I Don't Know Why #4

"I Still Give My Ex-Husband Great Gifts and I Don’t Know Why" The fourth installment of an occasional Oldster Magazine column by bestselling novelist Laura Lippman.

Oh, I know why I did it in the first year of our separation. I wanted him to realize what a gem he had walked out on. In my memory, he literally walks out, nine days after my 61^st birthday, having explained that he loves me, but is no longer in love with me. I could be wrong about the details, but I’m definitive about the date: Our marriage ended Feb. 9, 2020, although the divorce wouldn’t be official until Jan. 12, 2024.

Eight months after my birthday, he turned 60. By then, we had met with a mediator, I had a lawyer, but we weren’t moving as swiftly toward disunion as I would have liked. (See: “divorce wasn’t official until Jan. 12, 2024,” above.) Granted, it was that first surreal Covid summer, made more surreal by being in a “pod” with a person who was no longer my spouse. But we had a 10-year-old, we had to figure out home-schooling, shared custody, and activities that would keep everyone from going bonkers.

We visited state parks and battlefields. We paid our respects to the gravesite of my ancestor, Septimus Deaver, a Revolutionary War soldier. (He carried Lafayette on his back through the shallows of the Susquehanna. This is verifiable.) We went to Target. We went to Target a lot. One hot summer day, we visited the Baltimore Museum of Art sculpture garden, which was good for about 25 minutes of distraction.

I am a great gift-giver even when not motivated by spite. But I am, alas, competitive. Once, during my marriage, I crowed in a group chat that I had “won” Hanukkah. A friend observed that I was not bringing the right spirit to the holidays, or even to marriage. Fair. But I sincerely love giving gifts, especially when it involves finding things that people don’t even realize they desire or need.

My daughter, standing next to Rodin’s nude of Balzac, crossed her arms in imitation. Later that night, studying my camera roll, I realized the pose was familiar. Sure enough, her father had done the same thing two or three years earlier. When my stepson visited at summer’s end, I showed him the stance and asked him to replicate it. I had the photos framed as a triptych and it is utterly delightful, these three obviously related humans, imitating Balzac.

Happy birthday! See what a gem you walked out on?

I am a great gift-giver even when not motivated by spite. But I am, alas, competitive. Once, during my marriage, I crowed in a group chat that I had “won” Hanukkah. A friend observed that I was not bringing the right spirit to the holidays, or even to marriage. Fair. But I sincerely love giving gifts, especially when it involves finding things that people don’t even realize they desire or need.

I gave my ex one of the first iPods. He didn’t know what it was when he unboxed it, but he became devoted until Spotify usurped his affections. I presented him with posters from his favorite movies. I commissioned crafts inspired by his work in television — characters from The Wire as finger puppets, a set of Treme Russian nesting dolls. I found a sign in a schlocky mall store that read: “I could agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.” Of all the things I gave my ex, that might be his favorite.

Last year, 45 months into our separation, I learned of the Duke University Press “Singles” series — thank you, Slate’s Culture Gabfest — and bought my ex the first three entries in hardcover. I even sent a note to the press’s director suggesting that my ex might be a good fit for the series, which explores seminal songs in book-length essays. For my ex’s most recent birthday, I tracked down an affordable limited-edition poster that featured a painting by Robert Motherwell, his favorite. Post-divorce, setting up new households, one often has some blank walls to fill, and I wanted to show him that it didn’t require a big cash outlay to find high-quality prints and lithographs.

And now, Christmas-Hanukah approaches and, yes, I have a gift for him: A framed poster of Woody Guthrie’s 33 “rulin’s” for a better life, along with some Woody Guthrie pencils and a set of Guthrie’s CDs, in a box that looks like an old-fashioned suitcase. He may, in fact, already have the CDs, but so it goes. You can’t win ‘em all, although lord knows I used to try.

This summer, I reread Endless Love, a beautiful novel that deserves far better screen adaptations than it has known so far. A teenager, obsessed with his girlfriend – and her idiosyncratic family – sets fire to the family’s home, thinking it will allow him to stage a heroic rescue. The fire destroys the house, the family is torn apart, the boy is committed to a psychiatric facility. Upon release, he begins to seek out the family members, intent on finding his ex-girlfriend. He ends up corresponding with the mother. She reminds him of how he curried favor with everyone in the family. In her case, he joined in the family sport of ferreting out her private stashes of chocolate, returning them to her joyfully, expectantly.

She writes: “You were like a dog with a stick: throw it! hide it! I know you!”

It was not exactly a compliment.

When I began writing this essay, I was a dog with a stick and a bone. I was sure that it was all so one-sided, that I was the greatest gift-giver and my ex was only so-so. But then I visited the house we once shared in New Orleans and I was reminded that he was a good gift-giver, too. There’s a lamp made from a gumball machine that I had glimpsed in a local shop. Historic photographs. A pair of beautifully impractical Ferragamos. My all-time favorite is an old suitcase, painted with a field of poppies and transformed into a work of art. For my 62^nd birthday, 357 days into our separation, my ex tried to buy me a painting by a mutual friend, only to discover that I had already purchased it for myself. He punched his weight.

Maybe next year there will be no presents. Maybe there should be no presents. I have channeled my gift-giving prowess into creating memorable holidays for my teenage daughter. Well before Thanksgiving, I started a list, working from her Pinterest board, jotting down surprises for stockings and Hanukkah, searching secondhand sites for affordable versions of the ridiculous designer items she desires.

When I began writing this essay, I was a dog with a stick and a bone. I was sure that it was all so one-sided, that I was the greatest gift-giver and my ex was only so-so. But then I visited the house we once shared in New Orleans and I was reminded that he was a good gift-giver, too.

She wants to surprise and delight me, too, but claims I’m difficult to shop for. I think moms are hard in general. Mine provided me a precise list of her modest desires, for which I was grateful. In 2023, she requested only the latest edition of Videohound’s Golden Movie Retriever, a huge compendium of movie reviews that she preferred to any Internet resource. I gave her the book and several stellar bottles of white wine and rosé, because I knew she never treated herself to the good stuff.

My mom died Sept. 7, so that’s one less gift to worry about, one more loss to grieve.

Not that I grieve the end of my marriage. It was the best present my ex ever gave me, my personal platonic ideal of a gift: Something I absolutely needed, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

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Check out the whole series. Previously Laura Lippman also published an essay called Whole 60 on Oldster, and took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire. She publishes the newsletter Shaved Meats, Piled High.

Lady in the Lake, a miniseries based on Laura Lippman’s thriller by the same name, is currently streaming on Apple TV.