The Continent of Ruby, Excerpt

Ruby walks away from all her other things without regret or alarm. She does not even mention the boyfriend who disappeared after her terminal cancer diagnosis and who, until several days ago, shared her home with her. This is courage. This is Ruby.

This courage inspires me. I try to emulate it in other aspects of my life, especially when dealing with my soon-to-be ex-husband. With him, I have set boundaries for how our relationship should be from now on. Yet, I spend nights talking with him on the telephone about his cheating, our past relationship, what went wrong in our marriage, his other woman. Sometimes we fight or talk all night, but in the morning I can’t remember what was said. All I know is I can’t quit him cold turkey. He was too much a part of my life, and I am sickeningly obsessed with how his new love has transformed him, made him worldly, dynamic, and complex, wiping out any remainders of the kid I once married. I consider this mysterious change in him comparable to the discovery of the drawings in the Chauvet caves, a Paleolithic “museum” of drawings depicting a forgotten world. My questions about my “new” husband do not yield concrete answers and provoke more questions, like the Chauvet scientists who explore the caves in wonder and run into multi-layered scenarios which make them ask: Who were these Paleolithic people who lived in such a predatory environment, yet exalted in their drawings of wild animals, such as hyenas, cave bears, panthers, horses, and mammoths, that overpopulated the region and were to them a constant threat? How did man and predator come to share caves where scientists have proven these ancient people held rituals? What exactly happened in those caves? How is it that these drawings evoke the magic and mystery of a glacial world that existed over 30,000 years ago? 

My husband also comes back to me from the distant past, my past, and I don’t understand him in the present, not fully, not completely. Like the scientists who study the ancient caves, I pose questions to myself that will always remain a mystery. For example, tonight we have sex. (We do this every so often, in spite of all the complications of our relationship ending, but I never share this information with anyone because my actions are confusing, even to me). He comes over to my house after the kids are asleep. But he is no longer mine, and I can only wonder at the mysterious physical and spiritual changes that elevate his sense of manliness to higher places, places I never took him to. Why didn’t I change him? When did these changes occur? How did the other woman do it?

When he calls me tonight, I know he wants to show me what he’s learned and, because I am curious about his newfound knowledge, I call a truce to our fighting and arguing. All I want is to understand the reality of his newfound self. I can’t seem to unravel this from the credit card bills I study, which break down his spending with his lover at five star restaurants, hotels, and sailing excursion on the Atlantic Ocean. There are also the emails and texts detailing desire and an animal need for the other. It could be more of my ego that has suffered a blow; still, I need to know when and how we fell apart.

“I’m coming over,” he says on the telephone. 

“Ok” I respond, nonchalant, as if we are dating and not challenged by the problems of his cheating, our separation and pending divorce, as if our world has not collapsed and we have not ventured into the murky unknown. 

When he gets to the house he takes me by the hand and leads me to master bedroom. I am now living in the small house of his deceased grandfather, with the emerald green wall-to-wall carpet I detest. This is not the house we lived in before the separation, the one with the marble bathrooms, private sauna, and sun-roof ceilings, or the one before that with the 8-foot deep pool I swam in naked every night. No, this house is small, with only two bedrooms, and my son sleeps in the garage with the noisy washer and dryer machines. 

“Shh,” I say because the children are sleeping, but this does not faze him. He is confident in his strong grasp of my hand and bold stride. For the first time, I inventory his looks and physique: the clean lines of his body; sun-touched white skin; the backside of his six-foot frame; the smooth muscles on his arms and calves; the strong chest in proportion to his 32” waist; the razor-sharp line of the strawberry-blond hair on his neck where his crew cut comes to an abrupt end. My friends always said he was handsome, but somehow I never noticed. A 16-year marriage never brought out the passionate and wild in either of us. It was always familiar and safe between us, never fireworks or butterflies in the pit of the stomach. It was more like an understanding, like an arranged marriage, based on similar upbringings and an unspoken understanding to trust and protect each other’s sense of innocence and naiveté. 

Our life together was built on comparable experiences. Like me, he was sheltered and shy. When we met at the bank where we both worked as tellers, he had hardly had any experiences with women and the world outside. At 18, I held my first real job and was desperate for my first real boyfriend. When we met, I asked him out, and we started dating, driving around town in his used Buick and sharing dinners in nice restaurants in Ybor City. 

It might have all stayed sweet and nice between us, and, eventually, it might have ended if my father had not died and I moved to New York City with my mother and sister to start a new life. Unexpected turmoil brought on by death, a move cross-country, and heightened emotions emboldened us to ride the crest of the unknown and grab the opportunity to grow up. We both knew it was time to break away from family, do something outside our comfort levels, but we needed the strength of the other to go out into the world and claim it for our own. 

So he joined the Air Force so that we could marry, and eventually we settled into our lives, creating a safe environment to pursue our personal goals and raise our children, an environment that did not give rise to the storms of lust and desire, or offered any satisfying of emotional needs.

Now he wants to show me what he has learned outside the unspoken understanding and blessings of our marriage. It was something I had not given him because it was not within my power to give or within my ability to know that was needed - and that was our unspoken understanding: Passion was not something we agreed to share or ever could share. And the one thing I now know about relationships is that they all have unspoken understandings and the day you speak those understandings the relationship is over. 

“I know what you want,” he says, as he pulls me to him and puts in my mouth a perfectly executed French kiss, with enough tension and thrust to seduce me immediately. Shocked at his expertise, I open my eyes and stare at his closed eyes. His long fingers wrap around my jaw, gently guide my face into the different angles and sensations of his kiss. “When and where did he learn that?” I ask myself, as if I haven’t already imagined the innumerable times and places his lover holds lessons – in beds, closets, backseat of cars, bathrooms, pools, kitchens, and living rooms; in the early morning, in the afternoon, at dusk, at midnight. It seems to me that it would take years of practice for him to know what he knows about sex, to execute it so effortlessly and joyfully. 

My brain works furiously to connect the dots of his newfound sexual ability. I remember that a year ago, before I knew he was having an affair, we sat at seafood restaurant and talked about moving on, and all I could do was admire the glow in his eyes and the health of rosy cheeks, which I attributed it to the excitement of starting over again. At the time, I thought our agreement to separate was mutual decision; I had no idea that there was another party involved. We each admitted to being grown up and needing relationships suited more for our emotional and physical needs. But there was the business of his amazing glow. “You look so good,” I said in awe. It was as if he had traveled to and made a happy life in a mystical land I never even knew how to pack for. When he tried to explain his newfound sense of treasure, he said: “We have always loved each other, Barbara, but we have never been in love.” 

Tonight, I understand what he meant by this reference to the two faces of love.

Now I see him searching for her: her responses, her unique acceptance of his love, her physical and soulful recognition of him. This is how I know he is in love with that other woman. She loves him and has taught him to love her back. I sense his shock when he opens his eyes and realizes I am not her. There is a subtle jerk of his body, an almost imperceptible pulling away. Still, I allow him to continue. I must feel the pain of my loss through sex; I must convince myself he is no longer mine so that I can let him go. 

Mesmerized by his prowess, I try to focus on the minutiae of his ability and avoid surrendering to the primal flow and darkness of his sex, even though I can now only process his techniques half-heartedly: What is this, the feel of his “new” tongue, lips, and hands? How does he know to be rough or soft, when to push, pull, slap? When did he recognize the pleasure of my breasts, my navel, the fleshy inside of my thighs? He is a sexual god now and SHE made him into one, a thought that anchors me right back in the moment, where I intend to stay even though half-dazed, completely naked and fully responsive to whatever he wants to do. 

Thrilled and repulsed by the sweetness of his sweat, I sniff for physical traces of the other woman. I must keep her present. I must not forget she is sleeping with my husband. I imagine a scent reeking of powder and flowers on his skin, which I inhale for effect and theatrics: maybe, her smell will wake me from my stupor. But it is too late to concern myself with that any longer. We are no longer two children having the sweaty playground sex of pushing, pulling, and chasing, an experience so superficial it stayed on the surface, never venturing into any real depth or sensations of ecstasy.

Sex with him is now a revelation. We harness it, pull it down from the heavens, and stow it between us. His penetration reaches all my depths, exceeding all of my physical limitations and markers. After a while, our mutual exertion is focused, rhythmic, and no longer labored. Our orgasms start as the deep grunts of wounded animals and ultimately become earth-shattering, breathless, silent releases. Our lovemaking reaches the purity of self before it is thrust into the purity of timelessness, and it takes lot of courage for us to go there. And we do, but then I remember, she has taken him there before, and what he now offers is a reminder of what is left over between them, like the number I always forgot to carry over when I did my division problems in school because I didn’t consider it all that important. What an honor, what a joy, what a horror. I am not her, and it is obvious in the sex we just had.

When we finish, he quickly puts on his pants and runs out the front door. He breaks my heart yet again, and my ego is crushed. I spend the night in yet another episode of unbearable wailing, bemoaning the physical and spiritual connection I never had with my husband – or did not care to pursue – and even our accomplishments and mutually-agreed arrangement seem a bunch of hogwash after the sex we just had. Still, I don’t want him back and our “three-way” sexual experience confirms it.

But like Ruby and the caves of the terminal cancer she now explores, I must also secretly and stealthily journey deep into the pain of my divorce, finding myself in the midst of unbearable loss and confusion. I must allow these experiences to seek in me places I once feared going or didn’t know existed. I must allow them to consume and transform me, so that I am set free. 

Read my exciting memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at:
https://www.amazon.com/Continent-Ruby-Memoir-Because-sometimes-ebook/dp/B00TT5DDWO?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Photo Credit: Jess Fink on Pinterest