On any other morning this would be just the start of any other Tuesday. I get up at 4:45, put on a pot of coffee, get my gym stuff together as I watch the early morning news on CNN. I’m out the door by 5:45…
It’s still dark out but the sky is starting to lighten ever so slightly on the horizon. The air is thick with humidity and the promise of fall scented rain, probably in time for the rush hour. The air smells cooler than it should for August in Virginia but the days are still too hot to enjoy.
I remember this light, this smell, this stillness.
It’s shortly before 4am and I’m awake. I can hear her walking around downstairs. The light is on in the kitchen and it’s filtering up the stairs, not quite making it into the bedroom where I lie awake in the dark, listening. She packs her gym bag, gets her jacket out of the closet. Takes her keys and the cell phone. The one I’m not supposed to know about. The new, white foldable one.
The front door opens and quietly shuts behind her. I hear her open the car door and get in, she releases the hand brake, rolls down the inclined driveway and starts it at the bottom. I wonder if she knows I’m wide awake. Probably not. She hasn’t spent the night with me in two months. Not since the day we moved into this house. I’ve slept in the bedroom which was never our’s. The kids were just down the hall in their own rooms. She has made the den downstairs her room. She sleeps on the guest pullout sofa.
I hear the engine turn over and my bare feet are already on the warm wood floor. I walk past the kids’ rooms and head downstairs. Grabing the throw, I walk out on the front porch. The bright red lights of the car at the end of the street hesitate at the stop sign. There is no traffic in our quiet little neighbourhood this time of morning. She’s making a phone call. One of two. The second will come 5 minutes later, when she gets to her destination. I know the routine. I know it because I looked at our old cell phone bill from a couple of months ago, before she got her new phone. The bill she tried so hard to conceal from me. The one with a sudden huge spike in billed minutes that she said must have been an error. She’d take care of it. After all, she wrote all the cheques for the household bills anyway. Why was I suddenly so interested?
The car turned right and was gone out of sight. I wrapped the throw around my shoulders to stay off the damp night air and sat on the wooden bench. I sat and waited. She was off, moving at great speed to her destination and I just sat quiet and still. Feeling empty, alone and confused. No tears. I haven’t cried since before high school. I just stopped and then forgot how.
I had the urge to go upstairs and hug the kids while they slept in their beds but I didn’t want to wake them. They had day camp and needed their rest. They’d be up in a couple of hours anyway and I’d be making them breakfast, packing lunch, getting them dressed and reminding them to brush their teeth. I’d be showered and dressed for work before they woke up.
At 8:30, she’d be back, all business and bustle, ready for the hand-off so I could leave for work and she take them to camp.
We’d keep up the routine through September when the kids started school. First week of October, I’d be moving out and leaving behind 15 years of my life. I life that ended with me leaving a complete stranger.
Two years, and the memories are as fresh as this morning.
…I write sometimes to help keep things from rattling inside my skull too long.
I’m in a good place. Well, kinda…