She had put the breakfast plates in
the dishwasher, rinsed the cups and racked them above the plates, and was
dropping the spoons and forks into the utensil rack on the dishwasher door when
he hung up. He was talking to Tom, a
friend of theirs who was going through a nasty divorce, and she was listening,
only half attending to her chores. It
was a spring-bright Saturday morning, and they were both home, intent on doing
nothing in particular. They had few days
when they could hang around and do nothing in particular. They thought of the day as a luxury, since
they had so few of them. She half
worried that Tom wanted to come over, bringing his anguish with him, and rely
on them for solace. It wouldn’t be the
first time. Last Wednesday evening he
had come, and they spent hours talking.
She was tired of it, and, though she felt for him, she wished it would
end. He suffered and she couldn’t stand
it. As she listened to her husband’s
side of the conversation, she was hoping she wouldn’t hear, “Sure, Tom, sure,
come on over, we’ll be here.” She didn’t
hear anything like it, though, and was relieved when he hung up.
“So?”
she said. “What’s up with Tom?”
“He
keeps going over it, running it through his mind, and the more he does that,
the worse it makes him feel. The problem
is, he doesn’t understand it. He can’t
make Mona’s behavior seem rational.”
“I
don’t think it is rational.”
“We
don’t know it isn’t. We only know Tom’s
side of it. Something drove her to what
she did.”
“If
half of what Tom says is true, she’s loony.
If it’s all true, she’s worse than that.”
“Look. A woman doesn’t just wake up one morning,
after ten years of marriage, and discover she hates her husband. It has to be something that has been
accumulating over the years. Tom might
not even know.”
“Why
are you making excuses for her?
Sometimes people do flip, you know.
And she didn’t merely flip. She
hates him. Tom’s not the kind of guy one
hates, or should hate, anyway.”
He
was sitting at the breakfast table across the kitchen from the sink, where she
had been rinsing and stacking the plates and cups in the washer. The frying pan was still on the stove. She was leaning against the counter and
glanced at it. He saw she had forgotten
it, got up from the table and brought it to the sink. She stepped aside and let him wash it,
stooping for the dishtowel hanging on a rack inside the cabinet door beside the
dishwasher. When he finished, she dried
it and stowed it under the counter. The
sun rayed through the window, brightening the room, making it seem more
cheerful than she felt. Whether he was
there or not, Tom and his anguish were intruding into their morning, and she
resented it. The beauty of a Saturday
morning like this is that they had nothing planned. Neither of them had to work that day, which
didn’t happen often; no crises or family obligations loomed; nothing in the
house or yard needed mending; they were free to follow their noses. But he had that look on his face and she knew
what it meant. He wanted to talk about
Tom and Mona.
“Let’s
drive out to the nursery. I like when
you’re with me picking plants. It makes
the garden seem more ‘ours’ when it grows.”
She
wanted to get out of the house, now. Get
away from the troubles that absorbed him.
She wasn’t ready for what he said in response.
“Do
you think our marriage will last?”
She
wasn’t there yet. Tom and Mona’s divorce
hadn’t spilled into her own comfort zone.
She was surprised by his question.
Was he feeling anxious? Unsettled
by the apparent motivelessness of Mona’s hatred? Like he might suddenly find himself where Tom
is now? She didn’t know what to say to
reassure him without sounding dismissive or flippant.
Caught
up in her surprise by his question, she didn’t answer at first, so he asked
again. She put her hands on her hips and
looked away from him. The sunlight
streaming through the window fell directly on her.
“A
thousand little things about you drive me crazy,” she said, turning toward him,
trying to smile and hoping it didn’t seem obvious she was trying to
smile. “But none of them make me care
for you the less.” She wanted to add
that it was the same for him and didn’t he see that? But she was floored by his response.
“Care
for? Care? Not ‘love’ the less?”
This
was getting serious. She didn’t want to
delve into these feelings. Not because
she was afraid of what she’d find there but because they were too difficult to
think about, no less talk about. She
didn’t doubt her love, but she doubted, really doubted that what love was for
her was the same for him. If they
explored these feelings now, against the canvas of Tom and Mona’s divorce,
against the strangeness of Mona’s newfound ill will toward Tom, he might make
too much of their differences, might make those differences mean something they
don’t.
“Why
are you quibbling about the word? I mean
‘love.’ The first part of love is
caring, isn’t it?”
“I
don’t know. I guess so,” he responded,
with that same look on his face.
A
tension had risen in the moment, and she didn’t feel it lessen by his
acquiescence. So she put the question,
“So
you doubt that I love you?”
“No,
no,” he said, still thoughtful, still with that pondering look in his
eyes. “I don’t see anything like that
happening to us.”
“But
one can never be sure, can one?” she said.
“Does being sure matter? Many a
woman, feeling sure, suddenly found her husband in love with some one else.” She wanted to shift the ground a little, to
make him know that their marriage depended as much on him as it did on
her.
“For
every crazy Mona there’s a philandering Tom.
I know that,” he said, getting her drift.
“You’re
wrong,” she said, smiling. “For every
crazy Mona there are five philandering Toms.”
“Yeah,”
he said. “But our Tom is no
philanderer.”
“That’s
one reason,” she said.
“What
do you mean? Reason for what?” he asked,
looking at her sceptically. She leaped
like that, taking something he said to someplace he couldn’t follow.
“For
why Mona is crazy.”
“Oh,”
he said, seeing her point. “I’m not so
sure. Only a week ago she seemed so
together.”
“That’s another
reason.”
“More likely
something happened and Tom’s not saying.”
“You’re trying to
make sense of something that might not make sense. I believe Tom. He is bewildered. If anything he did drive her to that
hatefulness, don’t you think he’d know?”
“You’re right,
you’re right,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Do
you want to go to the nursery?” she asked him, hoping he was ready to end this
conversation.
“Sure,
why not? It’s a beautiful morning,” he
responded, not noticing the sigh of relief that came from her. “I just can’t believe that Mona did those
things for no reason. It’s all so,” he
paused trying to find the right word, and she interjected,
“unpredictable?”
“Yes,
that, but it’s not what I had in mind.
She forced him to do what he did.
Like she had it planned. Then she
took advantage of him. It’s like he’s
become a criminal. The court issued an
injunction to keep him away from the kids.
He can’t go within a thousand feet of them. And she literally dispossessed him.”
He
was breathless, almost. She didn’t
realize how bothered he was, how undermined he felt, by the whole affair. The break between Mona and Tom came when she
pushed the door on him as he was leaving for work in the morning, catching his
foot between the door and the jamb, causing him to push back on the door to
free himself. She pretended he pushed so
hard that she fell to the floor. She had
the kids ready to go and ushered them out of the house and fled with them to
the police station. From that moment on,
he was marked. And the worst part is
what she made the kids believe—that he is dangerous, a menace to their lives.
They
both wore jeans and sweatshirts with sneakers on their feet. He picked up the car keys from the counter by
the door that opened into the garage.
But still he had that look on his face.
He paused once more and asked,
“What
makes a marriage last?”
“You
tell me,” she said, laughing. “Why do
you think I know any better than you?”
“I
think,” he said, as he reached for the doorknob, “it must be. . . .” She pushed him through the door and he
tripped quickly down the two steps to the cement floor of the garage.
As
he turned the key in the ignition he finished his thought, “It must be simply
that people want it to. When they’re
passed that, there’s no help for it.”
“Yes,”
she said, “It’s called ‘love.’”
They
drove in silence to the nursery. There
were tables and tables of annuals and more of perennials. The two of them wandered together up and down
the aisles between the tables.
Occasionally, he stopped and picked something up and showed it to
her. Either she shook her head or held
up the cardboard tray on which they stacked the things they liked. When the tray became heavy, he took it. When it was filled, they brought it to the
register where they took another tray and continued walking the aisles. The sun diffused through the opaque plexi
roofing, and the air underneath was warm and humid. The warmth and humidity made them perspire in
their long-sleeved sweatshirts—the man and the woman. The man and the woman with flowers for spring
planting.
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