I was home on my day off, texting my husband Mark at work.
He had left in the morning while I was still under the covers--not saying
goodbye, not kissing me, his shadow moving heavily through the darkness around
the foot of our bed.
“For example, last night you would have said ‘If we get a
pomegranate, it will be because of Nick.’” Nick is our 27-year-old son who has
schizoaffective disorder, which one doctor helpfully described as both schizophrenia and bipolar disease.
“That sounds much better,” I continued. “Or if I was in a
fit of pique, I could shout, ‘I want a pomegranate!’”
I added this last bit just to entice him into the
conversation. Pique isn’t my current preference. Lately, I almost never
threaten divorce. A divorce would be just another huge problem to deal with,
when I could use a few trauma-free years.
I waited. I’ve grown good at waiting. Nick has taught me
that. I’ve had conversations with my middle child in which almost all I do is
wait. He won’t hear me in the moment. He refuses. He takes a stand against hearing. But later, perhaps,
an idea I’ve suggested will take hold.
A few seconds passed before Mark texted back. “I wish I had
a big glass of pomegranate juice right now! Oh, I mean divorce juice.”
“No ‘D’ word!” I countered.
“What about when I_mean_pomegranate?”
“I don’t think you ever mean that!”
“I could say Dover sole.”
“Hahaha! Good idea!”
“And then, if I wanted Dover sole, I could say trial
separation!”
“Deal!”
I love my husband’s sense of humor, which has come in quite handy
over the years. I also love his big, bushy eyebrows—over the top, like Groucho
Marx; his gymnastic brain; his secret, little heart; and his quick metabolism.
At night, under the covers, he’s my private blanket-warmer.
But there are also things I don’t like, such as his
moodiness. His mood goes up and down more often than a bride’s nightie, as my late
father might say. Mix that with his manly disinclination to question his own
behavior, add my womanly inclination to make nicey nice, and you have a recipe
for dysfunction. And yes, we have that. We have that a lot.
The irony is that I don’t mind, really. Dysfunction is my
home. I feel comfortable there. I wouldn’t know what to do with Heart’s Ease if
Helen slipped it into my drink on Sparta, deciding in her queenly way what pain
I shouldn’t feel.
Mark and I are both children of unhappy marriages. That
could explain things. Our parents didn’t like each other much, but they never
divorced.
I remember thinking at a very young age that my mother was
wrong not to divorce my father. I vowed that if I was ever stuck in a marriage
like hers--in which my father, bipolar, made her life miserable--I would get
one myself. Divorce has always been in my toolkit.
And social strictures notwithstanding, there isn’t much wrong
with divorce. Countries with the highest divorce rates also have the best
records for women’s rights. A woman who can get a divorce is a woman who is
capable of independence because of fair property, employment, and human rights.
True love? Soul mates? Until death do we part? Bah! I’ve
seen the product of buying that bill of goods. One friend’s husband comes home
after 30 years to say he’s fallen in love with a younger woman—that hokey old
tale. Another friend falls in love repeatedly only to decide, upon reflection,
that the object of her great passion isn’t God’s gift, but a curse. A third
loses her true love to alcohol. Yeah. There’s that.
Then there are all the people I don’t know who are harmed by our myths about love and marriage: men
who kill their ex-wives because if they can’t have them, nobody will; women who
kill themselves because their husbands left; men who kill everyone because the
universe disappoints their fantastic expectations.
In my world, romantic love is hooey. Love is not a gem you
find in the forest if you’re lucky and then enjoy for the rest of your life. Love
is a struggle. Love is a peeling back of layer after sometimes-stinking layer
in a possibly-doomed effort to get to the bright, shining center. Love is a
two-person project. In my world, it makes sense to stay married when both are working
on it, and to get a divorce when one stops.
The trouble with my world is it requires constant re-evaluation.
Does this tender day make up for that horrible one? Has he given up completely,
or is he just taking a break? Have we finally crossed the line? Can—and should—this
marriage be saved?
This mental state reminds me of quitting smoking. If I tell
myself I can have a cigarette sometime,
my mind always wonders if now is then. It’s far easier to decree that I can never have one. Then I can put cigarettes
out of my thoughts.
Perhaps that’s what I’m doing now—making it easier on my
mind—by trying to take divorce off the table, after so many years of having it
on.
But perhaps to maintain the equilibrium, just as I stopped suggesting
divorce, Mark started in. I don’t like where he put the compost bin? Maybe we
should get a divorce. I don’t think he’s taking the right route to Britex?
Maybe we should get a divorce…
Recently, we were in the midst of a divorce-themed fight
when we accompanied our eldest to her lab at Stanford, where she’s getting a
PhD in Genetics. We sat squished together on the tiny couch in her cluttered
office while she went to the back to check on the fruit flies. Mark had his
phone out and I mine as we argued back and forth silently via text, thumbs
tapping.
“We’re a terrible match,” he texted that day. “You obviously
think so, too.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t! In fact, I quite enjoy being married to you. I
find it amusing and interesting and fun. I just wish it would go down
differently when we fight.”
We both paused and simmered over that information, staring
down at our phones. “You two look cute!” our daughter called out, passing by
the office door.
The length of this contentious marriage is pretty impressive—31
years come September 24—but is that a sign of health, or sickness? What exactly
is the difference between perseverance and perseveration, anyway? No one knows.
And if they tell you they know, they’re probably delusional. Stick that in your
DSM-5.
Still, that longevity is one reason I want to take the “D”
word out of our vocabulary—I’d like to make it to 32. And the weight of shared days
adds complexity to our relationship which can’t be replicated.
Over time, Mark has made deposits in the bank of goodwill
which cover his debt when he behaves like an ass. At the birth of our first
child, when I was lost in a miasma of fear and pain, he was the one who leaned
in close, gripped my hand, and whispered into my ear, “Swim up. Swim to the
top.”
Twenty years later, when the doctor telephoned to discuss
the results of my biopsy, saying cheerfully, “If you have to have breast
cancer, ductile carcinoma in situ is the kind to have!” Mark was the one who rushed
home from work, breathlessly bursting through the front door and crushing me into
his chest.
And a year after that, on the sunny summer afternoon when
two policemen stood in our kitchen to tell us that our youngest child, a high
school senior, had been taken to jail for conspiracy to rob a bank, Mark was
the one who shared my stunned and incredulous look.
The list goes on.
I know a divorced and remarried woman who concluded that she
had just exchanged one set of problems for another. And so, like a country and
western singer, I want to stand by my original man.
Who else would feel a tsunami of pride when our eldest puts
on her white lab coat? Who else would understand, despite evidence to the
contrary, that our youngest isn’t a dangerous criminal, but an impulsive and
credulous youth with a capacious heart? And who else would continue to hold out
hope for our middle child, nine years deep into his mental illness, now homeless
with a pregnant girlfriend in tow?
No one would.
I want to take divorce off the table for the good of our three
grown-up children, yes, because we’re better equipped to respond to their crises
and triumphs as a team. But mostly I want to do it for ourselves. Because Mark
knows me better after 11,000 days of marriage than any new man or woman ever
could. Because I want us to form a more perfect union, and we’re not done. And
because I never learned how to eat a pomegranate.
Are you supposed to chew or spit out the seeds?
###
The "D" Word is one of many short stories, plays, novels and columns you can find on my Amazon Author Page. See what I'm working on now at northbeachnotebook.blogspot.com.
Copyright 2014. All rights reserved.
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