To My Ex-Husband Read Free Page B

blue-rinse ladies and a few surviving men badly in need of nose-hair clippers. It’s an awful movie, all rushing, angry water and screaming, hopeless voices drowning in the wind. I got sick of looking at Sissy Spacek standing on the river bank, the strands of her long, drenched hair stuck to her face, and those round, red, frightened eyes. My attention wandered, and I happened to see Stephen reach over and take Nina’s hand. It was the first time since we’ve been apart that I’ve felt the sting, not of loneliness, but of being alone. I got this little ache in my throat, and wondered if I’d ever have someone to hold my hand again.
    I’ve been so intent on not being the great walking wounded that moments like those take me by surprise. I try to be optimistic, to use this time to learn something about me and about us, rather than dwell on the failure. Sometimes I’m successful. At other times, a simple gesture, like a hand reaching out to take another, triggers all of my worst fears. For me, such a thing now seems so remote and improbable that I have to concentrate to remember the texture of your skin, the weight of your arms around my shoulders, the comfort of your presence.
    I used to think of my mother, alone in her bed, the bed in which my father gave her back rubs on Sunday mornings, the bed in which they sat among their pillows and drank coffee and read the newspapers. How did she ever manage to absorb the loss of those small intimacies that comprise the larger, more encompassing aspects of love?
    Nina has reminded me, in her usual glib fashion, that this is the best thing that’s happened to me in twenty years. I don’t like hearing that from a friend, our friend, supposedly. It seems mean, to say nothing of being awkward if we ever did get back together. Nina wants me to move on. It’s as if she’s taking my face and pressing it against the windowpane so that I can see beyond. What I see is an abstraction, an idea of something better for me. But that something doesn’t take shape. I keep it at bay because it will have to wait.
    I don’t even know how to play this role yet. It is a role, the abandoned wife, just like being a wife is a role. You haven’t played it before, so you have to play it as you’ve seen it played. I did what my mother did. I changed the sheets once a week, wore skirts-and-sweater sets, and used Minute Rice.
    But here’s where I stop copying my mother, and not just because of the Minute Rice. I want to interrupt the programming, make it turn out differently. As I said, I don’t know how to play it yet. But while I’m figuring it out, I don’t want to try anything fancy. I just want to be with my friends. Right now, there’s nothing like Nina’s voice on the other end of the telephone nearly every morning, checking in before she goes to work.
    Of course, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone who reviews restaurants for a living is actually working. Imagine going around worrying that you’re getting behind in your eating. There must be days when she’s bored and can’t wait to hang up, but she goes on listening and listening. In some ways, it’s merely the continuation of a conversation that’s been going on ever since I met Nina. Love. Men. Women. Women and men. The limitations of men. Why men do what they do. Why women do what they do. What’s wrong with what we do and with what they do. Dependency. Resentment. Guilt. Children. Hair. Dogs. Clothes. The bathing-suit problem. The body problem. Yeast. Life .
    So this is our unexpurgated dialogue on the events as we perceive them. Nancy and I had another version of it when all the kids were little. They grew up around our conversations, literally evolved from one stage to another while we were talking. They outgrew their overalls, and then one day, when we were making tuna fish sandwiches and talking about the G-Spot, we noticed that their