The Last Cadillac by Nancy Nau Sullivan Page A

keep up or lose my appetite, which was quickly happening. His smooth jowls bulged in and out like a squirrel, a creature he had a lot in common with. They both ate with abandon and on the run, except that the squirrel sat in the tree. Hubby, on the other hand, often reminisced fondly about the “field” of his old Army days when he ate a variety of C-rations dumped into a helmet and cooked over an open fire. He was the type of person who needed to consume all those, and everything, around him. He once stuck an entire Big Mac into his mouth in two bites, and given the assortment of Chinese in front of us, he was about to eat the whole table in five minutes.
    His cell phone rang and he answered it, lowering his face almost into his rice. His wife’s screams came through the tiny black holes of the phone into the large hole in his head. I could hear the hollow echo of her voice and imagine the tiny impotent woman trapped inside that phone, and trapped in a life with him. She had taken him, and she could have him, if she could get him back.
    Suddenly, I pushed away my plate. In the place of an appetite for Chinese, I felt a sense of possession, of a future without him and a time of possibilities. Yes, she could have him. I was good, very good, with that. It came to me like a door opening in my head, and I felt better than I had for a long time. I was free of him. Really free. There was no knot of dread anymore for the fits he would spring on me; I could just walk away, or hang up, or do whatever it took to get away from him.
    He flipped his wife closed, back into the tiny black holes from which she emerged to scream at him, and he put her inhis pocket. He gave me a sheepish look. I knew that look. He was embarrassed, and he knew that vulnerability often won me over.
    â€œI love you,” he said.
    â€œOh, please. It’s a little late for that.”
    â€œI’ve always loved you. You’re my girl, my woman.”
    He reached for my hand and turned it over. The pleading. This was truly incredible—he actually thought I would go back to him, like I’d done many times. I pulled my hand away.
    â€œI’m tired,” I said. “I want to go home.”
    â€œYou know I love you. Say you still love me.”
    â€œI can’t say that. I won’t say that. You’re married.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘so?’ You left.”
    â€œYou were going to leave me. You said you were.”
    â€œI said that after you went to see a divorce lawyer, while you were diddling with that trash from southern Indiana, and God only knows how many others, and finally that fuzz ball you’re married to now.”
    â€œYou’re my wife,” he said. “She’s just my spouse.”
    â€œAre you planning to leave your spouse?”
    â€œWill you come back to me?”
    So, that was it. He wanted a commitment from me before he pulled the plug on his latest marriage. I almost choked on the nonsense he was making up as he went along. In fact, I would choke before I told him that I would go back to him. I’d jump off a bridge before I’d break up their happy little duo.
    He had just called me up one night and simply said, “I’m filing on Tuesday.” I remember that night. He’d been gone a lot around the time of that miserable Christmas, trystingaway, moving his computers, going on “business” trips. And he was the one who was “filing.” I’d felt very cold at the sound of Hubby’s voice over the phone—so cold and impersonal. That night, I only said, “Good-bye.” That was it. After all the years, he was filing on Tuesday, and to this day, I’m sorry I didn’t see his face when he said it. But I knew what I’d see there. Nothing. Just the empty cold look of the needy.
    My family didn’t say much about the divorce, except to keep reminding me that I’d known Hubby for years before I