Chapter Eleven
I didn’t know how to feel about Ben coming to New York. It felt too soon after the wreckage of the last time we’d seen each other, three weeks before I flew to Rochester to take the bar exam. A week before I spiraled at Vin Rouge.
I’d been packing up my off-campus apartment when the doorbell rang. A FedEx driver handed me an envelope with the divorce papers I’d mailed to Ben with a note stuck to the front, asking him to sign and send them back promptly so I could finalize everything before I took the bar.
Relief washed over me. Even with something like this, he was still reliable, and I was grateful for it. I opened the envelope and pulled out the papers, marked with a “sign here” tab on each of the three pages that required Ben’s signature.
He’d signed the first two.
The last page was blank.
I felt exhausted and frustrated. I’d spent the entire summer doing nothing but studying for the bar, and I needed to be able to file the papers before I moved to New York.
He picked up the first ring.
“Hey, it’s Sam. The papers just arrived. There were three signature tabs, but you missed the third one.”
The line was silent for a second, but I could hear his breath close to the phone.
“Sorry. It’s been a rough week. Mail ’em back to me, I’ll sign the one I missed.”
I’d already done the unthinkable by leaving him. But I’d allowed myself to go on autopilot so I could just get through to the other side, and my anxiety had overtaken my guilt. “I can’t wait that long. I’m driving them back to you now. Please be home.”
I pulled in an hour later, rattled from stress.
He had sold our townhouse and moved closer to his family, into an apartment complex that was reminiscent of the place he’d lived in when we met in college.
Not seeing Ben for months had made it easier to ignore the emotional fallout from ending our marriage.
I climbed a worn wooden staircase to the second-floor apartment, my eyes locking on what looked like a waste stabilization pond behind the building.
Everything was a visual reminder of the impact my choices had had on his life.
I knocked and waited. I knocked again a few seconds later, then jiggled the doorknob and realized it was unlocked.
The door opened to a plastic linoleum foyer that led to a carpeted living room.
Ben was sitting on a couch I recognized from his parents’ basement.
There was a metal floor lamp bright enough to illuminate only half of the couch.
From what I could see of his face, he looked tired.
The circles under his eyes hurt to look at.
I set the papers down on the coffee table next to an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts.
“You’re smoking?”
Ben hadn’t smoked a day in his life. Not in college or in high school. Not even when he was drunk at a party. “You’re smoking in your apartment?”
“Is there a law against smoking in your own apartment?”
I stared at him, unable to look away. I’d never seen anyone look so angry and sad at the same time. It was like a punch in the stomach. This was what my choices had cost him.
I slid the ashtray over to the opposite end of the coffee table. “Since when do you smoke?”
“Since when do you care? Are you going to take it all back if I promise to quit?”
A million tiny punches. The subpar apartment, when he certainly could have afforded a better place.
His parents’ old couch. The cigarettes. This was what I had done to him.
It had been my decision to drive the papers over, but maybe that’s what he hoped would happen by not signing the third page.
Mailing them would have been less painful for both of us.
He sighed. “Where’s the page?”
Somewhere between the linoleum and the cigarette smoke, I’d almost forgotten. “It’s right here. I’m sure I have a pen somewhere . . .”
He grabbed a pen on the coffee table. “Don’t worry, Sam. I’m ready for you.”
Ben never did sarcasm and couldn’t deadpan to save his life. Until now. He flipped to the signature page, signed, and handed it back to me.
“Sorry you had to come all the way over,” he said flatly.
I stood there trying to figure out if it would be best to just take the papers and leave or try to talk honestly to the man who had been my husband.
Neither choice was going to change anything.
I couldn’t flip a switch and feel less guilty, and he wasn’t going to be less heartbroken.
There was nothing I could say or do to fix it.
He pushed his laptop aside without looking up. “Do you need something else?”
I fumbled around for words. “No . . . thank you for signing. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
When he’d moved out a year earlier, he’d asked for space. We’d barely been in touch, save a few emails and texts here and there about bank accounts. Not seeing him had made it easier to convince myself that he was fine.
“Has it been okay living here?” I asked cautiously.
“Are you really making small talk?”
I flinched. “I guess I was trying.”
Ben turned to face the window. “Really wish I’d just signed on all the dotted lines the first time like any jackass would’ve.”
He turned back to his laptop, typing as we sat in silence. “Yeah, it’s been fine living here. I’m writing a book. I’ve got six chapters down.”
“A book? I don’t know what that means.”
“A book, Sam. With words and pages and shit.”
I laughed despite myself. He reached into a small drawer on the side of the coffee table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“I didn’t know you liked to write. What’s it about?” The question immediately felt intrusive. “If I can ask,” I added.
He reached over and cracked the sliding door. “Sure, you can ask. It’s called Surviving a Baby Divorce.”
I felt like I’d stepped into a postmarriage twilight zone, where my ex-husband was a chain smoker writing self-help books.
“A what? What is a ‘baby divorce’? It sounds like I got knocked up and you left me.”
He dropped the cigarette in the ashtray and turned to face me. “No, Sam. We are babies. Babies shouldn’t be getting divorced. I’m too young for this.”
I looked over at the screen, but all I could make out was jumbled text.
“Babies shouldn’t be getting married. We’ve been through this. And you’re thirty-three. You’re not a baby anymore,” I said, sounding more exasperated than was fair.
He took a slow drag of the cigarette. “I thought I’d be having kids by now, not starting over. But that’s the choice you forced on me.”
I took a deep breath, unsure if this was a productive conversation. I knew I wasn’t the right person for him to talk to, but I also wasn’t sure it was better for him to be putting it all down in some cynical book.
“I’m sorry, Ben. I really am. But imagine waking up in twenty years, resenting each other, and having to face that reality in our fifties.”
“Your parents did it.”
“There you go.”
He turned and stared out of the window. “Is there something else you need? Because it seems to me that you got everything you wanted.”
I couldn’t deny it. He was right. My own happiness had cost him his.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay, Sam. But I think you know that.”
I had another split-second internal debate about rationalizing with him, then bit the bullet and took my shot. Like an idiot.
“Look, Ben . . . we had a good marriage. We just grew in different ways. Why does it all have to be a failure because we didn’t end up spending the rest of our lives together?”
He shut his laptop and shot me a look.
“It’s an honest question,” I said quietly.
“Jesus Christ, Sam. This idea that you keep trying to shove down my throat—that divorce doesn’t mean we failed because some of our marriage was good—I don’t buy it.
I’ll never buy it. You find one person, and you love them through everything.
That’s not failing. You’re taking that away from me.
I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life.
Maybe that’s old-fashioned. You’re forcing me to throw it all away just because you decided you don’t want the kind of life you think I want.
But you used to. And that fucking sucks. ”
“I don’t even know what I used to want, Ben. I was twenty-two when we got married. That was seven years ago. People change.”
“Is that what your therapist told you to say?”
I frustratedly swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I know it doesn’t mean anything, but . .
. I’m so sorry. I really am. For everything.
I never meant to hurt you. I shouldn’t have married you when I didn’t even know who I was.
It wasn’t fair to either of us.” I took a deep breath as I picked up the signed paper off the coffee table. “You don’t deserve any of this.”
He put his hand up. “I don’t need you to keep telling me you’re sorry. I need this nightmare to be over.”
I drove back to campus feeling like I couldn’t breathe in deeply enough. I was still barreling toward New York at warp speed, but something in the narrative I’d been telling myself had been punctured. Making the decision to leave had nothing to do with knowing how to move forward.