Tear You Apart

“Not to the dog,” he says.

I laugh. “But it’s not the dog who gets to decide, is it?”

“You don’t take a man’s dog,” Ross says pointedly, and stabs more salad. “You just don’t.”

“I didn’t even know they were getting divorced.” I sip water to clear the taste of the dressing from my tongue. It’s delicious, it always is, but tonight everything seems to have a bit of sour taste. “What about the kids?”

Ross shrugs, clearly more concerned about the dog than the rest of the details. “He’s letting her have the house.”

“How generous.” Not all words have color, but generous has always been a soft powder-blue. It doesn’t match the sarcasm with which I’ve imbued it.

“They’re upside down. He’ll get out of it, find something better. In this market, he can snap something up.” Ross snaps his fingers to demonstrate.

“He can afford to do that?”

Ross pauses in the steady back-and-forth of his fork from plate to mouth. “Well, yeah. She has to buy him out.”

“So then he’s not ‘letting’ her ‘keep’ the house.” I don’t know why this irritates me so much. I barely know Kent and Jeanine, and they were always more Ross’s friends than mine. “She’s paying him for it. And I’m sure she did the lion’s share of taking care of it. So he’s not letting her do anything, he’s getting out from under a debt and starting fresh.”

Ross stares. “Why shouldn’t he?”

“Does she work?”

Shrug. “Sort of. Part-time, I guess.”

“So how can she afford to buy him out of that house?” It was twice as big as ours, and in a more expensive neighborhood.

“Look, I don’t know all the details, okay? It wasn’t really my business. I guess she’s going to make payments to him or something. And forfeit her share of the retirement. Whatever, Bethie, what do you care? You don’t even like Jeanine.”

That’s not quite true. I don’t know her well enough to not like her. I wince a little at the spurs of burnt umber spiking my name the way he says it. I’ve never liked it when he calls me that, but he still does no matter how many times I ask him not to. “Why are they getting divorced?”

“People grow apart,” Ross says stiffly, in a way that tells me he knows more than he’s letting on, but won’t share it.

I let it go. I don’t really care. My stomach’s in knots, and it has nothing to do with the end of the Presleys’ marriage.

“So she’s saddled with the kids and the house and having to figure out a way to not only get back into the job market to pay for all of it, but she sacrificed her future retirement in order to do it. That’s what it comes down to in the end? Money? After how many years together, two kids...” I pause. “A dog.”

Ross doesn’t notice the layer of sarcasm I put into the word. “Money matters, Beth.”

“Only when you don’t have enough.” The words slip out of me like puffs of black smoke.

He laughs at that. Takes my hand. Strokes his thumb over the palm in the way I told him once, years ago, turned me on. It doesn’t anymore.

“You don’t have to worry about money, honey. I’ll always take care of you.” He laughs again. Making light. “Unless you leave me, of course.”

Nothing about this feels light to me. Not the birthday hitting me harder than I was expecting. Not the way my world has tipped on end and I don’t know how to stand up straight. My fingers curl inside my husband’s to squeeze his hand tight.

“What would happen then?” I ask.

Ross kisses the back of my hand, his breath warm and moist and sending a shiver through me that’s not from arousal. “Oh,” he says with a smile, to show me he’s joking, though I know him well enough to know he’s serious, “I’d make sure you get nothing.”

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