I felt like that a lot.
“You tried to tell me,” I say. “You told me something was wrong in your mind, and I said you were fine.”
“I wanted to be fine. I wantedso badlyto be fine for you. For us. After the divorce . . . I finally got to the point where I knew I wasn’t getting over it the way that I should. So I went to a therapist to talk about that, and I ended up getting diagnosed. I told Roger, because we were dating at the time, but no one else knows.”
My mind is reeling over all the fights we had over stupid little things. Me telling her that everything was fine, stop worrying, just make a choice, it doesn’t matter which one. “That time you wanted me to have an opinion on which stroller to buy,” I say.
Kim cringes. “Every time I looked at a stroller I imagined it folding up with Ivy inside.Those things look like the jaws of death. I knew I shouldn’t be so afraid, but I wanted you to make the choice, because I was sure if I did, I’d make a mistake, and she’d die.”
I’m pretty sure my heart has completely stopped. “You were sick, and I abandoned you.”
Kim shakes her head. “No. I was making you miserable. I was scared and losing my mind, and instead of talking to you about it, I pushed you away. It’s not your fault you left. You’re right. I talked about divorce. I made you think I wanted it.”
“I wasn’t miserable.”
She looks up at me, and I can see tears glistening in her eyes. “You were. How could you not be? I was rigid and unreasonable and constantly picking fights with you and—”
“You told me something was wrong, and I didn’t listen.”The words seem to echo in my hollow chest. I’m remembering all the times we fought, and I couldn’t even tell what about. I was supposed to care more about minuscule things—this baby proofing method or that one, this music class, that baby gym. I always thought if the decisions were so important to Kim, I’d let her make them. She’d always been opinionated, and I didn’t even stop to think why she was so fixated on this stuff.
I thought I was the problem.
“It’s not your fault,” she says, wringing her hands. “It’s mine. I ruined everything. Of course you had to leave.”
The tears have reached her cheeks now, and I want to go back to the man I was six years ago and shake him. Make him see what was happening and not make the biggest mistake of his life.
She was sick, and I left her alone.
“You didn’t want the divorce,” I say. She’s said this, but I’m having a hard time adjusting to it. Our lives are like one of those pictures that looks like a duck, until someone points out to you it might be a rabbit, and then you can’t figure out how you ever thought it was anything else. “God, Kim, I’m so sorry.”The words are beyond inadequate, but they’re all I have.
Kim straightens and brushes her hair back out of her face. “It doesn’t matter now, I guess.”
It does, but it takes me a minute to wrap my head around why. “Is that why you hate me? Because I left you alone when you were going through that?”
Kim looks surprised, and then she sighs. “I don’t hate you. I wish I did. I’ve never been able to get over you, and you seemed to so easily, and—”
“I never got over you either,” I say. “You said I was relieved—it’s the opposite.The day we split up was the worst day of my life. I’d been dreading it so long—I knew things were falling apart, and I didn’t know how to fix them. I could never do anything right, and I thought I was making you unhappy . . . I guess maybe what you thought was relief could have been the finality, you know? I didn’t have to dread the day anymore. It finally came.”
Kim sniffs and wipes tears out of her eyes. “I’m sorry I did that to you. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch. I just—I was so hurt, and I could never figure out how to talk to you without all the pain seeping out. You were always so good at that, so I assumed it was because you didn’t care.”
“I want to say it’s because I’m a good actor,” I say, “but maybe it’s more that I’m the suffer in silence type, which was never your strong point.”
Kim laughs bitterly. “That’s the truth.”
We’re both quiet for a moment, and I’m trying to sort through the mess in my head—the mistakes of the past, the startling revelation that Kim wasn’t unhappy in our marriage—
And the horrifying conclusion that this means I’ve made us miserable for the last six years for absolutely no reason.
Ten
Kim
There’s this silence that stretches out, and I can’t think of how to break it, because I’m too busy trying to piece together fragments of this conversation into something that makes sense. Something that fits with the story I’ve been living with the last six years.
No, not living with. I was drowning in that story, drowning in my mistakes and pain.
But he loves me.Then and still now. He didn’t want to get divorced, despite what he said at the time.Though I have six years of that other story to convince me this can’t be right, I have the look on his face right now as he says these words. I have the way he made love to me in the trailer, with the same need and longing that was coursing through me.
I’m desperate to believe this and scared of it all at once. Scared of what it means we’ve done.
