Affairytale : A Memoir

by C. J. English

  Chapter 30

  “OB·LIT·ER·A·TION: TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

  —DICTIONARY.COM

  Stress seemed to catalyze the debilitating effects that were happening deep within my spine. I was deteriorating rapidly and if I didn’t get real help, real soon, the end result would be nothing short of cataclysmic. The pain was life-taking pain and nothing that I’d done or tried was working. I was running out of time and money for remedies that proved useless.

  I stuffed ice packs into the fold of my yoga pants each time before I left my house, but throbbing and stabbing pain followed me relentlessly. My daily walks had dwindled to fifteen minutes of circling the same block, going up one side and coming down the other. I couldn’t walk too far from home in case I’d have to crawl back.

  My unusual behavior at the mall sent a shock wave of panic through passing patrons when a sneeze threatened to blow up my insides. I preempted the implosion by dropping to the floor, tucking my head into my knees, and squeezing myself into the tightest, smallest globule I could. It was the only position that could contain the massive internal pressure of a sneeze without shattering my spine. When I dropped, a few people around me felt the need to follow.

  I hoped that once I got away from Levi, my condition would improve. I was convinced that the stress of our marriage was a major contributing factor in my physical demise and once I plucked myself from that environment, I could begin to heal.

  The final divorce papers were ready.

  Quickie tossed down an inch thick manila envelope that hit the table with a thunk. In it, was the manuscript that detailed how I was to divide my life and belongings. I asked for custodial custody of Dani, the king size bed, the washer and dryer and the upstairs furniture. He could keep the downstairs furniture, the big screen T.V., half the kitchen items, the house, and the dog. If at some point he decided to sell the house, I would be entitled to half. It seemed fair, except for having to give up Bodi, which was unthinkable and analogous to abandoning a small child.

  Divorce mistake number two: I gave up the dog.

  Getting over the hurdle of him having to pay child support was going to be a gargantuan fight, for which I was ready. I needed everything to be agreeable—I just wanted out. In cheap blue ball point pen with zero emotion I scribbled my signature on the last page.

  The last evening I spent in our house was the first time I would tell Dani and Levi what was about to happen. He knew I wanted a divorce but refused to have a conversation about it or talk with Dani together, so I had no choice. I had to follow through by myself or not at all.

  Before Levi came home from work I sat Dani down on the floor in her bedroom. She had just turned nine. “Honey, I need to tell you something.” She crisscrossed her legs and plopped down in the center of her pink room. I put my hands on her knees and gulped air. “We are getting an apartment, it’s really nice, you will love it.” I spoke slow, assessing her reaction and judging how much she could take. “You will have your own room and your very own bathroom. You’ll still have your room here, that won’t change. Bodi and Daddy will be here too.”

  I gagged at having to tell her, I didn’t know the right way to break a little girl’s heart. And I couldn’t bring myself to say the D word. “Mommy can’t stay here anymore,” I continued as sporadic sniffles puffed up her tiny chest and tears rolled down her chin. “You’ll get to stay at both places. Honey, Daddy and I love you very much. This has nothing to do with you; you are a great daughter. It’s just, you know sometimes how you hear Daddy and me arguing?” She stared at the carpet, each breath now came with a full body flinch. “I can’t argue with Daddy anymore, it’s hurting me, it’s hurting Daddy, and we don’t want to hurt you.”

  A loud, angry voice bellowed from her little lungs, “You and Daddy are getting divorced?” She yelled. She’d figured it out before I even had the guts to say the word.

  “Not quite yet, but in the future—yes.”

  She hated me for what I was doing, I knew she would, but someday…she would forgive me—right? Eventually the hurt would lessen and a new perspective would emerge—right? Not all kids of divorced parents are fucked up—right?

  She wailed in her room for half an hour as I sat on the floor and cried with her, watching her convulse with a despair she didn’t create or deserve. She asked questions, like who will get the T.V., where would Bodi stay and how will she get home from school, then she asked if she could play with her dolls.

  I intercepted Levi the moment he walked in the door, asking him to come into our bedroom, before he could see Dani.

  “Since you won’t leave. I’m going to,” I said, “and Dani is coming with me. I’ve already told her.”

  “Told her what?” his voice was hostile, “that you’re abandoning her? That you’re abandoning this family?”

  “I’m not abandoning her, she’s coming with me. I have a place for us, and we’re moving out.”

  I didn’t tell him when, or any other specifics. I was direct and cold and regurgitated the same statement over and over, there is nothing you can do to change my mind. I’m moving out.

  Throughout that night, Levi alternated between crying and yelling. Then at six am he left for work without saying a word. He was clueless that today was the day, and that he’d be coming home to an empty house with no bed and no wife.

  There was no other way. There was no sitting down like adults and talking about how to divide our things; no having a reasonable conversation about what’s best for Dani. There was only hatred and contempt that made a mature and rational conversation absolutely impossible.

  On the morning I left, I took out a piece of yellow legal paper and wrote him a letter.

  Levi,

  I didn’t know how to tell you I was leaving today, I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, but I didn’t want to fight anymore. I never meant to hurt you and I hope that someday you’ll understand and agree that this was the best thing for both of us and Dani.

  All of the paperwork is done; you just need to sign on the last page. I tried to divide our stuff evenly and I won’t take the child support. I’ve already opened an account that it will go into and it will get routed right back to you, all of it, I won’t touch it, I promise. I don’t want money. I just want you to let me go without fighting about it anymore. Don’t try to talk me out of this, it’s already done.

  I’ll have Dani call you later, she’s with me.

  C.J.

  I set the yellow letter on the kitchen island next to the divorce manuscript then hurried to pack and move all of my things within the hours of his work day. I hauled a dozen boxes in and out, up and down, wincing with each step, pushing myself to the brink of collapse. When Ibuprofen didn’t cut it, I added Celebrex, Flexeril, and a fresh ice pack every thirty minutes—just enough for me to stay upright until the job was done.

  I had no one that I could ask for help when moving day came. I’d kept everyone I knew at arm’s length to avoid disapproval and I couldn’t ask Grant, it would be suspicious. More so I needed to do this without him. This was a life I created without him, and needed to get out of, regardless of him.

  Dylan disapproved, mom and dad disapproved, it was too fast they said, I needed to think this through. I kept Lissy in the dark about my plans along with everyone else I had ever known, in fear of them finding out my secret or lecturing me on how I was breaking the sacred vows of marriage. I would move myself even if it killed me. I didn’t want the help of anyone who was not fully supportive of my decision. So I had no one.

  Not only did I not ask anyone to help me, I hadn’t even told anyone I’d filed for divorce or that I was moving out. I’d only mentioned to a few people that I wanted a divorce and that I was serious. No one seemed to understand or support my decision and thus I couldn’t tell them the whole truth until it was done.

  I had enough money to hire two men for two hours to move my big items. The rest I muscled on my own at the expense of permanently damaging my already broken back.
On the last trip out of Levi and I’s house I sat beside Bodi with a handful of treats. He was my respite after Nanook died, and having to lose him too, was unbearable. I didn’t see how I had another choice. He belonged in the house, in the yard, not in an apartment, and there wasn’t a place in Dani’s school district that would take pets. I secretly hoped and thought that Levi would default on the mortgage payments and be forced to move out, then I could move back in and keep my dog.

  I gave him a treat in exchange for a kiss then sobbed into his fur. My involuntary whimper made him tilt his head and lick my tears.

  “Goodbye buddy,” I said from the bottom of the stairs. “I love you, I’m so sorry, I’ll come back and visit, okay? Take care of Dani when she’s here with you.”

  I fell to my knees when he trotted over begging to go out for our daily walk. I squeezed him and wailed through another goodbye, “be a good dog, don’t bite anyone.” I held his head to look in his eyes and felt sharp stab of pain in my chest.

  “I love you buddy.” He wagged his single coil tail fast like a metronome. I stood up, wiped my face off on my shirt and walked away. The tears I cried for having to leave him behind kept coming for hours, then days, then months.

  I picked Dani up from school later that day and brought her to our new apartment. She cried and asked to go home. I cried and wanted to go home.

  Levi signed the papers a few weeks later with no contest. I heard that our divorce was final when it was publicized in the local paper later that fall, hung out on the gallows for our entire town to see.

  ***

  Gonna get the plane

  gassed up. Love you!

  Chapter 31

  “AND THOUGH SHE BE BUT LITTLE, SHE IS FIERCE.”

  —SHAKESPEARE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, 3.2.355

  Divorce mistake number three: I should have gotten out sooner. Much, much sooner.

  My hair was falling out.

  In the single stall shower of my lonely apartment, clumps of dark hair collected in the drain. It wasn’t until my stylist asked, “Honey, why are you losing all your hair?” that I realized how bad it really was.

  In the months after I’d moved out, depression, in its most destructive form showed up at my door and refused to leave. By day I was a broken, single mom, with a fake smile and by night I was with Grant, leaping and dancing and planning how to satisfy our wanderlust. I couldn’t have been living any more of a polarized existence.

  The physical pain came and went with little correlation to anything I did and there were still no clear answers as to what was wrong with me. Not only was I not improving, I was blacking out from the pain. It began with a deafening ring in my ears then tunnel vision before everything went black. The first time it happened I was by myself. I knelt down so I didn’t fall, it only lasted a few seconds before I came back. The second time I wasn’t quite so lucky.

  I’d just pulled up to a red light when I felt myself fading. I yanked the emergency break to keep my car from rolling back, then slumped over the steering wheel. When I came to, cars and trucks were honking and drivers were staring as they pulled around me.

  Thanks for the help assholes, I thought as I quickly put it in gear and drove away semi-coherent and crying. That was the second incident in two weeks.

  I’d exhausted every resource I had trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I’d went to a dozen different specialists and racked up thousands of dollars in bills to no avail. Desperate for relief, I was sucked into buying one useless remedy after another; herbs, acupuncture, acupressure, energy healing, raindrop therapy, Rolfing, and of course, I’d seen many, many chiropractors. Each convinced that if I just kept coming back, they could fix me. All of that was after I’d been through the traditional route; x-rays, physical therapy, anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, pain patches, second opinions and psychiatric care. A diagnosis was out of reach.

  I was incapacitated from simple movements like sitting, or getting out of bed. Each caused a relentless stabbing followed by an endless deep ache. I concealed my torment, I tried to live normally. But I fooled no one. My clients, Dylan, and even strangers were starting to notice. Some guy at the grocery store offered to carry my bags when he saw me struggling to walk with a few plastic sacks and Dani held my hand, leading me gently as I limped up and down the stairs to our apartment. Everyone saw that something was wrong but no one knew what it was. I didn’t know what it was.

  Grant saw my guarded movements, erratic spasms and muted wincing and asked what was wrong, but I didn’t tell him the full extent of what it was. Because I didn’t even know what it was. He deserved a woman who could have babies, and live a normal, long life. And if I couldn’t figure out how to get better, I wouldn’t be able to give him that. The fear of losing him to this, whatever it was, was more excruciating than the pain itself.

  ***

  My new apartment was aesthetically beautiful yes, but it was emotionally empty and Dani felt it too. She never wanted to be there. She stayed with Levi three nights a week and the other four I almost had to force her to stay with me. I tried to make it a home for her, for us, but everything I did was futile. We dyed Easter eggs, carved pumpkins, hung lights on the house plant and balcony at Christmas and stapled stockings to the fireplace. But still, our new place never became a home.

  We had one T.V., and no cable and spent most of our at the apartment watching our favorite chick flicks over and over while I laid on her bedroom floor strapped to hard piece of thick black plastic.

  It was called a traction table but it was more like a medieval torture device that pulled my ribs away from my hips with sixty pounds of pressure. It was like being sawed in half, it separated my upper body from my lower body and I laid in it every day, sometimes twice a day. It worked at first, offering me partial relief in the hours after. Then a few weeks, the relief lessened, and after a few months the pain and depression only deepened.

  On a lonely Saturday afternoon when Dani was with Levi, I clutched the shiny black bench in front of my piano and lowered myself down, then placed my fingers on the ivory keys. It was the first time I’d played music in the hollow rectangle that was now my home. Lonely sounds echoed through the rooms as I played every dark and somber tune I knew. The only music that seemed fitting within lonesome walls.

  My somber playlist ended when my phone vibrated on top of the polished ebony. It was Grant.

  “Hi, baby. Meet me at the hangar in an hour.”

  “The where?”

  “The airplane hangar,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay! Where do I go?” He gave me directions and instructions on where to go and what to wear. I stuffed an ice pack down the back of the only jeans I owned and pushed a small white pill into my pocket. As I walked out, my hiking boots clunked across the thin floor loud enough to wake the people in the apartment below. I locked the dead bolt behind me, leaving misery, my alter identity trapped inside.

  ***

  “Come on, get in.” Dylan said, coaxing me into a hammock that was tethered between two totally inadequate trees overlooking the lake. I wasn’t more than ten years old the day he prodded me into that rickety, cream colored, fish net hammock mom picked up from a flea market. It was something to keep us occupied outside and out of her hair.

  “Get in, I’ll give you a nice push.” Dylan said.

  This, from the brother who would fart in his hand and then cup it around my nose. I knew it wasn’t going to be a nice push.

  “Get in,” He whined. “I’ll push you slow, come on. I won’t do anything, I promise.”

  I fanned out the cream netting, straddled the wobbly cradle then sat down in choppy thunks as the ropes slipped down the bark of the trees.

  “Wrap yourself up,” he said, helping me into the cocoon that encased me in its maw.

  He pushed gently at first, then faster, ignoring my pleas.

  “Come on, I’ll flip you all the way around,” he said. “It’ll be fun, just hang on.”

  As if I had
a choice. I was already on a trajectory to do a full loop when the ramshackle netting spit me out and flung me to the ground.

  This, I imagined, was how my private flight with Grant was going to go.

  ***

  I had on my only pair of jeans, a long sleeve shirt and sunglasses like he’d asked. All I was missing was a compass, in case I survived the crash, and a set of dog tags for identification, in case I didn’t.

  Just before the gravel road, I slid back the little white pill with a sip of warm water from a slightly stinky Aquafina bottle rolling around in the back seat.

  “Hi, baby!” Grant yelled, peeking out from behind an open panel on the side of the plane.

  It looked like one of those old-fashioned World War II planes with an open cock pit. Except this one was modern, with a paint job that morphed it into a carnivorous animal with a gaping blood-red mouth filled with jagged teeth. It sat in the spotlight of the sun, next to a private grass air strip that had been carved from cutting down a swath of cornfield.

  Grant trotted over to me and wrapped me in a hug that lifted my boots from the ground.

  “I’m so happy you came, I can’t wait to take you up. Honey, just think…we’ll get to do this anytime we want—watch the sunset, fly over the lakes, sightsee in October—your favorite month.” He set me down smooched my lips with and audible Mwah! Then slapped my tush. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in jeans. Mmm…you look so good, baby, I can’t wait to re-create the other night.” He said with a salacious, hungry expression as he scanned my curves.

  “You’ll have to fly me to Fiji for that.” I said then smiled the same hungry grin.

  “I can do that.” He said.

  He was donned in aviation gear from head to toe, looking pistol hot; I didn’t need to go to Fiji, I would have gotten naked and let him do me over the plane right then. I was completely willing to make love to my hero on the wings of a plane and have Aerosmith playing in the background. I was sure he would indulge me in that fantasy someday.