The Price You Pay

Ruby's sniffles were beginning to build again approaching her previous levels. She had a look of total defeat about her because she knew what was coming next.

"Can you look me in my eyes and tell me that the weekend you spent with Bisbee won't be one of those end of life recollections?"

She didn't answer. She didn't have to. It was obvious to both of us.

"In fact it will be ahead of any intimate sexual encounter we have spent together won't it?" I offered rhetorically.

"How am I supposed to compete with that over the next thirty years?"

There was a pause in the room. Oddly, Ruby stopped crying and looked long and hard at me.

My voice was cracking and very soft. "That's what you stole from me Ruby."

She took a deep breath and gave a pronounced sigh. She finally understood.

"We aren't ever going to get back together are we?" She asked but we both recognized it was more of a statement.

"No we are not. As I see it, we have two choices here. We can continue to play this silly counseling game wasting our time and money, or we can spend whatever moments we have available together figuring out how to make this work for our children. We owe it to them to make this transition as seamless as possible for them, don't you think?"

At that moment Dr. Wickenburg finally interposed herself to tell us that our time for this week was up, but that she thought we had made significant progress. Really?

Ruby just looked at her and shook her head. We both got up and left. We departed as we had arrived, in separate cars, but not before we had set a time to get together and settle things so we could both move on with our lives.

Ruby spoke with her lawyer the next day and withdrew her demand for counseling. A week later between the two of us we had worked out a joint custody agreement with provisions we felt would be the best for our children and keep us both out of the soup line at the local family shelter. It included all five of us being together on the major holidays. It may have been late in the game but we were both acting like adults. Six months later our divorce was final.

Epilogue:

Twenty years later. Ruby and I were at our youngest daughter Winslow's wedding to a very nice young man named Robert. We laughed that we had finally married off our last child so we both should have lots of extra income now and would no longer have to shop at the Dollar Discount Store. We congratulated ourselves on raising our kids well. We were very proud of them all. It took hard work and there were difficult times, but they seemed to have survived our divorce well. At least it didn't dissuade them from marrying themselves so that was a good sign we thought.

Interestingly neither of us had ever remarried or for that matter even had a serious long term relationship during the elapsed time period from our divorce. In many ways we still acted as a family. We saw each other regularly and continued the practice of spending holidays together. But as the children aged and needed their parents less, we didn't see each other as often.

Although we had emailed and texted each other frequently, the wedding was the first time we had been face to face in over two months. We both had a little too much to drink, ok maybe a lot too much and somehow we ended up in bed together at the hotel.

We lay cuddled together, sweaty and exhausted because we finally got around to trying out that wheelbarrow thing. Believe me if you know what that is, it was no small feat for a couple in their mid fifties! We were both extremely thankful that we were still in decent shape and that we hadn't needed to call the paramedics.

"You know Tommy that you just kicked that Bisbee fellow off my top ten moments at death memories don't you?"

I just smiled and responded, "It still doesn't mean we're getting married again."

"I know, I wouldn't want to take a chance and ruin a great friendship anyways."

We both fell into a deep and restful sleep.