A Different Kind of Forever - By Dee Ernst Page 0,98
no suggestions, so I looked back at Brian. “Your clothes?”
Brian cleared his throat and spoke very slowly. “Yes, Mona, I’m packing my clothes and moving out. I want a divorce.” Then he stood up and walked out of the kitchen.
I looked at Lana again. She yawned. I followed my husband out of the kitchen and grabbed his arm as he started up the stairs. “Divorce? What are you talking about? Who did you meet? Where did you meet anybody? Except for your business trips, we go everywhere together. How could you meet someone?”
Brian ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a woman at work, Mona. Dominique.”
“What?” Dominique? Was he crazy? There are no real women named Dominique.
“You met her,” Brian continued. “At the Christmas party. She transferred down from Boston.”
Wait. Yes. Now I remembered. Her name was Dominique because she was from France, where the name Dominique is not outrageously pretentious, but actually as common as Nicole or Emily or Shanique. She was also about fourteen years old and roughly the size and shape of a bamboo shoot. I remembered her, quite plainly, because at the Christmas party she was wearing an amazing winter-white suit that I had tried on at Nordstrom, but decided against buying because it made my butt look too big, with very chi-chi red alligator pumps.
“Dominique with the accent? And the blonde hair? And red shoes? Are you kidding? You’re old enough to be her grandfather.”
Brian looked insulted. “She’s thirty, Mona.”
“Thirty? You’re leaving me for a thirty-year-old bimbo?”
Brian pulled away from me and started up the stairs. “She is anything but a bimbo. She has an MBA from Georgetown. She actually interned at the White House.”
“So did Monica Lewinsky,” I yelled. “You can’t leave me.”
Brian turned on the stairs and looked down at me. Literally and figuratively. “I am leaving you, Mona. I’ve already spoken to a lawyer. You have a great deal of your own money, but I will be very generous. I’m not going to be a jerk about this. You can have the house and kids.”
He turned back and marched upstairs. I stood there, watching him, feeling like a total loser. Then I screamed up to him at the top of my lungs.
“But I don’t want the house and kids.
When Brian came back downstairs twenty-seven minutes later, I was calm. I was rational. I was the perfect Model of Wife.
Things happened in a marriage. I knew that. And since I’d once been in therapy for eighty-three days, I knew that I could be a challenging person to live with.
I knew that there could be issues in a marriage that go completely unnoticed by a preoccupied spouse. I watch enough Dr. Phil to realize that things may have been going on that I was totally unaware of. Like that woman who didn’t know that her husband was actually a cross-dresser until she threatened to sue her dry cleaner for all her missing clothes, and the poor guy had to confess. So, it’s possible that there had been a blip on the radar that I didn’t pick up on. I’m a big person. I can admit my mistakes. And I was perfectly willing to do whatever it took to get my marriage back to where I thought it was, say, oh, two hours before.
Brain was carrying all three of his suitcases, and he dumped them in the foyer. I opened my mouth to speak, but he went back upstairs. I waited. He came back down, this time with my suitcases.
I narrowed my eyes. Did he really have that many clothes? “Those are mine,” I said, trying to keep a possessive snarl out of my voice.
He nodded. “I know. I’ll bring them back tonight.”
“You’re coming back tonight?” Was I surprised? Confused? Pleased?
“Well, yes. I think we should tell the girls together.”
“Together? You want us to tell our daughters together that you’re moving out to be with another woman?”
Brian looked uncomfortable for the first time. “Yes. Well, I think they need to hear the explanation from both of us.”
“But both of us aren’t leaving,” I pointed out. “You’re leaving. You’re leaving because you’re screwing a woman almost half your age. How can I possibly explain that when I don’t even understand it myself?”
See, I was calm. No screeching.
He cleared his throat. “Now, Mona, I can’t take the total responsibility for this.”
That may have been the wrong thing for him to say. “And how, exactly, am I at fault?”
“Well, let’s face it. Our marriage hasn’t been the same