He lay next to her considering his ex-wife. Certain things are hard to get over. She understood him better than anyone. Even his mother never really knew him. He remembered his mother once told him, "You're my only child, but for the life of me I'll never figure you out. Your father was as transparent as the invisible man before I kicked him out for good. But you're another story altogether." When his ex-wife said she'd leave him for good, a flood of confusion seized him. All that data about him would now be compromised—how he refused to eat anyone's cooking but his own, how only he could do his own ironing, how he stacked on the bedroom dresser loose change from his pocket in a tower from quarters at the base to nickels to pennies to dimes at the summit. She said he didn't care about her. But that's not true. If it were, why was he thinking about all this now?
He got out of bed leaving her there, put on just his pants, and walked outside. The rising sun was radiating on the front of his house. The clapboard siding and shutters needed painting. The white paint from the clapboard and the black paint from the shutters were peeling, especially on the southern side of the house. He could not forgive himself for buying into the brazen lie about the advantages of southern exposure. He needed to paint but he needed a change. This time he thought, he'd paint the clapboard black and the shutters white. And he'd get started right away. He wouldn't wait for her to leave. And if she did, it wouldn't matter. Not this time.
