Read To My Ex-Husband for Free Online

tells me you don’t like the color I painted the kitchen. Too bad. You’ve lost your voting privileges. Anyway, it’s a clean exorcism job, my version of washing that man right out of my hair. It’s not actually pink. I prefer to call it “Dusty Nipple,” and try not to dwell too much on the implications.

NOVEMBER 14
    Thanksgiving—again. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! That sums up the holiday spirit when you ask a woman who is newly separated and whose youngest child is still living at home and wishes she weren’t because “it’s not home anymore,” and whose oldest child may or may not come home from college, and if he does, may or may not stay with her, and whose sister and brother-in-law may or may not come, and if they do, may or may not bring their own children, who want to see their friends and who, in any case, no longer have anything in common with the woman’s children, and her mother may or may not come to dinner because her house is always freezing. But if her mother does come, the woman wants her sister and brother-in-law to be there, too; otherwise it’s much too quiet. The air fills with the sound of swallowing. She stares into her mother’s eyes from across the table and sees recrimination, the inevitable, “What did you do to make this happen? No one could have been more devoted than Nick. You never learn.”
    The trouble is, just when you get used to not operating as a family, you have to think about operating as a family. Here are the possibilities: a) We can all get together here for a midday dinner, you, my mother and the kids and I. That’s if you think your presence here in this house can be explained. (No one knows whether it’s anticipated, and if it is, to what extent, or by whom.) Or, b) My mother and the kids and I can have a midday dinner here; then, Annie and Peter take two Fleet enemas each and go over to your apartment to have another Thanksgiving dinner with you. Or, c) Annie and Peter go to your place for Thanksgiving, period, and I and my mother, who doesn’t care much about food anymore, can share a Cornish hen.
    A brief postscript to Halloween: I mentioned to Dr. Bloom that I was still getting phone calls from people like your sister, who don’t seem to have been told that we’re separated. His eyes lit up. “That’s why you dressed up as Nick! He wasn’t talking. You were talking.” The unconscious works in mysterious ways. Like the Lord.

DECEMBER 2
    I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. Forgive me if that sounds sarcastic. Any hint of insincerity isn’t directed at you, but at the situation. How long does a newly separated man have to know he’s free for Thanksgiving dinner before the phone rings? Six, maybe seven minutes? It must be the image a single man evokes, standing all by himself at the microwave, waiting for his Swanson’s chicken pot pie. He’ll eat it with one of the two forks he bought at Conran’s recently, along with two plates and two glasses, an apron, some dishcloths, a couple of wooden spoons, a mixing bowl, some bath towels, and a set of sheets, decidedly masculine, with gray stripes. I can see the saleswoman, too, very solicitous, very Oh , poor baby , leading the bewildered fellow around the store, saying, “Now let’s see,” as if speaking to a small child, “you’ll need one of these …”
    I have an extra set of measuring spoons, by the way, or should I send them to your hostess?
    I can’t wait until the holidays are over and we can get on with the business of being separated. The trouble is, being separated is a condition of suspension. It could go either way. Until which way is decided, it feels like an occupation. How are you? I’m separated . I’m so busy being separated, there isn’t room for living. I’d be happy just to have people stop telling me how wonderful I look. What they mean is