Chapter 17
The human psyche is an amazing thing.
Batter it, shred it, deprive it of the oxygen of any rationale kind of hope, but if you love someone enough, you still persuade yourself there’s some kind of hope.
But for the next ten days, that wasn’t my frame of mind.
When I saw Sasha climb into Thomas’s SUV and disappear off to his Downtown apartment, all hope felt finally gone.
Which was when I realized why Lisa had been in the second car.
Sasha had even given her a key so the woman who was kinda busy and stressed in her twentieth week of pregnancy had another task thrust onto her plate. Babysitting her best friend’s near-suicidal husband. Making sure he didn’t do anything stupid.
Strange as it may seem, I tried to carry on with work. I reckoned it would help take my mind off the thing I was desperately trying to pretend didn’t exist.
But when I got to the airport, I found my old boss Alan waiting there for me. As one of my father-in-law’s oldest friends, he’d been tipped off and put a fatherly arm around me.
“Jason, go home… I got this… you never knew this, but your boss Hank went through a terrible time when his wife left him… he believes in you… but he knows you need time… he’s signed you off for a month…
apparently some old semi-retired corporate gunslinger persuaded him he needed a few more weeks of encores before he was finally ready to hang up his corporate poncho and revolvers…
Dragging myself out of the bed and into the shower and been an almost sinew-snapping effort… and getting from the shower to the airport (my arteries four parts blood for every one part bourbon) had used up whatever willpower I still had left.
So, totally out of character, I hugged a very surprised Dr. Alan Burton and within an hour was back in the womb-like safety of my darkened bedroom.
Aside from the airport, the next few days followed the same pattern.
With Lisa twenty weeks along, she and Sasha’s sister Kate took it in turns to drop by and spend a few hours a day with me.
Odd as it may seem, one of my most therapeutic talks happened when Kate came over and found me two-thirds of the way towards the bottom of a new bottle of Gentleman Jack.
For a woman whose alcohol intake barely exceeded one glass even on New Year’s, I was surprised when she accepted my offer to join me.
As I guzzled and she sipped, with her straight-talking and na?ve honesty, she asked me the question that cut right to the core.
“Jason… why did you do it?
“You had to know it wouldn’t end well…
“However adventurous the young Sasha might have been, at heart she was always a MacAlister girl… sure, she was fighting hard, having fun… more than I ever did…
“But her Scottish genes and all those years and years of Sunday School lessons were always going to win out in the end…
“Didn’t you realize that? Maybe Thomas with that strong Catholic upbringing realized and gave her what he knew would always bring her back home…”
Even half sloshed, as I looked across at my sister-in-law sipping my bourbon, I wondered how she’d seen it so clearly when I’d been so stupidly dumb for so many years.
I don’t know why, but that inebriated moment of realization sparked a renewed hope in my heart.
The way I looked at it, if all Sasha needed was a return to a conventional marriage, then surely the depth of a decade of love trumped the last few months of her emotional attachment to Thomas.
At least, that’s what the rational, numbers-based engineer in me thought.
So I resolved to clean my act up. No more booze, no more self-pity and even persuading my ex-boss that I was ready to go back on the road with him.
With Sasha still working the DTW Incheon route, it was nearly two weeks between that talk with Kate and me having the chance to meet with her and show her that I was the man best suited to give her what she wanted.
When I asked her to arrange a meet, Kate seemed conflicted. The Presbyterian part of her said ‘husband and wife, ‘til death do us part,’ but the realist in her was concerned I might be hurt again. Might dive back into the bottle that had been my comfort blanket.
Despite her reservations, as Sasha’s big sister, Kate made sure the meeting happened. Although the sterile, safe environment wouldn’t have been my first choice.
Inevitably, we started with mundane pleasantries. But I was too keyed up to be patient for more than a few minutes.
“Sash… I’ve worked it out… I was talking to Kate… I know where it all went wrong… honey, I know how we can be happy again… happy and normal…”
Sasha didn’t instantly reply. She paid me the respect of listening and thinking. Or at least, pretending to think. But the look that appeared on her face finally made me realize the ship I longed for had long since sailed.
And, as she reached across to clutch my hand, her words just doubled down on the same message.
“Jason, honey… I’ll always love you… our marriage, our love…
all those years… nothing can wipe them away…
they’re me, they’re us… but I’ve moved on…
‘us’ isn’t you and me anymore… I’m with Thomas now…
the sooner you accept that, move on and find someone wonderful enough for you…
the sooner you’ll be as happy as Thomas and I are…
That coffee shop meeting finally doused the last hopes I had of resurrecting our love and marriage.
That may sound clinical and cold, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
The pain didn’t magically stop that day. In fact that early November hook-up did what Kate had feared. That final extinguishing of hope sent me sliding back into the bottle.
But unlike before, my trip to the bottom only lasted a couple of days. A couple of days which ended with a total volte-face. Not me asking for a meet-up with Sasha, but her asking for a meet-up with me.
But this time the way she framed it, it was pretty clear where things would be headed. Her text simply said, ‘Jason, I want to talk about Thomas and my future… how we unpick the past.’
When I replied, she asked me where I wanted to meet. ‘Your place, please…’
After a short pause, her reply came back. ‘Okay, I’ll see you there.’
‘You and Thomas, please,’ I replied.
‘Are you sure?’
‘The more the merrier!’ was my sarcastic but unambiguous answer.
‘Jason, sweetheart…’
‘Sasha, Thomas!’
Heading over to Thomas’s apartment (‘their place,’ as I know thought of it with a painful irony), I felt a strange sense of calm.
For the last six years I’d been experiencing the highs and lows of sharing a woman who I knew loved me, but who equally I knew was three or four rungs above me on the primate attractiveness scale…
A silly metaphor?
Maybe yes, maybe no… all I’m saying is that at core humans are animals with all that entails in terms of physical attraction and physical hierarchies…
After a brief conversation about how I was doing—I really didn’t want to share, too soon, too raw—Sasha started yammering and muttering, before pushing a folder across the table.
Opening it up—and for once feeling like I was the one with the power—I examined the main envelope.
‘Divorce Papers’.
Okay, so that’s what all this is about!
“So no final chance then?” I teased, enjoying her awkward embarrassment. Noting the way he squeezed her hand to comfort… a squeeze that sent darts of pain flying through my heart. How many times had I squeezed like that over the years… but I’d been replaced in that, just like in everything else…
“No counselling? Are you sure? The court might throw it out,”I threw back, pretending the pain wasn’t real.
But the pain was real. I still felt calm, but that simple touch from Thomas forced me to gather myself, to restore my earlier calm.
Holding my hand up, closing my eyes, they gave me the moments I needed.
Finally opening my eyes, the pain was still there, but at least I felt back in control.
Now calm enough to look across and look at them, I think Sasha finally realized why I’d wanted to meet here and why I’d been insistent Thomas was here as well.
I needed to see this.
Painful as hell.
But at least it started the process of giving me closure.
Seeing the way they looked at each other—all self-support, all co-dependence, just like we’d been—I realized there was no mileage in bitterness of regret.
The pain would last for years. And I could allow myself to wallow in anger and throw shitloads of blame at both of them.
But what was the point? Living in a world of anger would hurt me more than it hurt them.
And, most importantly, it wouldn’t mean a damn in terms if getting Sasha back.
Looking at how they sat, at the closeness, the emotional bond between them, I finally realized there was zero chance of going back.
That particular ship had sailed. What I was looking at was the future. Their future. Together. Not my future. However much it hurt to think it, however much I wanted it, I knew I had part in Sasha’s future.
You can’t fight the future. Silent movies… telexes, faxes… dial-up modems vs. the internet.
Their future wasn’t necessarily the right one or the best one—maybe I could give Sasha a better future. But was the point in fighting? I had too much self-respect and too many years to live to push and fight to get back what my wife had decided to give to someone else.
I still loved her—although in my darker moments I still harbored hatred and anger—but I was done fighting.
If she’d seen fit to choose someone else, then I’d slowly and quietly rebuild my life until the pain was reduced enough that I could love someone else.
Looking across at them, there was a still a part of me that wanted to shout… to say something… to hurt them.
But I didn’t.
I just signed her papers and felt a surprising sense of relief.
The pain, the terrible pain was still there, and aside from my emotions, I knew this whole fuck-up was on Sasha and me to an equal extent… but what I did know was that however much it hurt, I had the strength within me to one day find happiness again.