Cure Me
By Michael P. Ferrari
Originally published in Literary Magic Magazine.
“So…” I say to her.
“So…” she responds.
“Did it hurt?”
“No, no,” she pauses. “Well, not as much as I thought it would anyway…”
“That’s good,” I respond. “That’s good.” She’s lying. She’s lying and I can tell because I can practically see the truth gelling inside her eyes. She looks at me with a face that’s half-content and half-distraught.
“So…we’re both good now…”
“Yeah,” I agree. “I guess we are.”
“I don’t feel any different. Did you?”
“Not at first. It doesn’t hit you right away. Y’know?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean…” she forks her way into the salad in front of her, keeping her eyes on it most of the time, except when she’s talking to me.
“How’s the salad?”
“It’s good.” The subtly of our quiet dining room swallows us. Her voice sounds meek, quiet. It’s almost voided out completely by the bullying silence of the low-lit room. “I’m glad you offered to cook for me,” she says, her fork down and her hand snaking across the table to rest inside mine. “It’s been forever since you last cooked for me.”
“I guess it’s kind of a special occasion, y’know?” She just smiles evenly as her thumb rubs along my hand.
I was checking out Websites about how to do this kind of thing. A lot of them said to do it in a public place. I couldn’t do that. Not now. She’s far too emotional for that. Another one said to do it after a big meal. I guess having a full stomach is supposed to some how soften things and make it easier to process.
“You know what?” she says, suddenly perked up, “I kinda lied. I do feel a lot different already. I feel great.” She looks refreshed when she smiles at me again.
“I’m happy for you, babe.” I smile back. “I really am.”
If I were a better man, this whole thing would be easier. Scratch that. If I were a better man, this thing wouldn’t be happening at all.
“It’s like there’s a boulder lifted off my back,” she explains. “Not to be cliché or anything.”
“It’s not cliché. It’s a good point. And a good feeling.”
“So what are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well,” her voice picks up, balancing vibrantly between enthusiasm and hope. “We’re both ‘free,’ right? We should celebrate.”
“OK…” I thought cooking her dinner was celebration enough. “Celebrate how?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can take a trip or something? Go somewhere crazy and beautiful. Like another country or something!”
“Yeah…that’d be cool.” Humoring her isn’t going to make things any easier. But I do it anyway.
“I always wanted to go to France. See Paris, and do all that romantic, whimsical stuff people always associate with it.” She’s smiling while she stuffs her small mouth full of salad. “You know, I was actually this close to going there, remember? But I cancelled the whole thing when I found out about…”
“Yeah,” I cut her off. “When you got the news that…” and I don’t even have the strength to finish the sentence. I don’t have the courage to even talk about it. Coward. Rotten, fucking coward.
She smiles and cocks her head, showing no notice to the abruptly ending sentence. A swirl of her head and she flushes her straight brown hair behind her shoulders. I stare at her over the cheap, dimming candles I picked up at Target earlier this afternoon. She picks up speed as she eats. She has a new sense of life. She’s just glows in the low-lit room, and all I can do is wonder if I’m going to make a mistake. If I’m going to be 60 years old, sitting in a dank apartment by myself, siphoning sympathy from any good-willed youth I see while thinking of her soft tan complexion and her bulbous red lips. I wonder if after tonight, I’m going to miss her almond-shaped eyes, her subtle curves. I wonder if I’m going to miss her annoying, off-key singing. Am I going to actually miss her jealousy and her insecurities and everything else she did that drove a wedge between us?
A better man might take his chances, swallow his pride and return the loyalty she’s given to me since we both got trapped into our “situation.” Either that, or he would end this quicker than it’d take to rip off a band-aid. Bottom line: a better man would do this better than I can.
“Alright…” I urge out in a breath. “Time to do this.” Her eyes bulge up from the table and focus on me, big, hollow and moist. They inflate with interest and her dark irises shrink into the deep blue around them. Her eyes know what I’m going to say next before her brain even registers the guilt in my voice.
“Huh?” dribbles out of her mouth. Six years of playing house and tricking ourselves into being happy with each other and all she can say to my impending rejection is that.
“I can’t do this anymore. I want a divorce.”
“What?”
“Yeah…”
“What are you talking about…” She chokes. “Divorce?”
She communicates only with deep breathes and sighs that soon evaporate into short, little gasps and sobs. Her big, cartoon eyes swell some more, crackling red and tearing out streams. The tears come quicker than any of the Websites said they would. Three minutes pass by in the form of gapes and gasps. Her mouth gets slack and dopey, and before she can squeeze out the “Why?!” I’m expecting her to squeal, I get cracked over the brain with something blunt as a club.
“You fucking bastard…”
I’ve turned the expression “speechless” a million times without ever knowing what it was truly like to feel that way…
“You’re a fucking coward, and a fucking bastard.” There’s an ice in her voice that could freeze her tears into little shiny ponds. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Planning…?”
“How long?” she says, only a little louder this time. “You fucking bastard, tell me how long…”
“We haven’t been working out for a long time, and…”
“Is it someone else?”
“Why would…”
“Because why the hell else would you be doing this? Why the hell would you spend the last six years glued to me, only to move on now of all times? Isn’t it a little convenient that you decide all this now, after getting ‘clean’?”
“So, because of that,” I’m innocent in asking, “you just automatically assume…”
“You don’t think I’ve noticed how you’ve been since you got clean six months ago? You don’t think I’ve noticed that you can’t even look me in the eye? I’m not a smart girl, Matt, but I’m not stupid.”
“Notice what?” I’m humble.
“You’re different. Distant. I don’t know why or how. You just are…”
“So you just associate that with the idea of me cheating on you?”
“Are you?” A meekness takes over her voice. It cuts my vocals out and leaves me hacking on guilt. “Just tell me, Matt…” she interrupts. “Is my marriage ending because my husband is sleeping with somebody else?”
“You always do this!” I attack her in my most absurdly whiny of tones. “You always jump to the insecure conclusion that our problems are about someone else and not about us!”
She interrupts again. It’s not angry, it’s not bitter; it’s not even childish in delivery. It’s simple. “Just tell me. Is there someone else or not?”
There’s a weird sense of balance that screams from inside when you’re about to do the right thing by admitting you’ve done wrong. It’s irony in its most tepid form. It brings a weird sense of tipsiness that makes you feel like the weight of guilt is going to rise up just as your dignity sinks and drowns in a boiling vat of nerves and self deprecation.
“Not anymore,” I mumble. “But I was.”
She either moans or mumbles something before her face breaks down into a scrunched pile of cheek and tears. If I were a better man, this probably could have been avoided. She lets out some subdued shrieks and sobs, all muffled by her hands as they barricade her mouth.
Do I get up? Do I go to her just to let her push me away and scream?
Or am I supposed to sit here and watch my words stab at her emotions?
“Who is it?”
“You wouldn’t know her.”
“Who. Is. It.” A demand, not a question.
“Mindy. A woman I used to work with. You don’t know her.”
“When was it?” Her face is level, almost even, damp with snot and salty tears seeping from pillow-like red eyes. Her scratchy face, abused by tears, crashes through any reasons I had for hiding this from her.
“Right after I got clean,” I admit. “So about…I dunno…six months ago, I guess.”
As she propels out of her seat, I realize the first discussion involving our final communications has finished. Our marriage is official destroyed.
This first discussion about divorce ends short. The websites said it would be. They also said I can expect more. Plenty more. The weeks will come with more conversations that start civil and end in curses and salty, bitter tears. Conversations where she asks “Why are you doing this to me?” and “How can you destroy me like this?” Conversations where she tells me that I’m breaking her heart, and conversations that have no words at all but are created based off an exchange of glares and shattered expressions. I push all that aside as I see her blasting out of the room, jettisoning away from me. Leaving our home and sticking me into a situation of regret, relief, grief, enthusiasm, loneliness and alleviation. She leaves our home, and leaves me balancing on a knife, teetering on the possibility that I made the right choice on one side, and the possibility that I made the wrong choice on the other. Either side I sink into, I sink into for good.
We were only together because we were in the same situation, I remind myself. We were only together because nobody who was outside of our situation would take us. We were both a means to each other romantic ends, right?
Somehow I thought all of this would be easier once I got clean. Once we got clean. Maybe the only thing connecting us was the fact that neither of us were clean.
But now we are. And now the “we” is destroyed because I wanted to re-experience life outside of the “situation” we’ve been living in all these years.
I can’t help but shake my head. Somehow, I thought all my problems would go away once they came out with a cure for AIDS.
