Passenger in divorce

The mystery wasn’t how it turned, but when. A time she wasn’t privy to, the endless butterflies shedding their wings and crawling into something darker, more frightful. 

Somewhere between the spring lilies of March and the early summer sun of May it had settled under their skin like a virus. First, a rot nudging at the back of teeth, its pungent smell singing like a warning sign. Then, a blotchy rash spread across her arms as if she’d bathed in a bath full of nettles. 

It cultivated on the second weekend in June, the virus rearing its ugly head, spitting phlegm across the breakfast table. 

“Divorce?” She croaked, setting the served papers back down on the table with a thud. The weight of all fifty or more pages coming down with it. “Joe? What is this?” 

The man across the table resembled nothing of the man she’d married, years passing since he’d swirled her around on a sticky, neon-squared dancefloor. When his hair still shone in the sun, catching its rays and brightened the long curly mane that was more lion than man. Before the grey had receded it and left its mark upon his forehead. 

“It’s—“ he pauses, a waiver to the honey brown puddled in his eye, the one she’d once put on rainboots for. Joe sighs, scratching at his eyebrow. “It’s exactly what it's meant to be, Lou.” 

“Which is what exactly? You give up? You’re giving twenty years of us away with the same amount of thought you give takeaways on a Friday night.” She snaps, a burn lighting up every raised goosebump on her skin, “Is that exactly what it’s meant to be?”  

There’s a knot in his jaw, hardened against the once sharp, now blunt with the decades they’d spent together, “I tried for years.” Joe hisses, “You gave up long before me.” He spits, years of built up resentment brewing and spilling over.

 Lou’s fingers tense beside the papers, narrowly missing the edges which sharpened under the apparent vermin her husband— ex husband?— threw out at her. 

“It was not me first.” She said, a chill cascading from her lips, across the top of the papers and sitting as the third chair at the breakfast table. “Need I remind you of the woman I caught you kissing three years ago.” 

Joe’s nose twitches, “She kissed me!” 

“And you lingered.” She punctuates, voice as low and as unforgiving as it had been the night of the incident, when she’d got off work early to chase against the rush hour clock and surprise him at work. 

“I was surprised.” Joe argues, an argument so well rehearsed and repeated in the years passed that Lou was surprised it hadn’t earned a nomination for some award, or been shopped around for a piece of theatre. 

It had never changed, Joe never bothered to create a different version, and Lou had gotten tired of chasing an answer that was as certain as the sun setting and rising each morning and night. 

It was still stale, and still incomprehensible as it was that night, upon rounding the corner of the sea of dividers and desks to see a woman, two electoral terms younger than her, with her lips pressed against Lou’s husband. Fingers that were paler, and daintier holding Joe’s neck, inches away from twisting into golden locks Lou had found solace and sun in for nearly two decades. 

“No Joe.” She sniffs, looking down at the big bold black letters that spelled the action every woman over the age of forty dreaded, divorce. Or put simply, their death. “Surprise is leaping out of your skin after being scared by a clown, surprise is blinking too hard when a loved one turns up at the airport unannounced, it’s when I tried to show up at your work to whisk you away for a dinner.”

 Lou closes her eyes, the blanket of darkness a reprieve from the bright white of her death sentence below, because a woman too old to fit into predator-lined clothing did not sell. They had expiry dates, unlike her Joe, whose dimple and charmed smile still ran under their best before. “It is not, pretending to dislike a kiss from a much younger, and much prettier woman.”  

“She was not-“

“She was.” Lou interrupts, “You knew it, that’s why you froze, I got over it a long time ago.” 

Lines crease the dimple of his cheek as Joe frowns, the same lost look in his eyes as the first night they met. Only then, she’d been smitten by the sight and confused it with an ambitious man looking to be known by someone. Now, she knew better, knew she was the one confused. 

“I asked you then, about how we could fix it.” He said, a carefulness to the quietness in how he murmurs, Lou doesn’t dare look to the ceiling. How it droops, not with a water leak or weakened planks of wood, but with pressed ears against the carpet. “How we could make it work for the kids.” 

Lou narrows her eyes, “Where have you been for the past three years then? Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.” 

“No.” Joe shakes his head, pointing to the paper between them, the only proof that they’d once held love for each other, the evidence of years of commitment. The proof she’d ironed-out shirts every Sunday night for meetings, and how he’d used to buy her flowers every first weekend of the month. Tulips, which sat ghostly across the recently sanded oak of their countertop. He rubs his finger between his thumb, “You’ve been a passenger.” 

Lou inhales sharply, bringing the dampness of summer mildewed rain from behind the open window closer to her, oddly remiscent of the downpour they’d got caught in on their third date. Her hair flashing brown to a damp black, to thin-soaked strands that clung to her neck, the back flushing scarlett as Joe pushed the hair out of her face to kiss her right there in the street. 

With clothes weighing three tons too much against their bodies and droplets dripping off their clasped hands. 

She had burned more than any film, or any book had described it to be. 

Lou wasn’t sure when it had turned to weekly Friday dinners, sampling Mexican through Malaysian cuisine, or Sunday football games at his parents ranch in the countryside. Or when they’d started arguing over the flower design of their shower curtain, and purchasing separate comforters to sleep comfortably on opposite sides of the bed. 

She couldn’t pinpoint when they’d swapped their twice a week midtown bar crawl for sleepless nights swaying crying babies and mixing formulas at dawn, listening with envy for college kids to scream their way back down the city’s streets from bars they’d forgotten about. 

She wasn’t sure if Joe was right, if she’d been a passenger the past few years. Or, if she’d been asleep the whole time. 

Her hand shakes as she opens the first page of the settlement, “They are eight and six Joe, this will destroy them.” Her voice catches, and he looks away, staring a hole into the teal-streaked cabinet with the wonky doorknob they’d both claimed as decorative rather than a problem, 

He scratches his beard, “And I’m forty three, and you’re forty one. I haven’t forgotten that.”  

“Don’t be smart.” Lou snarls, 

“I’m not trying to be.” He picks up his tea, the peppermint he’d brewed and sat with for over an hour, which undoubtedly had no heat left to it at all. “Lou this hasn’t been working.” 

“Okay, can’t we get it to work?” She grasps for something, straws that had already fallen out of her hands, “A councillor? More dates? I don’t know, we have to try, for them.” 

“And what Lou? Pretend for another five years, sit unhappily in a home that hasn’t been a home in a long time and waste our breath?” 

There’s a stiffness that locks her jaw tight. “This has been a waste of your time?” She repeats, it's measured.

 It’s scathing. 

“You’re a real piece of work sometimes.” He shakes his head. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

“And you’re still the same selfless jerk.” 

“Maybe you’re right.” Joe grits his teeth, face clenching with the sheer will to not wake the kids upstairs. “But you married the selfless jerk, you loved him at some point.”

There’s a creek, a sharp rip in the wood directly above them. They both snap their heads up, 

“Crap.” She mutters, hand coming to press lightly to her lips. Joe stares upwards at the hidden nose, one caused by feet and not the fate of an old house. 

“Their life isn’t going to end because Mommy and Daddy are in separate houses.” 

The rot spreads through her stomach, acid trapping the loneliness Lou had escaped by cohabiting with a man, a man who had stopped loving her, and giving it back to her, tenfold. In the form of a lingering photo of a two bedroom flat she’d seen in passing in a rental agent's window just this morning. The only place her salary as a middle-school health teacher would stretch to cover, the one she’d have to move into once it was all over. 

“God.” She whispers, “What is wrong with you?” 

He pauses, an ear to the stairs that soft thuds tap down on. “Me?!”

“Yes, you.” Her voice thinned, stringing together on a plea that both of them knew they weren’t surviving, or banking on. “I loved you from the very first day, with that awful tie-dye tee and messy glow in the dark paint on your cheek. I loved you when you broke your arm trying to jump from a swingset after six neat whiskeys. I kept it even when you lost me in a crowd at that stupid concert you insisted on paying a hundred dollars to see.” Her fingers twist in his marooned university jumper she’d stolen ten years ago and stuffed into the corner of her drawer, she watches how his face crumples, painful unlike the scrunch of paper, and sharp like empty cans crushed in hands. 

Lou’s voice cracks, “You don’t get to divorce me when I love you.” 

He sighs, the crease in his crumpled face deepening. “That’s the problem Lou, you’ve always loved me.” Joe looks up, meeting her in the middle, where they’d always been, and drops his voice as low as it can be when there’s a shuffling out in the hallway. “But when did you fall out of being in love with me?”

“Mommy?” 

It squeaks from behind her, and she has the pleasure of watching Joe’s face brighten, the slip of a mask being placed back upright. “Hey pipsqueak,” it’s gentle, the nickname, far gentler than what he’d just spit out. “It’s a little past your bedtime.”

Lou swivels, the rot more dangerous when she spies her daughter in the doorway. She’s engulfed by the frame, with oversized princess pajamas she’d thrown a tantrum to get, despite them not having her size. The venom wilts at the sight of her stuffed elephant, grey and wrinkled, with a patch on his arm from where Lou had to sew it back up because she’d carried him that specific way since she could walk. 

“Florence.” She crouches, and opens up her arms for her daughter to walk into. “It’s almost midnight sweetie, come here.” 

“T’was noisy.” Florence mumbles, words catching in the same sleep she rubs from her eyes. Her elephant, Rody, swings as she does. 

Lou swallows, dryness that arose with papers placed on the table still lingered, and she wanted it gone. To not have to tie this moment to one with her daughter. “I’m sorry Flo, come on, let’s get you back to bed hmm?” 

There’s a moment where she just blinks, elephant in between them as the safety net he’d been bought to be, before small bare feet pad across the chestnut marbled floor towards her and lodges herself into Lou’s arms. 

Lou presses a kiss into the nest of hair that wove in different directions, the sign of sleep only a kid can achieve. Undisturbed, stress-free. There’s still the lingering apple from her evening shower, and Lou stays there for a second. 

“Alright, let’s go.” She scoops her up, and legs tangle around her waist, arms stretching around her neck. Lou doesn’t turn around, not even when Florence lifts her head up, 

“Night Daddy.” 

Joe doesn’t miss a beat, “Goodnight pipsqueak, I love you.” And it’s layered enough to almost trip Lou up on the first step, with a fondness they’d both promised to each other at the altar, and had consequently cast aside when their life began to run itself. 

Florence goes easily from her grip, the bed reaching out to take her back, to tuck her back in. Her eyes are already closed by the time Lou has her untangled, she pauses, brushing a small dark hair overstaying its welcome across her cheek. “Sweet dreams my sweet, I love you very much.” 

There’s a small puff against her skin when she leans in to kiss her daughter's cheek, a thumb stroking the crown of her hair. She looks at the dark bird's nest, and small button nose. There’s a small blessing, that her eyes are closed, so Lou doesn’t have to look at the identical honey brown that just told her that loving wasn’t enough. 

It’s what pushes her to the door, 

“Mommy?” There’s a rustling, Lou pauses just an inch from the door, a half-asleep question falling from Florence. 

“Yes sweetie?” 

“Were you and Daddy fighting?” It’s innocent, full to the brim of all the curiosity that she’d brought them up to have. To not shy away from.

Lou’s fingers clench around the door handle, “No.” She lies, “We were just talking.” 

“Oh.” Florence breathes heavily, “Good.” 

There’s a rustling behind her, and Lou doesn’t dare move her hand until it filters into silence. Until her daughter lies back down, accepting the truth like every child does, with full trust. 

Unknowing that people can lie, and can deceive. 

Her knuckles are white when she finally opens the door and steps out. 

By the time she’s downstairs, Joe’s sat on the breakfast stool, fingers massaging into his temples. The paper hasn’t moved, still just as a white and weaponised in the centre of the table. 

“You really want this?” She asks, avoiding the crack that had been wanting to escape from her throat. 

Joe’s massage stops, but he doesn’t look up, instead his eyes slip shut. “I don’t want it, if I wanted it I wouldn’t have married you but we need it. We’ve not been working for a while now.” 

“It would feel wrong to not advocate for staying together, for them, it feels wrong to lay it all down without fighting for it.” 

He chews his cheek, “But it would be forced.” 

Lou’s socks slide as she draws patterns into the marble, the slow acceptance and dread of watching a man who could vehemently argue about the cinematography of a lesser known indie film for hours, lay down papers without as much as a discussion. 

Something built up enough that he decided it wasn’t worth it, or too far gone to fight for. 

The rot returned, and Lou started to guess when. If it was straight after the kiss, when the only words they exchanged for weeks were around the children, and he’d slept on the sofa. 

If it was when Florence had fallen off her bike, while Joe was taking a phone call, and Lou had refused him the decency of coming into the doctors office. 

Or if it was earlier, years before the kiss, when he’d come to the waiting room of their second child’s birth with flowers that were for Florence and his undivided attention on the small bundle wrapped in blue in the cot. If it was then she’d fallen out of love with him, when he’d stopped paying his full attention to her, and perhaps never even realised. 

“Do you have a pen?” She asks, less steady than she wants it to be. 

His head snaps up, “Really?” He breathes, as if he’d drawn up a thousand more arguments in his head, expecting to have to convince her. Expect her to refuse him, over and over. 

“I—“ she looks away, to the fridge littered with magnets that the kids insisted on collecting while away on the southern coast of Spain, and files it away for later on how they’ll have to divide them. “Maybe I’m a passenger, maybe not. But you’re not wrong, I guess, it’s been forced for a while hasn’t it?”

There’s a fractional, understanding, not-quite smile on his lips. It trembles and it’s truer than anything they’d given each other over the past few years. Lou lingers on it, “I’ll sign it, but we have to do it right by them.” 

“I know.” He says, and fishes out a ball-point pen she’d bought in bulk from the store last week, “I don’t want it to ruin them.” 

“Like it ruined us?” It’s wry, and Lou doesn’t shy away from it. Sitting in it as a flinch passes across his face, more of a twitch, a truth. 

“I really wanted it to be you.” He admits, and somehow it’s far worse than the papers below them. “The vows,” He pressed his lips together, “I tried really hard to stand by them.

There, under the raw honesty melting from his lips, does Lou finally unsheath the wetness that had been threatening to cover her cheeks, and lets the tears fall openly. “Me too.” 

He sets the pen down shakily, in the middle of the table. Lou takes it, and signs her death sentence on a Sunday in June.