I Really Can’t Stay
Baby It’s Cold Outside
The Answer Is No
Baby You’ll Freeze Out There

The day I caught my husband in a lie, on the phone, asked him if something was going on, if there was someone else, if he was cheating on me, he was too stupid and too slow to lie. He just confessed. Didn’t pause, take a second to think up some non-truth to buy time, to save us. He wasn’t fast enough.

During the first days that followed, I was too stupid to know it was over. I moved to the refrain of ‘we will fix this I will fix this we are married I am committed we will fix this I will fix this i will fix this.’ I filled my trunk with clothes in garbage bags and drove around and around, leaving my closet mostly intact. Waiting for him to call, beg, chase.

But he was busy enjoying the freedom, his requited crush. He told me he needed some time.

I floated around, not telling people, not wanting to say it out loud; I’d forgive him but others wouldn’t. Days passed without him calling, begging, chasing. Without him knowing or caring that I had fallen apart. That I was crying in my sleep, at work, all the time. I waited and he told me I was being impatient. That his only crime was being honest, asking me to give him time, let him think. My problem, he said, was that I always wanted answers right away.

When he asked me to marry him, I said let’s think about this. let’s wait. It’s a big deal. We don’t have to get married. we can wait. we have time. If we get do this we can’t undo it and that’s scary. Let’s be sure.

I stood up in front of people who love me and believed in me and said I do. I beamed while my mom, through tears, read these words:

“…I hope you kiss
like you do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while you stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.”

Why didn’t I understand, he wanted to know? What don’t I understand? He was sure and then he wasn’t. Give him time.

He’s still thinking. Last week, he told a friend how great I’ve been about this whole thing, agreeing to live in limbo while he gets his head on straight. He heard I was planning to have dinner with a mutual friend, a male, and he said he doesn’t like that idea. It should have been cleared, first, with him. I’m supposed to be waiting. he thinks i'm waiting.

He emailed to tell me it’s it’s cold and he hopes my apartment is warm enough. He’s been worried about me driving in the snow, I should be careful not to slide through any stop signs.

Stay warm and be careful driving out there are things you say to strangers in the elevator. Conversations to fill air time on the news. They are not things you say to your wife, who you are supposed to wake up next to. Watch the snow with, out the window, from under the covers. Drink hot chocolate with and stay inside with. You are supposed to tell her to drive carefully in a way that’s different from the way you say it to everyone else.