Castaway

“It’s a damn sweater, Katie. I’ll Venmo you for a new one.”

“But it’s my sweater,” I huffed. I felt the damp condensation of my words pressing from my phone screen onto my left cheek.

“Katie, how many ways do I have to put this. I don’t want to see you, and I don’t have your sweater. Why would I lie about that?”

“Oh, I don’t know Jeff, maybe because you lied about having a whole ass wife so forgive me if I don’t exactly take your words at face value.”

He paused. I mean, to be fair, how do you even respond to that. “I’ll look this afternoon. It’s not here, but I’ll look, okay?” “That’s all I ever wanted.”

“Jesus, Katie. Just say thank you.”

He hung up.

It’s hard to explain my relationship with Jeff to anyone who’s, well, not Jeff. Jeff was an actor. Quite frankly, that’s generous – Jeff wanted to be an actor. He booked a few gigs here and there – a constipated father at his son’s soccer game, a dead body on a cheesy crime show – all the classic roles that point to the fact that his greatest asset was his face, rather than his capacity to say a line with passion.

We broke up after three years together, surprisingly unrelated to the entire wife situation (I found out about her early in year two), but more so because I couldn’t stand his expectation of me to play house while he (unsuccessfully) served as the “breadwinner.” If I didn’t do the dishes, they molded in the sink. If I didn’t pick up his dress shirts from the bathroom floor, I was “irresponsible.”

It’s been three weeks since he told me to pack my stuff and get out. While I wish that I was the one to call time of death on our three-year long codependency, it was my – how did he put it – “lack of domestic support” that led him to fling my red suitcase atop the bed and begin piling my clothes in it. One thing he forgot, though, was my sweater. My “favorite” sweater.

If he had half a brain cell, he would have remembered that it’s the sweater that I was wearing when we first met. Honestly, it should have been a red flag that the first words my supposed “soulmate” uttered to me were “that’s a brave color,” but at the time I found him gutsy and observant.

To be honest, it’s not even about the damn sweater. The color definitely washed me out, and the fabric was super itchy, but it’s about the principle of Jeff not – never – caring about me or my needs. While I’d prefer to have three years of my life back, the sweater will have to suffice for now.

***

Three days have passed, and nothing from Jeff. Not even a text to let me know that he checked – that he tried, for once – and the sweater was in fact not there. I would have let it go if he at least acknowledged how much the sweater “meant to me,” or picked up on the fact that this obviously goes so beyond a discounted piece of fabric, but long story short I now find myself outside his door, praying that he hasn’t changed the locks since we broke up.

I inserted my key – the same key that he gave me after I saw the texts on his phone from “Love Nut” (gag me) – turned it, and the door practically begged me to come inside. Of course, I obliged.

As the door swung open, not only was I greeted by the smell of freshly baked sugar cookies and potted lilies in the mudroom, but also, a woman. Just as shocked as I was to see her, her genuine fear appeared magnified by twenty-fold. She stared at me, baking sheet in hand, apron caked in flour, forcing me to consume the image of the woman that I would never be. The woman that I could never be.

She was the perfect homemaker. Her blonde hair tied perfectly into a “messy” up-do that definitely took at least twenty minutes to curate. The painful lack of molded dishes in the sink. I would bet a million dollars that not one of Jeff’s shirts lay on the bathroom floor right now.

She wasn’t his wife – I knew that from his Facebook – but it didn’t matter. This domestic robot was my future with Jeff; she merely chose to accept it.

I was horrified, not by my own trespassing of this happy couple’s Eden, but by the life that I semi-mourned only three minutes prior. I dropped the key on the welcome mat, safeguarding myself from the possibility that my loneliness would inevitably lead me back to this dreaded place, and bolted from this domestic hell.