Ellie J. Bator 

A Single, Clear, Red Bead

published in Backwards Trajectory

 

 

I filed for a divorce on Wednesday and Friday went to pick up my husband at the airport, deliberately arriving an hour later than he’d asked. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t let him drive, which I would usually do. I stayed behind the wheel. I didn’t ask him how he was, didn’t ask about his trip, didn’t act glad to see him. I just drove. Before he left on this trip, I’d insisted on keeping the car, a dark blue Bronco. I wanted to see what he’d do. I announced that I absolutely had to have his car and then I watched. He waited until I was in bed and then he cleaned out his car. I already knew there was a gold crucifix on a chain in a box under the driver’s seat. When he came back in from the car, I said, “Oh, did you bring the crucifix?”

 

He looked startled. “Why do you have that hidden in the car?” I asked.

 

“I wanted one for my birthday and when I didn’t get one, I bought one.”

 

“You wanted one for your birthday? You never said anything about it.”

 

“I may not have said anything,” he shrugged.

 

“That’s perfect, anyway,” I said.

 

“Perfect?” He was concerned now.

 

“You’ll have a cancelled check, a charge slip.” I knew he hadn’t bought it. “A crucifix is such a nice gift,” I said. “Why would you hide it?”

 

When I took him to the airport I was in a grim mood. He tried hard to talk to me about my writing, the kids, our life. I wasn’t about to be charmed into talking to him. At one point I looked him in the eye and said, “You know you take pride in the wrong things.

 

He nodded, trying to get along with me. “Yes,” he said. “I know I do that sometimes.”

 

“For example,” I said. “It’s easy to be deceptive. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Anyone can practice deception. It takes a special person to pursue the truth and honesty in life. The truth is so much harder to tackle. It’s so much easier to lie.”

 

Even when he wasn’t home he wanted to know exactly where I was. “I wanted to know what in hell you were doing on Sunday. I called and called and there was no answer.”

 

“I went to a christening in Kirkland and then to a dinner afterward.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I didn’t think you’d be interested. Are you telling me everything you’re doing?”

 

That winter, after the divorce, I skied my heart out. In Jackson Hole, I met a young man on a chairlift who was studying writing at the University of Montana at Missoula. I told him I knew Bill Kittredge. I wrote Bill a note, and gave it to the young man to pass on to Bill. His eyes lit up, “It’ll give me a reason to speak to him. I’ll have something to say.” These ties are so fragile, like smoke.

 

Now it’s spring and kites fly high above the beach at Redondo. I find a single, clear red bead in the sand and hold it in my palm. It is a lively red, like a drop of blood. I am here alone. Somehow, I have severed all human connections. There are couples here in the sun. A seal in the harbor dodges fishing boats. A man smokes and talks to his woman. She holds her hands over her face, but she is listening.

 

At a time like that when my husband talked to me so intensely, telling me his lies, I wanted to put my hands over my face, but I could not raise them. I didn’t have the energy. Denial takes energy.

 

I am suddenly transported to the silence of the trail behind the beach, the cedars rising to blue sky and I am sobbing, the hard, cold rock of that pain sits in my chest. You have to understand that my heart always lifted when I saw him, when I heard his car on the drive, his voice on the phone. And he was so cruel.