Diary of a divorce

This is the way our world ends, baby. First of four parts.

By Lillian Ann Slugocki

Mar 19, 2001 |

Jan. 10, 1999, 8:37 a.m. Well, it's a cold dance we dance this morning. You are up at the crack of dawn and the bed is empty even before you leave. I pretend to sleep so I can revel in the delicious morning ritual I know will be ending soon. I hear you brew coffee, shower, talk to the dog. I listen to the cadence of your footsteps on the kitchen floor, the rumble of garbage trucks, the shrieking sirens and disembodied voices of our neighbors outside our windows. I have my eyes closed, but I can see you slowly and quietly opening the dresser drawer for a clean white T-shirt and clean socks. I feel your satisfaction as you tightly lace up your boots, for they are freshly polished. Then, I tense my body; my eyes still closed, for the last step in this morning ritual. The coffee pot sputters and you pour coffee, add sugar and milk, and almost tenderly leave it on the night table next to my sleeping head. Your hand lightly brushes my hair.

Last night, late, I woke up, the bed shaking and heaving, and heard rather than saw you pleasuring yourself -- your suppressed sighs, the frantic rhythm of your body -- and that's when I knew: It's over. Because you did not turn to me, and I realized you probably haven't been turning to me for a long long time. Then, unbidden, I remembered my purely sensual pleasure at the sight of you in clean white socks and clean white underwear, wearing nothing else but your slack-jawed smile, your wiry black hair. Then I remembered the sight of you fresh and steaming from the shower, completely naked, impatiently wiping the fog from the bathroom mirror so you can shave, and the black specks of hair you left behind on the bathroom sink. And on those mornings when you kissed me goodbye, it was a real kiss, full and warm on my lips.

You turned to me often in bed at night and our goodnight kiss became passionate. Your right hand and then your right foot pulled down my underwear even as you slid my T-shirt over my head. I slid your underwear off, but insisted, always, that you keep your socks on. And your smile and then "Oh, baby" as you entered me. But that was 10 years ago and events have transpired to tear us apart, events neither one of us could ever have possibly predicted. It's nobody's fault, and I'm not even angry. In fact, I'm grateful to have a few more mornings listening to you; the familiar sounds of ritual, of a marriage, even as it is ending, give me pleasure. And so when I hear the front door softly click open and then close, I open my eyes and drink my coffee.

Jan. 15, 1999, 9:05 p.m. In the bathtub this evening, darling, my nipples looked like old roses, uncompromised by sexual want or need, unblemished by desire, the tangle of hair between my legs, like the site of a shipwreck, and the message in the bottle is this: You don't love me anymore. I passed my hand over my nipples and up and down the slippery sides of my thighs, onto my belly, my hands in my hair, and I couldn't for one second fathom making love to you. I knew you were waiting for me behind the closed door. I knew you could hear me run the water for my bath, hear the water dip as my weight displaced the almost full tub, spilling out over the edges. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, before I dropped the towel, because already I felt too exposed. My body more like a paperweight, a piece of marble, pink and solid, but not passionate, and somehow not alive. I lit three candles alongside the tub. They glowed like stars against the black tiles of the bathroom, and in the water, I floated, solid as the earth.

At dinner tonight, you were tight-lipped and polite. You said "Pass the butter" as if you were speaking to a stranger, not the wife you have lived with and loved for over 10 years. I don't know what to make of this new territory we have stumbled into neither by accident, it seems, nor by design. Is there a map to be found? If only we had the courage to say what we are thinking, but we don't because that would make it palpable, give it weight, make it real. And so we drift from dinner to dinner, morning to morning. And so I close the bathroom door to you. And so I blush to think of being naked before you. Baby, baby, baby, is this the way the world ends -- behind closed doors, like a broken wheel, not with a bang, but with a sigh?

When I stepped out of the tub, I was surprised by my reflection in the mirror. I looked soft; still damp and glowing from the hot water, I almost ... almost opened the door and opened my arms to you. But then I remembered how long it has been since you kissed me, and I remembered how long it has been since you told me I was beautiful and smiled, really smiled, at me. Listen, at one time nothing was dearer to me than the sight of you walking up the block, hurrying home to dinner in our kitchen, a glass of red and a quick, hot tumble on our wide double bed.

Is this the way the world ends?

Next Page: I will tell you that my dreams have become very erotic

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