I wonder how long it will take before he stops loving me, before he stops looking at me the way he always does, before his eyes no longer spark, before he stops whispering my name while we make love. How long will it take before he stops caressing me, pressing his fingertips on my lips? His love for me will die one of these days. I will be another lollipop that he will be tired of chewing. I will be a forgotten candy, unfinished, unwrapped, laying on an empty table.
He comes in, throws his keys on a table full of unpaid bills and doesn’t look at me. I sit and watch the rain, pretending I don’t know he is there. I pretend this man is not the man I used to love, that he is not the man who never had enough of me, who could never stop kissing me. But why should I pretend? Now we are just strangers. I play with the ring on my finger, the ring that was meant to map our love for eternity, the ring that is now as meaningless as an unsolved equation. I’m thinking of selling it to an antique store or handing it off to my daughter. Or maybe I’ll throw it away like another piece of garbage. I’ll let it deteriorate with the rest of our trash; I’ll let it become dust. My daughter hates me because I’ve turned into a cold, bitter mother who is too tired to read stories or sing lullabies. My daughter hates me because I don’t look at her father when he is home, because I don’t ask him to take her horseback riding or to a movie.
My husband is gone. He left yesterday before noon when the rain began. He left me standing in the rain while I got soaked. He gave me a check for the bills and placed his wedding ring in my hand. My daughter stood behind the window and watched. I remembered the day my Daddy left. It was raining and Mama was crying inside. She cried and I watched Daddy leave with his brown brief case. But I didn’t cry as I watched my husband leave. I had no tears, no regrets and no guilt. I let the ring drop from my hand as I stepped inside. I didn’t turn around to see him get into his red Chevy, the one we bought on our wedding night. That night we were both drunk. Drunk and in love. And we thought we would always stay that way. We thought we would always sit in that Chevy and drive away to foreign towns. I didn’t turn around to see him wave to my baby daughter, my Lolita, my only love. I went inside, picked her up, kissed her and told her how much I loved her. I slept alone that night after 13 years and sold my ring the next morning.