The front door hits and the heavy footsteps of my husband are stamping through the hall.
I am in the TV room, meditating, but my heart started to bang. The serenity of our small house has disappeared.
I feel all the dark, angry energy that he has brought into my life in recent years. I open my eyes and get up from the couch, knowing that he wants to talk, knowing that there is no way to sink back in a blissful nothing while he is in the house.
I hear the freezer open and the crack of ice in glasses. He appears in the doorway with two drinks, one for me, diluted with tonic, one for him, neat. Both are almost filled to the edge.
I was not a big drinker before I met my husband, but I now understand that drinking after twenty years has been the only one that held us together, a shared ritual at the end of every day.
How I loved this time.
When our three children lived at home, Cocktail Hour meant the beginning of the evening – and all the joy that kept: rustling food for the children while they were sitting at the kitchen table to do their homework and watch them outside to play for the sun.
We had a beautiful family house in Santa Monica and our lives, from the outside, looked charmed. They felt charmed for a while.
We had a beautiful family house and our lives, from the outside, looked charmed. They felt charmed for a while.
But after the last of our children flew the nest three years ago, everything changed – and that charmed life now feels like a distant dream.
I thought I couldn't wait for the children to leave. It would be the start of new adventures for me and my husband.
We had not been on vacation for years (all those children are so expensive!) And I missed traveling very much that I liked when I was young.
I thought we would leave for Europe, maybe Bali, India. I suggested doing wild things together, getting closer and closer without children taking care of.
I never dreamed that the opposite would happen.
About 13 years ago, with the children young, my husband lost his job.
I have always worked and made it long enough to maintain the whole family. I was lucky, forged a path as a successful screenwriter, with tens of millions of people who enjoy my work.
Of course, we could not do the expensive vacations after my husband's income had dried up, but we lived in a beautiful house with five bedrooms close to the Ocean in Los Angeles – we had bought it for $ 2 million after I wrote a hit film and I had spent another $ 300,000 to change it into my dream house.
And my husband turned out to be a great gentleman mother. He left me to write and get the money while he did the school run and the children to baseball practice, doctor's appointments, playdates drove.
When he didn't, he met other outdoor work men in our rich city for the suburbs, daydreams over endless cups of coffee where they could start together, companies in which they could invest, companies that would never be anything.
Looking at our lives, everyone thought it was perfect. Our friends and neighbors knew that my husband did not work, but they assumed it was because he had earned a fortune with venture capital and retired early.
The truth was, although he had indeed worked for venture capital company, his company never made any real money. By the time he lost his job, he had nothing on the couch.
But my husband would rather have died than someone knows that his wife was the one who yielded all the income.
So for many years we have made our mysterious role in marriage. Until the industry changed.
The arrival of streaming paid payment to traditional film budgets and everyone started sharpening their belts.
Suddenly I was not paid for something like what I had ever earned. But naive maybe we have not adjusted our lifestyle, assuming that I was always a script removed from another major function, that the money would come back, that we could continue as we always had.
This life of reckless denial, to burn out all our savings, shocked for several years. And then the 2023 writers strike came, and it all dried up.
I have always worked and made it long enough to maintain the whole family. I was lucky, forged a path as a successful screenwriter, with tens of millions of people who enjoy my work.
Our house looked Shabbier and Shabbier. We needed a new roof and a new oven. My husband encouraged me to try different types of writing, other things to bring in money. I insisted with him to get a job. He refused.
Instead, he rented an office and tried to set up a practice as a consultant, but he failed to produce paying customers. He would sit all day and talk to friends and never bring in a cent. When we fought for it, he would tell me that it takes time to set up a practice.
He had that office for two years, but never one customer.
Eventually we were forced to sell the house in which our children grew up and shrink. It was devastating, but I told myself it was just a house and that it would be fine.
My husband still did not earn money, but blamed me that I could not keep the house. I was furious with him because he didn't work because I had been foreseen alone. I felt that I was abandoned when it got rough and I had no idea how I could forgive him for that.
I didn't try to give our little new house with two bedrooms on one side of the city where no one we knew lived. But our friends – or the people we thought were our friends – did that. As soon as we moved, the invitations dried up. When we did not meet our neighbors while we walked out of the dog, the neighbors completely forgot us.
And the house was too small to be able to have people to ours. I told myself it didn't matter – even when the children wanted to come home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer and there were not enough bedrooms.
They slept on benches and air mattresses, and instead of those large family fines around a huge kitchen table, we ate our laps while squeezing the couch of the living room together.
But the biggest change was in my husband. He had always been gentle and fun. Now he simmered with anger. He barked to me and the children when they were at home. Once supporting and encouraging, he was now overhang with criticism.
Everything I did or said was wrong. What I was wearing; How I acted. He started sharpening me for our friends – and I became quieter, pulled me back to myself, not knowing how he could get my husband back.
We started to argue more. When I bought the fact that he had to bring in money, how I could not do this alone, he would become defensive and begin to point out how I was not 'supportive', how I was not interested in his latest imaginative business plan.
The fight would end that he stormed in anger, before the inevitable return a few hours later, apologetic – until next time.
I started going to bed for him. He would continue to drink and scroll down on his phone. Eventually he would stand up to add me, to fall drunk or faint on the couch, his snoring throbbing through the house.
Of course our sex life had almost disappeared. When we had sex, I hated every second and wanted it to be over quickly, so that I could be alone again.
It was around this point that we both fell into depression.
Women are said to internalize their grief while men externalize.
There were days when I could hardly get out of bed. The children were gone, I stopped seeing friends and rarely left the house. I tried to write, but the words would not come.
In the meantime, his depression manifested himself in anger and alcohol. He was constantly furious and drowned it in massive Glugs from Wodka.
I got afraid of his patience, but hoped that things would change desperately.
You see, I still loved him and always thought we would be married forever, never let myself think about a divorce, even though I knew that I had never been so unhappy.
My husband would rather have died than someone knows that his wife was the one who yielded all the income.
I suggested that we would see the therapist of a few, but he refused. I insisted with him to try antidepressants, but he refused.
One day, when we launched the same old fight, I noticed that I told him, just cold, that I could no longer do it alone.
He grabbed his keys and closed the front door. And although this routine was no different than the hundreds of other arguments we had had, everything was different. A small switch had flown in me.
When he returned hours later and stood in the doorway with those two glass tumblers, full of the edge with alcohol, which begged my forgiveness, I could not look him in the eyes. A shutter had landed around me; I knew it was over.
So this is how my marriage ended. I still wanted us to see a therapist. I wish we had learned how to talk to each other and, more importantly, how to listen.
I wish we had treated each with which demons my husband prevented from working and that I was undoubtedly supportive.
But I know I did the right thing.
Now Single in the 1950s, my career has returned, with a new TV program that keeps me busy.
As far as he is concerned, he fell directly into a different relationship – with a rich widow of course. I hear that he has been withdrawn from her and together she finances their glamorous life.
They say that a leopard cannot change his stains.
