Chapter 2 - The Wrong Body
Mark hadn’t always been cruel.
That would have made leaving easier.
Early in our marriage, he bought tiny sneakers at a department store because they were on sale.
“We don’t have a baby,” I told him.
“We will.”
He put them in the spare bedroom.
For a while, that room held nothing but hope and a cardboard shoebox.
Then came the appointments.
Blood work. Ultrasounds. Medication schedules taped inside a kitchen cabinet. Phone calls that started with a careful voice saying my name.
The doctors called it unexplained infertility.
My ovarian reserve was somewhat low. Mark’s numbers weren’t perfect, either. There was no simple answer, no single person to blame.
He heard something different.
“You need to stop worrying so much.”
Then:
“Maybe if you’d wanted this earlier.”
Eventually:
“My brother and his wife barely had to try.”
I was washing a mug when he said that.
“I’m not your brother’s wife.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He walked away.
That became our marriage in miniature: I stood there holding something fragile while he left the room.
At Thanksgiving, his mother, Diane, served enough food for a small wedding.
Eleven people sat around the table.
Mark raised his wineglass.
“To family.”
Everyone smiled.
“And to people who actually know how to build one.”
His eyes settled on me.
My fork stopped halfway to my plate.
Nobody laughed. Nobody challenged him, either.
Across the table, Diane gave me a look of sympathy.
I hated that look more than I hated the silence.
Later, while she wrapped leftovers, she touched my wrist.
“He’s hurting, too.”
“So am I.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I the only one expected to behave like it?”
She turned back to the foil.
Three months later, Mark stood in our bedroom and told me he wanted a divorce.
“I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for your body to cooperate.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
The same bed where I had cried after failed treatments. The same bed where he once promised we would figure it out together.
“My body?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I finally do.”
We sold the house.
Split the furniture.
Argued through attorneys about things neither of us really wanted.
I took the coffee table. He took the dining room set.
Nobody asked about the sneakers.
I found them while packing the spare bedroom.
For ten minutes, I sat on the empty floor with that little box in my lap.
Then I put it in the trash.
Three weeks after the divorce became final, Mark knocked on my apartment door.
“I left two boxes,” he said.
May you like
I should have handed them over and closed the door.
Instead, I let him in.
