REUNITED. A quiet night at Nott Cott, preparing dinner together.
December 2016.
Meg and I had discovered that we shared the same favorite food: roast chicken.
I didn’t know how to cook it, so that night she was teaching me.
I remember the warmth of the kitchen, the wonderful smells. Lemon wedges on the cutting board, garlic and rosemary, gravy bubbling in a saucepan.
I remember rubbing salt on the skin of the bird, then opening a bottle of wine.
Meg put on music. She was expanding my horizons, teaching me about folk music and soul, James Taylor and Nina Simone.
It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day.
Maybe the wine went to my head. Maybe the weeks of battling the press had worn me down. For some reason, when the conversation took an unexpected turn, I became touchy.
Then angry. Disproportionately, sloppily angry.
Meg said something I took the wrong way. It was partly a cultural difference, partly a language barrier, but I was also just over-sensitive that night. I thought: Why’s she having a go at me?
I snapped at her, spoke to her harshly—cruelly. As the words left my mouth, I could feel everything in the room come to a stop. The gravy stopped bubbling, the molecules of air stopped orbiting. Even Nina Simone seemed to pause. Meg walked out of the room, disappearing for a full fifteen minutes.
I went and found her upstairs. She was sitting in the bedroom. She was calm, but said in a quiet, level tone that she would never stand for being spoken to like that.
I nodded.
She wanted to know where it came from.
I don’t know.
Where did you ever hear a man speak like that to a woman? Did you overhear adults speak that way when you were growing up?
I cleared my throat, looked away. Yes.
She wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of partner. Or co-parent. That kind of life. She wasn’t going to raise children in an atmosphere of anger or disrespect. She laid it all out, super-clear. We both knew my anger hadn’t been caused by anything to do with our conversation. It came from somewhere deep inside,
somewhere that needed to be excavated, and it was obvious that I could use some help with the job.
I’ve tried therapy, I told her. Willy told me to go. Never found the right person. Didn’t work.
No, she said softly. Try again.
