Leaving wasn’t as easy as she’d thought.  Not at all.  Like budgets, it worked on paper, managed to seem logical and doable and even intelligent until it came to the carrying out.         

Why was that, she wondered.  After all, hadn’t the past few years entered that numb and automatic stage?         

“Nice day, how was yours.”        

“Good.”        

Faces lost in newspapers, minds still on the job. Dreams drifting off on their own paths.          

Was it the dividing?  That was never easy.  Who would take the microwave?  Who owned the good set of Lord of the Rings?  Okay.  He could have the DVDs; she would keep the books.         

Books.  Now there was a lover who never let you down.  No awkward silences, no conversations just because.  A book would spit emotion in your face, run it up and down your spine, allow you a range of colors and feelings, a smorgasbord  fit for every mood.        

She took the books.  All of them.  And the music.  It was hers.  Hadn’t she paid for all those downloads with numerous viruses, two hard drives and enough spyware to expose her every fetish?      

Some clothes.  Not many.  She’d been so unhappy for so long that she never ate.  So nothing fit.  She imagined thrift store clothing worn in peace had to be an upgrade.        

He kept the dog.  She knew she’d miss her but temporary lodging and Labs don’t mix.        

Leaving Texas, driving back to Michigan, her old hometown, she didn’t really look back.  Still it wasn’t easy.  She would give him that.           

She’d never been a sustainer.  Not a big problem day to day but collectively, looking back on her life, she had to admit it made a poor resume.  Relationships simply went stale, like bread and Doritos.  What was the use, the profit, in throwing herself on the pyre of a dead relationship.  The notion she was somehow diminished by being alone was widespread.  Family. Friends.  Lord, she could already hear the panic, the pleading, the ‘fixing’ that would go on once people found out she was gone.        

Odd how those same people had fucked up their own relationships over and over and yet they somehow needed her to stay in her place, her slot, for that once-in-a-while-meet-for-a-visit phone call.  She was prepared for the onslaught.  If running like a rabbit from town, home, and all familiarity could be called preparation.  She needed a new pace, a new place, a venue she could control.  She’d been handing out bits and pieces of herself: freedoms, authority, life choices, to everyone she met.  Now, when she needed to regroup, assess who she really was, those portions had been carried off and she felt like that kid in Willy Wonka who’d been broken into millions of parts and transmitted through the air.         

She would, by god, find herself, reassemble herself and make a new life.        

Not so much giving this time, she promised.         

The foothills of the Ozarks spread wooded arms around her as she crossed the last bit of Missouri.  Another few hours and she would be back in Michigan, back with her mother.  How strange.  This woman who’d groomed her like a little hooker to be submissive, non-threatening and to keep her place would now reap her harvest of rage.           

The town hadn’t changed as much as she’d hoped.  Still, on close inspection, there were changes.  Down narrow, tree-lined streets platoons of rubber recycle bins and trash cans marched, proof that even the most rural communities had become politically correct.  She remembered a time when trash was hauled to the back yard and burned, sending plumes of smoke, often rich with foul pollution, spiraling into the sky.  Hazardous materials?  Who knew or cared. She had often thrown batteries in just to hear them pop.  Plastic, carpet, cleaning supply containers, nothing was banned from this ritual.         

Leaves drifted through the air, piling against curbs, littering brown lawns, and crunching under her tires.  Fall was a good time to come back, was in fact the only time she ever missed Michigan.  She’d longed on hot October nights in Texas for the oddly erotic aroma of burning leaves, overwhelmed by memories of Saturday afternoons when fathers raked foliage into great red, orange and brown piles which kids leaped in and out of for hours before their parents torched them in the dark.         

Marshmallows and hotdogs, traditional rites of passage into winter, were consumed as families gathered around the fires with cold backs and scorching fronts, knowing that in just weeks the fields and lawns and streets would be blanketed under snow and that squeaking, crunching footsteps would soon rush everyone from car to house and back again, and dreamers would plan for spring, new leaves and the opportunity to do it all again.          

Those were the good memories.  She tried to avoid the others.  But driving past Bates Street, she slowed, backed up and swung the car to the right.  Get it over with, she thought.  317 Bates.  A tiny two-story, faded paint and a neighborhood that had seen better days long ago.  She stopped the car and peered at the house.  Even now, all these years later she could still hear the fighting, feel the humiliation of three huddled children sitting on the front stoop trying to stop the screaming and yelling with their wills.                 

Neighbors would look toward the house, the children, and then shake their heads and look away.  Peculiar how that early embarrassment had pierced her soul.  The fighting ended long ago, at least for her, but she still wore it, a shell of inferiority that she’d never managed to shake, no matter how much she spent on clothes.  A woman opened the front door and studied her through squinted eyes so she pulled away from the curb.         

Driving, she had to chuckle.  It had been years before she discovered her friends had thought their families odd, too.  She’d watched Leave it to Beaver and believed other kitchens, other houses sheltered happy mothers in beautiful shirtwaists and welcomed home wise fathers who always smoked a pipe.  As it turned out, dysfunction was the norm in the 50’s and the 60’s.  She was no more damaged than anyone else.  Realizing that hadn’t healed her as deeply as she’d expected.  Warm summer nights still echoed with angry voices.  Lightning bugs almost always made her cringe.          

Her mother lived on a new street.  Tidy doublewides with painted window boxes sat close to the curb on impeccably groomed lots.  Almost every yard had a flagpole and for blocks around, hundreds of Old Glories flapped in the breeze.  She stared at long rows of white homes with black shutters and look-alike gazing balls, each sitting proudly amidst rose bushes and juniper plants.  She hummed the old Pete Seager song, Little Boxes.  Wow, we hadn’t seen anything back then, she thought.         

A tight knot formed in her belly.  This was home for the next six months to a year and if it wasn’t the bottom of the barrel she hoped she’d never find it.  Her mother, having gained more weight than usual had called her cell phone while she was in Indiana and told her there were several pair of trousers hanging in the closet for her, things she could no longer wear.  Lovely. Starting a fresh new life in wide-legged, elastic-waist double knits did not bode well for the future. Of course neither did three days a week playing bridge at the Elks.  Texas suddenly didn’t seem so bad.  Maybe she’d made a mistake.         

Yeah, okay.  Her husband had screwed her best friend.  But only twice.         

They said.         

Still, it was a long way back and she had to admit her lungs had expanded a bit once she got past Oklahoma.  Breathing battle-free air felt good.   Her mother wouldn’t suffocate her quickly.  And the pants wouldn’t be so bad if she wore them only in the house.        

Sighing, she turned into the driveway.