What girl doesn’t believe that the guy who is her first real lover is the one who will remain the love of her life? At least back then. Not like now, when girls take up partners as if they’re making sandwiches. Two bites and you’re done. Move on. Meaningless. Anthony wasn’t meaningless to me.

Every girl who worked at Marcone’s Grill had a crush on him, the youngest son of the Marcone family. I was working there, taking courses at the local community college, and definitely not interested in complicating my life—at the tender age of twenty—by falling in love. It’s probably because I didn’t pursue him that Anthony began to pay attention to me. Long talks as we closed the place up for the night, then coffee in the all-night diner that was their nearest competition. Very platonic, very sweet, and this sweet, unthreatening attention made me fall in love with him.

But, in the end, I was meaningless to him. He married me because he had to, but he never loved me. Not the way a woman wants to be loved.

* * *

“Anthony, I can’t do this anymore.” I face my husband of three and a half years. His face is a mask of indifference, which is how he is treating me, with indifference. He goes out every night with his friends; he rarely plays with his son. The sweet, gentle nature of our friendship has become silence and avoidance. I no longer delight in his physical beauty; I cannot see it anymore. His fastidiousness has gone from endearing to unbearable; his loyalty to his friends undermines our marriage. Our marriage, clearly, is not important to him. Maybe even abhorrent. “I can’t stay if things keep on the way they have.”

Anthony shrugs, as if his wife’s telling him she’s leaving is of no consequence. I wonder if he’s calling my bluff, but the relief in his eyes is clear. I have been the braver partner; he’s been waiting for me to pull the plug so he won’t have to. “So go.”

* * *

When I left his father, Tony was almost three, just young enough to think this was a normal life; just old enough to ask, every now and then, where Daddy was.

* * *

“When’s Daddy coming?”

“He’s not coming, baby. He lives in Brooklyn.”

“Why don’t we live in Brooklyn?”

I have no answer for that. How do you tell a little boy that his father won’t love his mother?

* * *

If I thought that Tony would keep me tied to one spot, I was wrong. But he did give me a different reason for moving on: I was pursuing the better life for him, one that didn’t mean living in a motel by the week or taking a shit job just because it came with some benefits. I wanted to give him a home, one he could be proud of. I always told him that the next place would be better, bigger, cleaner, safer. The next place we lived would be where he could play with kids in the neighborhood, ride his bike. Heck, own a bike. The next town or the next city, the next state, would be better. What I didn’t realize was that in order to have a stable home, there must be some permanence. It isn’t enough to have a loving mother. You need a place to call home.