The Breakup

by Debra Kent

  She shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “Not him. Not possible.”

  I wished I had a more recent photograph. Then I remembered my key chain. I took it from my pocket and showed it to her. “Look at this, Mary.” Encased in a Lucite oval was a photo of Roger and Pete last fall at the Tiger Cub camping trip.

  Mary peered at it and smirked. “Still not him.” I took another look at the picture and saw that my husband’s face was bleached by a splash of sunlight. I knew it was him because, well, who else would it be? But I suppose from Mary’s perspective—the perspective of someone whose identity as the wife of a “famous” American playwright now depends on refuting my claim—this man with the bleached-out face could be anyone.

  I was starting to feel panicky. I had to get this girl back to my house before the deputy arrived. “Listen, Mary. Please. I know things about Roger that only a wife”—my throat tightened—“or a lover would know. Like, there’s a red mark on his rear end shaped just like Texas.” I realized she probably didn’t know where Texas was, let alone the shape of it, so I found a pen in my bag and drew a picture on the back of a bank deposit slip. “Here. Like this.” Mary stared at it but said nothing.

  I went on. “A wife would know that his favorite breakfast is vanilla yogurt with granola and a glass of apricot nectar, and his second favorite is a banana-nut bagel with honey-walnut cream cheese. And a wife would know that he times it so that he finishes the bagel and his coffee—black, no sugar—at exactly the same time.” I checked Mary’s expression. Her eyes looked watery, but otherwise her face remained stony.

  “Let’s see . . .” I continued. “He pees in spurts, and sometimes it sounds like he’s peeing out a song, like ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’—you know, pee pee pee pee pee-pee-pee. Wait. I know. He’s afraid of bees, he hates Swiss cheese, he only brushes his teeth after he eats breakfast because he doesn’t like how food tastes with toothpaste in his mouth, and oh! the little toe of his left foot is weird, like this.” I quickly slipped off my shoe and crossed my pinky toe over the next toe. “See?”

  No reaction.

  I was sweating now. “And he just loves Xena. If Xena’s on, forget it. Nothing else matters.” I knew this was a long shot. In all likelihood, he was too busy screwing this girl to watch Xena or anything else on the tube. Surely his devotion to Xena was a byproduct of his boredom with me, but I threw it out there anyway.

  Bingo! Mary’s face crumpled and she sobbed into her hands. I heard her whimper, “Yes. Xena. How I hate that lady!”

  I moved closer and put an arm around her. It would have been so easy to hate her, but my heart ached for this girl. “Listen, sweetheart, Roger played a bad trick on you. Can you understand that?” She howled louder. “He’s a bad man. He already has a wife. Me. And he has a little boy. See?” I took out the key chain again and held it in front of Mary’s face. She peeked at it from between her fingers. “It’s Petey. He’s just a little boy. Such a sweet little boy. And Roger is his father.”

  Mary stopped crying and started snorting mucus back into her throat. Her nose was red and bulbous. It was getting late. I had to move quickly now. “Look, Mary, Roger is not allowed to have more than one wife. It’s illegal. Do you understand what that means? It’s against the law.”

  Her eyes widened. “Am I going to be in trouble? With the policemen?”

  I had her now. She was scared. “I don’t know, Mary. Maybe.” I hated to exploit her gullibility, but what choice did I have? “People in this country aren’t allowed to have two wives at the same time. And if you lied about your age, well, that’s also against the law.”

  She was crying again. I stroked her hair. “Mary, I’m going to help you, I swear. We’re going to straighten everything out and I’m going to make sure you don’t get put in jail or anything. But now you have to come with me. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll come.” She was barefoot. I grabbed the flip-flops by the door and handed them to her.

  Mary stared out of the Jeep’s window all the way home, and I realized that this was all new to her, these streets filled with gas stations, chain restaurants, and Laundromats. Roger had kept her a prisoner; he’d convinced her that the condominium was all the world she would ever need. I knew that I’d attained the highest level of detachment from Roger when I realized that I cared more about this girl’s welfare than the fact that she’d had sex with my husband. As I sped down Market Street Mary would occasionally lapse into sobs, and I’d reach out to pat her arm. “You poor little thing,” I told her. “We’re going to make things right, I promise.”

  I can’t begin to describe the warmth that flooded my veins as I neared the house. Everything was going according to plan. I had Mary. In less than an hour, the divorce papers would be in Roger’s hands. If Omar does his job, I’m going to be a wealthy woman and Roger will be destitute. I felt the purest joy, an excitement so powerful I thought I might shatter.

  I pulled into the garage and instructed Mary to stay put. Roger was upstairs. It was now 11:30. I grabbed a canister of Pringle’s, some Little Debbie zebra cakes, a can of diet Coke and brought it back to the Jeep. “It may be a while. Do you want anything else?”

  Mary tore into one of the Little Debbie cakes and took a bite. “You have any magazines?”

  I raced back into the house and found a stack of People and Entertainment Weekly in the family room. Her eyes lit up when she saw the magazines. “Oooh! The Backstreet Boys!” She released a small smile. “Thank you.”

  I left her alone with the junk food and magazines and prayed they would keep her busy for a while. I used my remote to lock the Jeep doors. If she tried to escape, the alarm would sound.

  Then the doorbell rang. I glanced outside and saw the sheriff’s car. I called upstairs. “Roger, can you please get the door? I’m in the bathroom.” I scooted into the bathroom and listened as Roger trotted downstairs and swung open the front door.

  “Roger Tisdale?” a deep voice boomed.

  “Yes, that’s me.” Roger’s voice was thin, wary.

  “This is for you, sir. Thank you, sir.” The door closed; the lock clicked. I stepped outside the bathroom just as Roger was surveying the envelope. His face was gray. I froze in the bathroom doorway as Roger fingered the envelope.

  “A sheriff’s deputy just delivered this,” he said quietly. “It looks like it’s from a law firm.”

  This is it, I told myself. It’s happening. It’s really happening. I wanted to jump out of my skin. I fought to keep my voice even. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  Roger slumped in a chair by the kitchen table. “I’m afraid to.”

  “What are you afraid of, Roger?” I was sure he knew. I was wrong.

  He stared at me. “I’m just afraid it’s another, you know, another lawsuit. An Alyssa thing. You know.”

  Oh dear. Poor Roger had apparently gotten himself into another mess. I decided to play with him. “Well, maybe you’d better tell me about it before you open that envelope.”

  His head sagged into his hands. “Sweet Jesus!” he cried melodramatically. “Why me? Why must it always be me?”

  “Come on now, Roger, why don’t you tell me about it? It can’t be that bad.”

  “Oh yes, I’m afraid it can.” Apparently Roger had taken a “special interest” in one of his actresses, the girl with the body piercings who had once delivered pizza to our house. Now he fears that his interest might have been “misinterpreted.” She’d quit the cast two weeks ago, hinted that she was getting a lawyer. “But I swear, I never touched the girl. I swear!”

  “Oh, Roger, it must be so hard to be you.” He looked at me and bobbed his head. “A man of such passion such creativity. And so misunderstood!”

  “Yes, yes, that’s exactly it!” he cried. “You know me so well!”

  “Now why don’t you go ahead and open the envelope? Just get it over with,” I urged.

  He gazed at me gratefully. “As long as I have you on my side.”
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  “Of course, Roger. Now open it.”

  He slipped a finger behind the flap and slid it along the length of the envelope. He slowly unfolded the letter, took a deep breath, and began to read. “What the hell . . . ?” he looked stupefied. “What is this?”

  “I’m leaving you, Roger. It’s over. I’m divorcing you.” Oh, the sheer joy of finally pronouncing those words!

  “But why?” he shrieked. “Why?”

  “There are many reasons, Roger. And my attorney will be happy to detail them for you. But the most important reason is a young girl named Mary.”

  “Who?” he asked, as I’d hoped he would.

  I started toward the garage. “Don’t move, darling husband. I’ll be right back.”

  When I got back to the Jeep, Mary was sound asleep (knocked out by all the junk food, no doubt, a condition with which I am intimately familiar). I used the remote to unlock the doors; the loud click woke her up. She blinked at me and stretched. “Can I go in now, Mrs. Ryan?” She lowered her voice. “I have to pee.”

  “Absolutely, sweetheart. But first, we need to talk to Roger. See, just like I thought, he says he doesn’t know you. He’s lying again. And we need to help him see the truth. Do you understand that?”

  She nodded at me. “I understand, Mrs. Ryan.” I helped her out of the Jeep and tightened my grip on her soft, slender arm. I couldn’t risk her running away, not when we were this close to blowing up Roger’s life.

  As I steered her toward the door that leads from the garage to the family room, I surveyed all the junk piled in corners and on the wooden shelves, the artifacts of our life together. Actually, they’re more like artifacts of the life we never led. The matching Rollerblades we bought when one of our marriage counselors told us we needed to play together more. (We used them twice.) The unopened cans of periwinkle paint I bought when I read about the healing power of color and decided that what our marriage really needed was a fresh coat of paint. The canoe and helmets we bought for what Roger promised would be a lifetime of outdoor adventure. We’d driven out to Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. Roger sprained his hand attempting to wrench the canoe off the roof of the car, then spent the next three days whining about it. That was the last canoe trip we ever took. Let me amend that: It was my last canoe trip. How many girls he seduced on the banks of Gunflint Lake is anyone’s guess.

  I held Mary’s hand as we walked into the family room. As I approached the kitchen I called out, “To answer your question, Roger . . .” I gently pushed Mary through the archway dividing the family room from the kitchen. “Heeeeere’s Mary!” I felt intoxicated. I was floating so high above this man, he was now a dark speck in the vast aerial view of my life. I watched him as Mary stepped tentatively into the room. Roger tightly wrapped his arms around himself, as if to prevent some involuntary confession or gesture of recognition. He looked at her face. Actually, he seemed to focus on a spot above her head. He never looked into her eyes.

  Mary raced toward him and threw herself at his feet, humbly and adoringly, like one of those little kids in The King and I. “Is true what Mrs. Ryan says, Roger? Is true that she’s your real wife? Is true?”

  Roger looked down at the girl. “Get the hell off me!” he yelled. Then he hit her with his loafer, not a kick exactly, more like an attempt to pry her off his legs.

  She started to cry. “Why are you doing this, my husband? Don’t you know who I am? Your little Mary! Don’t you remember me? I’m your wife, your little love blossom!”

  Roger looked at me. “Who the hell is this person?” Roger seemed sincerely confused. Suddenly I wasn’t so giddy anymore. I was scared. Had I made some bizarre mistake? Was Mary part of some elaborate scam designed to humiliate me?

  I continued. “Don’t bullshit me, Roger. You know exactly who this is, and so do I, and so does my private investigator.” I helped Mary to her feet and held her as she sobbed and snorted into my chest. “You make me sick,” I said.

  “You make me sicker,” he shouted, hoisting himself onto his all-too-familiar high horse. I could see him inflate with self-righteousness as he warmed to his new strategy: He would take the offensive. “You bring this girl into our house from God knows where, and you believe whatever craziness she tells you. Who knows what she has in mind, what she plans to steal from this house, what diseases she’s carrying! You put your family and home in jeopardy all because some wacko tells you she’s my wife? You’re the sick one, my dear.” He twirled a finger at his temple. “Certifiably loony!”

  Now Mary was howling. I forged ahead. “Did you really think you were going to get away with this, Roger? You’re a smart man. What on earth made you think you could have some kind of crazy pseudo secret marriage with a sixteen-year-old girl and actually get away with it?”

  Roger jumped up and pointed an accusing finger at Mary. “You said you were twenty-one.”

  All three of us gasped at Roger’s self-revelatory faux pas. He covered his mouth with a hand and fell back in the chair. “Dear God,” he muttered. “Dear God.”

  I stared at him. “You pathetic excuse for a man. You depraved, decripit sicko. You make me want to vomit.”

  Roger rubbed his eyes wearily. “Don’t let me stop you,” he answered. “But not on the carpet, please.” I marveled at his ability, even in his ravaged state, to construct a snide comeback.

  “Allow me to enumerate your crimes,” I said. “Number one, you’re a bigamist. In case you’re wondering, bigamy is prohibited in our state, according to Statute 1846, which states, in Section Five, ‘No marriage shall be contracted whilst either of the parties has a former wife or husband living, unless the marriage with such former wife or husband shall have been dissolved.’ ” He stared at me and I beamed back. “I looked it up on the Internet!” I was feeling giddy again. “Number two, you’re probably going to be convicted of statutory rape!”

  “I think not,” Roger said. “The legal age of consent in this state is sixteen. I looked it up on the Internet.” He thrust his chin out defiantly.

  “But I was only fifteen when we started,” Mary said quietly.

  Roger and I looked at her. Roger put his hands over his face. “Jesus God.”

  I looked at my watch. “You have twenty minutes to pack a bag. Call me with your address and I’ll have the rest of your crap sent to you tomorrow. Just get the hell out of here.”

  Roger stood up and wagged a finger at me. “You’re not going to get away with this, you realize that.” Roger was up to his neck in his own shit and he’s still playing the aggrieved one. I could hear him stomping around upstairs like a kid who has lost his video game privileges. Doors were slammed, drawers were flung open and banged shut. I heard him punch the wall and scream, “Fuck! Fuck! She can’t do this to me!”

  Mary looked frightened. “What’s he gonna do to us, Mrs. Ryan?”

  I held her in my arms. Her hair smelled of Alberto VO5. “He’s never going to do anything to either of us, ever again.”

  She started sobbing. “It’s just not fair, Mrs. Ryan.”

  “What’s not fair, Mary?”

  “I was supposed to be a married American wife. That’s what I was supposed to be!”

  Mary seemed to be teetering between heartbreak and an aggressive sense of entitlement, the way Pete gets when he’s denied something he’d expected to have. (“But you told me the ice cream truck would come through the neighborhood today! It’s just not fair!”) I didn’t know what to say except the lame, allpurpose: “Nobody ever said life was going to be fair.”

  She looked up at me and blinked. “True.” She hugged me more tightly now.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ryan. Thank you for being my friend.”

  I had no idea what I was going to do with a sixteen-year-old Filipina, but I certainly didn’t plan to send her back to that cell on Lake Merle. I told her I’d pay for her way back to the Philippines. “Oh no, Mrs. Ryan!” She was terrified. “I can’t ever go back home. My father would kill me if he found out what h
appened. I can’t ever go back, ever. Please don’t send me back there!”

  “Mary, do you have any family in the States?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “Somewhere in Philadelphia.” She pronounced it “Pilladelphia.” “They are cousins of my father.”

  “Mary, I’m going to try to arrange for you to live with them. Until then”—I swallowed hard—“you can stay with me for a while, me and Pete.”

  She was elated. “And Tippy? With the babies?”

  “Well, Tippy yes, but we’ll have to bring the babies to the animal shelter. We can’t take them too.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Ryan. That’s okay.” She looked disappointed, but quickly brightened. “Thank you, Mrs. Ryan.”

  “Call me Valerie, please.” Suddenly I heard the door slam and I knew Roger was leaving. The garage door rumbled open. Mary and I went to the bay window in the living room and we watched his van back out of the driveway. His eyes met mine as he pulled away. Then he flashed his middle finger.

  Mary is in the guest room now, watching I Love Lucy. It’s been a long day.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 4

  Mary’s period is eleven days late. This morning she threw up after breakfast. I should be ripping my hair out, but I feel oddly serene. Is it the Prozac, or the prospect of having a baby in the house again? I know the neighbors would relish the gossip: First my husband had an underage lover, and now a baby? But the compelling reality is that this child would be linked by blood to my own son. Why wouldn’t I want that child growing up in this house? On the other hand, the baby would be a constant reminder of Roger’s sexual hubris. And what if Roger insists on helping to raise this child? On the other, other hand: A baby! A sweet, soft package of cuddly love! I get all gooey inside just thinking about it. Or am I just losing my mind?

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 4, continued