I feel. She brought my three children into this world. She is their mother and she was my partner for a while, too.
For about the past twenty years, she’s just been this figure in my home. Well, what used to be my home, can you call it your home if you haven’t lived there full time in years?
We had ten good years, but that’s not enough, I want more of the good. She wants more money, more young men to play with, more, more, more.
I hate it and as the years have passed, the anger has built inside of me and I actually think that I might hate her, too. No, I think to myself, I don’t hate her. I hate the situation and I’m disgusted, embarrassed, and disappointed by her.
With a heavy sigh, I pick up the phone and slide my thumb across the screen. “Susan,” I grunt.
“Did I interrupt time with your whore?” she slurs. She’s drunk. She seems to be drunk more than she’s sober, another disappointment. Letting out an exhale, I lean back and close my eyes.
“I’m at work, alone,” I announce.
She snorts. “You’ll be interviewing Helen Bradley’s daughter for the paid intern job.”
“I will?” I ask.
She laughs, it sounds just as cold as she is. “Yes, you will. You’ll give her the job, too. If you’ll give any other person off of the street a job, you’ll give this girl one too.”
“Why don’t you have another drink, Susan?” I murmur.
“You’ll do it,” she snaps.
I’m silent for a moment, thinking about Susan and her friend, Helen. It’s been years, but I remember her. She was in our wedding thirty years ago. She had dark hair, she was always kind of sad, and was married to a total fucking loser.
After the wedding, I didn’t hear much about her anymore. “She married to that guy still?” I ask.
“No,” she hums. “He left her after she had the girl. Hasn’t seen him since, as far as I know.”
Her Oklahoma accent is thicker since she’s been drinking. I’m used to it these days, she only tries to hide it when she’s sober and attempting to be something fucking special.
My wife was a sweet hometown girl when we met, an Oklahoma beauty queen and boy did she want to be so much more. I should have seen it then, that nothing would ever be enough for her.
She wanted to be a socialite and she got what she wanted. Too bad it’s torn our marriage apart in the process. I’m not sure if she minds much. She has her drinks, her multiple men, and her shopping. I have my work, an occasional woman if I go out of town, and my children.
Now that my children are grown, they have their own lives and it’s just work and occasional women for me. It’s a sad existence, and nothing that I had ever imagined or wanted.
I used to hope that things would change, that she would change, that we’d change, but after twenty years of the same sad life, I’ve come to terms that it won’t.
“Why do you care? I didn’t think you cared much about Helen?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything, then in a moment of vulnerability, she gives me a glimpse of the woman that I married.
“I owe it to her. It’s the least that I could do.”
I don’t ask anymore. I am sure that she does owe it to Helen. Susan was a sweet Oklahoma beauty queen, but that doesn’t mean that she was innocent. I have no doubt that her claws struck Helen at some point and she feels a small bit of remorse, but only a sliver.
“I’ll give the girl a job, as long as she’s qualified.”
Ending the call, I open the bottom drawer of my desk, taking out the manila envelope there. I’ve had it for six months. It’s not signed or dated, but it’s time to pull the trigger. This is the last thing that I ever wanted in my life, but this is where I am.
We’re not happy. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time we had sex. Maybe five years ago? Probably longer. It’s done now though. At least it will be when I stop sitting on these papers and just give them to her.
It’s time that I lived again. What I’ve been doing is not that.
Reaching in the bottom drawer, I take out the other thing that accompanies these papers every time I take them out and glance over them. A bottle of