A Very Unhappy Birthday to Me

"Yes you will." She was crying quietly now. All her plans had being blown out of the water. He wasn't supposed to react like this. He was supposed to compromise. All marriages were compromise.

"Anne. I loved you. I really, really did. With all my heart, I worshipped you. And I suppose I still do. But right now I actually despise you as well. I couldn't despise you more if you strangled a box full of kittens and ate them raw in front of me -- with BBQ sauce. Right now, you are the lowest, most disgusting thing on this planet to me. You took the trust I gave you freely, and you smashed it to dust on a whim."

"No, no, no!" she sobbed. "Don't say things like that. It will just make it harder to make things right again. We'll make it right!"

He walked over to a shelf which contained a few knick-knacks -- memories of places they had visited together. He picked up a glass snow-globe with a cheap and nasty looking plastic Eiffel Tower inside. They had laughed so much at the time at how badly it reflected the real Paris they had shared on their honeymoon.

"Anne, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. Alright?"

She nodded. Perhaps there was a way they could sort this silliness out.

"I want you to pretend that this is all the trust I had in you this time yesterday, when I drove off to sort out your brother's idiocy. No -- don't say anything! If he hadn't fucked up so badly, I would have been here last night and we wouldn't be having this conversation. So this little snow globe is all that trust I gave you. You didn't ask for it and you didn't earn it. I simply gave it to you."

He suddenly turned and hurled it through the bedroom door at the wall in the bathroom. Shattered glass, bits of plastic and coloured water fell into the bath. She screamed.

"Anne, that's what you did to my trust. You shattered it into tiny pieces. And I don't have another snow globe. In the same way, I don't have any more trust to give you; I already gave it all to you -- all of it. If you can fix that snow globe together again, we can go on. If you can fix that then you could probably fix my trust. Until then, this marriage is over. Because I can't live with a woman I can't trust."

"But you can trust me! I just made a mistake. We all make mistakes. It's not fair to break up our marriage for a mistake."

"It's also not fair to take my heart and try and flush it down the toilet. And you, my dear, are fucking untrustworthy to the nth degree."

"Goodbye," he said as he swung the suitcase off the bed and went downstairs.

"Nooo!" He heard the scream and the patter of her feet.

He fixed his eyes forward and opened the front door, thumbing the toggle on his keys which made the lights flash and the horn sound.

Anne dithered at the front door. She was naked but for a towel, and the lights and horn had probably attracted attention from the neighbours. But this was her marriage.

She rushed out only to see the car moving off.

"No," she whispered.

*********************

For me, that's the end of the story. It was a snapshot of a conversation, and when the conversation ended, so did the story. I know I will get screams about how it was too short and this should have happened and that should have happened, but I have little interest in writing what happened after that.

However, before the screams become too loud I will offer a compromise -- marriage is all about compromise, so I will offer you two more snapshots.

Ending 1

On his forty-first birthday he sat out in the sun -- rare for this time of year -- and gazed out over the immaculate lawn. He had received his presents from his children that morning when they woke him up with their best efforts at a hot breakfast and coffee. His daughter had given him a woolly hat to protect his brain against the cold, while his son had given him a computer game that he hoped they both could play. Then he had driven them to school and returned to soak up some sun and ponder his life.

He hadn't received anything from his wife, which was understandable. At the divorce proceedings, she had lost it so badly and assaulted everyone who came near her, to the point that the judge ordered her detained for mental assessment. And that's when it all came out -- psychoses, split personalities, and newly developed schizophrenia -- the works.

He felt so sorry for her. Mental illness is nothing to laugh at, and the way her chemistry was off, it would take years before the shrinks managed to get her balanced out again as they tried to adjust her chemistry from day to day, trying a smidgeon more of this and a tad less of that each time and then studying her for weeks. He had withdrawn the divorce as he hadn't needed it; everything they had shared was now his -- children, house, money -- the lot. Another advantage was that this way she was still on his insurance, which meant he got reports every month, and knew exactly how she was doing.

He hoped with all his heart that they would eventually manage to balance her chemistry enough that she would be able to leave the sanctuary.

But if she ever did get out, and he would be the first to know, she would be served those divorce papers as she stepped out of the hospital door.

And she would just have to keep walking.

Ending 2

On his forty-second birthday he sat out in the sun -- rare for this time of year -- and gazed out over the immaculate lawn. He had received his presents from his children that morning when they woke him up with their best efforts at a hot breakfast and coffee. His daughter had given him a woolly hat to protect his brain against the cold, while his son had given him a computer game that he hoped they both could play. Then he had driven them to school and returned to soak up some sun and ponder his life.

He hadn't received anything from his wife, which was understandable. At the divorce proceedings, she had lost it so badly and assaulted everyone who came near her, to the point that the judge ordered her detained for mental assessment. And that's when it all came out -- psychoses, split personalities, and newly developed schizophrenia -- the works.

He felt so sorry for her. Mental illness is nothing to laugh at, and the way her chemistry was off, it took well over a year before the shrinks managed to get her balanced out and stable again, and then she had left the country, leaving the children, house, everything to him without a word.

There was a knock at the door and when he opened it, there she stood -- a small snow-globe in her hand. She looked different; her hair longer and much darker, small worry lines at the corner of her eyes, and with some weight loss her lips were not quite so full. But then she smiled and she was as beautiful as ever.

"I brought you a present for your birthday," she said, handing him the globe when he finally put out his hand. "It's not the same one. I couldn't fix it -- although I tried for a long time. I came close but there were too many tiny pieces missing."

She frowned and looked down at the globe.

"So I went to Paris and found a new one. I had to hunt everywhere for months to find them as they don't make them anymore. When I did, I bought two. The one I have in my apartment represents all the love I have for you and our children.

"The one you are holding can -- if you want -- represent your trust in me as a completely new person. I'm not the same person I was before. That woman has changed so much she might as well never have existed. So I'm asking you, as someone you've never met before, if you can forgive that old crazy person and then forget about her. I wondered if you wanted to learn about this completely different woman who somehow already loves you from afar, starting right from the very beginning. I mean dating, and getting to know each other, and perhaps we'll eventually be in love with each other and then we can see where it goes.

"So -- as a woman you've just met, I'm asking if you would give me your trust freely, although I am asking."

He took the snow-globe, shook it, watched the badly faked snow fly around the warped, plastic Eiffel Tower for a few moments, and put it on the mantelpiece.

Then he invited her in.