On the Rocks

There was nothing left to say. No roads less traveled. He had left his ring in her favorite martini glass sitting on the bar. The one place they both knew she would find it.

She had always been a social drinker. Friday nights and sometimes Saturday brunch with the girls, a martini, a bloody mary, maybe a margarita or two. While he being the son of dysfunctional alcoholics rarely if ever found himself with a drink in his hand. He had done a spot of reading on the subject and found out that alcoholism was statistically higher in the second generation of an alcoholic family. While he accepted that not all statistics were factual he was not willing to risk his family or for that matter his liver and them being wrong.

In hindsight he found that there was not one particular event or moment that pushed her over the edge from social drinker to alcoholic. Loneliness, a miscarriage, her mothers' cancer fight any or all of the above could have been the straw that stirred the drink. In her eyes she was just fine. She could handle the booze and he was just jealous because she knew how to have a good time and he didn't.

They tried counseling but it was a spectacular failure. She was opened minded until her drinking became the topic on the table. When the subject was broached, the damn broke, and she ran out of the room with tears streaming down her face.

He did not hear from her until three that morning when she called from the local jail. Her car had wrapped itself around a telephone pole on the way home from the local pub. Fortunately no one was hurt. He bailed her out but she refused to discuss it with him. As far as she was concerned the one with the drinking problem was him, because he had a problem with her drinking.

The marriage disintegrated from there. He began sleeping on the couch, not so much to avoid her, but to avoid being woken up by her when she stumbled into bed. They rarely spoke. They were islands in the same current. Sharing sand but little else. He knew it was over. Nothing would change until she put down the bottle and he knew from experience that she was not ready for that.

He remembered the clear-eyed beauty he had married. How his love for her had seared his soul. Now his soul was filled with the damp embers of that forgotten feeling. He had no tears left to cry. No words left to say. So removed his ring and placed it in the glass. The symbolism of that action saying more than words ever could. He picked up his suitcase and walked out the door without looking back. Leaving her on the rocks.