End of Act One

Sunday morning.  I think.  Yeah, Sunday.  I don’t even bother calling her name.  I just wander through the house taking a quick inventory of the rooms.  They are as empty as they were last night.  And the night before.

I feel a little shaky, but I'm not hung over.  That's good; when I find a half empty can of beer in the fridge, I finished it off.  Flat, but I don't like to waste beer, and it gets me started on the day's drinking.

Sunday morning.  As I stand there in the kitchen, bollocks naked as they'd say in England, I remember that at this time on a Sunday morning 12 years ago, I'd ordinarily have been dressed in my best clothes; she and I on our way to church.  I can’t believe there was ever a time when that seemed normal.  As it was, I haven't bathed shaved since Friday.

New beer.  I crack it open.  The head overflows; I slurp it up as it runs down the back of my hand.  I lift it to my lips and pour it back, barely tasting it.  Already I can sense the buzz from the first can making its debut on the dark stage just behind my eyebrows.

The doorbell rings.  On Sunday morning?  Fuck ‘em.  I raise the beer again.  The ringing becomes knocking.  Loud, insistent knocking.  I ignore it.  I just want them all to go away.  The knocking does, finally, stop.  And of course, it’s right at that moment that the icicle stabs my heart: what if something’s wrong?  What if I haven’t heard from her because something’s happened?  I look around frantically and finally grab a dishtowel and hold it like a loincloth.  “Wait!” I shout, and vault towards the living room.

I’m headed off by the sound of a familiar voice in the back yard.  “Adam?  Adam!  It’s Bryce.”  I stop in the doorway of the living room and peer back into the kitchen.  Bryce McGregor.

Good old Bryce.  I pad back into the kitchen; he’s on the patio and standing by the door.  I open it and let him in.  He comes in and spies me there in my birthday suit, at first surprised, and then not in the least surprised; he even nods softly.  Sure.  Does he know?  Well, anyway, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; we play squash together at lunch sometimes.  “How you holding up?” he says.  Yeah.  He knows.

“Is anything wrong?” I ask.

He looks bemused, as if, y’know, what a question, and then the import of my question suddenly hits him.  “Oh, shit, Adam, I’m sorry!  No, everything’s fine!  Uh, well… Linda’s well, I mean.  Nothing… Jesus, I’m sorry.  I wasn’t thinking.”

“She hasn’t called,” I say.  He nods.  Apparently, he knows that, too.  Oh.  So that’s what this is about.

“She, ah… she came by yesterday.  Talked to me and Jim.  Um… she told us what happened Thursday night.  She asked me to come over this morning.”

“She’s still there?”

“No.  No, she left last night to stay with a friend.”

“Who?”

“A woman.  A friend.”  It’s all he’ll say.  “Adam, look… she asked me to come over because we’re friends.  Y’know, and… because I’m a lawyer.”

I swallow.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Adam, um… she’s filing papers.  She wants…”  He sighs.  “She wants a divorce.  And this time, she means it.”

I’m suddenly full of rage.  My skin glistens with beery sweat.  I’m standing naked in my kitchen and a man is telling me my life is over.  “Are you representing her?”

“No.  There’s no way I could do that.  I want you to know, she asked.  I said I couldn’t.  I’m not coming between you.  I… I did refer her to a friend of mine, though.  Someone fair and professional.  I promise you.”

“Uh huh.  Do you have someone fair and professional for me?”

He blanches; his mouth pinches a bit.  No doubt about it, I’ve just clenched that Asshole of the Year trophy.  “Yeah, I can… I can find you someone.”

“I’m sorry.  Really… I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.  You’re a good friend to…”  Suddenly I’m in a chair and I’m sobbing my guts out and I don’t even know how I got there.  He’s sitting beside me with his hand on my shoulder.  I used to be scared to death of gay men.  Now his sympathy is the only lee in all this storm.  I don’t know how long we just sit like that.  But all I can feel around me is it all folding up.  The house we spent all summer looking for.  The up-and-coming couples whose friendships we cemented because we were just like them.  The children we tried so long to have, who never were born and now never possibly could be.  All the things I thought I’d be and have and do for the next forty or fifty years of my life are pouring out of me in tears that will simply evaporate.  It’s the end of the first act of my life; all those scenes behind me now.  And I can’t imagine the play has a happy ending anymore.