The Last Original Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

doesn’t it?”
    Dr. Harrison Katz was quickly losing points with me.
    â€œYes. It does. But my annoyance doesn’t stop with the age spread, Dr. Katz. Paolo’s swift remarriage was just another sign.”
    â€œSign of what?”
    â€œReally? That wives are so easily gotten over and so easily replaced. We are an expendable breed.”
    â€œDo you really believe that?” To his credit, his expression was briefly ever so slightly incredulous.
    â€œYes, I do. The evidence is all over the place. Men wear us out, either bury us or divorce us, and then they just go get another woman to be their mother.”
    â€œGo on . . .”
    â€œSo I looked around at these second wives with their fake boobs and their Jennifer Aniston flat-ironed hair and their Michelle Obama toned upper arms and I felt more like a chaperone than a peer. They were all wearing skintight bandage dresses with spiky platform high heels and they had their spray tans and big chunky jewelry. I was wearing, well, something age appropriate, pearls, pumps, a nice dress. I realized over the course of the night that they had plenty of chitchat for each other, but when they talked to me, they deferred as though they were being respectful of their grandmother. That was when I came to what I thought was a rather startling realization.”
    â€œAnd what was that?”
    â€œThat I didn’t want to be there. I really didn’t want to be there! Worse? I didn’t belong there! All of a sudden I didn’t care. Wes’s friends were married to girls who are young enough to be their daughters. I didn’t want to spend every holiday and weekend for the rest of my life with a bunch of Barbies. These men were Wes’s oldest friends, and their former wives were mine. These insipid young women would never be my friends. Moreover, I didn’t want them to be my friends.”
    â€œHmmm . . .”
    â€œHmmm, what? Listen, every time I looked at those men and thought about how much they hurt their families, I got angry. And guess what? They hurt me too!”
    â€œAnd how is that?”
    â€œReally? You need an answer to that? Look, the self-indulgence of those men, with the exception of Paolo, denies me the company of my closest friends. There will be no more Saturday nights with them. It’s all done! Finito! From here on in, weddings will be awkward, baptisms will be awkward, graduations . . . the entire structure of my social life has been undermined by a bunch of men who are afraid of getting old and who think a younger woman will reverse the clock for them. The social life that I had, that I loved, is gone! You can’t see that? ”
    â€œYes. I do. But it is what it is. Divorce is painful and it impacts everyone, but as you know, half of all marriages end in divorce. It’s not unusual.”
    â€œDr. Katz, I’m not campaigning for tougher divorce laws. Quite the opposite. I’m saying my life, my marriage—it all just doesn’t make sense anymore. I might have twenty years left to live or maybe twenty-five and I’ve just come to the conclusion I don’t want to spend them in a relationship that has run its course, surrounded by people I don’t want to know. It’s just stupid. I don’t want to be made to feel bad about my age, and I don’t want to be anyone’s personal slave anymore. And maybe most important, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with someone who feels he’s giving me a break by staying married to me. It’s just about as simple as that.”
    Katz sighed hard and made some notes. Obviously, he did not disagree with me.
    â€œWhat about your daughter and your son? What do they think?”
    â€œIt’s time my daughter took responsibility for her daughter and for their lives. And my son, as you know, lives out of the country.”
    â€œBut what did they think ? You know, about you