Confession of an Abandoned Wife - Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Hartstein, Michal

  "I came to celebrate with you.”

  "Celebrate what?"

  "I’m a single woman as of today…”

  "You think divorce is a reason to celebrate?”

  I was shocked by his response. "I thought you’d be happy."

  "Of course I'm glad you’re single and nothing stands in our way now… but I don't know if a divorce is something to celebrate, and I certainly can't engage with you like this in the middle of the work day!"

  It was almost seven in the evening and, for most people, that's not the middle of a workday, but I didn't say anything. It would sound like a conversation I’d had too many times with Itay. I looked down and started crying. I felt so rejected. I’d been certain Manny wouldn’t be able to resist me.

  He stroked my face gently and said, "You have nothing to cry about, my darling. We’ll celebrate together later. When I finish here, I’ll come over."

  I slowly closed my dress. I was hoping that maybe he’d change his mind. I sat for a few minutes to wipe my eyes and calm down. In the end, I left and went home, waiting for Manny.

  While I was waiting, I compared today’s surprise visit to the first time we’d had sex on the examination table. On one hand, I realized I’d badly misjudged the situation today. The other time, I was the last in line, the last patient of the day, so Manny was freer. How could I think a professional man like him could have sex while at work? He was a doctor. He had to make diagnoses and life or death decisions. On the other hand, he didn't even touch me. He’d pulled my dress closed… He didn’t even stroke my cheek. Nine months ago, he was starving for my body. He couldn’t see me naked without charging at me. Today, I’d given myself to him on a silver platter, wrapped in a flowered dress, and he’d passed up the opportunity.

  He came to me at ten o'clock. I was tired, and he was exhausted. I was angry with him for not thinking of cutting his day a little shorter today. It’s not every day a woman gets divorced for a man. In retrospect, I can see that I overdid it. Manny's appointment schedule was determined well in advance and couldn’t be reversed on a whim just because the doctor’s girlfriend wanted a little more attention… But, that night, I felt very hurt. I felt I’d given up everything, and he couldn’t even give up an evening clinic for me. It annoyed me, too, that he objected to the term ‘celebrate.’ He didn't see a cause for celebration. He thought that, although he was personally very happy that I was now single, I was ignorant of the fact that it was not a happy day at all.

  We didn't have sex that night. We were tired, and I was hurt. I lay next to him, and I thought it was starting to feel just like how I’d felt with Itay.

  That weekend, the girls were with me, so that left no time for Manny and me to work things out. The following week, he was very busy. Besides his ongoing work at the hospital and the clinic, he had an important conference in Haifa, and so we didn’t meet up. We talked on the phone every now and then, but our talks were short and very cold.

  The proximity of the two events was coincidental. The finalization of the divorce was set six weeks before the actual day and the conference in Haifa was planned months earlier, but with every day that passed, I brewed up more and more anger toward Manny. I had a very unpleasant feeling that I’d ruined my daughters’ home for a broken dream. My quality of life was poor with Itay because he worked too hard and didn't give me the attention I felt I deserved. I’d thought that with another man, with Manny, it would be better for me, but it seemed to be turning into a rerun of the worst chapter in my life.

  Ten days after I got divorced from Itay, I decided to break up with Manny. We hadn’t seen each other in a week, and I had a feeling that seeing me was not exactly a priority for him. We’d barely seen each other lately, and I'd forgotten the last time we’d had sex. This was not what I split my family apart for.

  It was a Thursday. Manny invited me over. Although he knew that we’d have all of Saturday, because the girls were at Itay’s, he said he missed me and that it had been a long time since we’d spent time together. He asked me to find a babysitter and come over for a romantic evening.

  Everything went wrong that day. Ahuva couldn’t watch the girls and the teenager who babysat from time to time had just gone into the army. Having no choice, I asked my mother to come and watch the girls because I had to go out. My mother didn't ask too many questions, though I imagined she was aware that I was going to Manny’s. I went to him, knowing that I was going to break up with him.

  I got there a little late. I took my time. I wanted to punish him a little for his lackadaisical attitude toward me. He opened the door, smiling and happy. There was the great smell of food in the air, but I knew I wouldn’t even sit down to eat.

  Manny hugged me warmly, and I wriggled my way out of his embrace quickly.

  "Has something happened?" He immediately noticed that I wasn’t my usual self.

  "Yes," I said and sat down on a chair in the kitchen.

  "Are you going to tell me about it?"

  Manny washed his hands and went to stir the fragrant dish in the pot. I didn't answer. I found it hard to say what I wanted to say.

  "Want a taste?" he asked. "It’s just outstanding."

  "I can smell it," I replied, "but I have no appetite."

  "You’ll get your appetite back by the time it’s ready," he smiled. He had no idea that I wanted to say goodbye. It really had become a pattern - the men I planned to leave didn't even have an inkling it was going to happen.

  "Manny, please leave the pot for a moment and sit with me."

  Manny sat down and patted my hand. I took my hand back and said, "I want to break up."

  "What?" He opened his eyes in disbelief. "You're not serious."

  "I'm totally serious."

  "Just a week and a half ago you got divorced so we could be together… and now you’re leaving me?"

  "I didn't get divorced for you," I corrected him. "I got divorced because I was unhappy with Itay, and now everything that went bad with Itay is repeating itself with you."

  "It’s bad for you… being with me?" He was shocked.

  "I'm not happy."

  “Everyone has better and worse times. That's no reason to break up.”

  "I don’t know," I said. "I don't remember feeling so rejected quite this quickly with Itay.”

  "You're talking about what happened last week at the clinic?"

  "Not only that.”

  "So, what then? You have to understand that I have pressures of work from time to time, and in any case, I can't just cancel my clinic and drop everything to come and be with you."

  "It wasn’t just any day."

  "But what could I do? If you’d told me in advance that you wanted to be with me that day because of the rabbinical court appearance, I’d have canceled all my appointments, but it was too late.”

  "But it's not only last week. I haven’t been feeling like I used to feel with you for some time now.”

  "But that's how life is, Sharry. You can't live in high excitement all time. In the end, everything becomes routine.”

  "There’s routine and there’s routine," I replied. "For years, I lived with a man whose routine was to get home every day when the girls were already asleep and go to bed without giving me a moment of his attention. We’ve fallen so quickly into the same routine, and I won’t go on like this.”

  "You're making too much of it. Sometimes, I just have to work.”

  "That's what Itay used to say too.”

  "What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing," I said, and I just left.

  I got home less than an hour after I’d left. My mother was astonished.

  "Why are you back so soon?"

  "I just said goodbye to Manny."

  My mother looked at me, shocked.

  "What do you mean, ‘said goodbye’? Is he going somewhere?"

  "No, Mom," I sat down next to her and started restlessly flicking through the channels. "I just broke up with him."

  "I don't
understand you," she said, pulling the remote out of my hand. "You leave Itay, break apart your family, and the week after you become officially divorced, you leave the man for whom you went through all this mess?"

  "I didn't divorce Itay for Manny.”

  "So, for whom, then?"

  "For myself. Living with Itay was bad for me.”

  "A lot of people feel bad in their relationship, but not everyone runs off to get a divorce.”

  "But I do," I said defiantly. I knew I was being stupid. Manny may not have been the only reason I got divorced, but he was certainly one of the main reasons.

  "Well," she sighed. "If that's what's best for you…"

  She went into the girls’ room, sent two kisses to the sleeping princesses and went home.

  I knew that, in any case, I’d have told her about my break up with Manny, but I wanted to let it sink in. I knew that once she knew, it wouldn’t be long before everyone knew.

  The next day, almost everyone had heard the news.

  Even Itay.

  CHAPTER 32

  A day after I’d broken up with Manny, all my family already knew. My mother couldn’t hold in all the joy she felt. Of course, this juicy snippet quickly found its way to Itay. Orit, my sister in law, had informed him the minute she’d found out. I wished I’d told Mom that I wasn’t sure that the break up was final. After sleeping on it overnight, I felt I’d been impulsive. After all, couples do get stressed every now and then without breaking up immediately.

  That entire Friday, I waited for Manny to call me and try to work things out, but it didn't happen. I could’ve called him, of course, but I wanted him to woo me a little and was very offended when he didn't.

  On Friday night, after I vigorously refused invitations from my mother to join them for their Friday meal (I didn’t have the energy for all the lectures and, anyway, I was still hoping for Manny to get in touch), I sat alone in front of the television with a cold bottle of Diet Coke and a huge bowl of microwaved popcorn. I tried to watch a movie from the video store, but mostly, I felt sorry for myself.

  A few minutes after the movie had started, my phone rang. I jumped up with excitement. I hoped it was Manny.

  It was Itay.

  He said he wanted to pop in to get Shira’s math notebook because she’d forgotten it and she had homework to do for Sunday. It sounded like a lame excuse. I figured he’d heard about my break up with Manny, and he wanted to come and see for himself - and gloat.

  He was there within five minutes.

  "You called from downstairs?"

  "Yes."

  "What if I hadn’t been home?"

  "I have a key.”

  "The notebook’s on Shira’s table.”

  Itay went to the girls’ room and found the notebook. He returned to the living room, staring at the TV screen.

  "What are you watching?"

  "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

  “Didn’t we see that?"

  "We arranged to see it with Inbal and Yaron, but, in the end, you couldn’t join us."

  "Are you at the start?" Itay ignored my barbed comment. "Can I join you?"

  I didn't know if I wanted him to join me. What if Manny called?

  "Who’s watching the girls?" I asked.

  "They’re at my parents’. I was planning to go out with friends."

  "And your friends won’t mind you ditching them?" I wasn’t at all sure that he had plans. I had a feeling that he’d heard about my split from Manny and wanted to check the lay of the land.

  "I can text them to say I’m not coming."

  "Do what you want."

  He sent an SMS and sat down next to me. "May I?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, took a handful of popcorn.

  After a few minutes, he was thirsty. “Is there anything to drink other than Diet Coke?" he asked.

  "There’s apple juice in the fridge."

  He went into the kitchen, and I grabbed his cellphone. I wanted to know whom he’d texted. I stayed to watch a movie with Sharon. He’d texted to his mother.

  I stopped the movie.

  "Why did you stop it?" he asked as he came back with a glass of juice from the kitchen.

  "Why did you lie to me?"

  "What are you talking about?”

  "You didn’t have plans to go out with friends, did you?”

  He smiled in embarassment.

  "So, you heard I broke up with Manny.”

  He continued to smile.

  "So you've come to gloat?"

  "Absolutely not.”

  "So what are you doing here?"

  "I thought you might want company.”

  "You're the last person who’d want to console me over that!”

  He sat down. "I wanted to understand why we got divorced less than two weeks ago if, in the end, you were going to break up with your lover too."

  "I’ve told you about a million times that we didn’t get divorced because of Manny."

  "Not just because of Manny," he corrected me.

  We watched the movie for a few minutes and then he said, "I've always said it, there’s never a dull moment with you."

  "What's so interesting about me?"

  "I don't know many people who, within three weeks, sell their apartment, get divorced from their husband and separate from their lover. You seem to get a lot done in a little time."

  I laughed at that. He had a point.

  Itay sat next to me and arranged a loose curl hiding my eyes. "I love it when you laugh. It’s been a long time since I saw you laughing."

  "There was nothing much to laugh about." I stopped laughing, and he drew back a little.

  "Do you want to go on with this movie?"

  "Yes," he lied, and I left the DVD running.

  It was a long, slow and rather disappointing movie. I fell asleep.

  Just after midnight, when the movie was over, he fetched a thin blanket from the closet and covered me. He leaned over me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I woke up.

  "What are you doing?" I asked, almost shouting.

  "Just... you were so cute."

  I ignored the compliment. I decided it was best not to go there. "Is the film over?"

  "Yes, you fell asleep in the middle."

  "Is it worth watching to the end?"

  "No, not really."

  I threw off the blanket, got up and stretched.

  "Are you going?" I asked, yawning out loud. "I want to go sleep.”

  He went reluctantly to the table by the entrance and collected his keys. He was almost out when I saw that he’d forgotten Shira’s math book. I threw open the door as he was pressing the button for the elevator.

  "Don’t forget Shira’s notebook," I called after him, and he came back to the door. "That's why you came." I smiled.

  "It was just an excuse." He smiled, embarrassed.

  I smiled meaningfully, and suddenly, he just pounced on me. It took me a few seconds to absorb what had happened, and I pushed him away from me.

  "What are you doing?" I asked in a cold tone.

  "I miss you," he said coyly.

  "Do you miss me, or do you just miss your personal assistant?"

  “Don’t ruin the moment.”

  "What moment?"

  "It's ruined now.”

  "Itay." I stopped for a moment to give emphasis to what I was saying. "There was no moment.”

  I motioned for him to come back in. This wasn’t a conversation to have by the staircase.

  We sat down at the kitchen table, and I made us coffee.

  Itay wanted to come back home. He still loved me. In the rabbinical court, he’d realized how much. The divorce proceedings hurt him very much; he’d held back the entire time, trying not to stop everything in the middle. He just thought there was no point now that I was with Manny, and once he realized that the romance with Manny was over, he knew he had to try to get me back.

  I’d also had it hard at the divorce hearing. I explained to Itay that I st
ill cared about him. It would be inhumane to not care about him. Itay was in tears when I spoke, and it moved me, but at the same time, I knew that, even with all the sorrow, our story had ended.

  Itay tried to convince me to give it another chance, especially now that Manny was out of the picture.

  "Manny isn’t really out of my life," I confessed finally.

  "I thought you broke it off."

  "Yes, I did."

  "So?”

  "I'm not sure it's really over."

  "If it’s not over, then where is he?" It was a good question. It was Friday night, the girls were away for the weekend with Itay, and it was only natural that Manny would be with me.

  "I don't know," I replied sadly.

  "You know what?" he stood up and said angrily. "If you have no idea what you want from your life, I definitely don't!”

  He left without another word. This time, he didn't forget to take Shira’s notebook.

  I was very flattered by the fact that, despite everything, Itay still wanted me, but it really saddened me to see how disconnected he was from reality. He thought that once the barrier, Manny, was out of the way, the road home would be clear for him. He didn't understand that I was already somewhere else. I really had divorced him.

  I could understand his desire to return to the family unit. A lot of men really were afraid of committing to marriage, but, in fact, when men married, they were upgrading their lives. Although I was no hero, like Hila - I went out to work, my house wasn’t shiny and I didn’t iron Itay’s underwear - Itay’s life had undoubtedly taken an unpleasant turn since we’d broken up. He was used to getting everything laid on. It wasn’t all done personally by me, but he always had ironed shirts ready to put on, a clean house and food placed in front of him, which was usually cooked by me. Someone, usually me, had always delivered and collected the dry cleaning, coordinated the housework and the childcare and went to the supermarket and deli. I was the one who took care to fill the fridge, pay the bills, ferry the children to their after school activities, feed the cat and go to the parents’ meetings at kindergarten and school.

  Itay had apparently found out that someone had to put the laundry in the washing machine; someone had to buy food, even if it’s ready made; someone had to make sure the housework got done and someone had to check the bank account once a week and ensure that all’s well. Until we separated, that ‘someone’ was me, and now that he ran his own home and, in addition, had to take care of the girls by himself once or twice a week, and not just breeze in to tell them a bedtime story, he found that it was a great deal of work.