That\u2019s what my husband said to me on a Thursday night in October, standing in our kitchen with his coat still on.<\/p>\n
I was at the stove stirring a pot of chili. His favorite. The kind with the extra beans and the little bit of cinnamon that he always said made it taste like Sunday afternoons at his grandmother\u2019s house. I had the radio on. I was humming. I didn\u2019t even turn around at first. \u201cWhat did you say, honey?\u201d He didn\u2019t repeat it. Instead, I heard paper. A soft rustle. Then the light thump of something being set down on the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I turned around.<\/p>\n
Greg was standing by the table with his hands in his coat pockets. There was a thick manila envelope lying next to the salt shaker. He wasn\u2019t looking at me. He was looking at the envelope.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cPapers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat papers?\u201d<\/p>\n
He finally looked up. His eyes were red around the edges.<\/p>\n
\u201cDivorce papers, Claire.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
I honestly laughed out loud. I stood there holding a wooden spoon dripping with chili, and I laughed, because it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard in my life.<\/p>\n
We had been married for twenty-two years. We had a daughter in college. We had a mortgage, a golden retriever named Biscuit, and a vacation planned to the Smoky Mountains in the spring. We still held hands at the grocery store. He still kissed me on the forehead every single morning before he left for work.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery funny,\u201d I said. \u201cTake your coat off. Dinner\u2019s almost ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not joking.\u201d<\/p>\n
The smile slowly slid off my face.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said quietly. \u201cI\u2019ve already signed them. I\u2019ve talked to a lawyer. I\u2019m going to stay at a hotel tonight, and I\u2019ll find an apartment this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wooden spoon slipped out of my hand and hit the floor. Chili splattered across the tile. Biscuit came running over to lick it up, and neither of us stopped him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said. My voice sounded strange. Far away. \u201cWhat happened? What did I do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why?\u201d<\/p>\n
He took a long breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve grown apart,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re too different now. We want different things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat things? What do I want that you don\u2019t want? Tell me one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs there someone else?\u201d I asked. My throat was so tight I could barely get the words out. \u201cJust tell me. I\u2019d rather know. Is there someone else?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said, and he said it so fast and so firmly that I believed him. \u201cThere is no one else, Claire. I swear to God. There\u2019s never been anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I don\u2019t understand!\u201d<\/p>\n
I was shouting now. I never shout. In twenty-two years, I could count on one hand the number of times I had raised my voice at that man.<\/p>\n
He flinched like I had hit him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he whispered. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he turned around and walked out the back door.<\/p>\n
I heard his car start in the driveway. I heard it back out onto the street. I heard it drive away.<\/p>\n
And I stood there in my kitchen with chili on my shoes, staring at that manila envelope next to the salt shaker, waiting for him to come back in and tell me it was all some terrible, stupid joke.<\/p>\n
He never did.<\/p>\n
The next three weeks were the worst of my life.<\/p>\n
I called him every day. Sometimes three or four times a day. Most of the time he didn\u2019t answer. When he did, he was always gentle. Always kind. And always saying the exact same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve grown apart, Claire. We\u2019re too different now.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was like talking to a recording.<\/p>\n
\u201cDifferent how?\u201d I\u2019d ask. \u201cGive me an example. Just one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to fight about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not fighting! I\u2019m asking!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click.<\/p>\n
He found a little one-bedroom apartment across town above a dry cleaner. He came by the house on a Saturday morning while I was at the store and took his clothes, his books, and his reading glasses off the nightstand. He left his key on the kitchen counter, right where the envelope had been.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t take Biscuit. Biscuit sat by the back door for two days waiting for him.<\/p>\n
So did I, if I\u2019m being honest.<\/p>\n
Everybody got the same explanation.<\/p>\n
His brother-in-law. My sister. Our friends from church. The guys he played poker with on the first Friday of every month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve grown apart. We\u2019re too different now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody believed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreg?\u201d said my friend Patty, when I told her over coffee. \u201cGreg Whitman? Claire, that man looks at you like you hung the moon. I\u2019ve seen him do it at every single barbecue for twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething\u2019s wrong. Something\u2019s very wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d I said again.<\/p>\n
The hardest phone call was to our daughter, Sophie.<\/p>\n
She was a junior at the state university, three hours away. She called me the night after Greg told her, sobbing so hard I couldn\u2019t understand her at first.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, what is going on? Dad called me and said you guys are getting a divorce. He said you grew apart. What does that even mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean, you don\u2019t know? You were there!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean I don\u2019t know,\u201d I said, and my voice broke. \u201cHe won\u2019t tell me either.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe sounded weird, Mom,\u201d she finally said. \u201cOn the phone. He sounded really, really weird. Like he was reading off a card.\u201d<\/p>\n
I lay awake every single night trying to figure it out.<\/p>\n
I went through his old emails on the family computer. Nothing. I went through our bank statements for the last two years, line by line, with a highlighter. No strange charges. No hotel rooms. No jewelry I\u2019d never received. No dinners for two at restaurants I\u2019d never been to.<\/p>\n
I even called his office and asked his secretary, Denise, if anything had been going on at work. She sounded as confused as I was.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been a little quiet lately,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd he took a few personal days this summer. But Claire, he talks about you all the time. Every day. I don\u2019t understand this at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Personal days. I didn\u2019t remember any personal days.<\/p>\n
I started going back over everything in my head. Every conversation. Every night. Every little thing he\u2019d said or done in the last year.<\/p>\n
There were things, I realized. Little things. Things I\u2019d brushed off at the time.<\/p>\n
He had gotten short-tempered. Not mean, just snappy, in a way he\u2019d never been before. He\u2019d yelled at a waiter once over a cold plate of eggs, and then he\u2019d sat in the car afterward with his head on the steering wheel for ten minutes, apologizing over and over.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d dropped things. A coffee mug in July. A glass of wine at our anniversary dinner. His car keys, constantly.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d started fidgeting. Tapping his fingers on the table. Bouncing his knee. I\u2019d put my hand on his knee once at church to make him stop, and he\u2019d looked at me with the strangest expression. Almost like he was scared.<\/p>\n
I had thought he was stressed about work. I had thought he was getting older. I had thought a lot of things.<\/p>\n
But I never thought he was leaving.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going on a cruise.\u201d<\/p>\n
My sister Lynn said it like a doctor announcing a diagnosis. She was standing in my living room with her purse on her shoulder and her car keys still in her hand. She\u2019d let herself in with her spare key, which she does whenever she\u2019s decided I\u2019m not answering the phone on purpose.<\/p>\n
I was on the couch in Greg\u2019s old flannel shirt. I hadn\u2019t washed my hair in four days. There was a box of tissues on my lap and a cold cup of tea on the coffee table that I had made sometime the day before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going on a cruise,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, you are. It\u2019s already booked. It leaves from Miami in nine days. Seven nights in the Caribbean. I got you a room with a balcony.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLynn. I can\u2019t afford a cruise.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not paying for it. I am. Well, technically Rob is, but he doesn\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t just leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cExactly,\u201d Lynn said. She sat down on the arm of the couch and pulled my greasy hair back from my face the way she used to when we were kids. \u201cClaire, look at you. You\u2019re not sleeping. You\u2019re not eating. You\u2019ve lost ten pounds. Patty told me you called Greg\u2019s secretary. His secretary, Claire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know you did. But you\u2019ve been searching for answers for three weeks, and you haven\u2019t found a single one. If you keep this up, you\u2019re going to drive yourself crazy. Maybe the answer is that there isn\u2019t one. Maybe he\u2019s just having a midlife crisis, and he\u2019s going to wake up in six months with a red sports car and a lot of regret.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not Greg.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s not.\u201d She sighed. \u201cThat\u2019s what scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked down at the tissues in my lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo,\u201d she said softly. \u201cJust go. Sit on a balcony and look at the ocean. Eat too much shrimp. Let somebody else make your bed for a week. Get away from this house and that kitchen table and that stupid salt shaker you keep staring at.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t realized she\u2019d noticed me staring at the salt shaker.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiscuit,\u201d I said weakly.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiscuit can stay with me. The kids will love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
So nine days later, I went on a cruise by myself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be honest. The first two nights were terrible.<\/p>\n
Everywhere I looked there were couples. Couples holding hands at the railing. Couples sharing desserts. Couples slow dancing at the piano bar to old Frank Sinatra songs. Old couples and young couples and couples on their honeymoons with matching T-shirts that said \u201cJUST MARRIED.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the first night, I ate a cheeseburger alone in my cabin and cried myself to sleep.<\/p>\n
On the second night, I made it to the dining room, sat down at a table for two, looked at the empty chair across from me, and walked right back out.<\/p>\n
But on the third day, something changed.<\/p>\n
I was sitting on a lounge chair by the pool with a book I wasn\u2019t actually reading, when a shadow fell across the page.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs anybody sitting here, sweetheart?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked up. An older woman was standing over me. She had short silver hair, enormous sunglasses, and a straw hat with a fake sunflower on it. Behind her, a tall old man with a white mustache was carrying two fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, good.\u201d She plopped down on the lounge chair next to me. \u201cMy name\u2019s June. That handsome devil is Walt. We\u2019re from Oregon. Fifty-one years married, and he still can\u2019t carry two drinks without spilling one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI spilled half of one,\u201d Walt said, handing her the fuller glass. \u201cThat\u2019s not the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed. It surprised me. It was the first time I had laughed in almost a month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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