Behind the wardrobe in the old house was a magical door.
I stepped through it, and I saw myself thirty years from now.
Both legs paralyzed, my eyes fixed on a withered orchid on the windowsill.
"How absurd. This is the marriage I begged so hard to keep."
"If the woman I was thirty years ago could hear this, remember, divorce Brent Gilbert if it kills you."
Trembling faintly, I came back to my own world.
A wave of desolation rose in my chest.
Once I was home, I was a different person.
I no longer asked where Brent had spent his nights away from home.
I no longer cared what secrets hid behind his locked phone.
I no longer felt the urge to drag every woman around me into a lipstick color match over a tube left in the passenger seat.
I simply felt that a marriage like this was utterly pointless.
1
When Brent came home, there was still a bright streak of red on his undershirt.
Even after two years, that girl he kept hidden in the dark was as loyally obsessed with this one shade of lipstick.
I picked up the spray bottle calmly and walked toward the balcony.
Brent looked a little startled. He peeled off his coat and tossed it into the washing machine.
"You're acting strange today."
Even in the dead of winter, this orchid was still blooming, delicate and bright.
When I finished watering, I set the spray bottle down.
Then I turned to look at him, my gaze steady, as though I were mentioning something that hardly mattered.
"Brent. Let's get divorced."
He looked far more flustered than I did, glancing around before finally sitting down at one end of the couch.
"I just said you were acting strange. Is that really worth threatening a divorce over?"
"Deidre Swanson, did you take the wrong pills or something? This isn't like you at all."
The last time we fought, Brent had punched a hole through the balcony window.
Half a month had passed, and the hole only grew wider, shards of glass dropping loose now and then.
The cold wind outside howled through it.
But Brent had never once thought to replace the glass.
Just like whatever was between us, cracked and cracked again, with no intention of ever mending it.
I gave a small shiver, walked into the living room, and took a sip of hot water.
"I don't want anything. I only need you to agree to the divorce."
"Tomorrow I'll go downstairs and draft a divorce agreement."
Brent tilted his head back against the couch, his face pained and helpless.
"Did you find something again? Lipstick? Stockings? Earrings?"
"I've told you, you're just too sensitive, always suspecting things."
I turned my face away and looked at the collar just below his ear. The old me would have thrown myself at him like a madwoman.
Sniffing for the lipstick, searching his back for a strand of hair that wasn't mine.
And in the end, grilling him until he broke.
But now I only saw how pointless it all was. It did nothing but push Brent further away from me.
I remembered the first time I found lipstick in Brent's passenger seat.
I was so furious I smashed his windshield on the spot.
"Which slut left this behind? If you don't tell me the truth today, I'll burn your car."
Back then Brent had looked at me like I was insane, not shifting an inch from where he sat in the driver's seat.
"She's just a female coworker. Deidre, can you not read into everything?"
But I didn't believe him. I took the lighter I always carried and threw it into the car.
The more Brent refused to say, the more determined I was to drag that woman out of the shadows.
I took that lipstick, worn down to half a stub, and went to Brent's company.
I gathered every female employee into the lobby, then matched each of their lipstick colors one by one.
The last one left had a color almost exactly like the one in my hand.
She stood frozen in place, shaking with fear.
I looked at her.
"The last woman who tried to seduce my husband, I already ruined her. Do you want to be next?"
She wouldn't look at me. Just as I was about to grab her chin, Brent rushed in and took me home.
After that, the tension between us only deepened by the day.
I began lying awake night after night, replaying every trace of evidence I'd found on Brent.
I had already stopped being myself.
Brent followed my gaze, lowering his head to look at the left side of his collar.
He patted at it offhandedly.
"Traffic was bad today, so I took the subway home. Some girl must have brushed up against my collar, I don't know who."
"I'll take it off right now."
His scramble for an excuse, the way his eyes darted away, told me plainly enough that he had cheated. And yet there was nothing I could do about it.
The sound of the washing machine started up. Brent didn't come out, staying a few meters away.
I spoke again.
"Brent, I'm setting you free. Two years now. You have to give that girl a proper place, don't you?"
