Read To My Ex-Husband for Free Online Page B

cigarettes in his mouth, along with the napkins, and chews them all up. A wonderfully written piece of fiction that felt so real, so awful, that I thought I was reading about us.
    I wonder if Peter felt like that boy. “You should have told us you weren’t getting along,” he says. The father answers, “We do get along, that’s the trouble, so it doesn’t show even to us …” The line goes on to read: “‘That we do not love each other,’ is the rest of the sentence, but he can’t finish it.”
    It didn’t show to us, either. Or at least until recently it didn’t show to me . So Annie and Peter were completely unprepared for what to them is a tragedy.
    I wonder how many parents who decide to end their marriage think that was the worst moment of their lives, when they told the children. You’re familiar with those movies of traffic accidents that you have to go watch at the local high school when you get too many moving violations. There should be a movie of nothing more than scene after scene of parents telling children that they are going to be living apart. It should be a legal prerequisite for all those contemplating such a thing. I have to believe that nearly everybody would reconsider. They would see their worst fears played out in the faces of their children, and they would take that extra step, cross the bridge, look back, see what it actually is they are about to do, and be repelled. If someone had shown me a film of that night, projected it big as life on the dining-room wall, so that we could have seen ourselves sitting in the candlelight—Annie struggling to hold herself together and clenching her milk glass so tightly that I thought it would crush in her hand, and Peter eyeing each of us levelly, coolly, and with absolute disgust as he rose from the table and went to put his dishes away—I couldn’t have let it happen.

DECEMBER 20
    I’ve been looking at the kids’ Christmas lists. Somehow, I am not interested in giving them “Patagonia anything” or “gloves” or “watch like the one I lost.” What I’d like to see is “red bicycle” or “basketball hoop.” Toys. Christmas makes me want my children back. There are these tall, slender, young adults walking around, yes; but where are my children? I want Christmas to be fun. I don’t want home to be the place where nobody wants to come anymore. Somebody stop me, please, before I go and do something stupid and compensatory, like buy a puppy.
    Am I feeling sorry for myself? You bet I am! Blame it on the season. Dickens is a wonderfully warm and cozy companion, especially on lazy Sunday mornings when I let him up onto the bed. But he won’t roll over for a hug on Christmas morning and badger me for hints about his present. That was the real Christmas, wasn’t it? That little slice of time to ourselves before the kids got us up, and we lay in the snowy blue darkness of early morning, giggling under the blankets and guessing. I loved the elaborate game we played just to put each other off when the guesses got too hot. Dickens is my Santa Claus now. I know he’ll make a noble effort.

DECEMBER 26
    How ironic to have had such a nice Christmas together just after separating. Not that it wasn’t a little strange to have you arrive like a friend of the family, for the festivities, rather than as part of the pajama parade down the stairs. But that moment quickly passed, and it seemed almost as if you’d never left. Which is a problem: How to resume the separation.
    My heart went out to Annie and Peter, how courageous and strong they were, making such valiant efforts on our behalf. It’s dangerous, I think, to view your marriage as it’s reflected in the eyes of your children. But I thought they were saying, in effect, “Come on, you two, take a second look, see how beautifully we fit together. Just love each other. Is