To My Ex-Husband by Susan Dundon Read Free Book Online Page A

leaned across her desk, lowered her voice, and said, “So much of it, though, is the guys. I mean, don’t you think—really?”
    We had been talking about miserable relationships, nearly all those she knew. And all had to do with women who were hanging on too long for too little by their fingertips. After a while it became hard to listen. I was ready for them to let go, to drop into the abyss and be done with it.
    My editor wanted me to write a column about emotionally impotent men. But no, I didn’t think it was the guys. I thought a lot of it was the women. You read an awful lot about why men arc jerks. Even men think that most other men are jerks. But no one wants to talk about why, because so much of the why can be laid at women’s doorsteps. As long as women perceive that theirs is the greater need, men will get away with what they can. A woman may say, “This is unacceptable; you can’t do this to me.” But just let that phone ring, and she’s right there, ready to give him his last, fifteenth chance.
    Men have gotten the message, all right. And that message is, “I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to be a decent person. All I have to do is show up.”
    More and more, I feel like someone severely disconnected from the world, as if I’ve only just been released from a long confinement. This woman I spoke of, she’s out there, part of that world, while I hide behind my typewriter. She tells me that if I want to have any social life at all, I’d better get used to the idea of sleeping with men on the first date, because “that’s the deal.” Maybe this is my New Year’s resolution to myself: Don’t get too needy .

JANUARY 20
    You know that little song you used to sing every time you replaced a washer or rehung a window? “It’s so nice to have a man around the house …” It’s a catchy tune, but time is running out if I’m ever going to teach Annie that it need not be background music for her life. So I’ve planned some home-improvement projects, a sort of mini-forum on role modeling. The first session started early yesterday, at Conran’s, where I bought a set of bookshelves to hang above the bed. I knew it would be an easy project to begin with, because the woman who sold me the shelves said it would be “no problem.” I would not, she assured me, have to hire a structural engineer. My thought, you understand, was that Annie would see how masterfully her mother could perform this simple but terribly useful task, and thus the screwdriver, like her hair dryer, would become a normal and congenial part of her life.
    That was my thought. Her thought, as I laid all the parts out on the bed, was to ask me why I didn’t call someone who knew what he was doing. Trying to ignore “he” as the personal pronoun of choice, I picked up the diagram that came with the instructions in search of some important clues, such as where, in the drawing, the wall was in relation to the shelves—not as easy as it might seem for a verbal, as opposed to visual, person. Next, I set about trying to identify all the pieces. The two long, flat parts I recognized as the shelves. So far so good. Then there were some curved things that I figured were the brackets. After that things got a little fuzzy, but fortunately June showed up with the drill and the drill bits I’d asked to borrow. I thought, at first, that she had brought me some freshly baked rolls, appearing as she did, like Little Red Riding Hood, with a wicker basket and an inviting red-checkered napkin covering its contents. You’d have thought the tools were contraband and I was breaking out of prison, which in a way I was. Anyway, she had all the pertinent questions: Where were the studs; did I need the bits for plaster or wood or concrete?
    I responded with an expression that said, “brain-dead,” an embarrassment that Annie