Lighting Candles in the Snow

by Karen Jones Gowen

  Of course. No big deal. It’s only Karoline, the trusting, long-suffering wife, busy with her own career and without a clue. I blinked away the tears. I would not cry!

  “It’s our anniversary. . . .” I began, unable to continue past the pain.

  After years of deceiving oneself, it hurts like hell to finally come face to face with reality. Maybe the actual Hell is made up of people like Jeremy forced at last to confront the truth about themselves and everyone they’ve hurt while selfishly, thoughtlessly, cruelly gliding through life.

  He untied his other shoe. “I know, Karoline, I know, and I’m sorry. Only I was on such a roll. I was in the zone! Wait until you read this copy; it’s my best work ever.”

  I gaped at him, unable to absorb the callousness. “I won’t read it, Jeremy. Or any of your work, ever again.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I thought you liked to read my pages. You’re my beta reader. I write for you.”

  “Am I your biggest fan, Jeremy? Am I your Number One Fan?”

  The anger returned stronger than ever, and I was ready to chop off appendages. If only I were a crazed psychopath like Annie Wilkes, instead of a law-abiding loan officer with an English degree who was more inclined to tears than anger, more passive than aggressive. Oh, if only!

  The Misery quotes sailed right over his head. “What? What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know, Karoline, are you my biggest fan? Lately you don’t seem to like me or my work much at all.”

  Jeremy tossed his shoe aside and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his temples, like I was giving him a massive headache.

  When he first came into the bedroom, a part of me had hoped for apologies and a bouquet of roses, for a kiss accompanied by begging for forgiveness and fervent promises to do better. He should be climbing into bed with a guilty laugh, telling me how the hours had slipped away, how many thousands of words he’d written, and now here he was, better late than never, swearing to make it up to me.

  I searched his face for some sign of remorse, finding none and wondering when he had turned so distant. I was normally asleep when he came in, and he the same when I left for work every morning. How can any marriage survive such a schedule?

  There would be no apologies this time, I realized, and my last hope evaporated like a puff of breath outside on a frosty day. A dark despair crept through me. I pushed it aside in my attempt to rekindle the rage. I couldn’t remain passive. I had to stay angry, to make a move. To act.

  Jeremy stopped massaging his forehead and returned my gaze. “Dude, what are you staring at me like that for? You’re giving me the creeps.”

  If only he had spoken with kindness, showed a particle of remorse, it might have been different. I would have forgiven him everything in that instant. But calling me dude like that and saying I gave him the creeps?

  If Jeremy no longer loved me, what was the point?

  I threw back the covers and crossed the room to face him. Wearing flannel pants and a tank top wasn’t the best outfit for taking a stand, but I was done playing the victim.

  “Get out, Jeremy.”

  “Get out? Why? What are you saying?” He made a move to rise from the chair.

  One quick sprint forward and I shoved him, hard. The chair tipped backward before righting itself.

  “Ow!” he exclaimed, rubbing the back of his head. “I hit my head on the damn wall. What’s got into you? I said I was sorry, Karoline, what’s the big deal?”

  I thrust my face into his. I could smell aftershave blended with the scent of an unfamiliar perfume. I had been blind, foolish. I clenched my fists, wishing I were powerful enough to hit him, hurt him, to tear him to pieces.

  He seemed taken aback by my reaction. I rarely got angry, leaning more toward passive- aggressive pleaser. He must have thought this would be another late night like any other, with me asleep and him coming in quietly trying not to wake me. Instead he finds this furious woman with sparks shooting out of her eyes like fireworks. Feeling the blood rush to my cheeks, I pictured myself with red face, laser-like pupils and steam pulsing from my ears like a cartoon character.

  “The big deal, Jeremy, is that it was our anniversary. We had a date. Remember?”

  Jeremy had large brown eyes with long black lashes and the most exquisite eyebrows; truly bedroom eyes, that I used to love. It was the eyes that sucked women in first. Next was his voice, low and soft like a caress.

  I had lost myself many times in those fabulous eyes. Jeremy glanced around the room, at anything but me.

  “Shifty-eyed bastard, look at me why don’t you,” I blurted. “At me! Your wife! Not that the word means anything to you, you cheating slime ball.”

  Jeremy’s eyes moved back to rest on mine. His expression hardened. “Go to hell.”

  That firmed my resolve. I swallowed and pressed on. “Okay, whatever. Now listen to me, dickhead. I want you out. Now. Go. Do you understand? I don’t want to see your face.”

  I would not cry. I would keep the rage. In the game of emotional checks and balances, anger trumps tears. Lose the anger, the tears would come.

  “You can’t throw me out.” He lifted his chin in defiance.

  “Yes. I can. It was my apartment before I met you. The lease is in my name. I can do whatever I want with my house. Now get out.”

  I stepped back from the chair where Jeremy remained like a statue. Like if he sat there long enough I’d turn back into easy-going agreeable Karoline who never learned her lesson.

  I took courage in my new tenacity. No more apologies, no more forgiveness. I would never forgive him, ever. “Go, Jeremy, I mean it. Just go. Before I do something we’ll both regret.”

  Jeremy gave a forced laugh. “Aren’t you the drama queen? Just like your sister. You’ll do something like what? Divorce me?”

  I sensed my mood veering toward grief-stricken sobbing but fought against it. I had to stay outraged and fuming, not devastated.

  “Get out!” I yelled.

  A flicker of relief crossed his face. “What took you so long, Karoline, is what I wonder. I expected this a long time ago.” He picked up his shoes, one at a time, fiddling with them.

  I had threatened to kick him out once before, three years ago, after the Incident. He had promised to get help, to never do it again, vowed that he loved me and only me, that he’d do anything to save our marriage. Somehow we had muddled through and stayed together.

  Jeremy tied his shoes slowly like he had just recently learned how to maneuver laces. It didn’t fool me. He stalled in hopes I’d change my mind, perhaps to further irritate me, a power play. He crossed one leg over the other and rested his elbows on his thigh, giving the impression of a man who planned on staying put. He leaned forward and flashed a fake grin. “What else have you got?”

  I tossed back my hair. I was no longer furious, but determined. I wanted him out. Determination was good, I just couldn’t allow sad. Not yet. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Gouging out your pretty eye-balls maybe?”

  Jeremy sat like that for a long moment, holding his so-called smile in the apparent attempt to appear defiant, in control and unbothered. I stood over him, hands on hips, trying for an authoritarian stance.

  Finally, he let out his breath with a “puh” and shook his head. “Fine. Have it your way.” He headed toward the front door, with me striding after him in preparation for the fight that never came. “Okay, sure, Karoline. Hey, it’s been real. I am outta here. Thanks for everything.”

  He grabbed his jacket and the precious backpack he took everywhere. It would have his laptop in its case, the latest hard copy of his manuscript and probably keys to some woman’s apartment, where he would now go.

  What a sap I had been. Really, what had taken me this long? I should have kicked him out three years ago, after the Incident. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. This time I’d stay strong. I’d stay angry.

  At the front door, Jeremy turned back. “Don’t touch any of my stuff. I’ll come back lat
er to get it.”

  I slammed the door after him. It was over. After six years to the day—plus one—our marriage had ended. I would waste no more time loving Jeremy London.

  After he left, the adrenaline coursed through me. Here I had been in fighting mode and instead of a fight Jeremy had given me chilly acquiescence which hurt even more. There was no way I could go back to bed. I stumbled into the living room and paced the floor. Finally, I stretched out on the couch, pulling the afghan up to my chin. I stared at the window where the moonlight softly whispered around the edges of the curtains.

  The words of Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice echoed in my mind. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.”

  I didn’t cry. I lay there and slowly turned to ice, feeling like my world had ended. “But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.”

  I must have slept, because I don’t remember the moonlight giving way to the morning sun rays until they shined in my face and woke me with their promise of a new day.

  Cottage Cheese and Celery for One

  1 cup cottage cheese (fat-free if you need to lose a few pounds)

  4 stalks celery, washed and trimmed

  6 slices melba toast

  Measure cottage cheese and place on a fancy plate, (although preferably not your wedding china if you are recently divorced). Cut celery into thirds. Arrange celery and melba toast alternately surrounding the mound of cottage cheese.

  Using celery like a spoon, scoop cottage cheese onto melba toast. Eat the cottage-cheese topped melba toast with a celery chaser. Repeat until cottage cheese is gone. Try to make the cottage cheese, celery and melba toast finish at exactly the same time. (These kinds of games will help distract you from the loneliness.)

  Chapter Three

  That was in June. By January, when I had imagined the two of us lying on a Jamaican beach, it was over. It happened quickly yet seemed like ages ago. I faced the beginning of a new year while struggling to find closure for the past.

  We got divorced fast and easy. He took his clothes and books; I kept the furniture and the apartment. When I married Jeremy, I thought it would last forever. My parents were married over forty years. I suppose my big mistake was choosing a man who was so much less than my dad in every way.

  Reading through my old journals became my therapy for the broken marriage. In them I searched for cause and effect, still puzzling over when it began to go wrong. Jeremy and I used to be in love, crazy for each other from the moment we met.

  It was his fault. He cheated on me! Never mind. It was over, leaving me a free woman—an independent, divorced woman. I tossed my journal aside. I had wasted the better part of a Saturday poring through it. Spending my weekends wearing a permanent depression into the sofa cushions didn’t help the weight problem either, the twelve pounds that crept up after he left.

  I went to the tall living room windows that looked out over the street. Sheila pulled up to the curb, and I watched her open her trunk and gather an armload of shopping bags.

  My apartment was on the second floor of an older home that at some point in its long and varied history had been divided into four units. Sheila, a forty-something divorcée who lately had been threatening to move someplace without stairs, rented the apartment across the hall. A legal secretary, she liked to shop on her days off. I wouldn’t call us close friends, but we were good neighbors. I had invited her over to dinner a few times for company when Jeremy worked late, back in the day.

  I considered popping out to say hi and help her with her bags, see what she bought. Sheila would shop the sales racks and then rave over what good deals she found. I decided against it, returning instead to my comfortable place on the sofa.

  My neighbor had a strong dislike of husbands in general and hers, or rather her two ex-husbands, in particular. Since she occasionally entertained men in her apartment, I knew it wasn’t men she hated, only husbands. After my divorce, she’d invited me out for Saturday lunch and shopping. I had gone a couple times before finding excuses not to. I couldn’t keep endlessly bashing ex-husbands with Sheila, something I did well enough on my own. The last thing I needed was more encouragement in that arena.

  I missed my mom. She and Dad were in Europe for at least another four months. They sent postcards back with pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Basilica, the German forests, Buckingham Palace. Who knew where they were now; I couldn’t keep track. Mom had started a blog of their travels but rarely updated it.

  After years of scrimping and saving and investing, my parents had the money to travel and enjoy their retirement. Last fall, about the time my divorce was final, they had set off. Selfishly I wished they were here for me instead of somewhere overseas, out of close communication range.

  Missing my mom, feeling depressed about the journals that had no answers, discouraged about the weight gain and not wanting to give in and make brownies, I rang up Suzie for moral support.

  “Suzie, I won’t use my miserable break-up as an excuse to indulge in brownies and cookies.”

  I leaned back against the pillows on my comfy sofa, lately my favorite place in the world. I was turning into a real couch potato these days. Weekends used to be when I’d head out to the canyons for hiking, biking, or skiing, and enjoy the varied seasons of the Wasatch mountain range.

  “Good for you!” Suzie encouraged. “Don’t give in. Be strong.”

  “I’m feeling kind of down today. Really glad you picked up, Suz.”

  “No problem. I’m just cleaning up after my last haircut. Talk away.”

  Suzie had a salon in the finished basement of her home. She didn’t need to work for financial reasons but she loved doing hair. All the neighbor women came to her. She charged five dollars for a cut and twenty dollars for highlights and perms, ridiculously cheap. Even the bargain chains charged ten dollars for a cut, no shampoo. Suzie could ask thirty for a haircut and get it, easy. Her business strategy seemed to work since her customers paid big in tips.

  “I want to eat, but I just had lunch. I can’t still be hungry,” I whined. “I only think I’m hungry. It’s my empty heart that’s talking.”

  I tucked the blue and green afghan around my legs, the afghan Mom had knitted for me in my favorite colors when I went off to college. Only a decade ago, that era seemed like the fuzzy memory of someone else’s past.

  “Oh, baby! I’m sorry that you have a hungry heart,” Suzie murmured sympathetically.

  “Yes, it’s true. My heart is craving love that is real and sweet and kind and good. In other words, the opposite of Jeremy.”

  “He wasn’t good enough for you,” she shot back.

  Suzie, my older sister, never did like Jeremy. Although during our marriage, she kept her dislike at bay. Since the divorce, she hadn’t held back much on her true feelings.

  “I really do like cottage cheese and canned tuna, Suz. My body does, anyway. It’s my soul that wants brownies, the kind with fudge icing and one perfect walnut half on top of each delicious, fudgey square.”

  Listening to myself raving about brownies, what I really needed was to get off this couch and go running.

  “Mmm, now you’re giving me cravings,” she said.

  Suzie could eat an entire cake and not gain an ounce, the one thing I disliked about her. Well that, and her extreme bossiness. Plus the fact that she always thought she was right. Either my way or the highway—that was Suzie. Still, she was my sister and best friend. I could tell her anything.

  “My cupboard is stocked with healthy food, no brownies. Yes, I can do this! I will not give in to a binge.” I squeezed the little spare tire above my pants for emphasis. It needed to disappear.

  “Don’t give in, Karoline. You’d just hate yourself afterward. You’ve worked too hard to lose the weight, don’t throw that away.”

  Bossy yes, but she told me what I needed to hear—
most of the time, anyway.

  “I think I’m craving sugar because my metabolism is down,” I said. “It’s freezing in this drafty old place.”

  Outside my living room windows, I could see the sky white and promising snow. The wind had picked up and the temperature was dropping. This apartment had charmed me when I first discovered it eight years ago. And it was still charming, when the winter gales didn’t blow frigid air through the cracks around the window frames.

  “Turn your heat up,” said Suzie. “Are you wearing layers? Put on a bulky sweater or a sweatshirt and be sure you have socks on.”

  “I should have made Jeremy stay here,” I mused, not meaning it but since I hadn’t said anything bad about Jeremy for a few minutes I figured I was due. “I should have moved instead of kicking him out. Leave him to pay the electric bill every winter.”

  “Why didn’t you? I never understood that. You should have been the one to go, Karoline. You could have moved in with Rob and me. You still can!”

  She said that last sentence like it just occurred to her, as though she hadn’t been suggesting I live with them ever since I moved to Utah nine years ago. Suzie, Rob and their seven kids inhabited a massive home on the East side. It had a zillion bedrooms and bathrooms. But twenty-nine, divorced and living with my sister?

  “I can’t bear the thought of sorting and packing,” I said, which was true. Suzie didn’t need to know the whole truth—that I’d rather die than move in with her.

  “Regardless of who left who, I’m proud of you, Karoline. You needed to get rid of him.”

  Suzie had never liked Jeremy, especially after he moved in with me. You’d have thought our subsequent marriage would have pleased her, since she didn’t believe in couples living together beforehand. But no, not really. She couldn’t stand the guy.