Home Away from Home

What I want to write back is "Congratulations. High fucking time you unloaded that rabid cow. Be more selective next time."

But of course I don't. A girl can dream.

He sends me another.

"I'm staying near you."

Oh goody. Time to move. My knee-jerk reply might have gone something like "Don't expect a dinner invitation anytime soon." But my sensibilities really just want to be assured that I won't be bumping into him in the local Starbucks. So instead I reply, "Where?"

He replies with the name of some condominium complex that when we were kids were The World's Worst Apartments. If a boy from there asked you out, he might as well have also admitted to performing animal sacrifices. I know he hasn't gone out and signed a lease. He must be staying with someone. I am not even remotely curious. But I do assume that his shrew wife has thrown him out.

I don't want to engage in any further exchange of information or heinously personal details. To know too much is to be sucked into his shit storm. To be sucked in is to drown in the quicksand Joe creates for himself with the problems he can't solve for himself. To be ignorant of the details is to sidestep disaster.

I simply write, "When Lars and I were separating, I was advised that the person who moves out is not responsible for the mortgage payment. Hire a divorce lawyer. You need advice."

He didn't reply. I guess he didn't particularly care for that advice.

Some time later, he texted something about putting his check into his own account.

Well, I should hope so, Slick.

I call Scott and fill him in on all the latest developments. And when he senses certain doom, I reassure him. I tell him I have made a conscious decision to refuse to be involved. I verbalize that I am fully aware that my responsibilities to my kids, my obligations at work, my commitment to my relationship with him and my generally sunny disposition are too important to sacrifice on the funeral pyre of my brother's doomed marriage.

And then Estelle calls.