Chapter 33, Goodbye Is Hard To Say

I knew Edward would leave me and he did. I wanted but never expected him to be faithful but he was for what I knew. There was never evidence of another woman in the almost two years we were lovers. If there was another I would have left him. I would not have been able to accept another in his apartment let alone bed, they like he, were mine.

In the spring of 1977 he accepted a hospital research assignment on the East Coast when his internship ended. He said I could follow but it was just words. He knew I wasn’t abandoning my family. It was time for him to start his, not an instant one with another's kids.

I asked if he wanted the jewelry back which upset him. I apologized but then he wanted the panties saying he did not want another man to see me in them. It was weird but I brought them to him and he put them all in plastic bags. I don’t know what he did with them. Maybe he took them with him.

Taking my husband to buy new ones he selected was my notification, if there was another, he was gone.

Edward had a big going away party at his apartment. I didn’t go. I didn’t want to see it stripped of the things remembered while others trampled our private place. Seeing it without the fish tank, water bed, with empty cupboards and refrigerator, cleaned but abandoned stove where I prepared meals would be too much. I didn’t know nor ask what happened to the fish tank. I was afraid he had given it to a friend.

I told him I had never seen another in our sanctuary and did not want to see it now filled with strangers. That is what I said but instead knew I would be socially ill at ease among his peers and would break down and cry. I did not want to be stared at, the uneducated woman he was oddly fixated about. He too was relieved I opted out, a sign he was returning to his own.

Instead I saw him off at the San Francisco Airport, arranged so we were alone when I picked him up outside his apartment. He carried only 2 bags. Everything else was packed and shipped, including his Porsche. Unlike before we said little as I drove, parked the car, we walked to the ticket counter, he checked his baggage and we proceeded to the gate holding hands.

There were no security checks then; one went to the gate to see a passenger off. I had a jeweler make a gold necklace with a little fish and gave it to him as we sat and waited at the gate, an hour early. He surprised me and gave me a little gold frog. We fondled our gifts in silence waiting for the time of call. There was nothing to say. It was over. We were facing the opposite arms of the Y from when we met.