The Fire Down Below

Chatper 3: The Bed Goes!

I won't think about that now, I'll think about that tomorrow

When the door closed behind Robert with its authoritative "thud" it felt like so much more. It felt as though all my hopes, dreams and wishes were crushed and that the door to my life as I knew it was closing on me with a sudden finality.

I stood in the hallway transfixed with fear, with indecision, with an unbearable sensation of loss. I was drowning in self-doubt and the realization that I was alone. I was gutted by his words. How could he say our marriage had been empty? I'd given him my life. I'd given him my everything and he just tossed it aside.

The world seemed to slow down around me. The second hand on the grandfather clock beside me looked to move at a fraction of its normal speed as though being held back by some invisible force. Even my tears wouldn't come immediately. Instead they paused, building up like a tsunami wave of pain and anger, and then they came. A torrent of tears streamed down my face as sobs wracked my body.

Through the tears, through the pain and the soul crushing misery, I grasped onto a single quote my Uncle Tony used to preach to me.

Uncle Tony had always been fascinated by history, particularly intrigued by the great characters that had transformed the world in their time. The quote he used when I was younger to encourage me to tackle issues that I faced was from Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."

I hadn't thought of that quote in fifteen years probably. But I suddenly held onto it and decided that I needed to be active. I needed to do something, crank the music, pour myself into a task and close my mind for a few hours in order to try to find some sort of equilibrium.

Ultimately I decided on a rather obvious but necessary task – to eliminate Robert and his things from my house.

First, I went down to Robert's expensive entertainment suite in the basement, plugged in my iPod and blasted some good ol' Michigan rock n' roll. Bob Seger, Kid Rock, Grand Funk Railroad all screamed from his recently installed speakers.

With the music pounding throughout the house I finally discarded the suit and blouse I had been wearing since Friday morning and piled into a comfy pair of sweats and an old Sandals Resort t-shirt. I was now ready. It was time to stop thinking and "go in".

I began with his clothes, pulling all of his recently dry cleaned Eton, Canali and Zegna dress shirts off their hangers and throwing them over the banister into a large pile on the first floor. The first smile in two days crossed my lips as I delighted in how the image of his carefully orchestrated shirts in a heap at the bottom of the stairs would blow his anally retentive mind.

His shirts were followed by his multi-thousand dollar custom tailored suits, and his hundreds of silk designer ties and pocket squares. His socks, underwear and undershirts went next, but these I tossed into a large garbage bag which also made the swift journey through the air to the first floor below.

With his dressers emptied and his hanging closet bereft of his Harry Rosen collection of tailored elegance, I danced dangerously close to thinking about my predicament. "No," I screamed at the walls as another Michigan rock anthem coursed through the house.

From a young age I adopted my namesake's motto from "Gone With The Wind" of "I won't think about that now, I'll think about that tomorrow." If it was good enough for Vivien Leigh, aka Scarlett O'Hara, then it was good enough for me.