I don't remember where these appeared, but they fell from something into the center of the floor. In an instant I was carried back to when my ex and I were still together and I'd find crumpled up receipts on the tiled kitchen floor, in the bedroom by the hamper, on top of the washing machine, or in his pants pockets when I was doing laundry. After finding out about his first affair six months after our wedding, I started unfolding the slips, pressing the creases flat, and reading the tiny black print. Toward the end of our relationship when he was home less often I started finding more receipts from bars and liquor stores. Sometimes it was clear that he had just paid for his own tab, but other times he was not alone. Even Dunkin Donuts slips were always coffee for two. I kept quiet about the receipts figuring a coffee or beer here and there wasn't much to be concerned about or at least not a reason to start an argument.
About a month before he told me he was leaving me, I found a receipt from Leominster. He'd bought dinner for two one night in a city miles away from home. I looked at a calendar to try to trace the date from weeks before, but I couldn't remember if it was one of the nights he'd slept at the hospital where he worked. He spent so many nights away from home it was hard to remember exactly when he'd been away.
When he came home from work the day I found the receipt, I asked him what was in Leominster. The color drained from his face for a quick second before his mind made up a lie to cover himself. I could see the lie forming in his eyes and I felt my heart pounding as if it were trying to punch its way through my chest. He claimed that he was there with a friend from work-- an older guy that he talked about often and went out drinking with. He said someone had been hassling his coworker's daughter and he'd gone to threaten the man. Even if the story were true, nothing about it felt right. Why drive an hour away from where you live and work to start trouble with someone you've never met, to defend someone you don't know? And if that was what happened, how could one deliberately threaten a person, whatever it is that that meant I didn't inquire or want to know, and then sit down to a meal in a restaurant nearby? And if he was the one "doing the favor" why had he paid for the meal? He said he hadn't told me because he knew I'd be upset. I got the same sick feeling that I had when I found out about his first affair and it didn't dissipate for days.
Maybe he was right to be mad that I checked the receipts he left lying around the house. I don't know if it's possible to patch broken trust after someone has been dishonest. In my heart, I knew he was with someone else. I checked the receipts because I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't just being overly-sensitive given what had happened in the past, but I also checked the receipts because I was hoping more than anything to prove that he wasn't having another affair. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to find that he was faithful.
When these receipts turned up over a year after he left, my first instinct was to unroll them and read the lettering. I realized though that even if they did have further proof that he was seeing someone else, I didn't want to know. We will be divorced in another month. What good would it do to know the details of what he was doing all the nights he didn't come home? I knew that whatever was written on the receipts would only make me feel worse, would only bring up the same heart-pounding, nauseating, sweat-soaked chills that I felt all too often during the five years of our marriage. I picked them up from the floor, ripped them to pieces, and tossed them into the trash.
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