DINOSAURS AND CHERRY STEMS
Intense emotion, leading to prose or poetry, cannot be described in any other fashion…
Chapter One: Moral Ineptitude
That bastard. I’m sitting in the theater where my grandson’s rehearsing a band concert, and my husband texts we should separate?
“Oh, Glen, that’s so you,” I whisper. In the twenty years I’ve known him, Glen always finds a way to sneak out the back door.
His motive isn’t really the shocker. Glen and I’ve been communicating via sarcasm since our first anniversary three years back. Arguments evolved how we spend our down time, his and my adult kids’ snafus, even our new bedspread, for Christ sake.
He had his picture taken without me the last time we traveled (using the word vacationed implies an enjoyable event), and I later found his photo posted on a social network he joined. In the relationship section, he’d written it’s complicated. Uh huh.
I kept my mouth shut until a well-meaning Ella phoned one night and cleared up those rumors about hubby’s slick trespassing, making what’s complicated a confirmation.
What transpired after Ella’s call is muzzy, but what remains with me is the sudden crash at the window during Glen’s lively denials. Diverted from our shouting match, we’d hurried over and saw a bird, lying in the garden below. Even as we watched, it soon gathered its wits and flew away.
As we withdrew to our separate regions in the house, my self-esteem questioned: How many slams into the window of surprises do I need before I fly this marital coop?
I’d once heard about some celebrity who sent his wife a fax saying he wanted to divorce, but texting such a message is un-fucking-believable, even for Glen. My hands flex with the urge to choke him as I recall how he kept checking his cell during my mother’s wake last spring.
Take deep breaths, I tell myself. Focus on the stage and Robert’s drum solo.
The pounding drums mimic my heartbeat, but I know until this rehearsal is over and Robert’s safely home, staying calm is key. There’s forty miles of driving on a freeway loaded with wild weekenders to cope with, and it’s a definite my grandson’s going to want to stop and eat since it’s past lunchtime, and we always do that anyway.
I pinch my fingers between my eyes to keep the angry tears at bay. I want to text him back, continue the battle, but the situation will only escalate if I do, because Glen never loses his wars.
Instead of retreating, I text him anyway, and ask if we can talk about this when I get home.
He responds he’s busy for the rest of the weekend and won’t be there.
Christ, today’s only Saturday. What’s supposed to happen on Monday, when we have to go to work in the same office?
Where he’s my boss?
