Day 123/Day 31: Happy Anniversary...I'm Leaving

Six years ago, on our second anniversary, my husband told me he was leaving. While he worked his way through a poorly rehearsed speech, looking down for dramatic effect, his nose began to bleed. Blood seeped through his fingers as he tried to stop the flow, getting all over the hardwood floor of our crappy rental apartment. I mopped it up with paper towel, the blood already sticky on the wood, leaving little paper towel bits I would have to go back over later. The floor dug into my knees as I wiped and thought: Maybe, because I'm the one who cleans up the blood, who will always clean up the blood, maybe you'll stay.

Two days before, we had run out of olive oil. We were olive oil savants, him and me. We knew the per-litre price of every brand in every grocery store in the city. We never paid more than $8.99. Never had to. Until two days before when he came home with $16.99 top-of-the-line oil. Now, of course, I know why. He'd be gone before I saw the bottom of the bottle. Long gone. Before I even cracked the seal.

That afternoon, I was at yoga, he packed a suitcase and left. I have no memory of that night, sleeping alone, or the next night, but I do remember waking up on December 31st because it was our anniversary. I opened my eyes afraid to move in case he had slipped back into his place in the middle of the night. In case that empty stillness in my guts wasn't permanent and in two seconds he'd roll over and say, all sleepy, "Angel."

I went to the cappuccino place across the street, our cappuccino place, and regretted it as soon as I walked in the door. "Where's your better half?" the gay Asian barista called across the empty store. "Sleeping in for once?" I stared at him, wondering if he knew something I didn't. If I should ask. I got my coffee and left.

I walked to my office. I called home as soon as I got there, panicking that he'd come back while I walked the fifteen blocks downtown. I counted the rings, feeling stupid for leaving the apartment, for jinxing it. I heard our voices on the machine, newlywed cheerful, leave us a message and we'll call you back. I called at least fifteen times before dialing his parents' number, hands shaking, blood hot in my neck.

"How are you?" his mother asked, sounding genuinely concerned. Your son is right now this second breaking my heart. Is what I didn't say. How do you think I am? I couldn't resist saying happy anniversary, though, when he got on the phone. I couldn't stop myself. Like licking an ice-cold flag pole.

That night, when he started to cry he said, "I'm sad for us." We'll be fine, I said. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. And later, after the speech and the nosebleed and great cavern of silence that came next, I understood that we would be fine. Not we as in us. These two individual, separate members of the human race sitting here at 7:30 on New Year's Eve would be fine. In the existential sense of the word.

"You could be happier," he said. I'll give notice on this place, I thought.

And everyone else, in the days that followed, told me, "He'll be back." They said it with wrinkled pity foreheads. And they said it over and over and over. They said it like they'd discovered a new country or broken a record, but it was old news to me. I already knew he'd come back. On Valentine's Day. On my birthday. Next Wednesday. He'll be back. I knew.

I knew it until a German lady with a glass eye and a red windbreaker came to my office a year and a half later. She handed me papers that said we were divorced. That some judge had decided it at 3:23 in the afternoon a few weeks back. "You were hard to track down," the German lady said. I work a lot, I told her. He had estimated my income. Used my parents address for the forms. He got everything right, of course he did, and paid all the fees. Small price to pay.

That's it? I asked her, searching her face for clues. For that hint of a smile that means any second now, someone will jump out screaming candid camera or surprise or gotcha. "Unless you want to contest it," she said, her glass eye staring straight ahead, little zipper sounds coming from her windbreaker as she backed toward the door. I didn't know what that meant. I still don't.