Nanowrimo-first edition
I stood there in the front door...with the screen door flapping on its worn hinges. I saw the vehicle go down the driveway and fade into the turn with nothing to show of its presence but the dust trail and worn gravels it left behind. It was true. He had left me. Physically this time. He had left me mentally months before...possibly years. I stood there at the door for a while, just taking in all my emotions. "Here I stand", I thought, "On such a beautiful day and it doesn't seem possible such an ugly thing could happen on such a beautiful day". In the foreground the hills rolled and the cows bellowed and called for their calves that had just recently been sold to slaughter. The world was green and promising, but my life was anything but that at the moment.
I was snapped back into reality by my toddler who wanted to know where "daggy" had gone. It was then that I began to cry. I don't believe I stopped for several days. I stayed in the house, locked up with the children and tried to ignore that life had changed. I thoroughly believed that if I did not accept this change in life that it simply would not come to be. "There is no way a man can leave a wife of five years and two children in such a short time period. It's all a farce...he'll be home soon. He's just having an early middle-age crisis and he'll come to his sense soon enough." I told myself these lies over and over again. I hoped each time that my prayers for his return would send him running back through our door and into our lives again, but it never happened. That is when I called my mother and set his actions in stone.
"Yes, mother, he's gone"
"Where to?"
"How am I supposed to know...he just left. He came back once for a few more clothes and then he just left again. It's been a few weeks and I think he is gone for good."
"Why didn't you call earlier and let us know honey?"
"Well, you didn't approve of our marriage and I surely wasn't going to give you the ammunition of his leaving if he just pulled a stunt and returned."
"Oh, honey that's absurd...we wouldn't do that."
I sat there with the phone to my ear...not really active in the conversation because my mind had wandered again. What was he doing? Was he happy without me? Was he happy without these children? Was he with someone? Was that the reason for her hasty departure? Was there someone else all along? How long had I been the fool? How do you fight an invisible foe? How do I go on knowing I've been dumped after giving a man a life, two kids, and all my heart?
It was then that I was snapped back into reality by my mother's voice..."Elizabeth...Elizabeth...are you there?"
"Yes Mom...I'm here" I took a good long look at "here". I realized that this was the first time in a month someone had called me by my name. This was the first time in a month I had had a conversation with another adult...not counting the man who left me who called every so often to open up the flood gates again. This was the first time in a month I had been treated like a person. It was then that I decided "here" was soon going to become "there".
The next few weeks I worked odd jobs and pawned my children off on the few friends I had inthe area so I could work. Child support was a joke. Divorce was a joke. He wanted nothing to do with either...but he didn't want me. This left me in a compromising situation because I was married to a man that was doing God knows what, with God knows who, and didn't want to divorce me, but didn't want to pay child support either.
I wasn't a girl that was consumed with romance and loving notions growing up. I tried to figure out how I had become so intoxicated with him. The harder I thought the more it seemed I forgot why I fell in love with him at all. Other than his butt when he had his wranglers on he had no good qualities. He had nothing when we met. He had no track record of good or bad things...no personality almost. I remember that I had felt sorry for him during many of our phone calls when he had exclaimed that his family was so far from what a conventional family was supposed to be and how he wanted something different for his own family. Perhaps I thought he was being honest. Perhaps he had meant it and had just recently had a change of heart. Perhaps I was stupid for ever thinking either thought.
I kept myself busy juggling odd jobs and two kids and a broken home with pictures everywhere to remind me of what had been and would be no more. It is hard to be a mother without the father in the home. You have a different role to fill and you become almost null and void to your children while they struggle to understand what is going on. I kept thinking I was lucky because mine were 2 and 3. Surely their small memories would not capture the torrent of emotions and personalities their mother had to go through to remain intact and smile while making their lunches and snacks and tucking them into bed. They didn't see me break down much because I held it in until the night time. I would lie awake most nights and envision how this would hopefully work out for the best. I would see him coming down the road and pulling into the drive and looking shameful yet handsome as he apologized. I would see our bond strengthened by his test of faith and I would calm myself by saying out loud that "everything will be just fine". I would then be reminded by the cry of one lonely momma cow that I was all alone. Brought back to reality by a four-legged animal who didn't mean to inflict such pain with one simple call for her calf that was no longer there. I would stay on my side of the bed, as not to infringe upon him or his memory anymore, and gently take in the scent of his pillow and cry myself to sleep. Life was simply unbearable.
I was awakened by a phone call the next morning. It was early. It was my disappearing husband. He wanted to take the kids for a weekend. He missed them. He needed to see them.
I was confused. He hadn't needed to see them in almost a month. Why now? I didn't know where they were going, whose home they would be in, what they would be around. All of the "mother" questions tossed red flags in my mind. His story was that he was living with a married couple he had known since high school until things calmed down and he made a decision...."but don't worry Liz...I just need some time and things will be alright". Those were nasty words to me. They kept me hanging on. They kept me wanting his love. They kept there "here".
I gave into his desire of seeing the kids for a weekend. I thought it was a test to see if I truly loved and trusted him. Trusting him however and being a mother are two different things. He had shown up in a truck that didn't belong to either one of us. He said his car was down and they had given him the truck to drive for a while. I was skeptical, but held my questions in and tried to smile and be happy for the kids who had been over joyed to see this man come back to give them hugs and some attention. I made a point to send him into the house for something that would take him a while to find. While he was in there I quickly jerked open the (_____________) and took out the registration and quickly memorized the address. It was an address to a nearby college town where we had actually first lived after marriage. It was the town where we had "fallen in love" to be truthful. The truck was registered to a married couple...I felt relief. Perhaps he was telling the truth.
Perhaps he wasn't. The children were returned bright and early Monday morning. It was the longest I had been without both of them since they spent a week with my parents when I was sick. That weekend was longer than my entire life it seemed and I was overjoyed to see them. It was then that I allowed myself to speak to my husband and let myself use his name rather than the wifisms we give husbands likes "honey" or "dear". I don't know what made me do it, but I did.
"Did they have a nice time Grey?"
"Oh yeah, we had a good time and I bought them some clothes...they are in the bag. They might be a little tired because we played an awful lot this weekend. Don't be mad but they had more ice cream and chocolate this weekend than in their entire lives."
My radar went off. I had been with this man for over six years. Not once had he initiated a clothes purchase for either child. He did not even know their sizes...which correlated directly with their ages. He had never even bought them anything at a yard sale on his own. I sat there and tried to remember a time when he had done anything for them besides come home and pay bills...I was stumped. Reality was setting in. I got both kids inside and settled. I then opened the dreaded "bag". Inside were new shoes for each child, a new shirt for our three-year-old son, and a pink ruffled shirt for our 2 year-old daughter. That should have been enough proof, but it wasn't. I denied it.
"Perhaps he is just finally wanting to be a better daddy," I told myself.
It was then that I heard our son say her name for the first time. "Lana has two dogs". I was prepared for this name. It was on the registration for the truck along with her husband's name. "What about Jimmy", I asked? "Jimmy?", my son said. My heart sank. I was enraged. I was betrayed. I was sick. I was a woman who had given her life to someone who had merely dropped it along the side of the road when someone new came along. I was alone. It sank in and I immediately took charge of myself and stopped playing silly games of "when he comes back" in my head. The person I was to trust solely with the responsibility of being a parent had just taken our two children and played house with another woman for a weekend. I was mad.
