My Husband Rollerbladed Away From Our Marriage — Literally
One day, he grabbed his rollerblades and skated off.
hitesh choudhary | Canva The memory splutters through my mind like an old VHS tape. Most times, I ignore it, like a problematic 1990s sitcom. Other times, nostalgia trumps regret, and I can’t help but press play on the movie of me.
In 1995, Steve and I were twenty-six years old and one year into marriage. Legally bound and determined to escape the redundantly dreary and inclement Midwest, where dreams go to die, we chased our happily ever after to Tucson, Arizona.
In my memory, a motel signpost fights for focus, flashing a familiar yet forgettable mishmash name. It’s Econo-Eight, or Super Six, or some similar ridiculousness, as if it’s the offspring of two cheap motels’ hookup. Our room reeked of old and mold, an indelicate bouquet of desert dry with notes of cigarettes.
Fate had dropped us onto a giant asphalt slab, perfect for roller-blading and a free workout for two gym rats on a budget.
“I refuse to spend half my waking existence scraping ice off the windshield of life,” I’d whined metaphorically one sub-zero morning.
“Tucson?” He smiled, and seeing joy flush my face, added, “I’m your Huckleberry.” Indeed, he was. One line from a Val Kilmer movie, and my bags were packed.
Arizona had been my dream for as long as I could remember. Growing up, my family took annual road trips. Three carloads of aunts, cousins, and grandparents caravaned to spend Christmas with extended family.
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I treasured my Phoenix kinfolk and fell in love with the picturesque landscape. Back home, my mother kept a current “Arizona Highways” wall calendar hung like hope in our Illinois kitchen. It’s sunsets sang. It’s Saguaro cacti waved their prickly arms, calling me to the painted desert.
Now, Steve and I could answer the call together.
In Arizona, we’d buy one of those tile-roofed adobe houses, fill it with babies, and love.
“Cardio time, babe — love you.” Steve air-kissed me and rollerbladed out the door. I’d opted out, immersed in a midday X-Files marathon, the episode titled “Blood” to be specific. I remember that. I also remember silently battling nicotine addiction.
Steve hated smoking. I loved it, but loved him more, so I’d quit cold turkey two days prior. My health guru hubby swore sweets would quell my cravings, which he added would fully dissipate after 72 hours. I grabbed my bag of “therapeutic” Laffy Taffy.
Forty minutes later, teeth ensconced in sugary cement, I was still jonesing. I’d have settled for a bitter Camel or an anorexic Capri. I smush-stretched a taffy like Silly Putty, cajoled it into a cylindrical shape, and took a deep introspective drag.
I thought about our trek to Tucson and the path I’d been denied. I had wanted to putter across Route 66, the historic “Mother Road” that ran semi-parallel to us most of the trip, but Steve couldn’t be bothered with diversions. Road signs at connecting crossroads whispered, “You’re on the wrong road!”
I’d yellow-highlighted our giant Rand-McNally road atlas with my desired deviation, played Depeche Mode’s “Route 66” ad nauseum. No dice. He even refused a detour to that quirky Amarillo, Texas, “Cadillac Ranch” art installation.
“Babe, it’s just a bunch of cars stuck bottom-up in the ground!”
"It’s an allegory, Steven!”
Just a silly spat. And thanks to Steve, we’d arrived in record time.
I dug through my suitcase and pulled out our wedding photos. My stale surroundings squiggle-dissolved away like a Wayne’s World scene, transporting me back to the kiss that felt like forever, to the world spinning around us like a movie, to our Las Vegas elopement.
“Stevie baby, look! A drive-thru wedding chapel! Oh, and Michael Jordan got married here. That’s gotta be good luck!” Words that actually came from my mouth.
I was all-in on our marriage. I’d have sworn it was his breath in my lungs, that I’d have suffocated, drowned inside myself without him.
Double Colgate smiles beamed through our “Just Married” photos. We were tanned and toned and perched out the sunroof of my ’94 Buick Regal — the sedan I’d traded my Camaro in for, ‘cuz I was a grownup!
My neon recollections crackled and dimmed, and I found myself back in a musty motel with TV’s Mulder and Scully. They were busy looking for some “truth” that was supposedly “out there.” It seemed symbolic.
Nah — that’s just the taffy talking. I should burn off some sugar.
I grabbed my rollerblades and peeked out the curtain. I didn’t see Steve in the parking lot, but he liked to roll the side streets and access roads, which were too risky for my taste. I scrapped the idea and figured I’d stay in, maybe even teach myself guitar.
Ugh — that guitar. Shortly after our wedding, Steve decided he no longer wanted to be an engineer. Up until that point, his mathy analytical self balanced my dreamer ways, but he’d had an epiphany.
“Babe, I’m gonna be a country music star. Check out this song I wrote,” then proudly crooned some mis-chorded country music Haiku.
Steve planned to teach himself to play and then wait for stardom to come calling, to ring the bell like some 1970s Avon lady. It was but one of what was becoming a whole “Vegas Neon Graveyard” of signs. But, for better or worse, right?
Anyway, that’s when I noticed it, when I was looking for the guitar, which was nowhere to be found.
And that wasn’t the only thing: Duffle bag. Shoes. All gone. Heart in my throat, I stomped out to the Buick, reassuring myself that his stuff must be in the car. I saw him rollerblade away!
I flung open the driver’s side door. A rush of heat mixed with cold reality smacked my face.
There was a one-word goodbye note on the seat, and the desert sun glinted off his wedding band.
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I drove to the closest Circle K and buzzed through the aisles like a rabid contestant on Supermarket Sweep, two-handedly scooping up junk food. At the checkout counter, a wall of cigarettes sprang to life.
“And a pack of Marlboro Lights. No, make that Reds.”
It turns out the Midwest didn’t kill my dreams; they rode shotgun alongside me cross-country and then died.
My knight in shining armor rollerbladed off into the sunset without me.
I picked up the pieces and moved on — sort of. I usually fast-forward past the part where he came crawling back a week later, begging forgiveness. I skipped past the part where he did it again a few months later, albeit in our Illinois town.
After that, I never saw him again. I filed for divorce and was granted one on the grounds of abandonment, which the judge called “gross mental abuse.” I skip all that because it’s more fun to end with that first “skateaway.” To chalk it all up to what it mostly was — a combination of bad decisions, youth, and the 1990s.
Now, when I think about that time in Tucson, I prefer to look back and laugh, like it's an old episode of Friends: “The One Where My Husband Rollerbladed Away From Our Marriage.”
Hannah Andrews, born and raised in the Midwest, now lives and writes in San Diego. Her words have been featured in print in Shaking The Tree: Brazen Short Memoir and Gold Man Review Literary Journal, and online at Narrative Arc, Severance, among others.
