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It's Political
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Straight Female / 54
And Then One Day I'm Married, For Real, A Husband, For Real
I am no longer a young woman. I'm 54. When I was 22 I was robbed in Madrid. Money, passport, clothes. Alone, no language skills, I fell asleep on a park bench. I woke up with a man beside me, in a suit and a briefcase. An American working in Madrid. He claimed to have kept some very bad people away from me. While I slept like a baby.
Over the next two weeks I was here and there and everywhere. I got marriage papers, a new name, a new passport, and one day without notice on a plane business class to the States. A day later at my father's lake house, introducing my husband of two weeks. He left me with my father, and instructions to behave myself. I didn't see him again for six months.
Last year he retired, finally. Over these past decades he showed up when he did, left when he did, and left me with two children, now grown and on their own. For over twenty years I never tested if my marriage was real. It wasn't. A church marriage, but no civil equivalent. Not 'legal'. Oh, about that, legal was a problem. He couldn't have that.
It's legal now. I know he never worked with his 'job'. An alias. I know that now, I guessed but now I know. My name and passport an alias. My children's last name, an alias. My life, an alias.
I'm 54 and married to a man I don't know, never did. Now he's retired, now I'm on the job. Now I'm a real life wife. Now that he is retired. Day and night.
Over the next two weeks I was here and there and everywhere. I got marriage papers, a new name, a new passport, and one day without notice on a plane business class to the States. A day later at my father's lake house, introducing my husband of two weeks. He left me with my father, and instructions to behave myself. I didn't see him again for six months.
Last year he retired, finally. Over these past decades he showed up when he did, left when he did, and left me with two children, now grown and on their own. For over twenty years I never tested if my marriage was real. It wasn't. A church marriage, but no civil equivalent. Not 'legal'. Oh, about that, legal was a problem. He couldn't have that.
It's legal now. I know he never worked with his 'job'. An alias. I know that now, I guessed but now I know. My name and passport an alias. My children's last name, an alias. My life, an alias.
I'm 54 and married to a man I don't know, never did. Now he's retired, now I'm on the job. Now I'm a real life wife. Now that he is retired. Day and night.
