Stephen Dixon - Time to Go

That’s ridiculous also and never happened. Why not say what really did happen and be done with it? It was all very simple and fast. We were eating dinner when she said she was leaving me for a man named Mike. We had no child, we’d been married for eight years. I said I wouldn’t try to stop her. I could see it’d be useless and I did only want her to be happy. If she couldn’t be happy with me, I was glad she was with someone she could be happy with. She said she was thankful I was taking it so well and in such a decent civilized way. I asked about him. She said he worked in a law office on the same floor as hers. They’d been carrying on for six months. He was divorced, had two children. That night Arlene and I slept in separate rooms for the first time in our marriage, or for the first time when one of us wasn’t very angry at the other or wasn’t so ill that he or she needed to sleep alone. We just thought it best to sleep separately till she moved out. They rented a new apartment together the following month. I helped her pack and bring her belongings to the van she rented and drove. I told her I wouldn’t mind if Mike came and helped, since she had several vanfuls of stuff to move. She said she felt I shouldn’t meet him till much later on: when they were married, perhaps; maybe a year into their marriage when I could come by with my new woman who she said she knew I’d have by then. “You’ll be as much in love with someone else in a few months as I am now with Mike.” I said “I hope you’re right. It’ll certainly be what I want.” So she was gone. I thought I was taking it well but I wasn’t. I couldn’t take it, in fact. Every night I’d get drunk thinking about her. I read her old adoring notes and letters to me and looked at her photos and would slam the wall or table with my fists and shout and cry. I couldn’t stand thinking of her being with another man, kissing him, whispering to him, making love with him, doing all those private things with him, confiding to him, telling him what happened to her at the store that day, asking him if he’d like to see such and such movie or play that week, meeting him for lunch, going away with him some weekend, visiting friends, maybe even planning to have a child. It also distressed me that they were in the same profession. I knew that’d make them even closer, all those professional matters they could discuss and look up and share. A month after she left me I showed up in front of their office building at around the time I knew they’d be finished for the day. They walked out of the building fifteen minutes later, holding hands, chatting animatedly. I had a wrench with me. I pulled it out of my jacket, ran up to him and screamed “Meet Jules, her husband, you bastard,” and hit him in the hand he threw up to protect his head from the wrench. He grabbed that hand, turned to run and I hit him in the back of the head with the wrench. He went down. I kept yelling “I’ll never let her be with anyone else, you bastard, never. I love her too much. I’ll love her forever,” and swung the wrench over his face but didn’t hit him again. The police came. I didn’t try to get away. I don’t know what Arlene was doing at the time. I was arrested. Mike was taken away in an ambulance. Later he pressed charges against me. I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years. That means I’ll serve around three and a half years if I don’t cause any trouble in prison. Arlene visits me every day she’s allowed to and stays the maximum time. It’s six hours by bus for her round trip but she says she doesn’t mind. Twice in my first half year here we were allowed to walk around the prison garden for an hour. She broke off with Mike and he’s already moved in with another woman. “So much for his professed eternal devotion,” Arlene said, “not that I would want it now.” She’s said several times that she’ll never again be with another man but me. She hated my hitting Mike with the wrench, but sees now it was probably the only way I could ever get through to her how much I loved her and wanted to get her back. “In some oddball way,” she said, “it made me fall for you all over again. Maybe also because what I did and the way I did it forced you to lose control and try to kill him and I’m trying to make up for that too. But it’ll all be different from now on. I can’t wait to be back home with you, my arms around you, in bed with you, I can’t wait.” At certain designated spots in the garden we’re allowed to hug and kiss for a half-minute, which we always did past the time limit till one of the guards ordered us to stop.

That’s not it. This is it. There wasn’t a wrench. There is a Mike.

My wife fell in love with him and told me this at breakfast, not dinner. She said she didn’t want to tell me at night because she wanted to give me plenty of time to adjust to it before I went to bed and also time for her to get her things out of the apartment and move in with a friend. We have no child. We tried for a while but couldn’t. Then I had a corrective operation and we could have a child, but she said the marriage wasn’t as good as it used to be and she wanted to be sure it was a very good marriage before we had a child. That was three years ago. She’s had several affairs since then. She told me about them while she was having them. I didn’t like her having them but put up with it because I didn’t want her to leave me. I don’t know why I mentioned anything about a gift. Maybe because her birthday’s in two weeks and I’ve been thinking recently about what to get her. A bracelet, I thought. But that’s out. This morning she said she realizes this is the third or fourth serious affair she’s had in three years. She’s had one or two others but they were quick and not so serious. She doesn’t want to continue having affairs while she’s married or at least still living with me. It isn’t fair to me, she said. She also said I shouldn’t put up with it and shouldn’t have in the past. Not that if I had told her to stop she would have, she said. But I should tell her to get the hell out of the house and should have two to three years ago. Since I won’t, she’ll have to leave me. That means divorce, she said. The marriage isn’t working out. What’s she talking about? she said. The marriage is so bad that she doesn’t think it’ll ever work out — it never will, that’s all, never. And because she wants to have children, maybe two, maybe three, but with someone she’s very much in love with, she’ll have to end our marriage and eventually get married to someone else. Maybe it’ll be with Mike but she doubts it. He’s married, but about to separate from his wife, and has indicated he never wants to marry again. He also has two children from a previous marriage and has expressed no interest in having more. Anyway, she said, it’s fairer if I stay here and she goes, since she’s the one breaking up the marriage. Of course, if I want to leave, she said, then she’ll be more than happy to stay, since it’s a great apartment and one she can afford and she’ll never be able to get anything like it at twice the rent. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’d like to keep the apartment. Losing you and also having to find a new place might be a little too much for me.” “I don’t mind,” she said, “why should I mind? I already said the apartment’s yours if you want. So, do you mind if I start to pack up now to go?” “No, go right ahead.

I’d love for you to stay forever, naturally, but what could I do to stop you from going? Nothing, I guess, right?” “Right.” She went to the bedroom. I brought the dishes into the kitchen, washed them, sat down at the small table there and looked at the river. She came into the living room an hour later with two suitcases and a duffel bag. “This ought to do it for now,” she said. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll arrange with a friend to come by for the rest of my stuff some other time.” “Sure,” I said. “You moving in with this Mike?” “No, I told you, he’s married, still living with his wife. I’ll be staying with Elena for now. If you want to reach me for anything, you can get me there or at work. You have her number?” “I can look it up.” “But you won’t call me at either place for very personal reasons, will you? Such as saying how much you miss me or things like that and you want me back? Because I’ve definitely made up my mind, Jules. The marriage is finished.” “I understand that. I mean, I don’t understand why it’s so definitely finished, but I do understand that you definitely feel it is. But I can’t make just one more pitch? There’s nothing I can do or say or promise to help you change your mind?” “Nothing.” “Then goodbye,” I said. “I’ll miss you terribly. I love you tremendously. I’ll be as sad as any man can be over a thing like this for I don’t know how long. But that’s my problem, not yours, I guess, and eventually I’ll work it out.” “I’m glad you’re taking it like this. Not that you’ll be sad — I don’t want you to be like that — but at least that you see the situation for what it is and that in the long run you’ll be able to handle it. Because it’ll make it much easier — it already is — for both of us. You’ll see. You’ll get over me before you know it.” “Not on your life,” I said. “Yes you will.” “I’m telling you. Never.” “No, I know you will. Goodbye.” She opened the door, put the suitcases right outside it, said “I’ll be back for these in a minute,” and carried the duffel bag downstairs. “I’ll help you with the suitcases,” I yelled down the stairs. “No need to.” she said. “It’d actually be better if you closed the door so we won’t have to say goodbye again.” I shut the door.