While We Live
The day I found out my husband cheated, I tried to drive to the market but cried until my eyes blurred and I had to pull over into a Tobacco Shoppe parking lot. I sucked my index finger and stuck it into my eye to fix my contact lens, just as a mud-crusted Jeep pulled into the parking spot beside me. The cute guy with dreads driving the Jeep saw me as I imagined I looked—hair wild, eyes red and wet, body a pathetic, cheat-on-able mess—and laughed. I gave him the finger, snot dripping from my nose—which I wiped with a crumbled Kleenex, then cried harder.
The day after I found out my husband cheated, I licked a stripper’s titties.
That day was a Friday. I skipped work, figuring I wouldn’t be much good at selling radio advertisement on a day I’d barely managed to brush my teeth without crying. I offered my Sales Manager a vague excuse about “the kids” and “germs” knowing that he wouldn’t ask any further questions. Uninterested to begin with, his attention span miraculously shortened at any mention of my children. “They’re cool kids,” he’d say, “I just don’t like any of ‘em!” And then he’d nudge me and wink, laughing loudly as if the joke wasn’t on me.
“Bianca! BJ! Let’s go!” I yelled up the stairs, juggling two lunches in one hand and a vibrating cell phone in the other. I ignored the call, handing over the pink princess pail to Bianca—first down the stairs, young enough to still love school—and then a plain brown paper bag to BJ, my oldest, who had recently decided that themed lunchboxes—in addition to a million other things, like nonbrand name clothes, books, and moms—were uncool.
“Bus is outside, let’s go!”
“Bye mom!” Bianca kissed my face and danced out the door.
“See ya.” BJ didn’t even look back to see the tiny wave I was hoping he’d return. The door slammed shut, and I was alone in the immaculately decorated 2,000 square foot home of my dreams.
Bruce had left early this morning. I’d watched his bald head shining in the sun all the way to his car, as he juggled his briefcase to find the car keys, which would of course be in his left pants pocket. From our second-floor bedroom window, he almost looked handsome. He always dressed spiffy for work, because apparently Ad Exec means wowing people with your charm and good looks. Plus, he’d been hitting it hard at the gym lately, probably for the pleasure of his girlfriend. Over the years he’d only gotten better looking, most likely because I was the one who had to do all the hard things like cook and clean and bear children.
Bruce had backed out of our driveway and I fought the urge to first laugh, then scream. I’d wanted him to leave the night before, but he refused, instead clipping his toenails down in the basement so that I could hear each one through the heat vent, clip clip clip—controlling the situation, and me, like always.
“It’s best for the kids if I stay, Cori.” He used the nickname he’d given me when we were still babies in college. A nickname I hated from anyone’s mouth but his.
“Don’t call me that.” The kids were already asleep and wouldn’t know the difference. “And you’re sleeping in the basement.” We had all grown so used to Daddy’s late nights and early mornings at “work” that honestly, his presence would’ve been more suspicious than his absence.
But I let him win, as always. I trudged up the stairs to bed with my head high, fully aware that he was watching and noticing the giant stain on the back of my pants from when I’d run out to the backyard in the middle of the fight, daring him to follow me, and then sitting down stubbornly in the rain-soaked grass after he didn’t.
“Goodnight,” he called up the stairs. I didn’t respond. I also didn’t sleep and was still awake when he crept upstairs in
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