Songs: “Walking Away” – Brother Ali
The desk was broad with thick notches in the bulbous corners. It reminded me of a field I had seen in Virginia a few weeks before, a famous battlefield of the Civil War. I had laid down in the center, feeling the grass underneath my skin where most of the men had been killed… I suddenly couldn’t remember which side had won there. That detail had somehow been rendered irrelevant.
I had met my lawyer for the first time face-to-face a few minutes before. It was a revelation. The same man I had talked to over the phone countless times, now in the flesh. He was hopelessly cliched: tall and tan, with the standard quaff haircut and a dark blue suit. We talked about his kids, his boat, and his golf game. He was surprisingly forthright about the financial mistakes I had made. I met his eyes and we cooly discussed my future.
Of course, it had all been mine. She hadn’t contributed a single dime to the marriage. I had bought the house, the cars, all of the useless things. But that wasn’t how the system looked at it. Despite her proven record of infidelity, our lack of children, and a wide range of mental health issues on both sides, she was legally entitled to half of my prosperity. There would never be an opportunity to seek actual justice for the time, money, and sanity she had stolen from me. Instead, it was a barren wasteland of numbers. And there was no number that sounded fair to me other than ‘zero.’
But that’s what lawyers are for. To convince us that the reality of our situation is graver than it is. I could tell my lawyer regretted taking my money. I could tell he regretted a bunch of things. We talked about about our exes and swapped horror stories as we waited.
“Phew!” The mediator bustled in, shaking her head, radiating a flustered energy that filled the room. It was clear that she had just come from somewhere else in the office.
“She is not going to come in here. I will have to take proposals between the rooms.” She said, fixedly avoiding my gaze. This was the ultimate gut-punch. I had held the shards of my being, melted them down, and cast myself into the pulsing foundries of existence. I had sat in the lava underneath my mantle for so long that I could reach through the fissures to the surface without thinking. I was strong, powerful, and steadfast. Unstoppable. Every step above ground was a miracle. I had come impossibly far and now it was time to look the devil in the eye. I was ready.
What a coward.
It all hit at once. The full weight of all the information available. A tsunami of memories and experiences. All at once. Altogether. Crystal clear…
…I was always awake before her. I loved to watch the way that her eyes fluttered as she began to awaken. We had taken off into the woods the night before. The tailgate of the truck lay open, our feet still tangled in the bottom of the sleeping bag. The air had a deep chill. I nuzzled her neck with my stubble. Her eyes opened…
…I came to staggered, as if I was a chunk of concrete awakening to multiple jackhammers coming from all sides. I saw her running down the stairs towards the highway. I was in the gravel parking lot. Why was I in a parking lot? I looked down to… blood. I was drenched in blood. Mine. Somewhere nearby a car was spitting gravel and fishtailing as it accelerated…
…I leaned in for a kiss. At first it was gentle but I could feel… hunger. I pushed in deeply, sinking her into the chain link fence behind us. Eventually, coming up for air, I caught the Paris skyline in the background. The sun was setting. She sighed and leaned into my neck. I could feel her lips breaking in a smile across my skin…
…She took one powerful lunge forward and off she went. One skate pushing, the other gliding, the epitome of graceful. It was her birthday. I’d surprised her by renting the entire rink. My own skates slid, slowly and clumsily, across the ice. I was too transfixed to care. She darted here and there, loops within loops, and then came toward me. Her grin was pure, unadulterated…
…Her fist came out of nowhere, as if it was a spasm. It swiftly angled upward and connected with the side of her head. Then again, and again. “Why don’t you hit me like you want to!?” She screamed. I felt the weight of my face, a granite mask pulling me to the floor. My God. Hit you…? You are everything to me. Why would I want…
…The table was set with a broad spread. It was a Mexican Easter. The food was spectacular, all tortillas, beans, and eggs. I’d developed a nervous eating habit. I stuffed taco after taco in my mouth. A married man sat across the table from us. He was hitting on her right in front me. His wife and children sat there looking abashed. It couldn’t be real. I wouldn’t let it. I knew I should say something, anything, but I was too stunned to do anything but eat, eat, eat…
…Sitting on the couch, my legs tucked in the lotus position. I had an inkling about her extra curricular activities now. The broadest doubt had begun to permeate. I knew how to endure, though. I would wait it out. Everything was going to be OK. I sat and meditated. She’d brought a friend over. They sat on the other end of the massive couch. They were rating something. She called out a stream of numbers, always followed by the flick of a finger one way or the other. Somewhere deep in the recesses, I knew they were rating other men. I held that reality at bay. I breathed deeply. In and out. In and out. In and….
The torrent slowed and I was back in my body. The massive table sprawled out ahead of me. I saw my flaws. These had been readily pointed out to me countless times, but now I could see. I was negligent, stubborn, and had adopted a victim mentality. I had burned alive in that, allowing myself to weaken; to become something unaligned in order to survive. My bitterness and hurt had become the crutch that I used to spite the steps I had to take to get free.
I saw the times that I had used my anger to hide my fear. I saw the habits I had learned as a child and how they had come out to the forefront. I had been withdrawn, completely out of touch with the realities of our marriage, and had thought that I could just coast through the problems. Endure, endure, endure. I saw myself in those moments. Angry. Bitter. Jealous. I saw how I had adamantly refused to back down an inch.
I also saw all of the ways I had been deceived. The cheating, the lying, the various forms of abuse. I saw every single way that I had been conned and used. And I saw the scared, angry child behind the mask. With shocking clarity, I was made aware of how the entire operation had been to uphold a false image. Her persona was a snowball rolling downhill, chewing up anything in its path in a desperate inertia. Because if she ever slowed, ever stopped long enough to consider the reality of her own behavior, the entire image would be lost. And she would have to finally face herself. This was the summation of years of… whatever her side of the marriage was. Now it was just determining what the monetary value of all of those lies were.
Coward!
I stared at the polished desk for a long time. I had been forced to wait for over a year while she had rented out my condo. I had been paraded in front of the neighborhood by the local police department while she flirted with the officers. Then my friends… family… court rooms… and when I was finally able to legally bring her to the table, she wouldn’t even sit at it. She had to have that one last screw to turn. I could finally see it for what it was.
Eventually I looked up. A percentage tore from my lips. I wanted to spit. All reduced to a percentage. All of my love… All of my heart… All of my time… I had been prepared to negotiate. I had been ready to dig deep and demand each and every penny. But something had shifted. I realized immediately what it was.
I had been holding out hope that she was still the person I had long thought she was. There was a sliver of me that had hoped she would come around and see what she had become. But that sliver, that person I had imagined, wasn’t real and had never been. I saw then, for the first time, who she was. And that wasn’t someone that would ever be accountable; who would ever behave like a decent human being.
Numbers. Percentages. Math.
I had initially offered her half, immediately after we separated. She had, of course, refused. She wanted me to burn; to draw this out as long as possible. My lawyer had been aghast at this.
“Dumbass.” He had murmured. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or her. Probably both.
I calculated. The rent she had charged, the rent I had had to pay, lawyer fees, travel costs… all of this math to find the correct percentage. I wrote it down and slid it to the mediator. My lawyer glanced at it and ruefully shook his head. I was cutting into his free time, evidently. I didn’t care. I was dealing with a corporation now, not a single entity. I have lived my life fervently avoiding these types of games. That didn’t mean I didn’t know how to play.
The mediator took the updated offer and left. Soon, my lawyer followed suit. He had mentioned before that he was good friends with my ex-wife’s lawyer. Small town. I peeked my head around the corner and saw them slapping backs. Just two good ‘ol boys, litigating an awful time. Outside, I am sure the sun was warmly blaring. I imagined myself standing in the full force of the sun, warm rays baking my skin, a cool breeze just enough…
I was alone for quite a long time. I knew the game. They wanted me alone, in my head, stewing and ruminating. I could hear them upstairs. I had lived with her for so long that I could tell by the heavy rhythm of her feet that she was right above me. Two people, inseparable for years, traveling the world and overcoming obstacles others couldn’t dream of…
A glimmer of sunlight cast across her sleeping face. The shadows moved quickly across the rippling face of our tent. Our dog was curled up between us. He was gently snoring. Her hand furtively reached out for mine as she slowly awoke. Her eyes fluttered…
Gone. Numbers. Fucking math. We were separated by a few feet of concrete, plastic, and wood. It might have been miles. Or eternity. I guess that’s why we need lawyers to determine which we get. Or maybe it is even less tangible than that.
I paced around the giant table. The rug was mostly dark red, a rich Afghan that grabbed at my boots. I followed the patterns, anxious, wondering how long it would take to finally get this resolved…
Somewhere amidst my reverie, a commotion began outside. Her lawyer stormed by the cracked door, flinging his hands upwards and loudly huffing.
“What a ___!” He growled just outside the door.
A few minutes later, the mediator and my lawyer returned. I returned to my seat and put my feet up on the corner. My lawyer sat and copied me. The mediator, obviously flustered, sat with a semblance of dignity.
“Well!” She said, her eyes wide, flashing between my face and the papers she gripped between her hands.
“They always reveal themselves in the end.” I said.
“…What?” My lawyer asked.
“Nothing. What’s the number?” Even I could hear the edge in my voice. It was surreal. The memories swirled and eddied. After everything, here we were. Summed up in one phrase: “How much?”
We bickered and dickered. She had written me a list of demands. The mediator had read it. The lawyers had too. I held out my hand and my lawyer just shook his head.
“You know what it says. It’s insane.” He said, balling up the paper and tossing it in the trash. “That woman is a ___.” The mediator snorted. We came up with a new number and sent her away. Final offer.
The other side agreed. I wasn’t surprised. It was free money, printed on the back of a man who was deemed unworthy and peeled, inch by inch. Her only currency was spite- and its exchange rate was dubious at best. She took what was offered because she couldn’t afford to turn it down.
For the first time all day, I could breathe.
After a few more hours, it was over. I signed some more papers, sighed a few times… then the door opened. Sunlight poured down onto my skin. I was awash with the heat of summer. Pollen drifted by…
My mind returned to that Virgina battlefield. Standing in the grass… the echoes of screams of dying men- brief and brutal… There was a trenchant finality to it all.
Something released. It was signed, sealed, and delivered. The war had been fought. I honestly couldn’t tell if I’d won or lost. My body felt ragged and beaten. Blood oozed from the cracks and crannies. It crept down like syrup along frosted bark; slowing the farther it got down the trunk. My spirit was a shred of its former self, a torn flag still furtively flapping. I was a fraction of the whole. A crumb fallen from the biscuit. The remnants of an ancient battle of attrition.
I had crawled up from a barren Hell. I looked down at my feet, firmly planted on the pavement beneath. The mountains felt firm and strong beneath. I took one step, two, three… with each I could feel the weight releasing. The malevolence diminishing. The unbearable lightness of… something… beckoning…
I smiled and looked to the sun. A breeze picked up and slowly wrapped around my hips. Ushering. Shepherding. Calling… The warmth began to sink in. And just like that I had to admit…
It was a beautiful day.