Short Stories Project

Saturday, March 26, 2005

You (Part III)

< Part II :: Return to Index :: Part IV >

3) Severance
Time: 15 years


Your father and I will have a major fight when you are three.

He didn’t return home the previous night, did not even think to inform me (something he began to do regularly after your birth), and I finally lost it. You had fallen sick in the middle of the night and I had nobody to turn to in my time of fear. I took him to task the next morning when he stumbled back into our house, whistling a cheerful tune. I told him that you had fallen ill.

So what? He’d countered. Weren't you playing with your toys merrily?

I slapped him. I would have gone for his throat for his carelessly and callously spoken words, fighter that I am, except that he had my arms in an iron grip. His voice was low when he next spoke.

Low, dangerous and filled with a violent savagery so that I could not identify the words with the man that I had married years ago. Tears slid down my cheeks unwillingly as I listened to his threats and warnings, knowing that he meant every word he enunciated with painful clarity.

What had happened, I wondered, to the person I had fallen in love with?

Could this bitter man in front of me really be him?

My heart was hesitant but my mind was resolute in its certainty. Things between us had steadily gone downhill since that day in the hospital. Today, I decided, would be the day where everything that bound us as man and wife came to an end.

I knew, you see, that there was another woman in all of this. Had known it the day I married him that it would come down to this. Even so, I was more than hurt that the man I had chosen to live with could betray my trust and faith so predictably. And yet, laced with that hurt and sorrow was steel, an obstinate will to preserve the fruit that our failed marriage had nonetheless borne.

When I questioned him about the woman, he looked stunned. Angry for a moment that I knew his secret, then defensive about it. He wanted to push all the fault of our failed marriage to me. I shook my head sadly and told him that the fault was on both of us, and he began to rant about how selfish I was, how little attention I paid him, how much time I lavished on you. For once in his life, he had someone who was utterly devoted to him and he would not, could not allow me to break them up.

It was as if he was jealous of you, a sentiment I find juvenile and immature, for I’d have given him my entire world once.

Before long, we sat down and had a good talk where both of us came to a mutual understanding and agreement. Our first one in years.

Our marriage was over and he wanted no part of you.

He offered me alimony and child support, both of which I declined. I still had my work at the local school, and would not need his money, not even to spite him, to make him pay for his infidelity.

When I needed him most, he wasn’t there.

That was enough for your mother.

< Part II :: Return to Index :: Part IV >

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