Chapter 28

28

Corrine

The thick waft of grey cigar smoke reached Corrine the moment she opened her front door.

She followed the trail of burning tobacco through the house and into Mitchell’s den. He was on the sofa, bare feet propped up on a coffee table and watching a football match on a television screen that took up most of the wall. A box of popcorn rested on his lap and a bottle of beer lay by his side and fast-food delivery wrappers littered the floor. A half-smoked fat cigar rested in a semi-full ashtray.

‘Could you at least let some air in?’ she asked and pressed a button that opened the bifold doors.

‘It’s my room, not yours,’ Mitchell replied without turning to look at his wife.

‘But it’s our house and the smoke travels through it.’

‘Get the help to turn on the extractor fans.’

‘Couldn’t you have done it yourself?’

‘There’s a lot of things I have to do for myself these days.’

Laughter came from a speaker and Corrine realized there were others present in the room, albeit remotely. She slammed the door as she left, irritated at herself for allowing Mitchell to exasperate her.

As she made her way back through the house, Corrine caught a glimpse of a moving image in a digital photo frame perched on a sideboard. It was of a group of friends she had barely seen since the night it was recorded at a silver wedding anniversary party last year. She was smiling in the clip – everyone was – but hers was as artificial as Mitchell’s hair transplant. They were all around the same age but Corrine appeared older. She had given up on fillers and muscle-paralysing treatments in favour of growing old naturally. She didn’t want to look like the others in the video with their breast implants, dermabrasions, facelifts, tummy tucks and designer vaginas. And she no longer cared about trying to impress her husband when he had long given up on her.

He wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with. Back when they had first met, it was his personality, work ethic and ambition as much as his dark-brown curls, sharp blue eyes and solitary dimple on his left cheek she was attracted to.

‘That bugger could charm the stripes off a wasp,’ her mother had warned her. He’d certainly charmed Corrine the night they’d met through mutual friends. He was working for a team overseeing a number of major construction projects while she was a ceramics and art teacher at a local Academy. Two years later they married and she was pregnant by the time they returned from their honeymoon in Thailand.

By the age of 35, Mitchell had set up his own construction business and, two-years after that, his contracts earned him his first seven-figure payout. But his swelling coffers gradually became more important to him than his family. This was when Corrine first started to feel sidelined. However, rather than confront it, she made excuses for him, reminding herself he was throwing everything at his career for his family’s sake. And she had been a willing participant in enjoying the financial spoils. At least another decade passed before she was ready to admit she had made a huge error in judgement and that they were drifting apart.

Corrine couldn’t understand Mitchell’s obsession with money and he didn’t understand her lack of interest in it. For a long time, she’d tried to re-ignite that initial spark with offers to spend more time together to cure her feelings of isolation. Suggestions of romantic weekends away, restaurant dinners and spa breaks were all casually swatted away like flies. Corrine searched for signs he might still care – a touch of her arm as he passed her, an unexpected smile or even a compliment – but nothing came.

When Mitchell refused to attend couples counselling sessions, she went alone. On her move into the spare bedroom, she spent the first fortnight with the door slightly ajar in the hope he would appear one night and beg her to return. Instead, he bought himself a larger television.

It was when he dismissed her desire to return to teaching art and ceramics part-time that frustration got the better of her. Despite herself, she began creating arguments simply to prompt a reaction, for him to acknowledge that he could still hear her. Minor irritants developed into major issues; quirks became provocations. Bumps in the road had expanded into sink holes and his cutting wit left wounds.

‘You don’t have the first idea of who I am, do you?’ she’d once asked him.

‘Have you been listening to the self-help podcasts again?’ he’d replied.

‘Do you know what makes me happy? What scares me? What energises me? Do you know what stops me from sleeping or gives me nightmares? And if I told you, would you even give a damn?’

He’d rolled his eyes but said nothing. His lack of answer had been answer enough. There was no going back after that. She’d known it was time to take charge of her own life and her own happiness.

She wasn’t alone, or so it seemed. Despite the stigma attached to divorce and the fact most of her friends were Upmarrying, an internet search revealed there were thousands of people who shared Corrine’s feelings. It even brought her a little comfort to learn her circumstances had generated its own brand name – “Grey Divorce”. Aging populations meant unhappy spouses weren’t willing to remain in a marriage until death did they part. They wanted more for the thirty or forty years they had left and they were willing to start all over again to find it. Many used Match Your DNA to find who they were supposed to be with, but Corrine had held back, too disillusioned to believe in soulmates.

She thanked God they had never upgraded to a Smart Marriage. Old-school divorces were much easier to negotiate. Friends had often asked why they had not Upmarried. But even before she and Mitchell had discussed divorce, he had boasted there was no need to as they would barely notice the financial gains. She wondered now if the real reason was that he too knew their life together was waning.

When Corrine eventually informed him she wanted to end their marriage, there were no protests or attempts to change her mind. He didn’t even question why. His only insistence was that she waited for six months until Nora and Spencer were to leave for university before they announced it. Their friends and neighbours would find out soon after. She doubted if many would remain acquaintances once they heard the news. Being friends with a divorcee was akin to having a contagious disease.

She had a little money put aside and, as a director in Mitchell’s business, she was entitled to annual dividends and a healthy company pension. Monetary and property negotiations were minimal and kept between their respective solicitors until a settlement was agreed upon. Mitchell would keep the house. Corrine had no desire to rattle about it alone, penalized into paying higher utility bills and taxes because of her voluntary divorcee status. So she would downsize and start somewhere afresh in the next phase of her life. She would not need to work but she wanted to.

In the meantime, she and Mitchell continued to live together but apart. They disagreed over everything from immigration to education, politics to the environment and, more recently, the Sanctity of Marriage Act. Their debates often ended the same way: him hearing what she had to say but not caring. Then he’d offer a wave of his hand as if dismissing a waitress with a reminder that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

Corrine reflected on the advice her therapist had given her during her solo marriage counselling sessions. ‘When you’re confronted by negative behaviours you don’t like, try to find one positive. It doesn’t matter how small it is. It’ll be there if you look hard enough for it.’

Today’s only positive was that, back in his den and surrounded by his diet of unhealthy foods, Mitchell hadn’t died of a cholesterol-induced heart attack. Because then she’d feel the necessity to tidy up before the ambulance arrived. And she had better things to do with her time.