Day 114 - Divorce Story

Divorce Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Chaz was not having a good week; he had been divorced twice already this week and it was only Tuesday. Charles had read once that his name meant free man. Well, he was certainly living up to that implication. He was indeed a free man. Free from burden. Free from responsibility. Free from wives.

 It wasn’t that he had been trying to lose wives this week. But it also hadn’t been the case that he was trying to collect them. These were just the sorts of things that happened to him. He was handsome and strong and possessed a combination of intelligence, kindness and confidence. He was an attractive man and had never had a problem convincing women to like him. He had loved and lost before, but this was a new situation. He had never lost two at the same time, and the two had never before been two that he hadn’t had the chance to love.

Chaz wasn’t really married to these two women, and he wasn’t really divorced from them either. Not in the legal way. He had been married to them in the way that people bonded themselves to each other, and he was certainly divorced in the same way. The attachment was severed. The affair, or whatever it was, had ended. The women had moved on. There was just no paper work or tax returns to worry about. At least there would be no alimony or division of assets due.

May had been his best friend at work. Amanda had been his best friend on the internet.

He and May would do each other favors at work. Cover for each other on bad days, punch each other’s ID into the time clock, and look the other way when a mistake was made. They made excuses to work on projects together, be it writing reports, filing, faxing, or setting up decorations for company parties. They were on the safety committee together as well as the party planning committee. Some of that was to get out of real work. Some of that was because they enjoyed the activities. A lot of it was because they enjoyed each other’s company. Everyone needed someone they could lean on at work and vent to. Everyone needed someone they could ask for favors and who was willing to help cover up their mistakes. Chaz needed May. May needed Chaz. They made the work week work. They made it easier and at least tolerable. May laughed at his jokes. He listened to her stories. Neither one of them talked about their private lives. They didn’t want to know. It was a tacit agreement. They both knew what was not to be mentioned. May had often called him her work husband. He accepted it, even if at first he had resisted and resented it a little bit. He let her know it too, but not in a lecherous way. He just let her know that he knew what the real implication was.

May, for unrelated reasons, had quit on Monday.

Chaz had met Amanda accidentally. He had made a holiday routine for himself where he would call in sick to work and go out and give himself a little celebration. Usually something small – a walk in the park or a trip to the beach or an afternoon Dodgers game or sometimes he would go to the taping of a television show. Something silly and fun. Something that would clear his mind of the true tribulations of his day to day. Chaz noticed Amanda while waiting in line to get into the taping of a late night talk show. There was only so much to do while sitting around for an hour and a half waiting for a show to begin. Chaz liked talking to pretty girls just as much as the next guy. They talked, but that was all. It was just a way to pass the time. Then a month later he saw her while waiting in line for a game show.  That was when they exchanged information. That was when their internet relationship began. For whatever reason, they never tried to hard to meet up on any sort of regular basis. But they enjoyed discussing ideas and planning their next vacation day. It was a game at first. Just something to look forward to. Something to make the monotony of work pass faster. Something to add a little spice and surprise to the month in between actual encounters. They sent emails and texts and tweets and shared jokes and interesting articles. Amanda was very smart and always interesting. Something that Chaz unfortunately could not say for May. May was lovely and energetic and optimistic and one of the nicest people Chaz had ever met, but she wasn’t the most mentally stimulating woman. Amanda kept things interesting. Chaz had proposed they meet more often, but Amanda thought it best to keep it the monthly excursions. Chaz soon discovered it was a good idea. Their relationship worked best that way. Not too much, not too little of the person. Just enough to make you want to keep in contact and know the person a little bit more. Never enough to create boredom or suffocating routine.

Tuesday she had deleted her accounts from a variety of social networking sites and had failed to reply to the latest email, tweet, text and post.

Chaz didn’t know what he had done. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. He wanted to feel bitter and abandoned, but he knew he had no true claim to either of these women. He wished they had given him some notice or some explanation. Maybe he didn’t deserve an explanation. Maybe he didn’t warrant one. Maybe he had misjudged them both. He didn’t think he was dating them. He didn’t think he was misleading them. Maybe he had been. Maybe they both realized they needed more and he wasn’t going to be the one to give it to them. Maybe he had grown stale and boring and not realized it. Maybe he had just been a momentary distraction for them and had misanalyzed his importance in their stories. Maybe lives just run the same course for brief moments sometimes and when they diverge there is no great reason. Maybe the race had just been run.

He knew he would miss them both.

He also knew he needed to stop worrying about these things and get home to his real wife, or else he might be facing divorce number three.