Crazy Sorrow by Vince Passaro

Author:Vince Passaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

BACK IN NEW York, she found Bert in the kitchen one afternoon when he was home, a rare event, him being home, his hours so long—he was rearranging the dishes in the dishwasher. He seemed furious. He was furious.

It looks like you’re tossing the dishes in here from horseshoes’ distance, he said, hammering the rack back into the body of the machine.

I can’t believe you’re actually angry about this, she said. You’re never fucking here and when you are here, rare of rare days, this is what you get up to, emotionally? What’s the matter with you?

She found out soon enough what was the matter with him. Monogamy and domesticity and the need sexually to roam was the matter with him. He was, she discovered (it wasn’t that hard to discover, after a few suspicious moments and then two days of painful urination), a serial cheater. She threw him out after twenty-three months.

He said, We can get past this. I don’t want to be divorced.

Of course you don’t want to be divorced. That’s a condition and you’re a doctor so you don’t want to have a condition. Except being married to me is a condition too and not a label. You think you want the label, but what it really is, to be in a relationship, it’s not symbolic. It’s a living organism. It bleeds and shits on the floor. It requires attention and care. Now it requires two shots and a round of antibiotics. You’d know all about that.

Don’t, he said.

Do! she said. Do! And I will! The relationship of two people—it’s work. You don’t have a fucking clue. It’s been obvious for a while—I started to see what it meant, what it is, this relationship, and I watched you not seeing it or caring to see it. I thought—but he will! Except he won’t. So fine. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold out anyway. The quicker we end it, the better. Find someone who lives as much in the gesture and the symbol and the label as you do. A trophy wife. You’ll need a higher salary but that’s in reach. So move out and go find her.

You’re a cunt, he said. That was all he said; he just looked at her with a molten anger.

He continued the look. The moments in life when men frighten you: this was one. He finally rose and grabbed a jacket and keys and slammed out.

When he had moved out completely and she’d reconfigured the apartment so that it felt like hers, she made it her business to sleep with one of his colleagues. She’d really wanted to. A sweet man of preternatural good looks, on an exchange from Italy. It didn’t last long, just a few weeks.

I feel bad about this, he said. He gestured. What we’re doing.

Oh don’t, she said.

If she’d known someone she could trust to do it, she’d have enjoyed being photographed in bed with the Italian.

I’d love to have pictures of us, she said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.