2. Two
Two
It’s nine thirty when Camp finds me glaring at myself in the bathroom mirror, anti-wrinkle patch stuck to my forehead.
After I cleaned up the spilled drinks and spaghetti.
After I did the dishes.
After I read bedtime stories and filled water cups four thousand times.
After he played a softball game and had beers and burgers with his friends.
He strolls in—filthy cleats leaving a trail of clay through the house—without a care in the world and an easy lopsided smile on his lips. I’m not someone I’d consider as having a short temper, but the sight of him—relaxed, unaffected, handsome despite the ridiculous mustache that covers his upper lip like a 1970s porn star—has me twitching.
Dr. Cowart’s words from the podcast become lyrics to an annoying song that’s stuck in my head.
Is it fair that men get to chase their dreams while women don’t? For every person sacrificing, there is someone who isn’t. Who never will.
I take him in, this man who had big dreams he chased and caught. Who gets to float around life doing whatever he wants. I want to scream. Maybe even use violence. Fine, I’m self-aware enough to know that if there were no consequences, I’d punch Camp “The Slinger” Cannon right in his goddamn face.
I must be a good actress because he coolly says, “Hey, J.” His thick southern accent that once felt like warm honey dripping all over me now hits my eardrums like nails on a chalkboard.
He kisses my temple, slightest hint of beer on his breath. An IPA. Local. I don’t have to ask. After twenty-five years together, there are no mysteries.
He smiles at my reflection in the gold-brushed framed mirror that covers the white-tiled walls before stepping aside to start the shower and toe off his clay-caked cleats. In the middle of the bathroom floor. That I’ll eventually move to the front door. After sweeping up the mess they made without him even noticing.
I clear my throat. “Hey.” Then, like someone else is controlling my mouth: “You had beer.”
His eyes narrow as he unties his pants—some sort of athletic jogger with burnt-orange streaks of clay across them.
“Yeah. I texted you after the game. We had burgers at the brewery.” He chuckles, pants slipping to the ground. “We were just about to leave and in walked Dani, so we had one more with her.”
“Dani?” I frown. “What was she doing there?”
My voice is clipped but he doesn’t react—he never reacts—only shrugs as he peels his clothes off.
“Coincidence, I guess.”
Fat chance.
Dani is the girls’ softball coach with dewy skin and muscular thighs. Always where Camp is. Gushing. And giggling. Camp isn’t even funny. And there’s her hair, chestnut brown with the swish and bounce shampoo commercials are made of.
He reaches into the stream of water to check the temperature, then steps in, oblivious to my glowering as he stands in the glass-walled shower.
“We had spaghetti, and it was a disaster,” I say, mostly to myself, slight echo in the room.
“Ah,” he says, a layer of fog forming on the glass as he squirts shampoo into his palm, tilting his head into the water. “That’s no fun.”
He massages shampoo into his shaggy blond hair, eyes closed as he faces the spray of the faucet. Steam fills the bathroom, water drips down his toned body, and an itch forms beneath my skin. Every inch of him triggers a memory.
The boomerang-shaped birthmark on his ribs, and his familiar To forever and back when I used to trace it.
The tan lines across his biceps from hours upon hours spent on baseball fields.
The slopes of his muscles from a life dedicated to movement.
The bump on his nose, a reminder of the night we almost weren’t.
His body, a timeline of us, unnerves me.
It’s taken years for me to get to this point—years of giving him the opportunity to show up and him not—but now that I’m here, there’s no coming back. Now that I’m here, I see he’s been living, and I haven’t.
With every drop of water that streams down his body, the things I once loved about him I begin to hate. Resentment stacks up inside me like bricks of a building.
I look from him in the shower—without a care in the world—to my own face in the mirror.
My now overly moisturized skin, a vain attempt at maintaining some kind of youth, is framed by penny-red hair that hangs down my back and eyebrows that have no actual shape. I’m a stranger. Dr. Cowart’s words the only truth I know.
Here I am, forty, an age when I always thought I’d be so sure of who I was and what I wanted, completely lost. A frayed rope one thread away from snapping. The girl who was once the best at everything she did, now failing miserably. No career. No direction. I’m a bus driver, chef, and maid—all without a title or paycheck. All without an ounce of appreciation from anyone else. A former wannabe photographer without a lick to show for it. I’m nothing. A dud.
The black sky against everyone else’s bright stars.
Or, according to Lyra, simple .
Every time a human was plucked from my uterus, I lost a piece of myself, no doubt scrambled up in the weird and bloody mess of afterbirth. Maybe that’s why celebrities eat the stuff. A futile attempt at retaining their identities.
The strange thing is, I didn’t see it happen. Somewhere between peanut butter sandwiches, loads of laundry, and committee meetings at the school, I began to vanish. A silent thief stealing away my pieces without my permission as the years passed by. Camp has emerged from the over two decades since high school larger-than-life while I’m a shaved-away version of my previous self with a soft belly and stretch marks.
There’s no laughing.
No flirting.
No intentional time together.
Assigned roommates who tolerate each other.
His life is work and baseball; mine is kids and keeping a house I never wanted to live in.
This realization—the fact this is who we’ve become, who I’ve become—makes pressure swirl in my gut. There’s an urgency, a desperation, pulsating through me as Camp pushes the shower door open and hooks a towel around his perfectly unchanged waist.
I can’t do this anymore.
Dr. Cowart was right. It’s not just about me. The implications for the kids if I stay in this are dire.
Is your marriage a source of life or the demise of it?
I square my sleepshirt-covered shoulders to him. “I’m done.”
He steps around me to the sink, taking his razor from a drawer, and snorts a laugh. “With what? Spaghetti?”
Typical Camp response. Idiot.
“You. Us. Being alone all the damn time.”
His chin pulls back as he puts a layer of shaving cream on—careful to avoid his mustache. Almost dismissive. Any other day, his silence would shut me up. Would be enough to make me want to avoid the argument. But today? Today I was called simple, and I will not willingly go back into my cage. For once, I want the argument.
“And you wear your cleats inside.”
He sweeps the razor down his jaw, eyes in the reflection flicking quickly to mine.
“And you’re always late. Always with the team or-or-or at work. And I’m here. Cleaning. Picking up your shoes. Picking up the dog shit.”
My own eyes widen along with his at my uncouth use of shit . I pause, but only long enough to get enough oxygen in my lungs to keep going. Voice firming with conviction with every spoken word.
“And I’m going to be honest, it doesn’t feel like you even like me. What do we do together? Anything?”
For the first time in years, I’m shouting at him.
“You go out on Tuesdays—all game days—and that’s not even mentioning the team you coach, or the other games you’re obligated to attend as the athletic director. And the sponsor dinners! You laugh and drink beer with the team and your friends and coaches, and I’m here making dinner and doing homework. Putting out never-ending fires with the boys—sometimes literally. Repeating bedtime routines over and over and over while my skin starts to sag from my bones. Life passing me by. I’m nobody. Because I gave it all to you. To the kids. But-but-but—”
He sets the razor down, half of his face still covered in thick white foam. Expression unreadable as his head turns from looking at reflection me to real me.
“I can’t do this anymore, Camp. I won’t. I refuse.”
Eyebrows pinched, one palm resting on the counter, the other hanging by his side, his half-shaved chin pulls back.
“Are you about to start your period?”
His question nearly knocks the wind out of me.
“No, Camp,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m not about to start my period .”
“Where is this comin’ from then?” He takes another swipe of the razor down his face. “You know I’ve been crazy at work.”
I bark out an unexpected laugh that shocks me as much as it does him.
“Do you hear yourself? You’ve been playing softball tonight. With grown men. Not getting paid!”
His mouth drops. Stunned.
“Do you know how many dinners you’ve made it home for in the last month?” I pause but don’t need to; he knows the answer just as well as I do. “Two. Both Sundays.” My hands fly into the air. “At your parents’ house!”
“I invited you to come to the game tonight, you always like talkin’ to—what’s Johnny’s wife’s name?”
He squints at his reflection as he thinks. Like that’s what matters right now.
“I don’t want to go to your stupid softball game, Camp!” He blinks, says nothing. “We have kids. With homework. And bedtimes. We all don’t get to float around living our best lives every damn night.”
We stare at each other, tension thick. My breaths match the cadence of my pounding heart: so fast it’s like I’ve been running nonstop for the last seventeen years.
He rubs his index finger across the bump on his nose and looks away, studying something on the counter that doesn’t matter, before looking back at me. For the first time since I’ve started talking, his face says he’s listening.
“I don’t do anythin’ around here because you’ve already done it, J. How was I supposed to know . . .?”
I scoff. “Really, Camp? How were you supposed to know that I needed you to come home?” Unbelievable. “Every week?!”
“You know how those refs are!” He holds up his palms, defensive. “They sit over at Liberty Tap and lose track of time. We never start on time!” he cries. “And you know how busy things are right now at work. Baseball season is in full swing with a crazy schedule. And we’re wrappin’ up basketball playoffs. But the sports complex is almost done, and the board is—”
“You staying for one more beer with Dani has nothing to do with the refs sitting at Liberty Tap!” I snap.
“Dani?” His half-shaved jaw goes slack. “Are you kiddin’ me right now?”
I cross my arms, heart pounding against my throat.
“I’m done.” I hear the words before it registers I’ve said them. “I’m done letting you live a life you want because I don’t have one at all.”
He scoffs. Says nothing.
He doesn’t get it. I would laugh if I didn’t think it would make me cry.
In college I had a photography teacher that said a good photographer takes a picture, a great photographer tells a story. I don’t know why I think of him right now, but I do. Clear as day, I see Professor Glenn standing in front of a classroom in his daily uniform of khaki-colored clothes and floppy hat with a dinged-up Canon slung around his neck, like he was moments away from leaving for an African safari.
He didn’t just look at photos, he studied them. Scrutinized every line. He’d stare at an image and hum and nod.
I imagine a photo being captured of Camp and I in this bathroom. Him perfect, me lost. Him aging like a barrel of fine wine, me a bushel of rotten apples. Him living, me not. Him. Me. Him. Me.
And then I know, clear as a photo with a new lens, this scene tells one story: We’re over.
I’ve heard right before a person dies, life flashes before their eyes.
And while I don’t think I’m about to die, in the seconds I take to work up the nerve to say what I need to say, I see it all. Our life.
The first time we kissed.
High school graduation.
The college parties.
The new baby.
The small wedding.
The sleepless nights.
The deep loss.
The drifting apart.
The unseeing.
The quiet.
So.
Much.
Quiet.
Then, the words I never dreamed: “I want a divorce.”
A breath gushes out of him, and his eyes go wide. “A divorce?!”
I swallow, unsure if I can repeat it. I nod, pause, then add, “Would we even be married if I didn’t get pregnant with Lyra?”
His expression crashes, palms gripping the edge of the vanity as he hinges at the waist. We’re quiet, breathing, letting the question float like fog in the small bathroom.
Upright again, he picks up the razor, drags the final line down his jaw, a small dot of blood bursting at the surface before he rinses his face. The whole act takes less than a minute but lasts a decade.
He looks at me—so much unexpected hurt in his eyes it sends a stab of guilt into my chest.
“I would have asked, but judgin’ by the question, I’m guessin’ you wouldn’t have said yes.”
He bends over, scoops up his cleats, and walks out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with the pile of clay in the middle of the floor.
No fighting.
No promising me things will get better.
When I tell my husband our marriage is over, he walks away.
Alone in the bathroom, hands trembling, I yank the drawer open and pull a pair of scissors out, doing the only thing I know to do. In four angry snips, I cut a jagged line of bangs across my wrinkle patch–covered forehead. Locks of my red hair fall down the front of my face before scattering across the tiled floor.
I refuse to cry the tears burning behind my eyes.
I sniff, wipe my nose with the back of my hand.
When I leave the bathroom, I don’t clean the mess. The strands of my hair sit in a pile next to the clay from his shoes.
It’s all still there when I walk in the next morning.