Six Not-So-Bad Things

Just to be upfront, this essay has no tidy little wrap-up at the end where I say I am grateful for all the hell you put me through because it made me a better person. Stuff like that is bullshit. Anyone is capable of becoming a perfectly fine person without having to be physically assaulted and raped first.

This is not about forgiveness. Forgiveness is something to consider when the person who harmed you asks for it. And not just asks, but sincerely regrets committing that wrong. They try to make it right again.

You never asked for my forgiveness. You never even admitted to any wrongdoing—the closest you ever came was the last time I saw you. We had been divorced for 17 years by then and I came to see you when I was in Colorado visiting my son. I wanted to see for myself that you were no longer the all-powerful being I had made you out to be and put the nightmare of our marriage to rest. As I was leaving you said, in response to nothing we had discussed, “One thing I admired about you was that you got out before you really got hurt.” I stared at you for a minute, then got in my car, and drove away.

Forgiveness is not necessary to feel peace. I like what a woman said about her ex-husband in one of my writing workshops: “I’m not forgiving him for what he did to me, but I’m tossing it back. I’m done with it.”

Just so we’re perfectly clear: I do not forgive you.

And this isn’t a recap of what you did to me. My therapist once said when an alcoholic is drunk, sometimes their actions don’t even make it into the file cabinet. Well, isn’t that convenient, I thought.

Besides, you know what you did. You got out before you really got hurt. That proves it.

***

I was in the middle of a divorce when we met and struggling to support my 4-year-old. Though I never encouraged you—you know I didn’t and, in fact, I couldn’t seem to avoid your relentlessness—you left Flo, your wife of almost 15 years, and swooped in to “rescue” me.

After we married, your drinking and violence got so bad that later I learned Flo, who hated me and had every right to, was worried about my safety.

My son Bob used to look at your Facebook page occasionally. Why? I don’t know. Some time ago he said you hadn’t posted anything for years and he thought you were probably dead.

***

I think of you every once in a great while. How could I not? You irretrievably altered the course of my life. Yet sometimes, almost against my will, I remember some things about our marriage that, well, weren’t all bad.

Before I share the six not-so-bad things, I want you to know that I am the kind of writer who tends to work on just one piece at a time. I sink myself into the timeframe of the essay. I look through old journals and photographs. Make a collage. It is a testament to how much I don’t want to spend any time with you—even on paper—that I’ve written three other essays from start to finish since I started this piece.

But my memories are still mine, whether you are in them or not. You took so much from me; you can’t have these, too.   

***

One 

Shortly after I started working at the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver, we were at the same table for coffee at break. I mentioned I had to go to the DMV after work and didn’t know how to get there. You volunteered to draw me a map. Later that afternoon, it arrived in one of the bank’s pneumatic tubes. It was three pages long. The first page was a map and detailed instructions for how to get from my desk to the second floor elevator. The second page was another map and instructions for getting from the first floor elevator to the parking lot. The last page had a little box in one corner labeled “bank” and another box on the opposite side labeled “DMV.” A squiggly line connected the two.

I thought the maps were hilarious. I still think they were hilarious, though I tore them up when I left you.

***

Two 

You were interested in everything. If one of our co-workers mentioned they collected buttons, you would want to know why and listen intently as they went on and on about their button collection. You might even stop at the library on the way home and check out a book about buttons. You would have loved Google.

***

Three 

We hadn’t been together very long when we went elk hunting in the mountains. It was winter and the first time I went camping in the snow. We didn’t see any elk, which was good because how would we have ever gotten it back to the Jeep? What we came home with instead were body lice. By the time we realized it, there were a lot of them and they had spread to Bobby. We were going through about three bottles of lice shampoo a day trying to keep up with their reproductive cycles. You discovered that K-Mart had the shampoo on sale so we rushed down there after work. I pushed the grocery cart, empty but for a couple dozen bright yellow boxes proclaiming “Kills CRABS lice and other parasites.” You were off elsewhere in the store when an attractive young man approached, smiling in a flirty sort of way. Then he glanced in my cart. He pivoted mid-stride and sprinted in the opposite direction.

***

Four 

I am ashamed to say I love the tuna lasagna recipe. Ashamed because it was one you found. “Add onions—lots,” you wrote in the margin. We both liked onions. You bought a gadget that had a bladed chopper built into a lid that screwed onto a fat jar. The onion went inside and you pulled up and down on a handle on top of the lid, which moved the chopper. It did the exact same thing as a knife except now there was a complicated gadget to wash instead of a knife. When you moved out, you had 12 liquor boxes filled with such gadgets.

***

Five 

Before you moved in, some little boys in the neighborhood brought me a kitten. I didn’t want a cat, but she was a skinny, mostly black little thing that had been abused. Really abused—like with cuts barely scabbed over. That night, she slept on my pillow, draping herself around the top of my head.

Whitey barely tolerated you after you moved in, mostly hiding when you were home. As life with you spiraled downward, getting Whitey spayed dropped off my radar. She got pregnant. I fixed her a box in our bedroom and every night put her inside and explained how she was going to have her kittens there. She looked worried.

It was April and you had your income tax forms, papers, and receipts spread all over the house. The dining room table had been blanketed since January. That night, April 14, you were going to finish and mail our returns the next day. But when we got home from work that afternoon, Whitey lay in the center of the table. She had made herself a little nest out of the papers and had her kittens in the midst of them.

I held my breath, expecting Whitey and her babies to be flung against the wall. Watching you out of the corner of my eye, I carefully scooped up Whitey and her three wiggling mice-like babies and crept into the bedroom to her box.

When I returned to the dining room, you were still staring at the table. You looked like nothing in the world would ever make sense to you again. Finally, you walked slowly into the kitchen and came back with the roll of paper towels. You picked up each partially completed form and methodically wiped at the afterbirth. “Let’s hope the IRS has a sense of humor,” you said.

***

Six 

You introduced me to crepes, quiche, Reuben sandwiches, French onion soup, and scores of things I might not have ever tried. Every time we ate out, I had to order at least one thing I hadn’t eaten before. I thought spinach was a slimy vegetable that came out of a can until you made me order a spinach salad. It’s been a regular part of my life ever since. After I left you, I realized that your interest in what I ate wasn’t so much about enriching my life as it was about control. For instance, you never let me forget about that piece of tripe I spit into my napkin.

***

That’s it—six not-so-bad things. Though technically, the DMV map was from before we were together. And the lice incident was more about me and a total stranger.

***

I’ve heard that living a good life is the best revenge. But I was never interested in revenge and I truly never wished you any ill will. I just wanted to be free from you. I had been afraid to leave. I was afraid no one would ever love me again. I was afraid I couldn’t manage on my own. I was also afraid you would kill me, but oddly, maybe because I wouldn’t be here anymore if you did, this didn’t scare me as much as being left on my own.

In the end, it was your drunken automobile accident that finally did the trick. Seeing you safely tethered to all those tubes and murky bags emboldened me to say, “You are a sinking ship and I want off.” Of course I still stuttered then so those words may not have sounded very convincing. But I meant them. I filed for divorce while you were still in intensive care.

As it turned out, the unknown was far more manageable than you had ever been.

I’m living the kind of full life I never could have imagined when I was with you. I understand you and Flo remarried, though I can’t imagine why she would have. I wish her all my best.