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Do I Ever

By Roger E. Bruner

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Drew (Andrew) Stevens:
I didn’t need to look at caller ID to have strong doubts about answering my cell phone. Elvis’s “Hardheaded Woman,” the all-too-appropriate ringtone I’d chosen months ago for my soon-to-be ex-wife, had already alerted me to the potential aggravation of yet another useless call.
Should I let this one go to voicemail—as I’d done dozens of times before—and leave it there, forever forgotten? Although this call might be important, that wasn’t likely.
Whoops. Too late. Elvis stopped in mid-sentence and I’d made my decision by failing to make a different one. I watched the seconds blip by on my digital watch and listened for the fatal—uh, fateful—beep signaling new voicemail.
One minute passed. No beep. Ninety seconds. Nothing but silence. Spooky silence. Silence I normally considered golden. The seconds continued to tease me with the steady pace of their tireless blinking.
Three minutes passed. What? No voicemail? Strange. Andi always left a message. Perhaps something unexpected had come up. Something more important than bugging me needlessly.
Ha! I should be that lucky. Blessed, that is. As a Christian I didn’t believe in luck. Of course, as a Christian I also didn’t approve of divorce. But that was another story. One I was still trying to figure out.
I was about to holster my phone when Elvis started complaining about his hardheaded woman again. Doing that song every time Andi called would’ve made the poor guy die of boredom if he hadn’t already died years earlier.
After the finalization of the divorce—we expected that within the next month—I would assign Andi a new ringtone. Still Elvis, of course. Had to be. He was my favorite singer. And her least favorite.
How about “Hound Dog”? Yeah, perfect. Especially the line about her not being a friend of his.
I frowned. That’s not how I’d wanted marriage to be.
A familiar female voice began yapping from somewhere nearby. As if trying to get my attention. Oh, right. Although I’d punched the answer button, I hadn’t said anything yet.
The best defense is…not offense. It’s ignorance. “What’s up?” I feigned a yawn to keep from sounding curious, which I was—just slightly. Or interested, which I wasn’t—at all.
“Do you know how lax—how negligent—you are about not answering your phone and returning my calls?”
What a greeting. Gone were the days when Andi had enjoyed the sound of my voice and I’d enjoyed hers. Our relationship had been okay until a year ago. Maybe eighteen months. Better than okay. We’d loved one another in spite of our drastic differences. And we believed love kept two people together—for life.
But marriage for life resembled life imprisonment now. And I was breaking free. Or more accurately, receiving a pardon. One I didn’t request, want, or find biblically acceptable.
I scratched my head. Hmm. If I was to respond honestly, I might as well have fun doing it. “Do I know how I react to your calls, Andi?” That would show her I’d been listening. I snickered once. “Do I ever!”
~ * ~
Andi detested “Do I ever!” more than any of my other everyday-kind-of-guy colloquialisms—and it was my favorite. So I used it often now. Not so much to bug her, but to discourage her from calling so often.
Ditto, addressing her as Andi and not Andrea. Something she hated even more. While we were still happily married, I never intentionally did either of those things.
During the months between “happily married” and “divorce time,” I’d once accidentally called her Andi. She didn’t let me hear the end of it for days.
Days of endless tirades about how I should abandon my casual ways and act more civilized. More mature. More genteel. More formal. More cultivated. More refined.
Not to mention less redundant. Less superfluous. And less supererogatory, whatever that means. More the way she thought of herself as being, in other words. An overabundance of them.
~ * ~
Rather than acknowledge I’d just agreed with her—she’d overlooked a perfect I-told-you-so moment—she launched into her monolog. Something about the consulting business she’d recently left her position at Triple-I to launch, bringing several loyal clients along for the ride. Thick-skinned clients who didn’t object to her volatile, abusive personality. And that was on her better days.
As if that concerned me now. Not the way it had twelve months earlier. If she wanted to work longer hours to afford everything she didn’t need and had no earthly use for, that was her business. Literally and figuratively. I wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. Not anymore.
Andi couldn’t accept my preference for living simply. Residing in a nearly empty one-room shack would’ve satisfied me, even if I had to stumble around in the dark looking for the outhouse. My little apartment wasn’t quite that severe, but it wasn’t the least fancy.
Andi wanted a mansion. A place so huge she’d get lost looking for one of the two dozen marble-encapsulated bathrooms. If she ever got a place like that, I was going to send a huge bag of breadcrumbs as a housewarming gift. If she could find her way to the door to take delivery, that is.
I moved the phone six inches from my head and massaged the blood back into my ear. She was still babbling. After twenty minutes, I might manage to slip in a few appropriate comments. Like, I’ve had enough fun for today, thank you. Say goodbye, Andi.
I seldom indulged in sarcasm, although I was good at it. As a Christian for seventeen of my thirty-five years, I’d worked hard to tone down my thoughts, actions, and speech. Not that I pretended to be perfect. How could I when Andi generously reminded me of my shortcomings on an ongoing basis?
The funny thing was, after growing used to my attentiveness over the years, she took for granted that anything of interest to her would fascinate me. Wrong, woman. Your soliloquies are as meaningless to me as…anything-Elvis is to you. So I continued to tune her out. Mostly, anyhow.
I let a few keywords register casually somewhere in the back of my brain, however. Like snowfall on a distant field. Just in case she demanded my opinion after running out of words. Why worry about it, though? What punishment was worse than calling dozens of times daily?
As unbelievable as it seemed now, I’d spent years paying close attention to everything Andi said and providing thoughtful feedback—feedback she usually took seriously. But not during the last year.
Our relationship had deteriorated so much the divorce was the only thing we had left to talk about, and we had long since talked it to death. In spite of the high cost in words—mostly hers—working out the settlement had been a breeze. Child’s play. A piece of cake.
Andi also detested my use of clichés.
Fine. She was the one with a BA in English. And an MBA in…something I didn’t understand the meaning of. I had an Associate degree in Information Technology. Only a two-year degree, she frequently pointed out. But I’d worked hard and maintained a 4.0 GPA. No matter how smart Andi was, she couldn’t make that claim for herself.
Because she earned substantially more than I did in my web design business—money didn’t mean much to me—she’d picked out and paid for nearly everything we owned. I had very little use for any of it, so…take it, Andi.
We’d agreed completely about the property settlement. The first and only thing we’d agreed about in far too long. Except…
~ * ~
If my angry snarl offended Andi—assuming she’d even noticed it—that was her problem. Angry, yes. We still hadn’t settled that issue. I couldn’t get her to discuss it. Or to take my feelings seriously. So it had become the only issue.
No wonder I’d felt an unconscious need to answer her call. Maybe she’d be willing to settle it now. I wouldn’t feel fully divorced until we solved this problem. No wonder I had such a hard time accepting the divorce.
So I would force myself to listen to the rest of her gab today—I’d be polite and attentive—but then I’d make her listen. Somehow. Even if I had to reach through the phone, grab her by the ears, and shout.

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