Excerpt from the novel, Undoing I Do

by Anastasia Royal

Chapter 246 ~
BECAUSE THE NIGHT BELONGS TO THE BITCH

They come in the night.
Men.
A few young, a few old, with an internal map dotted with need, leading to the destination of me. And I don’t even sleep with most of them. They say I am the warmest of women. Perhaps I’m fevering?
I’ve been living alone in the blacksmith house for three and a half years.
 “I bet no one has ever called you a bitch,” one man says.
He’s right.
But I’ve noticed bitches keep their men, lashing out at them when finding the slightest fault, demanding more and more until their man feels no longer worthy of licking any part of her, except her boot spur.
Why do men stay with the bitches and leave nice women like me?

An acquaintance of mine complained about her husband buying her a red BMW. “I told him I wanted a dusky color,” she whined.
Why does she get a BMW and bitch about it and I get a zilch and happily wait for breadcrumbs and bird doo? I could muster some theories, but I’m too tired.

No one, except those who have been mentally ill, understands the need I have for sleep. If the Snooze Police would ask, “How much sleep do you need, Claire?” I’d have to say twenty-two hours a night and two hours for some heavy napping.
So far, I haven’t admitted to anyone, even Christopher, how much I actually do sleep. Inventing things I accomplished in the morning doesn’t seem like lying, just a way to avoid being committed by the men in white coats.
I don’t date, but I do have gentlemen callers, and Christopher sometimes spends the night. I close my door so the children won’t notice, and he leaves before they wake. They inform me a few years later, “We always knew.”

To avoid being pathetic in the eyes of my children, I have dinner parties every Wednesday night for three years. As soon as I am a woman on the loose (randy stray— as in cat or dog—or wiggling, like a tooth), I am no longer invited to any parties. Ever again.
But not to fret. I have a lot of men friends, some who are married and some who are not.
I love men. They are generous, helpful, uncomplicated, sweet, muscular, aromatic, and they lift heavy objects (not the least of them being their own cocks every day!). (SCROLL DOWN TO CONTINUE)
Christopher stayed the longest of them, three years, albeit intermittently, but I dumped him when I found out he was sleeping with, not one, but three, other women.
True to the playing-hard-to-get theory, he tried for a year and a half to get me back. He left notes on my car, sent me packages of beautiful clothes from my favorite stores, and threatened to kill men who were in my life.
It’s the same old thing.
Heidegger said it best: “We pursue that which retreats.”
Hence the triumphal bitch.

Chapter 247 ~
PORTRAIT OF A DIVORCEE AS A YOUNG PARIAH

I am socially no more.

Chapter 133 ~
WOOD

In lieu of morphine, there's chocolate. I devour it, try not to. Getting out of bed is the equivalent of miles of brisk walking. I feel paralyzed. After a few weeks of no car, my nice dad saves me. But even the new-used Honda Prelude he bought and put, newly washed, in front of my house doesn’t rouse me. And I feel slightly guilty because he is getting old and has disbursed most of his savings already on my siblings and me.

 I remember the story my children’s German au pair Petra told me. She had stayed with us after we moved from Germany to the United States so I could accept a scholarship to study acting at Second City.
“My grandmother who lived in Ravensburg woke one morning completely stiff. She was unable to move any part of her body except her neck—and that could only turn to the left. She was as rigid as a wooden puppet, and when they put her into a wheelchair, they inadvertently broke both of her legs, trying to bend them into a sitting position.”
The leg part was hard to believe, but Petra swore it was true.

Her grandmother lived for thirty years in bed. She was the best friend Petra ever had. She could listen. That’s all we need. Almost. But who wants to listen to someone whose marriage is disintegrating? Listen to them moan about their already precarious financial situation becoming disastrous during a divorce?

I need to see the humor.
I have no money, no car, no toilet paper.
I slog through snow like Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago, but instead of getting to Omar, I reach a nearby restaurant and steal the extra roll of toilet paper.

Chapter 134 GOTT

  Nur ein Gott kann uns retten.
    Heidegger

Only a god can save us.

Chapter 135 GRIEF BACKPACK 

I am unable [SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE]
to drive that patch of road
near the lake
which turns toward home
without wailing
like a forest animal.

I abandon my car
with the backpack
of silver grief
I now carry with me
everywhere.

In the phone booth
I call anyone
to come pick me up.
It is so late;
no one answers.

 Chapter 136 LOST CONNECTIONS

I call my best friend, Nina, who is also my husband’s client. She hired Tobin, when she was still married, to do a painting for her loft. He created a new technique especially for her. He called it “lost connections” or, in German, verlorene Verbindungen because the dots, or blobs, don’t connect to the lines. I remember him quietly ecstatic in his studio at night, under the hum of lights, as he squeezed a luminous substance onto the linear drawing so large, it looked like a sail.

Nina, although recently divorced herself, is stunned by the news of our breakup. Like all friends, she has to ask. “What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I do mind, and I wish I could give a definite answer.