I sat at the folding card table in my kitchen and opened the final notarized decree that made legal my broken-up marriage with Debbie. I took that paper and stuck it to the wall with a Bic pen stabbed in the sheetrock. During that time two years ago I was full of such acts, pretending for no one’s sake but my own that I could be a hard-ass, that none of it bothered me. So here’s where I stood: I was thirty-five years old, coming off eight years of a marriage springing leaks I ignored until the whole thing was sinking, and as many years teaching geometry and woodshop to tenth-graders. I was done with school, didn’t care if the children could calculate isosceles triangles or build bookends, and so had made plans to abandon Winston-Salem, head south to Florida, and find a job wiring houses in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. In my heart this passed for a romantic gesture, which according to Debbie I lacked in abundance. I’ll show her, I thought, but really thought of a job that wouldn’t put me on disability if I could keep myself insulated and grounded.
