The Ex-Mrs.
by Kathryn Coulibaly

I have the kind of ex-husband who just won’t stay dead. Even now, six months after he died in a car accident, undoubtedly caused by his drinking although that was never listed as an official reason, I still see him. He still comes to me; into my room at night or appears in the passenger seat when I am driving to work. He talks to me, God! All the time now and he never talked when we were married. In death, he talks my ear off.

I was still sleeping with my ex-husband, sporadically, until the day he died. It was easier to sleep with him than with someone new and since I required so little I was usually able to get it from him. Except for when he felt guilty about what he had done to me. Then he couldn’t do it at all.

I rationalized my behavior. I was aware of what my friends and family would say if they knew. At first, I told my closest girlfriends. They half-heartedly wished me well, saying, “Get yours, girl” and “It’s just a booty call.” But eventually—two years after I left him, in fact—they stopped saying that and started making toasts at our girls’ nights out: “I wish for you a new penis.”

When I thought about it, it seemed to me easier to sleep with him than with a new man. I’d had a baby. No new man wants to see what that can do to a woman, what it had done to me and my body. Anyway, I couldn’t face taking all my clothes off in front of a new man. I remembered too well what it was like to take my clothes off for a man before I was married; a look of excitement and admiration would light his face. But now I was pretty sure there would be the shadow of a different emotion lurking there.

At any rate, it was comfortable with him, even if it wasn’t the greatest. Besides, he owed me something for the seven years I thought I was happily married to him and he was secretly running around.

David never comes to me when I am with our son. To the best of my knowledge, he has also never appeared to our boy, Henry.

“Baby,” David will whisper to me when he walks into our old bedroom at night when I am trying to sleep. “Baby,” he says, over and over again.

I can’t even escape him in my dreams. He invades them. My imagination invents a new history for us. It takes us into the future; to the time when Henry, now five, will graduate college, get married, become a father himself. These are the things we dreamt of and planned for when we were happily married. At least, I dreamt of them. I would picture Henry in his cap and gown while David proudly took his picture. I planned what song I would dance to at Henry’s wedding. I still plan for that. But David will no longer be there. Except to me.

I don’t know if I would call it haunting, per se. There’s nothing mean or frightening about his appearances. I know he doesn’t intend any harm. But I also know that if I were to admit these visions to someone, anyone, I would be scooped up and securely locked in treatment.

Maybe I am crazy; maybe David is just dead and gone and there’s nothing more to be said. Maybe he’s in Heaven. I can’t imagine him in Hell, even after all he’d done to torture me. In fact, we were quite a friendly team in the last few months before he died. I’d really turned a corner. I no longer started a sentence addressed to him in a normal speaking voice and ended it in a piercing shriek filled with accusations. So that was a good sign.

I’d forgiven him. And that’s why I don’t think he’s haunting me.

Another reason I won’t tell anyone about David’s visits is for fear they would take Henry away. Let me tell you about my son. He got the best of each of us. Henry has David’s strong, white teeth and magnificent height. He has my cheerfulness and loquaciousness. He glows. By that I mean that there is a light in him; a light that I once felt in myself and that every now and then still peeks out at the world.

When David comes to talk to me, I try to tell him about Henry. I feel the urgent need to keep Henry uppermost in David’s thoughts. I want to talk about Henry, too; this one, perfect boy that David and I made out of spare parts back when we were in love and capable of anything and true to each other. I can’t conceive of ever loving another man the way I loved David back when we started. To be honest, I don’t ever want to try again. Henry is enough, I tell David. He’s all I need, I tell him. You can let go.

I think that David still comes around because he can’t let me go; can’t accept that he never got the chance to make it right and make our family whole again. I tell him, “I seriously doubt you could have pulled that off,” but David is insistent. He never failed to get anything he ever wanted. That’s probably why he thought he could cheat on me and still keep me. He was so self-assured. How could he fail to have exactly what—and who—he wanted?

Clearly, this not only made him a rotten husband, but also a bit of a crappy father. When I am angry with David—in life and in death—I tell him this. “You were so selfish. Your life didn’t change once we had a child. My whole life was altered.” To be honest, this was the kind of thing I would say to him when he was alive. I can remember uttering these words on numerous occasions during our marriage, during our separation, at the hearing for our divorce, after he failed to show up for visits with Henry on multiple occasions, and even right before he died.

I make him out to be a bad guy, I know. So why did I marry him? Because he was—and could be—everything I wasn’t. He was calm and peaceful when I felt frenetic and loud. He was easily popular with everyone he met. He was capable of accepting the small gifts in life without knocking himself out to achieve and attain more. I admired him when we met. In fact, at our first meeting, I knew my life had changed forever.

Maybe that’s why I had such difficulty separating myself from him; I couldn’t imagine that we wouldn’t have the future I felt our auspicious beginning predicted. I couldn’t imagine it until it was irrevocably taken out of my hands.

When David appears, he doesn’t say, “I’m sorry, baby.” He doesn’t protest his innocence or try to explain himself. Usually, he just looks at me and says, over and over again, “Forever. Forever. Forever.” Sometimes, I say back to him, “I thought so, too.”

 

KATHRYN COULIBALY, a native of Atlantic County, NJ, has been a writer since the age of seven. Her travel tales have appeared in National Geographic’s Glimpse magazine.

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