almost okay

Dear Lyzako,

Looking at the calendar I realize that not even a week has passed since my previous letter, but I feel the need to update you on my status as a soon-to-be ex-husband (finally!).

The soon-to-be ex-Mrs. stopped by last night with a form for me to sign acknowledging the divorce complaint. After carefully checking to be sure that it was as simple as she had described and that the box next to 'No property to be divided' was clearly marked, I signed. Now we wait six weeks and voila!... my marriage is no more!

She came by on short notice and I wasn't in the best of moods. I'd been out in the garage for an hour, just getting into the swing of forgetting about another bad work day, toiling away at one of my personal projects and humming along to the new Erykah Badu CD when she arrived and marched straight into the house without knocking, despite my calls to her that I wasn't even in there.

We eventually made our way into the kitchen together where I cleared some space on one end of the table and sat down to read the thing over, doing my best to imitate Ed Norton's armflap show prior to putting my signature down in ballpoint.

“Where do I sign?” She flipped the double-sided document over and pointed towards the bottom.

“Here.”

As I read the line just above the space where I was supposed to make my mark, I saw another blank line with the word 'Attachments' next to it. “What's this?” I asked.

“Oh, I don't know. Dat's nothing,” she decided. I read a little more.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “I'm just acknowledging that I've received a copy of these papers and instead of you suing me and the court sending someone over, you're doing that part.”

“Yes,” she said, drawing out the 's' at the end like the hiss of a snake. “I'm just servicing you with papers.” I'd forgotten how cute I once thought her Portuguese accent was and how funny some of her grammatical mistakes were when she spoke English.

“Just for the record,” I said, “You're not 'servicing' me. You're 'serving' me with papers.”

“Oh, yah,” she said with a smile and a hint of shy giggle once she'd realized the implication of what 'servicing' me actually meant.

She looked good, better than when we were together. Since running afoul of the credit card company she'd lost the resources for her weekly manicures so her fingernails were natural and short, just as they had been when I met her and just as I'd always preferred. And her hair, though still adorned with unnatural extensions tied in, was short and easier to believe than the lengthy braids which she wore at the time of our parting.

I had pulled what was left of the pan of chicken wings I'd smoked on Sunday from the fridge and was planning on having a few for dinner. There were four left so I asked her if she wanted to try them. She shook her head. “Are you sure? They're really good, but I've been eating them all week. Help me out and take a couple with you.”

“Well,” she said as she eyed them. “I guess I'll take one.”

“Once you eat one you're going to be mad at yourself for not taking two.”

“Den I'll take the two big ones.”

And that, my friend, in a nutshell, was how the whole shebang went sour in the first place.

To Life!
Marty Sherman