"How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed" | Memoirs of a divorcée

"How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed"

by Theo Pauline Nestor

Crown, 274 pp., $23.95

Divorce hurts in ways big and small. But often, it's those smaller cuts and bruises — like a first outing minus the familiar weight of a wedding band, or repeatedly having to explain a spouse's sudden absence — that build the strength to nurse and heal the major wounds.

In her Seattle-based memoir "How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed," local author Theo Pauline Nestor staggers through the fog of her own marriage's dissolution, gradually gaining clarity about the future. The more time she takes to understand who she is, the better she grasps whom she wants to become. Ultimately, she discovers pleasure in no longer fearing the unknown, in reclaiming feelings she'd snuffed out, hidden away or ignored in favor of keeping the peace.

"I don't know if I feel happier," she tells a friend, after surviving the headache and heartache of parenting schedules, post-divorce dating, tortuous job interviews at Microsoft and an awkward divorced-parents seminar. "But I feel real-er." We meet Nestor as her marriage is dissolving, just as her mother's and grandmother's before her. She's reeling from practical concerns, such as how to support her two daughters and maintain a suddenly overwhelming house despite her former husband's gambling debts. Meanwhile, she's bewildered by her sudden membership in this "enormous club," where the role models are few and the rules are unclear.

"Alone, I shriek into my pillow and shout 'bonehead' through my closed car windows as I drive past my ex's apartment building. In public, I'm stoic, detached, nodding philosophically as a married mother from Natalie's soccer team tells me and a cluster of other married women that my 'grief is like a house.' 'One day,' she tells me, 'you'll be in the room of sorrow and the next you might be in anger.' The humbled divorceé, I can only nod as if this were news to me."

Despite all the tumult, Nestor suddenly finds herself with hours for reflection. She wonders how her family's history of divorce could have affected her marriage. She revisits her parents' divorce and wonders at its effect on her relationship with her sister. She worries at the impact of this separation on her own daughters. She wonders how, although she slept beside her former husband each night, she remained unwilling or unable to anticipate — to see this coming.

Bit by bit, Nestor stretches out to reclaim that space she'd always reserved for her other half, trying to make herself whole. She finds work. She finds love. She makes peace with her girls, her mother, her ever-changing future.

"I will never again be a woman married to the only man to whom she said 'I do.' I might recover a great deal of the brightness of my life, but I'm not going to come out of this the same person who went into marriage and then divorce. I'm not sure who she's going to be — this person who's going to rise like a phoenix above all the smoldering embers of her old life. I just want to make sure I'm going to like her."

Many scenes will coax a knowing snort from those familiar with the identity crisis and myriad surprises that follow any divorce. Suddenly self-conscious, Nestor worries whether the world around her is fixated on her empty ring finger, on her sex life (or lack thereof), on how civil she and her ex can be in public while swapping the kids. She finds herself fantasizing about past flames. She's struck by how something as solemn as a marriage could be ended so simply at the King County Courthouse.

Nestor, who teaches writing at the University of Washington, expanded this tale from a "Modern Love" column for The New York Times. Rather than preach about hope, forgiveness, self-awareness or other themes of many divorce-focused tales, she offers a chance to experience the quiet, secret, less dramatic aspects.

For members of this "enormous club," there is comfort in reading the all-too familiar.

Karen Gaudette is a Seattle Times food reporter.