“Raymond, Ben left. I couldn’t give him children because of my dwarfism.”
Then I cried.
My friend boxed up my husband’s records while I sat on the kitchen floor eating cold pizza. Neither of us mentioned the word “divorce” until sunrise. I was 31.
Marriage
That’s how it went for a year after that.
I built a quiet little life. A small graphic design job I could run from my dining room. Sunday coffee with Raymond at the same diner, where the waitress, Denise, stopped asking if we were together after the third or fourth time we said no.
“Why don’t you date, Ray?” I teased him once, stirring my tea. “You’re not hideous.”
“High praise.”
“I’m serious. You’d be a catch for somebody.”
He shrugged, that slow, easy shrug that never quite committed to anything.
