deal.” Where did we get this kid?

She reminded me of your mother talking about the men in her retirement community. The ultimate qualification for eligibility was owning a car. He didn't necessarily have to be ambulatory. If you saw him actually move while sitting on a park bench, that made him an okay kind of guy.

If nothing else, I seem to have taught my daughter some survival techniques. A working dishwasher (with a brand name, yet) isn't the worst way to begin a new life.

Annie should only know what went through my mind when Edward and I were on vacation. Perhaps it was only cold feet, but I felt suddenly horribly trapped. Our days of being alone together were about to end. Melissa had decided not to divide her time any longer between Edward and her mother, which was certainly easy to understand. It isn't just that they don't get along; it's a jarring system. Joint custody is a fine notion, but the reality is unsettling at best, and the kids do all the adjusting. I remember Annie's saying to me, when all of her friends were packing up every other week and shuffling off to their other parent's house, that that was the one thing she refused to do.

I had always assumed that Edward and I would at least have alternate weeks to ourselves. But much of my anxiety had nothing to do with Melissa. It had to do with the loss of autonomy. I really had gotten used to doing things my own way, whether it was the order in which I ran errands on Saturdays or packing the car for a trip. There was no order; that was my order. A prerequisite of my life was that nothing could be planned. And if I blew it and lost out, that would be my problem. There wouldn't be anyone saying, “You see? Now look.”

After you left, I did look, and I rather liked what happened. I had fun making my own mistakes. No one likes to be alone all the time, but after I met Edward, I had the choice. I could be alone or I could be with him. Now I would be with him. So who was sitting on the beach in August with her head in her hands and saying, “You see? Now look.”
I
was.

OCTOBER 21

It's the first thing everybody thinks of when this happens, that it must be a car crash or a gas explosion. The house shakes, the dog runs under the bed, and you wake up and call the gas company. Hundreds of people do it. But not us. Not this time. This time, we were smart. We knew it was an earthquake.

Wrong. It was a crash, and it was a car. But it didn't hit another car. It came through the yard at 1:47 in the morning, demolished the gate and a portion of the fence, uprooted several shrubs, and sliced a sizeable chunk out of the dogwood tree.