Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [117]
“Well, there you go. Your wife is bored, my friend. Some people call it the seven-year itch. Some call it a midlife crisis. But it all amounts to the same thing: boredom. One word. Told you.”
Milo didn’t know what to say. There was certainly truth in what Emma had said. Christine did seem bored, no longer finding enjoyment in the television, the movies, the afternoons spent at the town pool, and the occasional games of hearts and setback that filled much of their leisure time. In addition to the exercise regimen and the drinks after work, she had started filling her weekends with more and more community service. She had even begun taking an art class at the University of Hartford and had talked about looking into community theater. Milo hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but in light of Emma’s questioning, it seemed as if Christine might have been pulling away from Milo in more ways than he had originally imagined. Could it really have been as simple as that? Could the entire separation amount to nothing more than Christine’s being bored with their marriage, bored with her husband, and bored with her life? It seemed so utterly impossible for so much to boil down to so little, but maybe it was true. Whereas Milo found happiness in his relatively simple life—the time he spent with clients, the evenings in front of the television, his Wednesday nights with the guys, and an occasional movie or ball game—maybe Christine wanted more. Maybe she had decided that she needed the kind of man who would sit at the bar on a Friday night and drink martinis. The kind of man who rode motorcycles instead of mopeds. The kind of man who didn’t spend his time playing Dungeons & Dragons in the basement of a friend’s home and who didn’t have to answer requests for adult diapers and Viagra at all hours. Perhaps in the end, he simply couldn’t measure up to what she had expected. What she had wanted.
Could it really have been this simple?
He also couldn’t figure out how this virtual stranger had managed to diagnose the flaws in his marriage when a professional like Dr. Teagan had not.
“But hey,” Emma added in a noticeably more cheerful voice. “That doesn’t mean it’s your fault, Milo. I’m not saying that you’re boring. I’m just saying that your wife is bored. She’s bored with her life. And since you’re such a large part of it, you can’t help but end up with the short end of the stick.”
“I guess,” Milo said, flipping on his blinker to exit the highway and turn around.
“Seriously. This isn’t an indictment of you. It’s just the way things are. The two of you were probably incompatible to begin with.”
“How can you say that? You don’t even know Christine. And you barely know me.”
“Maybe I’m wrong, but in my experience, these things are much simpler than people make them out to be. Like I said, divorce can usually be explained in one word. Boredom. Dissatisfaction. Addiction. Incompatibility. You choose the word, but it all means the same thing.”
Milo was silent for the next several miles, annoyed with Emma for her presumptuousness, her arrogance, but mostly for her keen insight. And as if she were continuing to read his mind, Emma remained silent as well, allowing Milo to consider all that had been said. Perhaps she was right. He had spent the last five years, including three years of marriage, trying to impress Christine whenever possible, attempting to put forth an image that did not exactly match his personality. He had spent a great deal of time trying to be a cooler, trendier, less nerdy version of himself. Maybe in the end, he had simply failed in his ruse. Perhaps Christine had ultimately seen right through him.
“Maybe you’re right,” he finally said. “Maybe me and Christine weren’t right for each other.”
What Milo didn’t add was his fear that no one would be right for a man whose life was ruled by the urgent need to do strange, unexplainable things, a man who enjoyed reading books with Edith Marchand