Anne

It's dark in the garden, now. I can't hear the bees in the apiary, but I know they're there. Honey bees are smaller than I thought they would be. I guess I always pictured bumblebees? Maybe they're asleep and maybe they're just quiet.
I can hear frogs everywhere, just like at home. There's a little fountain opposite the door that makes a soft gurgling laugh. And there is, underneath everything else, the sound of Providence.
This is my first time in Rhode Island. I have been to Massachusetts and Connecticut plenty, but never found the reason to dodge over. Well, this time, the state is it's own reason. I knock it off the list. Of all states east of the Mississippi, only Maine eludes me. Someday, I guess.
The house I'm at doesn't belong to a friend. It's Anne's. I met her today by contacting her on Couchsurfing. I'm not her first guest. I'm not her first this week. Yesterday she had in an Italian girl who made the Olympic rowing team and have it up to go to college. I suspect I will be a forgettable episode in Anne's pastiche of new acquaintances, but she'll remain the first host I've had.
Her house is lovely. I don't know what I was expecting, but it's nicer than that. The wallpaper is fantastic the first time, and I don't think I'd tire of it. It would only fade into the background of reality and sink away. She has art on the walls: a lot of it. One is particularly my favorite. It's just a cloud, but the painter has captured well the way light glows when it gets trapped inside a cloud and illuminates it from the inside. Like seeing a cloud's x-ray. The at is sometimes sent to get and sometimes collected. She has a library floor to ceiling with books. I suspect she has read all of them, or none of them. Either she keeps what she reads or she only gathers new, but she's not here to ask.
She offered me a water, earlier, or cider. Just like that: "Would you like a water, or cider?" I must have looked thirsty—I was—because she made sure I got it. Over the drink, she learned a little about me. I told her the edge of my story and she was so sure of herself.
"Oh, everybody has a first marriage."
I'm sorry, what? Yeah, sure. everybody has a first, but I only wanted a first. It's exhausting, working yourself up to make a decision that you expect to affect the rest of your life only to find out that any effect it has will only be residual, because the primary effect has decided to move to Oregon. But I didn't say that. I don't know what I said. I think maybe "That seems very reductive, Anne," but she didn't need to hear it, because she wasn't done.
"My mother was good for me that way: she taught me that everybody has a first marriage. You get it out of the way and you're ready for a real one." Anne is leaning against the kitchen counter, but I can imagine her in front of a lecture hall, with students rabidly scribbling notes.
"I don't like that, right now. When I make a promise, I'm a man of my bond." I was in for the whole banana, if you take my meaning. Good or bad, brown or green or just perfectly yellow. But of course that's a meaningless sentiment, now. The banana doesn't exist to be in for. And she knew it.
"Who cares!" Ouch, if you don't mind my saying so. "She's on her path and you're on yours. If your path was forever, so what? Her's wasn't. And she had to get out."
Anne paused. For effect, not to let me speak.
"Everybody's on a journey, and they can only do what's right for themselves, at that time. If she had a path that led from you, then it's better for you that it happened so soon, rather than later. Now you've got time to get over her."
I know there's no way to change this woman's mind. Anne has lived more life than I have, and not because she's older. So I change what I need to say.
"Anyway, that's why I'm on this journey. She lives in Oregon, and that's where I'm going. I think maybe when I get there, we'll work out the divorce." I see in Anne's eyes a little brightness, like she's surprised.
"You don't need her for that. If you want it, just file. Send her the stuff in the mail."
We dither. Anne holds firm to this point. I try to point out that I'm not the one who wants it, Delight is. But I don't suspect she'll file. Perhaps there's a freedom to ignoring it. Perhaps it's difficult, like taking an envelope with an already writtenstamped letter to the mailbox. perhaps it's more, or less. Anne thinks it might be money stopping Delight from filling. It's not. "So," she says, "you're the one wanting it. So do it." I want her to use pleasant colloquialisms like "you're the one with a bug in your britches," but she's refreshingly, infuriatingly direct. "Don't let this last for a long time. It will get in your head, the questions. Don't let it worry you, what she was thinking, why she did it. It's her path, not yours. If you want it, do it."
Do it.
It echoes with me. I'm sitting alone in the garden because Anne used to be out here and I didn't want to be antisocial, in case she wanted to talk. But like a mystery made of vapor on a hot day, she ghosted on me. Maybe I've got stubbornness to account for. There's a story dad read to us when we were small about a young man who promises to deliver a parcel, but is frustrated at every turn, run all about town, and given a tormenting day. But he delivers, at the end, and proves that his word is good, that a promise he makes is worth more than the hot air it's made of. I always wanted to be like that. And now I've made a promise, and I can't properly keep it because the person I've made it to doesn't want it, won't accept the terms. It's my sheer cussedness that keeps me going, perhaps.
Do it.
But there's more, too. Marriage is worth something to me. And if I am to marry again, how will that bond be more than trash if I treat this bond as trash?
Do it.
No.
I'm not ready, yet, Anne. I know you've seen more of the world, lived more of life, and given me the best advice you have, as straight as you can. But I'm not ready or willing to end this farce with my wife. I don't want her back for a thousand excellent reasons, but I'm not willing to part with this tenuous connection on some moral ground or other.
What I want is bandages and sympathy, but you've handed me a helmet and a sword. I want to lie down and you told me to charge. What is that about?
Do it.
No.
Not yet.
Anne lives in a very nice house in a lovely neighborhood in an exquisite city. She's tall and elegant and she owns a cat. She speaks with force and surety, but she not I not anybody else knows everything there is to know.
So not yet, Anne. That'll have to be good enough.