FIDO

 FIDO

Third Prize Julia Fitzgerald Memorial Prize 1994 UK

 “Of course you can have your divorce.” Jean’s voice is sweet unlike the black coffee she sips from a stoneware mug. She stands behind the breakfast bar. As her husband continues talking, her mind drifts to the advertisement resting in front of a European-style kitchen. A drop-dead beautiful woman and an equally handsome man wear matching jogging suits.

The woman sits on the counter drinking coffee. She tries remembering if she or Allan ever sat on her counter drinking anything. Did they ever own matching outfits? 

Never. 

Who’d want to?

Allan, who speaks as if reading from a script, pulls at the neck of his Irish knit sweater. Whenever Allan does something he finds unpleasant, his clothes bother him.

She assumes her husband is waiting for recrimination rather than getting the same reaction as if he said, “I’m going to the store for milk.” The conversation has happened too often before. She wishes she could fast forward through the morning.

After Jean pours the dregs of her coffee into the sink, she swishes water into her mug. She turns the radio to WERS. The DJ announced Tom Jones will sing, “Matador.” She hums off key with the music.

“We should discuss it,” Allan says.

“Why? I agree.”

“There’s property to settle.” He tackles his prepared speech. He doesn’t look at his wife, but she knows he never really looks at anyone he’s talking to. Probably not even to Stephanie, his new love, she thinks.

It’s no secret that her husband has kept mistresses for years. There’s been Marina, Anne, Rita, Sue, Chris and the other Jean. Even she saw the advantage of him having a mistress and a wife of the same name. No worry of calling out the wrong name at the moment of orgasm as he’d done when he’d been sleeping with Chris.

With or without a name slip-up, Jean has always found out. She’s developed a sense like divining for water. Always before during a divorce discussion, she’s said, “Let’s wait.”

Allan than grows tired of his lover, comes back and vows to be a better husband until the next mistress.

“I want a new life. I want to feel young again,” Allan says. When Jean remains quiet, he adds, “I’ll be good to you and the kids.”

“I’m sure you will, Dear,” Jean says.

A robin lands on the bird feeder outside the window. She can see that there’s enough seed. The garden is a 20x30-foot bricked terrace with one tree and planters full of fall-lush marigolds, geraniums, begonias and ivy. A 10-foot fence separates their garden from the neighbors and the alley.

Beyond the fence, Jean sees another brick townhouses. She glances over to see Larry and Iris sitting on their deck. Every so often one of their lips move and the other answers. They exchange sections of The Boston Globe. Normal married couple things married couples do on a Sunday morning. Unlike me, Jean thinks.

“Mom!” CC’s voice whines through the intercom. “I need my blouse ironed, the blue peasant one. Now.”

“Jean flips the switch to answer her daughter. “You do it.”

“I’m late.”

“Then you better hurry.” Her tone is the same she used with Allan a few minutes before. He starts talking again.

Jean’s mind roams the 20 years she’s tried to save her marriage. Catching her reflection in the toaster, she sees the gray streaks in her hair and laugh lines working their way to wrinkles. Toasters do not flatter faces.

Her thoughts are a kaleidoscope with colors tumbling over themselves. The early years, the poor years as Allan built his architectural practice were red and yellow, bright and happy.

She’d helped in his office and tended her babies, a son and daughter — the perfect family.

In the second decade of their marriage, when money was no longer a problem, the colors faded into grays and browns. They made Jean tired. “Dear, we’ll talk later.”

Upstairs Jean shuts the door of each of her children’s room, hiding the chaos. The only time the rooms are neat is when publications come to shoot photos. Their house has appeared in The Boston Globe, Better Homes and Gardens and Architectural Digest. When she saw each spread, she felt as if she were looking at a stranger’s home.

After entering the bedroom, she walks up three carpeted steps to the platform where their king-sized bed rests. It is unmade. Allan’s pajamas hang on the night table. Dirty boxer shorts are on the floor. His middle drawer is open. Undershirts and socks flow over the side of the drawer. His damp bath towel, resting on the chair, might mark the peach silk. Jean leaves it.

She picks up a pillow and throws it across the room. It knocks a painting to the floor. “FIDO,” she says aloud. “FIDO! FIDO

           Susannah, her former college roommate, had defined the word for her only yesterday. They’d shared chocolate cake at the Gardner Museum café.

Susannah had been talking about a program she’d wanted to implement at St. Anne’s where she is Dean of Student. Popping a piece of cake into her mouth, she said “The Board of Regent’s fought me every step of the way soooooo, I’d no choice but to FIDO it.”

Susannah often draws out her words. Her tongue licked a spot of frosting from the corner of her mouth.

“FIDO it?”

Susannah swallowed. “Yaaaa it’s what you do when everything you’ve tried doesn’t work. You FIDO it—Fuc k It and Drive On.”

*****

Allan’s voice over the intercom brings Jean back to now. “I’m going out. Probably won’t be back ‘til late.”

Guessing he’s heading for Stephanie’s, Jean watches from the window as he walks down the street. His step is springy.

She knows his latest love owns a condo on the Riverway, a few blocks away. She knows he plans to redesign it. She found the drawings as she picked up papers he’d left on his drawing table. He’d written “our room” on the bedroom sketch.

The next morning Jean slips on jogging pants and a Harvard sweatshirt. Outside she walks to the bank in Prudential Center, where she withdraws half the money in their joint checking. She asks to close half their savings certificates.

The manager comes over. She’s half Jean’s age and dressed in a navy-blue power suit. Jean wants to pull the little bow at the woman’s neat white collar. “I need to point out, you’ll forfeit some interest,” the manager says.

“That’s not really important,” Jean says.

At another bank in Copley Square, Jean asks to see the manager, a clone of the other woman in an almost identical suit. She opens a checking and a savings account plus a six-month certificate. As she signs documents, she thinks this is her first non-joint account. Ever.

Heading home she notices a few of the trees on Marlborough Street have already changed color. Fallen leaves hide the uneven sidewalk bricks, the reds contrasting with the bright yellow. This is the first time she’s noticed foliage for several years.

Back in the bedroom she thinks about what she’ll need. Her jewelry box, open on her dressing table, is full of pieces Allan has given her. She empties it and then puts everything back taking nothing. It is also a music box. She winds it up and listens to “Rainbows keep Falling on my Head” as a ballerina spins.

In her closet is a mink coat. She feels sorry for minks, not caring that they are mean-tempered little creatures. The coat was a Christmas gift two years ago. She’d asked for a certain art book. In February she bought the book herself.

Picking up her mobile, she dials Susannah. Her daughter answers. “Mum’s sign is up.”

The sign says, "Do not disturb."

"Interrupt her. I'll take responsibility." When Susannah comes to the phone, Jean says, “I’ve FIDOed my marriage. Can you pick me up?”

Susannah has a deadline for a book she’s writing. She’s behind schedule. Her cupboard is bare. Dirty clothes threaten to bury the laundry room. “I’m oooon my way.”

*****

MOM! What ARE you DOING?” Matt asks. He’s just come back from roller skating along the Charles River. Susannah’s station wagon is in front of Jean’s house with its blinkers on and the tail gate open.

Jean puts the final armload of personal possession in the back. The station wagon is only half full.

Susannah is trying to convince a mounted policeman he shouldn’t give her a ticket. Her left hand pats the horse’s nose. The cop leaves.

“Go into the house Matt. I’ll explain in a minute. She starts to say, “Don’t wear your skates in the house,” then stops.

“The cop’s daughter goes to St. Anne’s. Gooood thing he saw the St. Anne’s parking sticker on my car. Even better I remembered his kid.”

“Sit in the car while I talk to Matt.”

 

Inside, Jean tells her son she will live on their boat. He doesn’t understand he tells her. 

Jean says, “You don’t have to. It’s nothing to do with you.” She kisses him, hands him her house key and runs to the station wagon.

*****

The boat is a 38-foot antique cabin cruiser moored off Long Wharf. Old gray warehouses converted into boutiques, condos and restaurants line the dock. Once sailing ships unloaded cargo from exotic places. Now docks are for private boats. Susannah helps Jean carry her stuff on board. Although she only brought a few things, they fill the small place.

“I realllllly have to get back. Sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“No, but go anyway. Allan will be along, and we do have to settle things.

“Ooookay, but call me if you need anything.”

“Promise.”

*****

Allan comes, screeching to a stop after dark. The Mercedes has less than a foot between itself and the end of the pier. He slams the car door.

Inside the cabin, Jean drinks tea from a teapot with a lion’s face molded in clay. She bought it because she thought it cute. Allan thought it stupid and wouldn’t allow it in the kitchen, saying it spoiled the ambience. She had squirreled it away on the boat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he yells as he climbs down the hatch stairs.

She pours another cup without offering Allan any. “I’ve moved. We’re getting a divorce.” She wants to add, “We talked about it this morning, remember? You’ve got the kids, car, house. I’m taking the boat.”

The vein on his forehead pulses. It pulsed the time he was fired from his first job and when someone stole his car.

“Dear, you never liked the boat. You love the house. I don’t. Think. No child support, no alimony.”

Allan yells. He paces. Finally, he leaves.

*****

Snow swirls around the boat. Jean sits in her sleeping bag studying. She has enrolled at Mass College of Art to get the MFA her marriage interrupted. She is surrounded by sketch pads, pastels, a canvas, brushes and acrylic paint tubes. She works at the school art store earning $7.50 and a tuition reduction. It’s enough. She runs out of day before she runs out of her to-do list.

The boat’s tossing makes her sleepy. The dock is in a quiet part of the harbor with subdued waves.

Sometimes she feels lonely not for what she had but for what she didn’t have. She misses her kids, but not their demands.

At first CC and Matt refused to come to see her, despite weekly invitations. Then last week they showed up. They stood, not knowing what to say.

Jean talked about her classes until CC said, “It’s stupid. A woman your age in school.” She left.

Matt started to leave but looked back and shrugged. She blew him a kiss, which he caught, a ritual since his kindergarten days. Then he blew her a kiss. She caught it. He half smiled.

Fido, Jean’s new kitten, curls up her feet. The kitten wandered on board three weeks ago, examined the accommodations and decided he would allow Jean to adopt him.

Tomorrow night, she’ll have her third date. She hasn’t been to bed with anyone since she left Allan but she knows she will.

She heard that Stephanie has left Allan. It doesn’t make any difference.

Some time she must remember to thank her ex-husband for her new life.

D-L Nelson has written 15+ books. Check her website at www.dlnelsonwriter.com