He waits patiently and takes a long pull from the bottle.
“Who is who?” I ask innocently.
“The man you’re leaving me for?” His voice is quiet, which worries me more than if he were yelling. And the white-knuckle grip he has on the bottle in his hand tells me anger is at the surface, barely contained.
“I just can’t do this anymore, Seamus.” I don’t know why I feel like I need to keep this vague. I’ve been waiting years for this day, working toward my destiny, and now that it’s finally here it’s harder than I thought it would be.
I have to trade in my get out of hell free card.
Fuck.
“Does he have more money than me? Is that it?”
Loads, I think.
“Is he better looking?”
No. Good looking, but no one’s better looking than you.
“Drives a fancy car?”
Someone drives him around in a fancy car.
“Buys you expensive gifts?”
Not in years.
He’s firing questions at me, his voice rising. I’m not answering any of them out loud. And then it turns personal, his voice biting and accusatory. “Does he love and care for your children?”
He doesn’t want children. Not even his own.
“Does he look after you when you’re sick?”
He’d ask the housekeeper to do it.
“Does he bring you food when you pull an all-nighter at work?”
He wouldn’t think of it.
“Does he get up before the sun comes up on your birthday and make you pecan pancakes with extra butter and syrup because they’re your favorite?”
He doesn’t cook. Or know that I love pecan pancakes.
“Does he know that you like your back rubbed when you can’t sleep because it relaxes you and makes you tired?”
He’s not one to comfort.
The truth in his questions, and my undisclosed answers, has me wanting to run for the door to escape this confrontation. I wanted to tell him I was leaving. And for him to quietly accept it. He’s not supposed to fight me on this. He’s not supposed to make me think. I can taste something hurtful and mean on the tip of my tongue.
“What is it about him that makes him better for you than me?!” he bellows.
“He’s not broken!” There it is. The worst thing I can say to him. The thing that will destroy him. Because he believes it. He knows he’s a good father, husband, counselor, human being. He knows that and never doubts it. His health he can’t change, and he wishes so badly he could. It’s his Achilles heel. And I just used it against him.
I’m going to burn in hell atop the hottest pyre for all of eternity.
Because the truth, everything else aside, is that no one’s better for me than Seamus. In the deep, dark recesses of my mind, I know that. And it’s not his MS that’s driving me away. Do I like it? No. Does it make him less attractive in my eyes? Yes. But does it make him less of a man than Loren? No. It’s everything that goes along with Loren that I want. Seamus can’t be the king to my queen.
Because he’s a saint.
And no one measures up to a saint.
He doesn’t refute my claim. He doesn’t fight me. He stands, drinks down the rest of his beer, tosses the bottle on the floor with the others, and walks toward the hall. Before he turns the corner, he looks back. He holds me in a stare that has my emotions folding in upon each other until my stomach aches. When he finally speaks, it’s low and clear. I forgot how much I loved Seamus’s voice all those years ago when we first started dating. The first time he spoke to me butterflies fluttered in my chest. “He’ll never love you like I do.”
And then he walked away.
I felt the connection we’d had for over twelve years snap like a rubber band.
Another fuck you from the universe, and I can hear it laughing at me this time, too.
Choking on thick smoke
present
One month rolls into the next.
My eyesight returned. Slowly, and deficient from what it once was, but I’m not complaining, I’ll take what I can get in the vision department. Feeling is somewhat returning to my legs again, the numbness replaced by tingling, pain, and easy fatigue. I’ve lost weight; my appetite just isn’t there. I don’t dwell on any of it. At this point, I’ve forgotten what a healthy body and mind feel like. I exist, that’s about the extent of it.
Work is work, a job that used to be fulfilling is now just a job. I take the kids I work with seriously, and do everything I can to help them, but my motives are obligation and duty, my heart’s no longer driving it.