Chapter 9 #3
He means the things he says. He genuinely means them and absolutely believes his own logic. So much so, that it’s easy for everyone else to believe it, too.
Like, in this moment, he’s a man who genuinely loves me and is in pain. So he’s doing and saying the things his pain is telling him to. His pain says he needs to make sure I can’t fully leave him. His pain needs to create an arbitrary rule I’m breaking if I do move on, even after I’ve left him.
I really don’t think he’s doing it on purpose.
That’s always been the hardest part. It’s just how he sees the world, so clear in his own version of black and white.
It simply doesn’t leave any space for anybody else’s color.
I sigh. Then push past him down the hallway, “I’ve got to get a few more things out of the closet.”
He follows me to the bedroom. I put my hand up when he tries to follow me into the closet itself, so he stops at the threshold. I go in alone and breathe in the smell of our clothes still hanging together.
Then I glance over my shoulder to make sure Jake isn’t peeking in and crouch down to the sock drawer in the bottom of the closet.
I root around to the back of the drawer where I’ve ferreted away two socks, each stuffed with a thousand dollars in cash.
I hold them both in my hands.
Jake has locked me out of every account. Even while he talks about giving me space, I can tell he’s trying to ensure I can’t go far.
It would be fully understandable if I took both socks.
Texas is a community property state, I looked it up. I’m owed half of everything. Maybe more, depending on what the courts decide about alimony.
Two thousand dollars isn’t even a down payment on what’s fair.
Still, I put one sock back.
I tuck the other one into my bag, underneath the clothes I grabbed from the hangers, and then I walk out of the closet and take a long look at Jake standing in the doorway of our bedroom.
And I think: I’m choosing to believe you’re still the person I know, even now. And I’m choosing to be the person I want to be even when it’s not the smart thing.
“I really think we can do this divorce through mediation,” I tell him. “Together. Like everything we’ve done in this marriage. You’re still the best friend I’ve ever had.”
His face softens. Hope moves across it, and I feel the familiar pull of wanting to be the one who makes things okay for him.
I always run towards his pain and tend to it.
I’ve had ten years of practice.
“So you’ll unfreeze the accounts,” I say. “And text me the new password. That’s what’s fair and good, and I know you’re a good man.”
He frowns in a way that shows genuine pain. “I’m a good man, and you’re a good woman. So stay.”
I sigh. “It’s gonna be okay. We can get through this together. Just text me the new passwords.”
I pick up my bag and I walk out through the bedroom and down the hall and through the foyer and out the front door.
Jake is still standing in the hallway when I leave the house.
I drive to the Starbucks at the edge of the neighborhood and park in the lot. It’s familiar from a hundred mornings I’ve parked here, scrolling through emails and planning my day before I go in for a long work session.
It’s ordinary. That’s the point. I drove here because ordinary felt possible for approximately thirty seconds.
I text Jake.
[LENNON: I need the password to the accounts. Please.]
I wait.
The three dots don’t appear.
I text again.
And again.
The thread stacks up, my words going out into silence, and I watch the space under each one where Delivered should appear… stop appearing.
My eyes go wide as it sinks in what that means. The thing about phones is they don’t tell you when you’ve been blocked.
They just stop delivering. And as the messages just sit there, undelivered, like they’re still traveling and maybe they’ll arrive eventually if I’m patient enough.
Because there’s no way he would block me.
Not while he’s cut off all my money.
I call.
One ring.
It goes to voicemail.
I call again.
One ring.
And then it dawns.
Oh my God.
He blocked me.
He froze every account and told me to come home and asked me to stay celibate for a year and then he blocked me.
I put the phone on the passenger seat.
I look at the Starbucks. At the ordinary Tuesday afternoon of people going in and coming out with cups, living their ordinary lives, unaware that a woman who is sitting in a car in this parking lot has just understood something deep about her marriage that she probably should have understood years ago.
The sound that comes out of me is not dignified.
It starts somewhere below my sternum and comes up with more force than I expected, and it is loud—
I have always been told I am too loud, at least until I learned to stuff it all down inside.
But right now I am as loud as I actually am without shoving a single bit down—
And I scream.
I scream in the Starbucks parking lot and I scream at the woman walking past with a Venti drink and I scream when I get on the frontage road.
I lean my head back and I scream until my throat aches and the sound of it fills every inch of the car and bounces back at me.
Then I get on the highway.
And I scream there too.