CHAPTER SIX - PARIS

Now and forever, I will always have Paris…

Such is life when you have children with someone. Someone who is not a bad person, someone who is a wonderful father… someone who just royally shit the bed at being a partner, a friend, and a husband.

Because I have the girls on Saturday, Sunday is Paris’s weekend day. Big is still struggling with a lot of the realities of this new situation, so last weekend, I decided to do the child swap at the playground. Lighten things up a bit. Hey, kid, I tore your world apart, but slides are sweet, aren’t they?

Paris showed up a few minutes late, but I wasn’t going to give him shit for that. After all, he had walked in on Romeo and I banging out sixteen years of sexual frustration two weeks after I left him. Just because the bedroom door was closed, didn’t mean I hadn’t ripped his heart out of his chest and chucked it in the garbage disposal. Additionally, he had an uncharacteristically mature response, via text, just a few days later.

I could have busted the door off its hinges… but I didn’t. Because I knew in that moment it wasn’t about me. You are on your own journey now, and although that crushes me… in the end, I just want you to be happy. That’s all I really want.

Wow. Okay, so I hadn’t been completely out to lunch when I married this guy, anger issues and all. Plus, he seemed to be doing something quite extraordinary - he was maturing at a rapid fire pace, getting not one, but two new jobs in the span of just ten days. (I should mention here that Paris is not a deadbeat. He may not have a college degree, but between bartending and waiting tables, he always paid his share. Always. Like many in the hospitality business, the pandemic kept him out of work for well over a year. Problem was, when things started opening up again, Paris hadn't opened up with them...)

And when he did arrive at the playground, I noticed more improvements. Just twenty days since I sat him down to tell him things were over, he lost what looked to be fifteen pounds - about what he had gained on the couch during the pandemic. Paris isn’t a tall guy, so that kind of weight loss makes a big difference, and in a very good way. He had also gotten himself a sharp haircut, and had decided to start shaving again.

Paris is a very attractive man. If you saw him in passing, you’d notice his full lips, large deep-brown eyes, and perfect smile. (I have a thing for good teeth, remember?) He also has fantastic hair, a thick crop of salt and pepper. But while we were together, particularly in the last few years, Paris stopped taking care of himself. His weight bounced all over the place, and he took to growing a beard, most likely to hide his vanishing jawline.

I hated that beard. At one point, I shit you not, Dearest Nurse, he looked like the unabomber. He got a passport photo taken, and I remembered looking at it thinking, who the fuck would let this guy on an airplane? It was awful. And he let his hair go, too. We live in a nice neighborhood in Los Angeles, but the house across the way is owned by an old man who takes in some of the neighborhood homeless. Paris fit right the fuck in.

No matter how much I begged, he wouldn’t shave. He wouldn’t even trim the hairs that grew over his lip so I could stand to kiss him. It was gross, and along with the fierce dad bod he was sporting, what sexual attraction I had left, packed its bags for the coast.

But here, in the playground last Sunday, I caught a glimpse of the man I had once fallen for. He looked fantastic, rested, and svelte. As much as it embarrasses me to admit it, my heart took a little lurch. I had forgotten how pretty he could be.

“Let me get the bags out of the car. I’ll be right back.” I said, referring to Little’s diaper bag and Big’s backpack for school.

“Oh, wait. Why don’t I just give you the car key? You can put them right in there. That way you don’t have to come back.”

Car? What car?

Paris and I have owned a few automobiles since returning to Los Angeles a few years ago. The first was an old truck his aunt gifted him because we were flat broke. When I got a new job on the West Side, I purchased a very used Prius that I paid for on my own. The truck no longer passed California smog, so Paris hauled it off somewhere where it sat for a year, and then apparently someone purchased it. I really have no idea. And before the Prius could become a money pit, I donated it to Kars for Kids and bought a Rav4 Hybrid that I absolutely love. I made the down payment myself, and every monthly payment after, but still, whenever I referred to it as “my car”, Paris would scowl.

“I pay rent. Does that mean it’s my apartment?”

That’s all he paid for. Not our phones, not the internet, electricity, gas, Big’s extracurriculars, weekend outings. He didn’t even pay for food.

“Yeah, Paris. Sure. It’s your apartment.”

So, because Paris was jobless, broke, and in need of some wheels, his mother was gracious enough to gift him her used Malibu. It might have been an older car, but she had taken fantastic care of it, and it was in immaculate condition.

Paris left that car in a back alley parking spot for two years. He let the battery die, the tires go flat, and the gas go bad. He let it get vandalized, the windows broken, the back plate stolen, and then all he did was put a cover over it. People literally left notes on it with their phone number to see if was abandoned. Instead, when he did get his ass out of the house, he used MY car until I got pissed, and then he would borrow his mother’s. He had the audacity to borrow his mother’s brand new car after she had given him her old one, that she had cared for and loved, and he destroyed it.

This infuriated me on a weekly basis. Actually, as much as it pains me to say this, it disgusted me. But no matter what I said - even when I offered to turn the poor thing over myself - he would get indignant, refuse, and ask why I cared.

So, at the playground when Paris mentioned “the car”, I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about. And, as he had so often recommended, I also wasn’t exactly sure I cared. I had work to catch up on, and I wanted to get home.

“That’s okay, really. I’ll just bring you the bags and take off.”

“No, here. Take the car key. It’ll be easier.” Paris insisted.

The fuck? What was he doing right now?

“I don’t want that.” I said, having enough of whatever this was. Besides, I was all too aware of the flash of attraction I had experienced when he first approached. The last thing I wanted was to start feeling something for this man in my vulnerable, post-Romeo, post-separation state. “I’m just going to get the bags and bring them to you.”

And with that, I walked off, trudging across the park lawn toward my Rav.

“Mommy, wait!” I turned to see Big running toward me, a car key dangling from her outstretched hand.

Now I was getting pissed. Paris was being really insistent about this whole stupid car thing, and now he had roped our daughter into it.

“Fine.” I relented, swinging the bags over my shoulder. I grabbed the key and searched the street for either the decrepit Malibu or his mother’s SUV. I saw neither.

“No, mama. Here!”

And that’s when I saw it. A slick, black, 2021 Toyota Tacoma. Now it all made sense. He wanted me to see his brand new fucking truck.

My eyes blazed.

I fumbled with the key, unable to unlock it. Big tried too, but I only gave her about two seconds before I snatched the key and stormed back toward the playground.

“The key doesn’t work. Here.” I said as quickly as I could, dumping the bags on a bench.

“It doesn’t?… But, I… are you okay?”

“Yeah. I gotta go.” I was roiling inside, blinded by a rage I didn’t understand, but the tears were coming and fast.

I jumped into my car, slammed the door shut, and let out a furious sob. And then I did what I always do in these types of situations. I swerved out of my parking spot, sped down Laurel Canyon, and called my mom.

“He could have turned it all around in a second!” I sobbed, more yelling than crying, because I swear, I’ve never been more angry with him. “But instead he dragged me through the shit, and the muck, and his fucking bullshit depression. Shaming me and guilting me for not making enough money. Or when I was, that I wasn’t paying for everything for him!”

I ranted and raved as I took the long way back to my apartment, and my goddess of a mother talked me off the ledge. Lady Capulet doesn’t get a fair shake in the history of dramatic literature, but let me tell you, mine is the tops. She is always there, right on the other end of the line. And when I say always, I mean always. She is my rock, and she better haunt me when she dies, because I don’t want to live a single second without her.

Now, up until this point, I had wanted to be “the nice ex wife”. Paris was so incredibly shattered when I told him I wanted out, it was heartbreaking. He cried, pleaded, begged and bargained. He took full responsibility - and I mean FULL - for being a shit husband, letting depression get the better of him, and fucking up our marriage. As much as he didn’t want what was happening, he knew he deserved it, and said as much. So, in turn, I agreed to do things slowly. We could wait on the divorce, and in the meantime, I would hold onto his belongings - and his destructive-ass Puppy - until he had gotten back on his feet. But that ended today.

Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks and you turn your whole life around? Fuck you. You made me suffer for nothing, you giant prick, and I want all of you gone.

So, instead of catching up on work as I had planned, I got home, and tore. the. house. apart.

Dearest Nurse, it was glorious.

I pulled every scrap of his from our jam-packed closet. I pulled pictures out of frames - stupid, studio-style family portraits we had smiled through in spite of the fact that the day had been shit up until that moment, and the rest would be too. I plucked his books that he never finished from the shelf, purged the apartment of his still-boxed action figures, sporting equipment he never used, every speck of James Dean memorabilia, and I rocked out to Ivy Levan the entire time.

It was cleansing. It felt like a rebirth… or a return. Like I was finally coming back to me, standing up for myself, and moving forward. Transcending… All I needed now were some boxes.

Moving is a pain in the ass. I’ve done it more times than most, and without ever really having any money. And even if I did, who wants to pay for moving boxes? You use them once, and chuck them. But my usual go-to of scouring liquor store trash bins seemed too much of an annoyance. Besides, the boxes are tiny, and I would have needed dozens to pack all of Paris’s shit. Please, benevolent powers of the universe, let there be an easier way.

The world has a way of letting you know when you’re doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s a feeling you get, a surprising flood of relief. Sometimes its a run-in with the perfect person at the perfect time, spurring you forward in your quest. And sometimes, that sign comes in the form of a dumpster full of perfectly collapsed moving boxes.

My apartment complex only has eight units, so there’s not a whole lot of turnover. About a month prior, however, a young bassist had moved in below me with her funny, blind chihuahua. But a month is a long time, and I figured she definitely would have unpacked already. Well, she hadn’t, and her busy gig schedule was mama Juliet’s gain.

I hauled all the boxes upstairs from the dumpster in three trips, taped them up, and tossed his shit inside. Last up were the junk drawers.

Paris, as you might have imagined by now, is not the most organized. Old mail, bills, paystubs, pocket change, and any other annoying scrap, would usually get plucked from his pockets and piled on a nightstand, a side table, the kitchen fucking counter, or any other place he never cleaned but felt entitled to dump whatever he wanted on. So, at some point in our marriage, I assigned him a drawer.

“Here’s your junk drawer. Put it in here and close it, so I don’t have to look at it.”

He had obeyed, but because he never actually went through and organized his junk, it soon expanded into not one, not two, not three, but five individual drawers in various dressers and credenzas throughout the apartment.

With great and resounding pleasure, I readied a moving box, pulled out each drawer, turned it upside down, and dumped the entire contents into the box. Over, and over, and over, until there wasn’t a single fucking junk drawer left. I laughed out loud, it felt so good.

I’m leaving the house for the next few hours. Please come by and get your things. You’ll find them boxed up by the door.

Again, I want my life to be a great movie. A vast improvement from the dull, cringe-worthy repetitive drama I’d been living for the past decade. And in that movie, I would leave my now thrashed apartment, full of crudely packed boxes, have a wonderful evening at The Huntington, and return to my new life. No husband, no boxes, no bullshit. But you can’t expect a man who never did what you asked in ten years to know how to follow a script.

I can’t tonight. I’m working. What’s going on?

Ugh. Fuck it. I’m going out anyway.

I pulled out of my parking spot, turned up the music, and headed for Pasadena, still on a high. Fine. So the boxes would still be there when I got back. He wouldn’t, and that was the important part.

And that’s when Paris started calling.

I had my phone hooked up to the car stereo, so every time there was an incoming call, it interrupted whatever song I had playing. I don’t know if you know a lot of recently separated women, but when they get their jam on, you best not kill the vibe.

I ignored him.

Ignored him.

Ignored him again.

I wanted to get on with things. I wanted to have a nice evening with myself. Write, enjoy the sunset. But mostly, I didn’t want to rage on him. Yes, he had made some grave mistakes. I’ll even venture to say that he was emotionally abusive at times. But he wasn’t a bad person, and he didn’t deserve the fury that would come out of my mouth if I picked up. I hit ignore again.

But when he interrupted Ivy Levan’s 27 Club, enough was enough.

“What do you want?”

“What’s going on? Are you okay? I’ve been texting you—“

To my credit, I warned him. I told him this wasn't a great time, and if he was going to insist on having a conversation, he might not like what he heard. To his credit - I suppose - he accepted the risk. Paris never heard me out in any sort of heated argument. If big emotions started to flair, it was shutdown time. So forgive me, Dearest Nurse, but that was all the permission I needed to royally unleash.

Everything came ripping out of me, from my gut, tearing up my throat, as my hands gripped white on the steering wheel. All the years of pain, sadness and frustration. Lost years I would never get back. A decade of egg shells, worrying for him, doing everything I could to help him, pull him up, out, and being repeatedly shit on. Doing everything I could to patch myself up; maintain a sense of dignity and self respect, while he picked at me, picked at me, and then tricked me with moments of kindness and fleeting affection. I fucking raged.

“You’re right, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know I could change! I was trapped, [Juliet].”

He tried feebly to defend himself. I could tell this was crushing him, but I didn’t want to hear it. Not one single second of his sad, defeated voice. I had made his feelings, his depression, his anger, and his selfish fucking emotional solitude my problem for ten years. I was done. Cooked. Fucking over it.

And then I hung up. I think a part of me expected to feel badly, the way I always do when I loose it. A kind of shame and wishing I could turn back the clock. But I didn’t feel any of those things. I didn’t care. And just like that, Ivy came back on, and I had a lovely evening alone.

But a small part of me feared I might have woken a sleeping giant…

“After ten years, he can claim half of everything, you know.”

A few days later, after Paris had picked up his boxes and loaded them into his stupid, new truck, I was on a Zoom coffee date with one of my mentors. She’s an absolutely extraordinary woman and successful writer who I call my sometimes life guru. We haven’t known one another long, but with some women, you just know, and you don’t let the other one go. Such is my loving relationship with S.

“I know, but we don’t actually own anything.” Outside of my Rav4, there wasn’t much of value purchased during our marriage. And we had already agreed on mutual custody of the kids, and an even split of their expenses. I didn’t see much reason to be concerned.

“Everything, [Juliet], including your intellectual property.”

As I mentioned, S and I are both writers. We also both write in several different mediums, and all of those mediums require development. Often the free part of a professional writer’s work, development is where you are coming up with new ideas, and drafting them into pitches - a written document or oral presentation given to a buyer in hopes that they will pay you to write the script, book, or what have you. Additionally, intellectual property also extends to any finished books, scripts, articles, etc., that you have written, whether or not it has sold. What S was telling me was almost unfathomable. That Paris could legally claim ownership of half of everything I had written or developed in the past ten years. I’m a very prolific woman on the verge of some very big deals. This could destroy me.

“No matter what you do, if you get lawyers involved, mediation, whatever, you have to make sure you carve out your intellectual property.”

A word to the wise, Dear Nurse: when going through a divorce, find other divorced people to talk to. Not only are they filled with useful, divorcey wisdom, they will also remind you that divorce is not a stigma. It is not wrong. There is no such thing as a failed relationship, only one that's run it's course, and that everything is about to get much, much better. That is, at least, what S did for me that morning, along with a reminder of her unending support.

“I’m such a big fan of yours. Keep going. I’m really proud of you.”

Thank you, S. I needed that. I still do.

But the information she had given me had my insides in knots. The idea of having to cut Paris a paycheck for selling a project he had most likely shamed me while creating in the first place, made my insides more raw than the fucking new Tacoma. I needed to get cracking on this divorce, and I needed to do it quickly.

Do you want mediation, or are you okay to do this ourselves?

I texted, and waited for a response in and around researching the book I had just been commissioned to write. A book I would have to pay Paris half my rate for if he decided to screw me over.

But here’s the thing about Paris: It’s not in his nature to try and take something that doesn’t belong to him. When the subject of a prenup arose back in the day, we both agreed it wasn’t necessary. What’s his will alway be his, and mine, mine. But Paris never thought I’d actually leave him. Probably why he thought it was okay to be a moody, depressive, jerk for so many years. I had also watched him take expensive gifts from his mother and destroy them, all while bitching to me about how if I was making more money than him, I should be paying the majority of the living expenses. So, there was a bit of errant entitlement about the man. How much, I didn’t know. What I do know - or what I think I know - is that Paris has no idea he can claim half of my beautiful brain children. Regardless of his potential ignorance, lack of legal funds, and what I think I know abot his character, however, I now want to get things finalized as soon as possible.

I’m good. He texted back. Just want to be clear on the kids.

Absolutely. I’ll draft something up, we can sign it, and it shouldn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks.

Okay.

Good. Great. I turned my attention back to my research, listening to a gothic, period novel to refresh the dialect before diving into my similarly-themed work… And then my phone dinged.

Just to be clear, I will never come for one single cent from you.

I exhaled. Not reconsideration, not regret - but a warmth for this man crept up on my heart.

I believe him when he says he didn’t know he could change. That he felt trapped in depression, and felt agonizing shame every day, preventing him from being able to touch me, hold me, make love to me. In the days after I told him I was leaving, he bared all of this, and Dearest Nurse, if you could have seen how completely vulnerable this man was, you would know as well as I he was telling the truth.

I've said this adnauseam, I know, but Paris is not a bad man. He’s not even kind of a bad man. He’s a good man that has been dealt a lot of blows in life, but never formed the faculties to properly deal with them. He didn’t have a father - his mother’s high-school sweetheart bailing at the mention of a baby on the way - and his mother struggled to stay afloat, weaving her way in and out of bad marriages. Marriages to men who physically disciplined her young son, striking him with belts, making him “pick a switch”, and who knows what else. He never got too into detail, but Paris does remember he and his mother fleeing an abusive stepfather in the middle of the night, his pet hamster in a little, plastic cage, along with them. The next day when they stopped on the road to get something to eat, little Paris left his hamster on the dashboard. When they returned to the car, they found him baked. Barely alive, burnt and bloated, as if cooked in a microwave. That story still haunts me to this day.

Paris has also experienced a lot of head trauma. Between being the little guy on the high school football team, and riding bulls in his youthful, southern boy days, a doctor once estimated that 4 percent of his brain is dead. If you know anything about brain injuries, they can cause very real and very lasting depression. For life. I fucking hate high school football, I really do.

I knew all of this going in, but I thought - like most women in their 20s - that I could heal him. That we could heal each other. I have my fair share of shit, and like I told you, he didn’t bat an eye when I said I had herpes. We both had our issues and our pasts. But if he could accept me for mine and still love me, want to marry and have children with me, then I was a very lucky girl.

It wasn’t until the birth of our first daughter that I really started to notice the depths of the damage he had endured. He was distant, moody, and mean. He was incredibly protective of our little girl, almost pathologically so, checking on her constantly throughout the night to make sure she was still alive. He stopped looking at me, reprimanded me constantly for not being attentive enough to her, and ignored me when I cried… A sensitive, postpartum woman exhausted and desperate for support. We were on our own back then, with no money, no help, and no relief, and suddenly, we didn’t even have each other anymore.

Paris never fully came back from that. After doing some research, I think he had postpartum depression. No one talks about male postpartum depression, but don’t think for one second men aren’t heavily affected by childbirth. Their whole lives are turned upside down too, and that creates hormonal shifts. It's estimated that one in four men experience this phenomenon, but again, no one talks about it, so who knows? What I do know is, when you have brain damage from a stupid, fucking high school sport where no one gives a shit about the child’s well-being, add a new baby to the mix, and you can get very, very depressed.

I can't let Paris know this, but my heart breaks for him. It’s breaking for him now, and I will always be sorry. Sorry he will likely have to struggle with depression for the rest of his life. That it could have been avoided, but his mother forged the doctor’s notes after each concussion. I am so sorry that I didn’t know what he was going through until it was too late, and I'm sorry that men are conditioned to put their heads down and muscle through when their insides are roiling, tortured with shame and guilt.

He still tells me how much he truly loved me, and that he always will. He knows its hard for me to hear, but that it’s important too. I didn’t marry some manipulative automaton. I married a man that loved me with everything he had, but try as he might, he just couldn’t pull himself out of his own shit to show me… and then it was too late. He lost the love of his life to a condition I truly believe is not his fault, but that he could have, and should have done something about.

I have lost all romantic feeling for Paris. Every. single. ounce. I have no desire to hurt him, and I feel no malice, but there isn’t a single part of me that wants to touch him again or be intimate. It’s all gone. There is no going back. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate him.

I can appreciate the bravery he showed in marrying me. In having beautiful children with me and being an amazing, though sometimes overprotective father. I can appreciate the times he fought through his depression enough praise me, celebrate career victories, and remind me how talented I was when things didn’t work out. I can appreciate the days of driving he did on those cross country trips, and the way he always made me laugh. And he did. That’s one thing about Paris. He is so fucking funny…

Oh, Dear Nurse… in spite of all of it, Paris was my friend. My very dear friend, and I will miss him. I will miss him. As much as I don’t want to… as much as I wish I wouldn’t, I will always miss him. The Paris I first met. The Paris I fell in love with, and the one I only caught fleeting glimpses of after Big was born. Perhaps even the Paris who will return, and it sucks so hard that I’ll never be able to have him again. It’s just too fucking late.

I’m crying all over my keyboard right now, which probably means I still have some shit to work through when it comes to Paris, but it is over. I will be drafting the divorce papers this week. And I will close this chapter.

I just needed you to know that in spite of everything I’ve said and may say in the coming days, Paris tried. He loved me. He loves me still. And though he may have destroyed our marriage, he is and always will be a good man.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet