The Divorce Papers He Made Me Sign

Two hours

I have replayed the next part so many times that it has worn smooth, like a stone you carry in your pocket.

“Pack my stuff,” I repeated. “What are you talking about?”

“The house is mine. I bought it before we got married, my name’s the only one on the deed, you know that. The papers are on the kitchen counter. Sign them, leave your key on the hook, and don’t make it ugly. There’s no reason for it to be ugly.”

Behind him, faint but clear, a woman laughed.

She was not far away. She was close, the way you are close to someone when you are sitting on the same couch. I heard a glass set down on a table. I heard her say something low that I could not make out, and I heard him half cover the phone and answer her.

“Dale,” I said, and my voice came out as a whisper, which I hated, “we are married. Twenty-two years. Our son is at Purdue. What is happening?”

“Not married for much longer,” he said. And he hung up.

I stood in that hallway with the coffee machine gurgling beside me. Through the little window in the conference room door I could see the board still sitting there, my quarter numbers glowing on the screen, waiting for me to come back and explain why the margins were thin. I remember thinking, with a strange clear calm, that I was going to have to walk back in there and finish the presentation, because that was my job, and my job was the only floor I had left to stand on.

So I did. I walked back in. I finished. I answered every question. Roy Duvall told me it was good work. I drove home down County Road 9 with my hands at ten and two and my mind perfectly, terribly empty.