I look around at my home. I scrubbed every inch yesterday, including the corners and behind the toilet, the fan blades and the air conditioning vent covers, which required a ladder to reach. “It’s my first time selling a house,” I tell her. “I’m not sure how the entire process works, but…” I hesitate. I have to tell her, but I hate watching the absorption of the information.Prison.People hear the word, and they conjure an image. A hardened criminal, a dangerous man. I know, because that’s what I used to do. In the time before.
Everything feels likebefore. Before Gabriel went to prison. Before Gabriel divorced me. A pivot, a point on a graph signifying an event.
Tracey waits for me to continue, eyebrows slightly lifted. Here goes nothing.
“My ex-husband’s signature will be more difficult for you to get.”
She doesn’t bat an eye at the word ex-husband, like I’ve seen other people do. I know it’s because, in their eyes, I’m too young to have a failed marriage. To be twenty-eight, and divorced.
“No problem. These days it’s easy to get signatures from exes who’ve moved states, or countries. Twenty years ago, that was not the case, but now”—she shrugs—“it’s all electronic, anyway.”
I shift my weight to my other foot. “How about exes who are incarcerated?” My breath stays in my throat, frozen in place, as I wait for the typical reaction. A widening of the eyes, a slight jerk of the head, gazes that go everywhere but my face.
Tracey is a pro. Or a master of her facial expressions. Either way, she displays no opinion of any kind, no pity or fear.
“I can handle that, too. Has he agreed to the sale of the home?”
I nod. “His lawyer has been in contact with him.”
I hate talking about Gabriel in this removed way, it hurts so damn much. He exists, but he is no longer mine. He is like any other person on this planet, an individual in their own orbit, no longer inhabiting my own.
“Like I said, everything is electronic. As long as he’s in agreement, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It wasn’t a violent crime.” I want her to know that. I want her to understand that my Gabriel wasn’t a person who hurtspeople. Not on purpose. He was a person with a problem, and he made a colossal mistake. “He had a problem with alcohol, and one night he drove drunk.”
“Oh no,” Tracey says, frowning. Pity floods her eyes. “I guess it was worse than your average DUI?”
“Someone was injured. A pedestrian. It ended up being a felony charge. I’m telling you because I don’t want you to think he was a real criminal. Like, someone who was malicious.”
Tracey’s lips twist. She sighs quietly, reaching into the pocket of her black knee-length skirt. She holds a fist between us, palm up, and opens her hand.
A coin. White and gold, with a triangle in the center. It reads ‘To thine own self be true.’
“Ten years sober, as of last week.” Tracey tucks the coin back into her pocket. “My husband died before I got sober. I’ll never forgive myself for not being fully present with him during those final years. I tell myself if I’d known they were the last ones, I would’ve done things differently.”
“You don’t think you would have?”
“Addiction is a beast you use to attempt to fight the beast within, and all you’re left with is a bloody disaster. You hurt yourself, you hurt others, and you justify your behavior. I’d like to think I could’ve quit for him, but I just don’t know.”
“Why did you end up quitting?”
Her eyes squint, like she’s considering something. “We’re veering far off the road of a professional relationship.”
“I’m ok with that if you are.”
With her fingers Tracey makes a twisting motion against her empty ring finger, the way she probably did countless times before when she wore a ring. “Not too long after my husband passed, I woke up in a hotel room next to a man I did not know. It was my personal equivalent to your ex-husband’s accident andDUI. We all have our own threshold for rock bottom. Waking up to a man who was not my husband was mine.”
My heart sinks. “I’m so sorry, Tracey.”
“I’m sorry, too. For you. It’s the collateral damage that pains an alcoholic the most. Knowing you inflicted pain on the people you love.” She pauses to shake her head. “There’s so much shame in that. Not a day passes that I don’t think of how much I hurt my husband while he was alive. He asked me repeatedly to stop drinking, and I told him he was no fun. I said he was already acting like an old man, and that you only get one shot at life and I wouldn’t spend it acting like a boring old person. I hurt our marriage, and he withdrew. Every time I opened a bottle of wine at home or ordered a drink at dinner, I felt the tiny accusation from him, and I resented it. And he resented me. Soon, all those resentments piled up until they blocked our vision. We hadn’t spoken in three days, and he went to work one morning, fell from a ladder, and that was it. He died disappointed in the woman I’d become, and I hated myself immensely.”
Salty tears sting my lips. She offers me a sad, knowing smile. “Did you divorce your ex because of the accident?”
I shake my head. “He divorced me. After he went to prison. I still can’t believe it.”
A knowing look creeps into her eyes. “He gave you a chance to move on. You were his collateral damage.”
“I didn’t ask for the chance. I didn’t want it. He took away my choice.”
