CHAPTER 10
“S o, your divorce was easy? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone describe their divorce as easy,” Elisa said.
“It was relatively easy. I didn’t fight to keep our marriage or anything. How could I when she already had someone else and told me our life together was boring? Had she told me she was unhappy, I would’ve at least tried.”
“Couple’s therapy?” Elisa asked before taking a sip of the beer she didn’t really want.
Since she left Archie, she had been trying not to spend frivolously and hadn’t bought a lot of alcohol, but she had wanted beer in the house just in case Myra wanted one because she seemed more like a beer than wine kind of woman, even though she’d had the wine the previous night and hadn’t seemed to have an issue with it.
Elisa had gotten this beer at the grocery store, and it had been one of the cheapest they’d had.
Myra was almost finished with her first one, so maybe she liked it or, at least, wasn’t complaining about it so as not to be rude.
“I guess. Had she said that she needed that or thought it would help us, I would have gone. I swear, Elisa, for years, she didn’t complain about anything.
I mean, taking out the trash? Sure. But not a word about any of the big stuff.
We got married, bought our house, the company was doing well, and she liked her job.
I thought we were good, so it felt like she went from being the woman I married to this completely different person overnight.
Suddenly, she’s moving out of our house and into a place with her now-wife.
That woman is leaving her husband and filing for sole custody of their kids.
Then, they’re all moving to Jersey, and now, they’re married to each other and raising those three kids she’s always told me she never wanted. ”
“Was it that you didn’t want to raise kids?” Elisa asked .
“I’ve just never felt that motherly urge thing that some women do. She didn’t, either, so it wasn’t a problem for us, but I wonder now, since she left me, if maybe she just didn’t want to have them or maybe didn’t want to deal with babies because those kids were all six and older when she left me.”
“Babies and toddlers are a lot,” Elisa said. “I had two at once, so I’d know.”
“Yeah, so… Maybe she wanted to adopt an older kid or something, but she never told me that. I don’t think she really wanted kids with me . I think she wanted kids with someone else.”
“It could be that she didn’t want kids at all still, but she wanted to be with her, and she came as a package deal, so your ex went with it.”
Myra nodded and said, “I’ll never know, I guess.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“No, we haven’t talked since the divorce was finalized. She told me they were moving and that was the last I heard from her. Without us having kids to worry about, the divorce was pretty simple. She had her car. I owned my truck. We split some things, and that was it. How was it with your ex?”
Elisa laughed and said, “Not easy.”
“No?”
“No,” she replied, wondering how much she should tell Myra as she took a drink to stall.
“There’s more to it than just a wife leaving a husband, but the truth is that I never loved him.
I kept thinking I would. I thought we’d have the kids and get married, and it would be like one of those arranged marriage things where people tell you they weren’t in love in the beginning, but they fell in love over time.
I kept waiting for that. I’d look over at him in bed and think that it wasn’t there yet, but it would be one day. I just had to wait for that moment.”
“That sounds terrible,” Myra replied.
“It wasn’t all bad, and he wasn’t around much unless he wanted something, so he left me alone. For a whole year before we got separated, he slept in another bedroom. ”
“Really? Why?”
“He claimed that I snored and that it was keeping him up, but I don’t snore. I’ve recorded myself to check. He just wanted to be alone, and that was perfectly fine with me because so did I.”
“What about…” Myra began but didn’t finish.
“Sex?” Elisa guessed.
“Sorry. Too personal?” Myra asked.
“No, it’s okay,” she said, clearing her throat as she set her beer bottle on the coffee table. “Well, that wasn’t happening all that much by then, but it wasn’t really all that regular before that, either.”
Myra didn’t say anything, but she nodded and finished her beer.
“Let’s just say that he wasn’t… good. Yeah, he wasn’t good.”
Myra laughed then, and Elisa wondered if that half a beer she had drank without having had any food since lunch had gone to her head.
“I can’t believe I just said that,” she added.
“No, keep talking. This is just getting good,” Myra replied, turning to face her on the couch.
“He was fast.”
“Fast?” Myra laughed a little.
“Yes. And it was all about him.” Elisa laughed. “Let’s just say I went through a lot of lube because I always needed it.”
“Oh, my God,” Myra said, laughing harder now. “I’m laughing, but that sounds awful. Why did you stay with him? Was it really just the kids?”
“I guess so,” she replied. “But I was talking to my now ex-sister-in-law one day – she’s a little younger than me – and she’d just gotten into a relationship.
They’ve since broken up, but the way she was describing how she felt and, well, their sex together made me jealous, honestly.
I knew I’d never felt that before and never would with Archie.
He’s always seemed so aloof to me; like he knew how I felt, and he felt the same way, but we both stayed together anyway.
I think he stayed because of how it would look if we got divorced after pretending to be this perfect family, but he also had me at home and could do what he wanted outside of the house because I really didn’t care. ”
“He was sleeping around?”
“I’m sure he was. Once I felt like I knew for sure that it had started, I brought up him getting routine tests done, and I specifically mentioned getting tested for sexually transmitted things .
He just nodded at me. A week later, I found the negative test results on our bathroom sink.
That was his way of telling me that, yes, he was cheating, and it was my way of telling him that I knew.
I got new test results on the counter for a few more months after that, and he still came into the bedroom about once a week, thanked me after, and then left to sleep in the other room.
When I stopped seeing the results, he also stopped coming in, and I decided that I needed to go around that time. ”
“You deserve someone who loves you, Elisa,” Myra replied. “Someone who wants to be with you and touch you because they can’t not , and it’s all they think about and all they want. You deserve to be happy, and I hope you find the guy who does that for you.”
Elisa swallowed and turned toward Myra on the couch.
“Well, remember how I told you that there was more to it than just a wife leaving a husband?”
“Yes.”
“Part of the reason I could never really love him as my husband and why I never pushed for more in the bedroom – really, I pushed for less – was because…” Elisa paused to take a deep breath before adding, “I’m not attracted to men.
” She met Myra’s eyes and watched her expression turn to confusion.
“I’m gay, and I’ve known it since before I even met Archie. ”
“You’re… a lesbian?” Myra asked.
“A lesbian who’s never been with a woman,” Elisa said with a shrug.
“I figured it out when I was young, but it didn’t really matter.
I was pre-med, only focused on school and being a doctor.
I wasn’t looking for anything at all because I wasn’t sure where I would go to medical school and then where I’d match later.
It’s complicated, wanting to be a doctor, since you can’t always control where you end up for at least a few years, so I didn’t want anything serious.
When I met Archie, I wasn’t out at all. I thought I’d go out with him a couple of times, and that would be it, but I got pregnant, and my whole life changed.
It didn’t seem to matter anymore then. Everything went from it being all about becoming a doctor to being the best mother I could be.
I’m not sure I was ever really a wife to Archie.
I didn’t want to be, and he didn’t need me to be anyway.
I started to think about how he was cheating, and I thought about cheating as well.
I figured I could join one of those apps, find a woman who might want to just meet up, and finally experience what sex with a woman was like. ”
“But you didn’t?” Myra asked.
“No, I didn’t want that. I’d had sex that meant nothing for years, and I wanted something that actually mattered for once.
I wanted what you said before: someone who wanted to touch me and be with me .
So, I didn’t proceed with any of the apps, but I did come out to my ex-husband.
Suddenly, everything that had been wrong in our marriage had been my fault.
I was the reason our sex life was bad. I was the reason–”
“Elisa?”
“Yeah?”
“You were in a marriage. That’s two people.
He has to own stuff, too. Just like I have to own not seeing the signs of my ex-wife being unhappy.
I can claim that she never told me that anything was wrong and that she cheated, but I didn’t notice anything going on, either, when maybe I should have.
Your ex-husband is selfish. You won’t be able to convince me otherwise.
He had put his own ambitions and needs over yours and probably over the kids, too. ”
“I suppose so,” she said.
“So, you haven’t been with anyone since the divorce?”
“No.” Elisa shook her head. “I’ll never be with a man again, and I’ve just put my focus into moving here, getting the kids set up and ready for school, and finding a job.”
Myra nodded and said, “Just… don’t just be with anyone.
I mean, I know you want to be with someone who wants you, but some women have a way with other women that makes you want to…
take those steps you might regret in the morning.
I’ve seen it a lot in New Orleans, especially.
You go to a bar. Someone offers to buy you a drink.
They flirt and make you laugh. Then, suddenly, you’re back at their place, naked and wondering how you got there, to begin with, because you only planned to have a drink with friends. ”
“You sound like you might be speaking from experience,” Elisa noted.
“I might have been the one buying those drinks when I was in my early twenties, and, well, I regret it.”
“Oh,” Elisa said.
“I wasn’t a bad person; I never pressured a woman to sleep with me.
But I did like the game of flirting and seeing where that could go.
More often than not, it went back to my apartment, and sometimes, they’d sleep over and tell me the next morning that they weren’t gay, bi, or that it didn’t mean anything.
Other times, they’d tell me that they regretted it and that I should’ve been more upfront with my intentions. ”
“ Were you upfront?”
Myra laughed and said, “I literally asked them to come to my place and told them why, so yes. But I guess it’s easier to blame someone else sometimes when you regret something. I don’t think I did anything wrong exactly, but I know why I did it, and that’s the problem.”
“You liked the game,” Elisa said with a nod.
“Yes,” Myra replied. “I liked picking a woman out at the bar. I especially liked it when she was with her friends, and I could get her alone and buy her that drink. It was fun and exciting, and the sex was only part of that. It wasn’t usually all that good.
A lot of times, it was just me giving and them taking, not much more than that, but it was the game that got me off, so I’m not proud of that.
Technically, that is how I met my now ex-wife, so there’s that. ”
“You picked her up at a bar?” Elisa asked and leaned in a little.
“A one-night stand, yeah. That was all it was supposed to be, but we went out again, and she was the last woman I picked up.”
“No one since?”
“No. I’ve had a few dates, but those were actual dates, not me picking them up at a bar, and I haven’t been with a woman since her.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to pick up women anymore. I liked being in love. I want that again.”
“A relationship?”
“Yes,” Myra said, leaning in as well. “I want to be with a woman, not with a bunch of them. Sex is great. But making love? There’s nothing else like it, and I want both.”
“Me too,” Elisa whispered.
Myra’s arm went over the back of the sofa, and Elisa shifted against it. She swallowed and wanted to be prepared for whatever would happen next, so she licked her lips.
“So, to be clear, I don’t play those games anymore,” Myra said. “And I don’t just want to–”
“Have sex,” Elisa interrupted, trying to speed this along. “Yeah, I understand.”
Myra smiled at her then, and her hand moved to Elisa’s cheek. She cupped it and dragged her thumb along the skin, causing Elisa to shudder because this was the very first time a woman had ever touched her like this.
“You feel it, too?” Myra asked.
Elisa didn’t move or say anything, though, because she couldn’t.
She was shaking. Her hands were just trembling in her lap as she tried to hold them together to shield the shaking from Myra.
Her lips were shaking, too, but she couldn’t hide that .
When the doorbell rang, indicating that their food was here, Myra proceeded to stare into her eyes for a few more seconds, almost pleading with her own eyes for Elisa to say something, but Elisa’s throat was too dry to make a sound.
So, Myra pulled her hand away, her arm slipped off the back of the sofa, and she stood.
“I’ll get it,” she offered, referring to the food that Elisa had totally forgotten about.
Elisa then watched as Myra walked to the door and pulled it open while she tried to get her nerves under control.