A Fighting Chance

A Marriage Fails

But it didn’t fix things between Jim and me. I had failed him. He had married a nineteen-year-old girl, and she hadn’t grown into the woman we had both expected. I was very, very sorry, but I couldn’t change what I had become. I was supposed to be the Betty Crocker award winner, but I set things on fire. I was supposed to be 100 percent focused on our home and our children, but I was making a life outside that neither of us expected. I loved every new adventure I took on—and he didn’t.

One night I’d left the dishes until after I’d put both kids to bed, and I was cleaning up in the kitchen. Jim was standing in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, just looking at me.

I asked him if he wanted a divorce. I’m not sure why I asked. It was as if the question just fell out of my mouth. I was shocked that I’d said it.

Jim looked back at me and said, “Yes.” No hesitation, just yes. He moved out the next weekend.

Of course, no divorce is that simple. There were reconsiderations and some attempts at one-more-try-to-make-it-work. No one ever yelled or hurled nasty accusations, but once we had opened the door to divorce, we both knew what was coming.

After Jim moved out, I had to confront the hard truth: I had failed at the one thing by which I believed my life would be measured. And now my failure was out in the open.

I was determined to keep everything the same for Amelia and Alex. The children and I stayed in the same house, the same school, the same church. I still taught Sunday school and Aunt Bee made mashed potatoes.

Daddy was still working as a maintenance man, mowing lawns and keeping the heating and air-conditioning running in an apartment complex in Oklahoma City. He was sixty-seven, and the work was getting harder. But the job came with a free apartment, and he and Mother planned to hang on there as long as they could.

At some point during the back-and-forth of separating with Jim, I hatched a new idea: they could move to Houston. We could all pitch in—Mother, Daddy, and Aunt Bee could help take care of Amelia and Alex. With the money I would save on child care, I could help them with their expenses. They would have to leave Oklahoma, where they had spent their whole lives. But they could have a home of their own and be woven into my little family’s life. And I needed them.

So they came.

Jim paid child support faithfully, and I had a regular paycheck from teaching, but I was deeply worried about money. Mother and Daddy offered to move in with me, and I was grateful for the offer but terrified by the thought. I started balancing my checkbook obsessively, almost every night.

I had told Jim that he could take all the furniture in our bedroom, and I slept on a makeshift twin bed in a big, empty room. I gave him the pictures off the walls. I had a garage sale and got rid of the dining room table. I wallpapered Amelia’s room and painted a big rainbow on the wall in Alex’s room. It was an odd, herky-jerky sort of stripping down and rebuilding.

While I carefully put one foot in front of the other, determined to keep my life more or less the same, Jim went in a different direction. He quit smoking, lost thirty pounds, and took dancing lessons. Eventually, he met a very nice woman and remarried. We didn’t see him often.





New Lives

Unlike a lot of single mothers, I was lucky enough to have my family nearby. I still worried about money, but we managed the other day-to-day challenges more or less okay. Aunt Bee made peach cobblers and cheese grits, Mother took care of short trips to the grocery store, and Daddy picked up Amelia from piano lessons. Child care was finally under control—a kid with a fever no longer turned life upside down. Daddy was always tinkering with something, so we could even handle a car that wouldn’t start or a busted pipe.

My life hadn’t worked out exactly the way I’d expected, but I could breathe. The children were flourishing. My parents were happy. Aunt Bee told me that it was a blessing to be “nearly eighty years old and so needed.” I loved teaching. I thought I knew now what my life would look like forever: family and teaching. And that sounded just fine to me.

That summer, Mother and Daddy kept the kids so I could go to an intensive course for law professors who wanted to learn more about economics. Enrolled in the course were about two dozen professors from around the country, including one named Bruce Mann.