"They were made for each other," our mothers cooed at our engagement party. Both of us the youngest of large families, tagalongs, bar rats, head of the class, athletes. Despite our shotgun wedding, our world believed if anyone could make it, we would.

Jim and I were white bread, Catholic school kids raised on guilt and Friday fish fries, classmates turned college friends then lovers. When I got pregnant two months before graduation, I did what was expected of me. I married him.

I put much of my passion into my teaching and writing career; Jim was so dissatisfied with his job-and I see now, with our marriage-that he put all of his energy into our son, becoming the kind of hero-father he always wanted. For the last five years we lived like brother and sister. I don't recall the last time we kissed with our eyes closed.

We agreed not to tell our families the gory details of our relationship. We both grew up in this town, knew a crumbling marriage is fodder at every bar, beauty salon, and corner market. Like many towns, ours is a gossip mill sustained by a grotesque pecking order built on embarrassing, intimate or just plain juicy news small-minded people tell
to make their lives seem better.

My husband and I spent three months planning our separation, and we decided together what arrangement is best for our ten-year-old son. Jim still leaves care packages outside my door, even six months after separating. I cook for all of us four nights a week at our house or my apartment. This is as ideal as we can make it for our son and for
ourselves.

Expert after expert-and merely common sense-says that nothing is more valuable to the adjustment of children than that their parents get along. Statistically, Alex has a better chance at continuing earning his A's, maintaining his current standard of living, and not succumbing to a life of crime and drugs simply by having his father involved in his life. Forget my research, my mother's heart says a ten-year-old boy needs constant contact with his dad.

We want to make our separation and divorce "good," perhaps in the same way that a gun fight might be "good": stage it with integrity and hope for flesh wounds. Unfortunately Jim is surrounded by hecklers chanting, "Shoot for the bitch's head."

When we told Jim's parents about our separation, his mother asked me if I had a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I wanted to confess to a lesbian lover, Black or Indian-if I'm gonna shake it up I may as well play the race card. I concoct these fantasies just for their telling aloud. In a town like ours, a strong woman must be a dyke, deep down.

Women of our parents' world would not have left one man without someone else. Women and men my age sometimes know when enough is enough, when to give up a great good lie.

"Everyone is unhappy," my father-in-law said, and my father agreed. "That's what marriage is. That's life." They've each been married to the same woman for over fifty years, so they speak from experience.

According to my mother, if I had not kept my name, not gone to graduate school, not worked so much, not written a book; or if I had kept the Ten Commandments, sent my son to Catholic school, and gone to church more regularly, all this would have resulted in continuing my marriage.

Perhaps it's human nature to speculate an inside story, complete with hideous motivations, the way we think we can tell a life from someone's hand-me-down by guessing at its stains. My mother heard from God or Oprah that any spouse who moves out did something wrong or has something to hide. When a wife leaves, particularly without her child, it means something horrible.

Maybe I am what people say I am. The price is not waking up to my son each morning, and the world's response to me can never hurt more than that.

Patti See's work has appeared in Salon, Women's Studies Quarterly, Southeast Review, and Wisconsin Academy Review. She co-authored with Bruce Taylor Higher Learning: Reading and Writing About College (Prentice Hall, 2001). Patti teaches developmental education, English, and women's studies courses at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She recently taught a course on third wave feminism.

©Patti See, 2002
All Rights Reserved

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