Chapter 6 #2
He fell silent. And this silence was no longer victorious. He looked at me as though trying for the first time to match my anger with reality, rather than filing it under "female nerves."
"Do you want a divorce?" he asked.
The word hung between us so sharply my mouth went dry. I hadn't yet managed to say it myself, and he'd already pulled it from the air like a knife.
"I want to stop being your wife in the form I was yesterday."
"That's not an answer."
"And have you earned answers?"
"Niki."
"Yes. I want one. Right now I do. Tomorrow I may want it even more. In a week I might learn to say it without shaking."
His face turned to stone.
"No."
"What 'no'?"
"I won't let you demolish everything in twenty-four hours."
"You already demolished it."
"I did a dirty thing. I won't argue. But a divorce from a state of shock isn't a decision—it's an explosion. I won't sign off on the children waking up in a new reality just because we're both on the edge right now."
"You don't have the right to decide for me."
"For you—no. For the family—I do. As long as it exists."
"For me it's dead!"
He flinched. Almost imperceptibly, but flinched.
"Don't say that."
"Why? Does it upset you?"
"Because our children are upstairs."
"I won't say it in front of them. Unlike you, I still remember where you can't deliver the killing blow."
He turned away first.
"I'll be in the study."
"Anywhere. Just not near me."
I headed for the kitchen exit but stopped at the door.
"And I'm taking off the ring."
"Don't turn this into a spectacle right now."
"It's not a spectacle. It's a sanitary measure. I don't want to wear a symbol of a marriage in which my husband kissed my sister in our living room."
"You want me to hurt?"
I looked at him. For the first time all day, he'd asked almost honestly.
"No. I want you to stop thinking that pain only exists inside me."
He said nothing.
I went upstairs. Marta was sitting on the nursery rug, already without her jacket but still red-eyed. Tim stood by the window. Sarah, poor thing, white as a sheet, was folding wet clothes by the door.
"Everything's all right," I said.
Marta jumped up.
"Mommy!"
She rushed toward me but stopped at the last moment and looked at the bandage.
"Can I hug you?"
"You have to."
She hugged me carefully—so carefully, as if I were made of glass. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of her hair: strawberry shampoo, the outdoors, the sweet sweat of childhood, a life that shouldn't yet know words like affair.
Tim didn't come over.
"Are you getting a divorce from Daddy?" he asked.
Sarah froze.
I felt my legs buckling. Six years old. Only six. And he'd already spoken the word that grown-ups are afraid even to think.
"Daddy and I are going to figure things out," I said. "But not with you. You're not to blame. And Daddy won't stop being your daddy."
"Will you stop being his wife?"
I couldn't lie.
"I don't know yet."
Tim nodded. Too adult a nod. I hated Damien and myself for that nod.
"Is he bad?"
"He did something bad."
"Is that the same thing?"
I sat on the edge of Marta's bed because my legs would no longer hold me.
"Sometimes no. Sometimes a good person hurts you so badly that you don't know how to see the good in them anymore. But that's grown-up stuff. You don't have to figure it out for me."
Tim turned toward the window.
"I don't want the building set today."
I understood it wasn't about the building set. It was about Damien. About the gift. About what had connected them with joy just yesterday.
"Okay."
"Daddy will ask."
"I'll tell him you're tired."
"Don't lie for me."
There he was—my son. My small, terribly honest boy.
"Then you tell him yourself. But without anger. He's your dad."
"He hurt you."
Marta lifted her head from my lap.
"Is Daddy bad?"
I stroked her hair.
"Daddy loves you. Very much. That's the truth."
"And you?"
The room went quiet.
I smiled. I don't know how. Probably terribly.
"Time for dinner, kids."
Marta frowned.
I almost laughed, but what came out was more like a sob.
That evening the house lived strangely. As if after a fire—the walls still standing, the furniture in place, but everything smelling of smoke.
Damien cleaned the kitchen himself. I could hear him collecting shards, mopping the floor, speaking on the phone in short, quiet bursts, canceling meetings.
He made the children dinner. Didn't order in, didn't delegate to Sarah.
Himself. An omelet for Marta, buckwheat with a cutlet for Tim, tea without lemon.
Tim ate in silence. Marta talked about daycare, because at four a heart doesn't yet know how to hold horror for long—and thank God for that.
We didn't fight in front of them. Not once. We moved through the house like two people carrying knives under their clothes who had agreed not to draw them in the nursery.
After dinner, Damien helped Marta with a puzzle. Tim sat nearby but didn't participate. He stared into a book that was upside down. Damien noticed but didn't force it.
"Want to start the car later?" he asked his son.
"Not tonight."
"Okay. Tomorrow?"
"I don't know."
Damien nodded.
"Tell me when you're ready."
I watched him and hated him for being able to stop with his son where with me he'd always pressed until there was blood.
When the children fell asleep, I went into our bedroom.
I took off the ring. It didn't want to come off.
My finger had swollen, it seemed, from eight years of marriage.
I twisted it, pulled, used lotion, and when the ring finally slipped free, a pale stripe was left on my skin.
The place where I'd been his wife looked almost diseased.
Damien stood in the doorway. I hadn't heard him approach.
"Don't do that tonight," he said.
"Already done."
"Are you punishing me or yourself?"
"I'm freeing a finger. Just the finger—for now."
He entered but stopped at the threshold, as if before a new border.
"I'll be in the study."
"I know."
"If you feel bad, call."
"I already feel bad."
He lowered his gaze.
I placed the ring on his side of the bed. Didn't hurl it. Didn't throw it. Simply placed it on the pillow where his head should have been that night.
"Don't weaponize the children with my guilt," I said. "Or with yours. They shouldn't have to choose."
"I won't."
"Neither will I."
"Thank you."
The word sounded hollow. Unfamiliar. Almost foreign in his mouth.
"I'm not doing it for you."
"I know."
He nodded and left.
I closed the door. Turned the key. The click was quiet, but to me it sounded like a gunshot. Between us, for the first time, there was a real door.
For a long time I couldn't fall asleep. I lay on my side, listening to the house, my own breathing, Damien's distant footsteps below. Then the footsteps went quiet. A few minutes passed.
I sat up in bed.
The silence lasted so long I stopped blinking.
Then something in the study hit the wall. Not glass. Something heavy. Maybe a paperweight. Maybe his fist. Maybe, at long last, his composure.