I know I said the last chapter would be the last, but I realize that I ended it pretty abruptly, and several people wrote to ask me if there was more. To be honest, I had gotten kind of tired of it. But that's no excuse for not closing properly, so, if you wanted one, here it is. As always, thanks for reading.
*****
As separations go, ours was surprisingly amicable. Ellen kept her word, and moved into the campus apartment I'd rented; I helped her move her clothes and things in, and brought away the clothes, books, and files of mine, most of which were still in boxes. She came by to see the girls and have dinner with us every night, and left when it was their bedtime. We were cordial, but not affectionate.
Ellen was right in thinking that her moving out would soften Alyssa towards her; Alyssa's anger, much like mine, turned into sadness and acceptance over time. I was closer to her than I had ever been, which was simultaneously the best thing in my life at that time, and a source of some concern. I had a talk with her therapist, Dr. Carter, about it.
"I'm worried that she's settling into the role of substitute wife and mother," I told her. "But she's great with Sophie, and there's nobody else who understands what we're going through better than we do, so it's natural for us to talk about it together. She needs this, and, to be honest, so do I. But how much is too much? She still needs to be a teenager."
"It's good to know you're aware of this," Dr. Carter said. "Alyssa is coping with the situation by taking on the roles she sees your wife as having vacated; it's a way of exercising control. In the short term, I think, it's therapeutic. How much longer before the divorce is final?"
"About three months," I replied.
"I think you said that the plan then is to move to a shared custody arrangement," she said.
"Yes. I'll keep the house, and Ellen's going to get an apartment, with rooms for the girls, and we'll each keep them half of the week."
"That's a natural transition point, then," she said. "In the meantime, have you talked to her about it?"
"Not as such," I said. "I've let her know that I'm concerned that she doesn't seem to be spending much time with her friends, but that's about all."
"See if you can have a conversation with her without giving her the impression that you disapprove. I'll also begin addressing it in our sessions."
My getting to stay in the house was a consequence of agreeing to leave Ellen's business alone. It turns out they were doing pretty well, and she would probably be able to support herself, although I was giving her $1,000 a month for two years, which was ultimately selfish, since I wanted her to be able to afford a nice place for the girls to stay when they were with her. I was betting that Ellen would remarry soon. She, as she'd said, was betting she'd be remarried to me, although we didn't talk about it. Privately I was still convinced that was never going to happen.
My certainty in that regard was not the result of having found a replacement for her. I knew there was no way I was ready to start a serious relationship with someone new, and I am definitely a serious-relationship kind of guy. The few casual sexual encounters I'd had in college had all left me feeling disoriented and unhappy with myself. Even after the heartbreak of my breakup with my two pre-Ellen long-term relationships--one in high school, one in college--I could still regard them, and my marriage, as good experiences that had just ended badly.
So I was still wearing my wedding ring, and most people I knew, including everyone at work, except for Dave (my divorce mentor) had no idea I was soon to be single. Or so I'd thought.
I was in my campus office working on the acknowledgments page for my book, which I had been able to finish when the dust from the collapse of my marriage had finally settled. I sensed the presence of someone standing in the doorway, and, looking up, I saw Diane Sokolov, with whom, a few years back, I'd co-written a paper on "uptalk"--the rise in voice pitch at the end of a sentence that isn't a question, which is a learned speech behavior among some American girls and young women--and how this was perceived and received by both women and men who were interviewing women for potential jobs. It turned out, as we'd expected, that men tended to view uptalk as a sign of indecisiveness and lower intelligence, while women mostly tended to ignore it. Anyway, we'd gotten along pretty well, but hadn't seen much of one another since the paper had been published. I wondered if she was interested in co-authoring another study.
"Not exactly," she said, "but I do have an idea I'd like to sound you out on. Wanna have lunch and talk about it?"
I agreed to meet her in the faculty dining room, where students are welcome by invitation only, and which has table service and is generally a lot quieter than the main cafeteria. They serve the same food, though.
Diane was always pretty direct, and she got right to the point as soon as we'd ordered. "A little bird tells me that you're recently single," she said.
"Well," I said, "as an anthropologist, my specialty is human language and culture; I can't account for what little birds may say."
"Come on," she insisted.
I sighed. "I'm in the process of getting a divorce. At the moment I'm still legally married."
"But living alone."
"No," I replied. "I live with my daughters. Is there a point to this, or are you just confirming the rumor?"
"I want a shot at you," she said. That was a surprise. Diane was an attractive woman, objectively speaking: tall, probably 5'10" or 11", and, from what I'd seen, she was in good shape, with full breasts and curvy hips; she dressed well for an academic, but not provocatively. She had a nice face, with regular features, and short, blonde hair. I guessed she was about my age, somewhere in her middle forties. All said, a pretty package, but not what I considered my type.
"I had no idea," I told her.
"Why would you? I see what you are. You're a one-woman man. When we were working together, I kept it professional." She reached out and put a hand on my arm. "I don't know what the story is, but I'll bet any amount of money that your wife is the one that fucked it up, and that you tried every way you could think of to let her get away with it, and still keep your self-respect. I'm glad to see that self-respect won out, in the end."
I was simultaneously filled with awe at how well she'd read me, and dismay at how transparent I apparently was. "Remind me never to play poker with you," I said.
"You misunderstand," she said. "I'm not underestimating you. Quite the opposite. She might have taken you for granted, but I won't." She took her hand away and sat back in her chair. "The trouble with most divorced one-woman men your age is that they're boring. Their wives get bored, and, suddenly, they find they've been replaced. Is that what happened to you?"
"Hey--"
"Easy, sweetie, I'm not insulting you. I know you're not boring. You're about the most interesting man I know. But wifey doesn't know that, does she? How often did you talk with her about your work?"
The truth? Almost never. "Well, you know," I said. "It can be pretty dry sometimes."
"Bullshit," she spat. "It's fucking fascinating. But she didn't have the intellectual candlepower to keep up with you. I'll tell you a little secret, Dan: long before she got bored with you, you got bored with her."
"I never . . ." I said, weakly, as the truth of it sunk in. How Ellen never read anything, except what was on her phone; no books, no magazines, even. How she never liked to argue both sides of a problem; how she was always ready to accept an answer that someone else had come up with.
"It's okay, sweetie." I silently noted the second use of the endearment, which was not one that Ellen had ever used for me; hers for me was "Honey." Funny that both implied sugariness. "You fell in love with a woman who wasn't a match for your intelligence. I'm not saying that you're a genius, or that she's an idiot. You're just too different. The beautiful, sad thing is that, because you loved her, you wouldn't let yourself realize that something was wrong. She did you a favor, Dan."
