Typical...1

She knew something was wrong. Anita and Terry came home to a dark apartment after a long Friday of work, daycare, and commuter traffic. Her husband was gone and in his place were two letters: one addressed to her and the other to their three-year-old son. She’d known that morning something was wrong. Since he had returned from the military a month prior, Michael had two responses to his wife and child’s morning rush to get out of the house on time: He would either walk Anita and Terry to the car and secure the child in his car seat, or roll over and go back to sleep until nearly noon when he had to prepare for the security job he’d held before going into the service. It was apparently military training that he needed to be efficient in the job because he’d made a beeline back to it upon re-entry into civilian life. Anita had spent two years struggling to raise their son alone as a Navy wife in Georgia, New Jersey, and Georgia again while Michael sailed to the Middle East or off the East Coast just to see her husband end up back where he’d started. No improvement or gain for her sacrifice.

On that Friday morning in August, the beginning of Labor Day weekend 1996, Anita and Terry walked to the car without Michael making an offer to accompany them even though he’d sprung from the bed when she yelled to him that they were on their way out. After she’d strapped her toddler in, Anita sat in the driver’s seat looking up at the bedroom window. The light was on and she could see Michael’s shadow crossing the room. The sight irritated her. Something wasn’t right. But, there was a child to drop off at daycare, traffic to navigate, and eight hours to plow through to the promise of the three day weekend on the other side. She got moving.

When Anita picked up her son that evening she didn’t want to go straight home, so she went to visit her parents who lived in the area near Terry’s daycare. They ended up having dinner; her mother’s lasagna held them gratefully hostage. Afterwards, they hung out until dark when she forced herself to leave.

Michael and Anita had been having problems throughout most of their six year marriage. The reasons were plentiful. They’d married too young; well, she had. Anita was a nineteen-year-old college sophomore when she met Michael who was twenty-five and trying for the second or third time to finish his undergraduate degree. Yep…she knew how bad that sounded; felt it every time her mother asked about Michael’s ambitions. Had she chosen poorly? Settled? Her answer had evolved from a resounding no to an ever strengthening, absolutely. Anita had been the quiet girl that no one really noticed in high school or college, except during the transition from winter to spring when she came out from under layers of bulky clothing and draped her curvy frame in light, form fitting tops and clingy jeans. So when Michael noticed and pursued her, Anita opened, reached inside, and presented her heart to him in trembling hands.

When Anita stepped into the dark apartment she knew what had happened. They’d talked about divorce; talked about him moving out when the lease was up in February; talked about paying bills off so they could both start over on solid footing; and they’d talked about Michael staying in the city so he could be a part of Terry’s life.

She stared at the lineless paper with Michael’s artsy handwriting swooping and curling to half way down hers, a quarter of the way down Terry’s.

Reviewer for IP Book Reviewers www.bookreviewers.org

Blog: Woman Free, A Novel http://womanfreeanovel.blogspot.com