The kitchen smelled like a cinnamon broom and whatever was stuck in the disposal. I had the laptop open to Kemba Credit Union, and my coffee mug from the Columbus Zoo sat on a stack of bank statements, the chip on the rim digging into my palm. It was 10:42 on a Wednesday night. The mortgage cleared in five days.
Evan was still at the gym. My husband is fifty-one now, a commercial real estate broker in Columbus, Ohio. For the last two years he has been remaking himself. Not with surgery. With a trainer named Chet, a tailor in the Short North, a barber who charges eighty-five dollars a visit. The man I married at twenty-six had a patchy goatee and a used Honda Accord with a cracked taillight. This Evan orders his shirts by neck size and sleeve length.
Last Sunday we went to The Refectory for his birthday. The waiter handed him the wine list and then turned to me and asked if I wanted a menu with larger print. “For your mother,” he said. Evan laughed and ordered me the half salad with dressing on the side. “She’s watching her figure.” I sat there in the cardigan I’d had since Lainey was in ninth grade. That night I didn’t sleep. My mother had a saying: after forty, a woman is finished. I hadn’t believed her. But at forty-seven, with a husband who now looked ten years younger than me, I was starting to.
I went through our joint checking because the balance looked wrong.
Eleven transfers. Over fourteen months. Each one going to a Kemba account ending in 4411. Total moved: $41,200. There was also $9,800 to something called Chet’s Elite Performance, and $6,400 to a place called Riverside Men’s Grooming. The joint account had $28,475 left. Lainey’s spring tuition is $9,000. The mortgage is $1,875. I had been married to Evan for twenty-four years.
I printed the statement and left it on the kitchen table. When Evan came in, he smelled like cedar body wash. He saw the paper and said, “You’re going through my things now?”
“It’s a joint account. Your name. My name.”
He hung his keys on the hook by the garage door. “I earn the money. I can spend it.”
“You moved forty-one thousand dollars into a secret account. The mortgage is due Thursday.”
“It’s not secret. It’s my image account. You should see the return on it.”
I had seen the return. A new Ford F-150 King Ranch sat in the driveway while I drove a 2011 Camry with a passenger window that didn’t roll down. He had a standing appointment with a skin care therapist in Grandview. I cut my own hair over the bathroom sink with scissors from the junk drawer.
The next morning I drove to Kemba Credit Union on Bethel Road. The teller was a woman named Pam with pink glasses and a name tag that said “Pam 22 Years.” I asked her to open a high-yield savings account in my name only. I gave her the joint account number and told her to transfer $25,600, leaving exactly $2,875 in checking. That was enough for the mortgage, not enough for his next package with Chet. The receipt curled out of the printer. I folded it twice and put it in my purse.
Then I drove downtown to Columbus State Community College. I parked in the visitor lot and walked into the enrollment office with a cashier’s check for $11,200. I signed up for the two-year Culinary Arts Certificate. The woman behind the counter handed me a temporary student ID and a class schedule. CUL-101, Tuesday and Thursday, 5:30 p.m. I hadn’t been in a classroom since 1998.
At 3:17 that afternoon, I walked into the kitchen. Evan was at the island with his laptop open to the Kemba site. The bank statement with the $41,200 in transfers was under his elbow. He didn’t turn around. He said, “You took twenty-five thousand six hundred dollars.”
I set the class schedule on the counter next to his phone. “I took twenty-five six. You spent forty-one two on Chet and your beard. I spent eleven two on a certificate. The rest is in a savings account you can’t touch.”
He turned then. His face had that new sharpness, the beard lined up like a hedge. “That’s my money.”
“It’s ours. You built your image. I’m building mine.”
He picked up his phone. “I’m calling the bank.”
“The password has been changed. The mortgage still clears. Lainey’s tuition is due next month. You’ll need to sell the truck or use your image account.”
He put the phone down. A vein moved in his neck. “You can’t just take half of everything and leave me with nothing.”
“You left me with nothing first. I was just too tired to see it.” I picked up my car keys from the hook. “Class starts Tuesday.”
In the driveway, the passenger window of the Camry still didn’t roll down. I sat in the driver’s seat and looked through the windshield at the silver maple in the front yard. A few leaves were stuck in the gutter. My hands smelled like the credit union’s hand sanitizer.
I turned the key. The engine grumbled. On the radio, a man was talking about the Buckeyes. I drove toward campus.
