The Image

In the photograph he is smiling. His wife stands next to him. She's an average woman. The type that makes you feel as if you have seen her before or conversed with her at some unspectacular event. Somewhere. Hard to believe that they have been married for over six years. She is his fourth wife. Where do you know her from? Well, it really doesn't matter, does it? She has no part in your life. But the man. Another photograph captures him laughing, obviously sharing a light-hearted moment at a social function. Strange to see him laughing. Is he truly that happy deep down inside? How could he be? It wasn't so long ago. Maybe he had shared his unhappiness with his third wife. Strange that she owned the house he and his second wife had wanted to buy so many years ago. Odd coincidence. Does he even think of those days any more? You know, the ones spent with his family. Seeing the photographs makes you wonder.

His second marriage wasn't perfect, but it was his longest at fifteen years. His first had ended in four years, mimicked it seems by his third. Number two had appeared destined to last. He had a close family. They seemed to share the same goals, aspirations. They worked hard together. They laughed together. Then after more than a decade, they started to grow apart. But they didn't quit. They still enjoyed each other and the family that they had created. Things would get better, they thought, and when he earnestly began new hobbies, his wife encouraged him. He felt good that there were new goals, new opportunities to be happy together. She, too, felt optimistic once again. It had been a tough battle but they had stayed together and worked through it. There was so much to look forward to together.

Until one evening when he told her he had filed for divorce. He gave her nothing to grasp for a reason. He said, simply, that he wasn't happy. He had never been. Not once, he said. She later heard rumors that he had met another woman, but by the time she'd heard that, she had no longer cared. He would be moving out in two weeks. They should tell their daughter. And they did, but he didn't leave, and they played a charade of acceptance of the inevitable divorce until ten months later he was gone. His ex-wife had primary custody of their daughter. He had liberal visitation and he picked his daughter up every other weekend. Then, after a few months, she didn't want to go with him one Saturday and he walked away. He never tried again. He sent gifts at Christmas and on her birthday. He paid the required child support until she graduated high school. Then it was over. He didn't see her. He didn't write. There were no cards, no gifts. A month after his mother died, he sent his daughter a letter and the obituary.

Could a man discard his own child so easily? Surely he must have regretted his decisions.
How does he laugh so readily? If the camera could look inside this man how different the pictures might be.