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He had begun an “apartment collection” downstairs, in the rec room. So far it boasted a bathroom throw rug, a shower curtain in its new plastic bag, several towels of various sizes, two other, incidental throw rugs, curtain rods and curtains – beige with some sort of criss-cross peasant design, probably purchased at K-Mart, where his mother liked to shop.
(I’d been mildly insulted once when his mother gave me a jersey from K-Mart that she’d put into a Wanamaker’s gift box—from a gift I’d given her. I thought at the time, You can buy yourself that stuff, but you don’t buy it to bestow on others. I never wore the jersey.)
That’s a small point.
Back to the sofa. He had all these things at its end. A matching bathmat and toilet-seat cover in a kind of chenille. Dish towels. A dish rack.
These were piled conspicuously on the large sofa on one side of the rec room.
The pile was infuriating.
Sheets. Towels.
The kids – 11 and 12—would walk by it. “What’s Jason doing?”
“He’s getting his own apartment,” I said. “He’s furnishing it.”
Jason would scowl, flounce about the room. “I’m being told I can leave!” he’d say.
The kids would look from one to the other of us. I gave away nothing. I could not relent, I could not! Let him go, please, and soon, was my prayer, day after day, as the tension and the pile of household goods mounted.
I had announced to the kids one morning at breakfast, when I was alone with them, that Jason and I were splitting up, that he was getting his own apartment.
“Oh?” my son said, with the vagueist of interest. “Is it money problems?”
Good lord, I thought. What does a twelve-year-old know of money problems? I almost laughed, except I saw he was trying to be earnest, interested, when in fact I think he was as relieved as I was to see Jason leave our household.
“No,” I said. I wanted to say it’s sex—or its lack– but I think that my son could see from Jason’s over-dramatic gestures and minced gait what was going on. Jason made him nervous, too, although he tried to be fair.
My daughter was a little upset. “He’s not taking Rosie with him, is he? Is he taking Tina?” Rosie was a cat Jason had given the kids when I married him – I once thought he was an interesting man—having my suspicions about him even them and overriding them. “No, not Rosie. He’s probably taking Tina. That’s his cat that he brought with him.”
“Oh,” they both said together, watching as Tina the cat walked by. “Okay.”
Days went by. Weeks. Over a month. The pile downstairs grew and grew. My tensions grew and grew.
Finally the day came when he took it all away, as well as all his opera records, boxes and boxes of them. He took it away! The house was emptied. The bills would be mine alone now.
I’d have to mow the grass—the kids would help—I wasn’t sure I could keep the garden going; I couldn’t. I’d have to live with a disorder I couldn’t keep up with.
But our house! The house was disorderly, perhaps, but marvelous. Marvelous! It was just ours. Ours, ours, ours! Just the three of us hereafter. It was like being reborn.