Shred Sisters

by Betsy Lerner

If you were looking for fun, danger, or magic, if you needed to blow up your marriage, your job, or your life, Ollie could help you out. You could call it a pattern, though it was more of an algorithm: Ollie would steal something, smash something, cause a disturbance.

Kira knew other girls would kill for someone as generous and kind as Ari, but he provoked a meanness in her she couldn’t explain.

We must have known the marriage was foundering, but we had no way to talk about it. Instead, we grew polite, perfunctory.

“We shouldn’t wait so long,” he’d say. “We shouldn’t,” I’d agree. But we did.

also knew that Marc had gravitated toward the law because it was black and white, and his keen sense of right and wrong left little room for forgiveness. There would be no second chances.

You sleep side by side, breathe together, eat together, talk all night. After that, it’s a half-remembered movie, a dream you wake from, the details vague and out of reach.

Our repartee was as quick and light as a birdie tapped back and forth over a badminton net.

Of course, I knew that telling yourself you are special, the exception, should be a red flag.

Our passion was ginned up, the repartee hollow, the sex good for being raw and desperate but not much else. I believed that was enough for me, all I deserved.

Mom had chosen the unexamined life and stuck with it to her dying day.

The emotional current was overpowering, and for a moment all the joy and sadness in life pooled inside me and I longed for everyone I’d ever loved. Ari

I walked out the door for the last time and knew that whatever I did next was up to me. I left the door open.