13th
I read the other day that Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery with the 13th amendment. I made a face of cartoonish shock and awe, pretending that the fact struck me as impossible, and called my wife over immediately. “This can’t be!” I said. “Honey, you have to see this!”
She came over and I repeated what I had read. “Yeah,” she said. “What about it?”
“Well, when does it go into EFFECT?” I immediately keeled over laughing but she stared at me without an iota of humor. She turned and started back toward the kitchen and I got up to follow her. “I had no idea! Babe, this is bad news for you. Can’t own someone, can’t hit someone, can’t tell someone what to do. Were you aware of this?”
“Shut up,” she muttered, getting back to making dinner. “I could use some help here.”
“Did you just call me The Help?” I was wheezing, laughing like a hyena. I wiped a tear from my eye. “Oh, oh. OH. That’s good. That was good. Yeah, honey, did you know you can’t get a guy nude and beat him up for not doing as he’s told? You can’t tell him to live on your property and listen to your orders and do your chores all day? What you’ve been doing to me is ILLEGAL!”
“I want you to move out,” she muttered. A tear dribbled down her cheeks and her voice wavered. “Pack up your shit and bring the kids with you. Tell them it’s a weekend trip. We’ll figure out how exactly we’re moving forward next week, I just want to be separated from you in the short term. These last two weeks have been a nightmare. For both of us.”
“K,” I said. “Sounds good.” I went to up to our room, whistling in a loud, “jolly” manner on my way up the stairs, and snapping my fingers to the beat in my head. But once alone in the dark of the bedroom, listlessly packing my things, a deep and irresistible frown kept rising to my face, and within minutes I was utterly silent. I frowned at my clothes as I folded them and packed them up. I frowned at the bed, I frowned at our wedding photos. I frowned at my parents’ wedding photos, and her parents’ wedding photos, which we had hanging on either side of our own. I frowned at the small orange light coming from my bedside lamp. I frowned at the little drawer of my bedside table, which I might never use again. I wept quietly.
This divorce was gonna be hell in a handbasket.