Shacking Up With My Ex During the Pandemic

Shacking Up With My Ex

The pandemic creates strange bedfellows

Stocksy Time expands when the world shuts down. I feel like I have lived in isolation for years. Actually, it has been months. I have been under a Stay at Home restriction since September, when I fell and broke my neck. The doctor told me I wasn't paralyzed but would need spinal fusion surgery. Home after eight days in the trauma unit, as a single middle-aged woman who lived with my cat, I needed help. Wearing a huge neck brace, I couldn't turn my head to see what was behind me or to the sides, making it impossible to walk on Brooklyn's crowded streets, travel on the subway, go to work, cook my own meals. I was in my apartment. After insisting on a divorce in 2004, I began talking to my ex-husband, solely about our son, five years ago. Helpfulness has always been his strong point, so I asked him if he could assist me with shopping and cooking and be there after the surgery. When he arrived with bundles of food, made dinner, cleaned up and watched television with me, I asked if he could stay the night. When he did, I felt safer and more protected than I had in years. He said, “I'll come at the end of the day, make dinner and stay until morning, for a month. But I have a life, and that's it." It's been almost seven months and he's still here. Since became rampant and going back and forth on the subway dangerous, he has moved his essentials into my apartment. I gave him my small second bedroom, which had been my studio, as his space to work from home and talk to his friends, while I work on my computer at the dining table. I follow the trail of potato chip crumbs and check every so often to make sure he hasn't turned my studio into a man cave. We are not a couple, rather a couple of dear friends who are riding out the pandemic together. After years of living alone, having my ex in my apartment, even when he's in another room, feels intimate. We go for to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, with me still wearing my neck brace and both of us decked out in sunglasses, masks and gloves. On the way, we zigzag from one side of the street to the other to maintain social distance from joggers, parents with baby carriages or kids in tow, other walkers. At each corner, he checks to make sure no cars are coming. Usually there are none. Upon returning home, resting on my bed, I look out the window at the city and revel in the rare silence of Brooklyn. He loves to shop, chop, and cook recipes I concoct in my head. After congratulating each other on another scrumptious dinner, which he documents on his iPhone, he cleans up, understanding my continued lack of mobility. We watch films on Netflix and the classic movie channel, courtroom TV series sprinkled with a little Will and Grace, then the nightly news about the latest COVID numbers and . We read to each other so we can sleep. Since our tastes are different, we compromise on books. The main thing is that whatever we read connects us, and blocks out the pandemic. We've read D.H. Lawrence, a biography of Lee Miller, a memoir about someone discovering how her father escaped the concentration camps, crime fiction with a comedic twist. When we turn off the light, we lay on opposite sides of my queen-size bed like stick figures. If I hadn't broken my neck, we would cuddle, might even have sex. But if I hadn't broken my neck he wouldn't be here. Our weeks may sound boring, but who wants drama at a time like this? For once in my life, the comfort of someone I care about just being there is enough.

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