Divorce Summer

My parent’s wedding anniversary was this Wednesday. Dad brought home a dozen roses on Monday. Mom didn’t thank him more than once, if any. I found that odd. Then Wednesday night, their anniversary, mom went to bed early. Dad stayed up later than usual. We were in the living room together at around 10:30. He stood up and walked towards his room. He lingered in the hallway, turned around, and talked to me for a little. Then he stood there. The thought crossed my mind: Does he want me to go upstairs so I don’t hear him making love to my mom? It was their anniversary, after all. But I knew. The twenty-six years-old fire was dead. It was like that sunflower that I planted that my dad accidentally sprayed with Round-Up. Lifeless.

A few days ago I saw my mom crying. She had been in her room for a while and it was very quiet. From a couple rooms over I could sense that something wasn’t okay. I don’t know how. So I walked into her room and said her name. I heard her voice say “Yeah?” coming from the bathroom. I said “Are you okay?” She said, “Yeah,” again. But I knew. So I walked to the door and said to the crack between the door and its frame, “Are you sure?” And she said, “I’ll be fine.” So I walked into the bathroom and found my sweet mother standing in her shower clutching a towel to her body, crying. I said, “You can’t hide from me.” And I stepped into her shower and held her close.

I rubbed her naked back, still wet from her shower, and swayed with her while she cried. I kissed her on the cheek twice. I thought it was something that I had said to her earlier that had made her sad, so I apologized. And she said “It’s fine, it’s fine.” I actually don’t know what made her cry. I said “I know, I know.”

And so today what I found when I was bringing mom’s laundry to her room didn’t shock me very much. I set the clothes on her bed and my eyes fell on her nightstand. There, right out in the open, a list with the big words PROS and CONS sat, waiting for my attention. And I knew then.

It was the pros and cons of divorce for my parents. Funny, it seems like something she would have at least tried to hide in her sock drawer.

I’m nineteen years old, I thought. Divorce is common, I thought. Holy shit, am I breathing right now? I thought. I walked around my house and cursed softly so my little brother wouldn’t hear. I went to my bed and knelt down and prayed a little. I cried a little. I texted my best friend whose parents have been divorced for fifteen years and told her everything, and she talked me through. I texted my boyfriend what was happening.

And then I felt fine. Getting a divorce was, all in all, a good plan for them. They’d been unhappy since I can remember. I’ve never seen them kiss on the mouth for more than a moment. Really, I knew it all along. I knew it for months.

So then I listened to Nina Simone’s “Everything Must Change” a few times. She gets it. If they do get divorced, that’s what I’ll play as I ride away from this big house in the U-haul, a montage of family photos and old home videos playing in the background. It will be very dramatic, just go listen to the song.

But I’m heartbroken. I can visualize my dad trying to please my mom by buying her what she wants, their early days, before they were married, of spending all day together and loving it. Then she wanted a big house on our land in the country. That didn’t happen, so they bought this house I’m sitting in right now. It’s beautiful. But it’s not my mother’s dream home. And come to find out, dad is not my mother’s dream man.

I can see momma thinking of something new to do like she always used to: a new business idea, a new way of organizing something at church, a diet or asking to go out for ice cream. And dad saying, “That’s ridiculous, Shelley.”

I can see momma crying by herself for how many years? I can’t know. I know they didn’t mean to hurt each other at first. But now they do. Their words are calculated to hurt. On Monday mom decided that she and dad were going to Chicago to see my big sister, Lauren. And then she said, “Finally, I’ll have something fun to look forward to!” in front of dad. After he had brought her roses for their anniversary, which was on Wednesday. I don’t know why she wants to hurt him, maybe to get back at him for the years she’s felt trapped. All I know is, the top of her pros list says:

1. stop living a lie

2. freedom

And so I can only assume the lie is that she loves my father and the freedom that she wants is a separate, insulated life away from him.