Soon after Steven had moved out – but nowhere near soon enough -- I'd worked up the nerve to tell the hipster tenants upstairs that they would be writing their rent checks to me from now on, now that I was a few months into a better teaching job, finally earning more than my previous $34,000, and would be the one paying the mortgage – my soon-to-be-ex-husband, Steven, having moved to Boston in the fall.
So I took charge of the house – the holes in the walls and ceilings, the stacks of drywall piled in the central hallway – cheerfully proclaiming that the basement – full of almost all of his possessions (most of which he had never taken), including piles of salvaged doors and 12 cans of deck stain (even though we 'd never had a deck) – was the last place where my divorce would be final.
Really,of course, I'd meant this as a joke. I hadn't realized at the time just how far from funny all of this would actually be. Or do I really mean just how funny? Once life reaches a certain point of absurdity, the horror of it all becomes almost a parody of itself. Little did I know how much trouble his piles of belongings in the basement would eventually cause me. Little did I realize that almost three years later, his things would still be down there and I would, in the middle of contemplating a refinance that might allow me to pare down my number of tenants to one so that I might live in peace – no more stomping around above me, no more stereo speakers making the ceiling above me vibrate – find myself actually asking my friends, “Do you think it will reflect badly on my credit report to have a company called 'Trauma Scene Cleanup' appear on my Master Card bill?”
Of course, I'd thought the company's name was supposed to be ironic when the other contractor I'd been working with referred me to them as a resource for people dealing with what he called -- based on my detailed description of the state of the basement that was causing me so much trouble – hoarders. There it was: it was official; I had been married to a hoarder. Ironic, in some ways. It seemed as though Steven could let absolutely nothing go except for me.
Professional psychotherapy has this way of hinting at unhealthy behavioral patterns that one should come to recognize in one's life, for the purpose of breaking them. So the point, I suppose, is that things do not merely happen to us; rather, there must in fact be something that we are doing to attract certain elements into our lives. And so, for my part, I began to recognize a way of inviting, into my life, the love of men who are, by their own admission, even, incapable of it.
Which I suppose sounds like a feat to be proud of. I may as well be saying that I am single-handedly responsible for the final conversion of the entire nation of Israel, or that a gay man, for one moment having gazed at my voluptuous derriere, would realize he has in fact been very much straight.
So then I ask you to suspend your disbelief. Just as in my very being I have asked these men to suspend their lack of ability to love, I ask you for just a moment to suspend your doubt of my suspect story.
It was April Fool's Day and during a chilly afternoon walk shadowed by our doom-filled topic of conversation in which the word “divorce” first appeared, that he responded to my plea in the guise of a proclamation, “but see, that's precisely the problem. You love me. But I don't love.”
But perhaps it takes one to know one, as the old saying goes. Who am I to criticize others for inappropriate affect? The contractor who had referred me to Trauma Scene Cleanup must have thought I was a truly insensitive person; I'd laughed. He'd given me the name of the company, and I'd laughed!
In my defense, I have to say that it was only when I looked at the website that I realized that yes, while they did in fact work with issues of hoarding, they also cleaned up after actual suicides and murders.
And so it was official: my life was a trauma scene.
But I am beating around the bush, just as I had been beating around the bush with 90% of the people I know. I'd laugh and tell them about Trauma Scene Cleanup. I 'd say Steven was a hoarder. I'd even go as far as to tell them it was the clutter that was causing me so many problems with the house. I 'd tell them how I was so busy working on the house over the Christmas break that I'd quit running for a month and lost twelve pounds, which was when I'd get the concerned looks: “But Reluctant Entomologist!" they'd address me, gasping, "you can't afford to lose 10 pounds.” They were right. I've made mysterious references to the problem, “too horrible for words” – references almost as mysterious as the problem itself.
This has been a story of divorce, yes – but divorcing what, precisely? A husband, certainly. His belongings. The hipster tenants who'd been grandfathered in under Steven's regime. Perhaps some feelings for several insufficiently supportive people along the way. But there's more.
Time flies when you're racing against it – to keep a handyman special of a house from falling in on itself, trying to keep it rented, wondering whether whatever was left after the mortgage was paid each month would ever add up to enough to pay a divorce attorney once Steven had been gone for the two years that New York State required, at the time, to first pass in order for me to have the abandonment grounds I would need in order to have him served.
In other versions of this story, things turn out differently -- but for what little I know, in those versions, things are worse; who's to say they're not? In other versions of the story, things happen for which Hallmark has invented a line of greeting cards. (Is that better or worse? I try to imagine the cards I could have collected -- perhaps having sealed each in a small, bug-proof Ziploc bag before putting it on display: "Congratulations on your Divorce!" one of the more cliched card might say. Or perhaps, "Thinking of you and hoping you are not contemplating suicide." What about, "My deepest condolences for your loss, both of $30,000 and your mind"? "In this time of your old and hopeless house being infested with blood-sucking insects, even though we are staying far, FAR away, please know that our thoughts are with you.")
I struggle for a way to end this -- but nothing works. So I keep writing, clinging to the only thing I know I still haven't entirely lost.
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