Accidents of Marriage (4 page)

Maddy worked a pill from a tissue hidden in her night table,
rubbed off the lint, and looked at it, craving the acetic taste. She put it back and curled into a ball.

Once she’d wondered if Ben was addicted to his anger. Now she wondered if the real secret to their marriage was how she couldn’t stop loving him despite it.

The sleep she’d craved eluded her. Rubbing at that spot on her chest where her heart might be, she went to the bathroom for a glass of water to help her swallow the pill.

She chanted supplications to bring Ben back to the bedroom and erase the past half hour. Everything about her would improve, she promised herself: The kids would never again have to go to school without the perfect lunch; they’d never have to grab money out of the change jar because she’d stayed in bed an extra ten minutes, or be forced to line up limp single socks on their bed to find ones that almost matched. She’d use bleach and fabric softener and static-cling-free sheets in the dryer. No more skipping steps—she’d even scrub the secret cruddy area under the cupboard when she washed the kitchen floor.

The teetering pile on her desk would be sorted, attended to, and filed.

She’d become a wizard of a mother: Gracie would get courage, Emma a loving heart, and Caleb patience. All she wanted in exchange was for Ben to come back and hold her.

•  •  •

Maddy met her friend Kath at six the next morning. Weather, husbands, children, and work permitting, they scheduled biweekly runs in the pristine Arnold Arboretum. Maddy needed the physical exertion. Even more, she wanted reassurance that her family wasn’t a broken corporation, Illica Sucks Inc.

Kath was her rock, the best friend with whom she’d fallen into a never-ending love the moment they met at Boston University. Why couldn’t husbands offer the same constancy and security as best friends? Back in Maddy’s college years she’d imagined adulthood as a shining beacon—compassionate work, a passionate husband, and
children who’d absorb their love and wisdom. She’d lusted for the future but hadn’t expected perfection. She grew up sheltered, not naive. Balancing business, the house, and kids had exhausted her mother, and her father’s blood pressure rose as he cursed clients, but each Friday they’d give thanks for their children, each other, and all the nooks and crannies that made up their daily lives. She thought she’d end up the same but better.

Maddy grew up surrounded by love. Her father sometimes exploded, but in a manner her mother could always shush away.
Jake! The children!
He’d continue to huff for a few minutes, but with her mother watching he’d catch himself. That’s what Maddy had believed her home would be like when she married Ben, but instead her marriage became partitioned into spheres of influence. Competitions for time. Emotional battles about moral high grounds. Maddy learned to watch each thing she said or did—any hint that she was unhappy with him brought forth his aggressive lawyer side, ready to prove her wrong and grind the fight out of her. But Maddy wasn’t able to be on guard every second, and besides, his temper wasn’t parceled out in ways that were predictable. The misstep that he’d laugh at on Wednesday drove him to battle on Thursday.

But when he’s good, he’s so very, very good,
she’d tell Kath during their daily phone conversations. They hadn’t lost their college habit of comparing every mole and freckle of their relationships. Maddy knew that Kath’s husband brought her lush white orchids and Viennese crunch, and rarely yelled—but that he had a problem with premature ejaculation and sometimes cried when they fought. Kath knew Ben massaged her for an hour without expecting a thing back, listened to her father’s business theories without complaint—and that he shouted so loudly that Maddy had trained herself to clench every muscle so she didn’t flinch.

In the beginning, Maddy had preferred Ben’s faults, though she and Kath were careful to only make sour faces about their own husband’s flaws. Her partiality was in the early years, when acts of contrition followed Ben’s tirades. She’d trusted in his stammering apologies and believed it when he said no other woman could ever understand
him. Maddy had uncovered his core! He bottled up essence of heart and gave it to her wrapped in satin bows.

And then there was the bedroom. Premature ejaculation was never Ben’s problem.

These days she and Kath could skip over the familiar marital details and explanations. They knew each other’s relationships well enough to speak in shorthand, and Maddy was able to detail the previous night’s battle in quick strokes.

“Something about that fight made me think about the Wednesday Blues Club,” Maddy panted out as they ran down Hemlock Hill Road. The Blues Club—the education and support group Maddy and her coworker friend Olivia ran for battered women—was a frequent subject of Kath and Maddy’s repetitive conversations.

“How and why women stay with men who act like assholes?” Kath asked.

Maddy stopped running. Kath was a few strides up before she realized Maddy was no longer next to her.

“What was that supposed to mean?” Maddy planted her hands on her hips. “I was talking about something that happens in all relationships—not comparing Ben to my clients’ husbands.”

Kath walked back and tugged at Maddy’s T-shirt. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I like Ben—I always have. But the story you just told me—what am I supposed to do, just nod?”

“That would be nice. Come on, it’s always that way in marriages—one is the parent; one is the spoiled brat. Guess which one Ben is. And what I was going to say is that men battle to win, women to be heard. Maybe not your Mr. Perfect. But most men.”

“Ben has many great qualities, but he has to be put in check.” Kath began running, nodding for Maddy to follow, not even panting from the effort of the incline they were on. Going up Peters Hill burned Maddy’s thighs every time.

“I said it wrong,” Kath said. “I didn’t mean you shouldn’t stay with him, just . . . What is it you want?”

Maddy was quiet—thinking as they climbed higher. All the things she didn’t want flooded in. Ben so angry that he’d kicked a hole in
the bedroom closet door. Looming over her. His face bright red as he yelled. About what? What was it that time?

Maddy placating him, worried about the kids being terrified.

“I just want my house to be . . . I don’t know, sane?” They’d reached the summit, their reward for battling up the hill. Boston’s skyline spread in front of them, puffy white clouds reflected in the mirrored surface of the John Hancock building. Living within walking distance made this bounty feel like it was Maddy’s backyard. “When he’s happy, the last thing I want to do is bring up this crap. And when he’s being an asshole, all I want to do is get out of his way.”

Kath raised her thin muscled leg onto a worn boulder and bent to tie her shoe. Leaning over, her words were faint. “You should never have to get out of anyone’s way in your own house, Maddy.”

•  •  •

Arriving early at Kelly’s Landing in South Boston to pick up Emma allowed Maddy a rare pleasure of watching her daughter interact in the world. Emma worked as a counselor at a camp for disabled kids, managed by Kath, who was a high school student services director during the school year.

Exhausted from their own day at camp, both Gracie and Caleb had fallen asleep in the backseat while she drove. Maddy watched Alex McMaster being pushed in his wheelchair along the cement walkway toward Emma. His smile widened as his mother, whom Maddy had been introduced to the first week of camp, rolled him closer. When he arched in her direction, Emma jumped from the stone wall and landed next to him.

Emma knelt to Alex’s height, placing a hand on his thin arm. His mother’s sun-wrinkled face lit up as Alex spoke. According to Emma, camp had improved his garbled speech. From the way the woman looked at her daughter, it seemed that she thought Emma could take credit.

Maddy opened the car door and waved. “Emma! Over here, sweetie,” she yelled.

“
Okay!
” Emma cut her eyes, signaling her mother to stop whatever
new embarrassment she planned to inflict. Alex lifted his hand for a shaky high five.

Emma got into the car as Maddy shouted a quick hello to Alex and his mother. Gracie and Caleb, now awake, sat heat-struck limp in the back, a lumpy clay animal in Gracie’s hand. Screeching neon-green designs covered Caleb’s filthy bandages where they peeked out of the oversized thong he wore on his injured foot.

“Is Alex ever going to get better?” Gracie asked as Emma fastened her seat belt.

Emma rolled her eyes, showing how tired she was of Gracie’s forlorn questions. “Are you ever going to get skinny?”

“Emma!” Maddy turned for a moment to glare, wondering not for the first time, and probably not the last, how her mother would have handled this bickering. Why did she barely remember fighting with her sister? God knew Vanessa could be a bitch.

“I’m pointing out that everyone has something, and not to make Alex into some sort of freak just because he’s in a wheelchair. He doesn’t have to walk to be acceptable.”

Gracie blinked three times and then opened her worn copy of
Anne of Green Gables
.

“Oh, jeez, don’t cry,” Emma said. “You know everyone loves you best.”

“Don’t pay Emma any attention, Gracie. You’re perfect, but no one loves
anyone
best.” Before starting the car, she turned to Emma. “That was uncalled for. Do you hear me?”

Emma reached into her backpack and took out an almost empty pack of gum. “How could I not hear you? You don’t have to scream. I didn’t say anything.”

“You called her fat,” Caleb said. “And Mommy’s not screaming. You are.”

“Did not call her fat. I just asked if she was ever going to get skinny. That doesn’t mean she’s fat; she’s just not skinny. Being different isn’t bad, right?”

“Emma,” Maddy warned.

Emma twisted in her seat. “Sorry, Gracie. You’re not fat. Want a piece of gum?”

Gracie shrugged.

“Here.” Emma drew out a stick and handed it to Gracie.

“Where’s mine?” Caleb asked.

“It wasn’t your feelings I hurt.”

“Emma, give him a piece.”

She rolled her eyes and gave Caleb the gum.

Maddy stopped for a red light. NPR droned.

“Music!” Caleb said. “Put on music, Mom. Play my CD again.”

Emma whipped around to face him in the backseat. “No way. Nothing of his! I get enough of that with Dad.”

Caleb had inherited Ben’s love of rock, always begging for his rejected CD from years ago. Emma ejected the disc in the CD player and read the title. “Def Leppard. God, Mom, have you heard the lyrics? They hate women. I don’t know how you let Dad listen to that stuff.”

Remove yourself mentally.

Imagine being in a cold movie theater.

Caleb kicked the back of Emma’s seat. “Daddy likes it.”

“Daddy’s not in the car,” Emma said. “And don’t kick me.”

“Caleb, put on your iPod and keep it low,” Maddy said.

Three blocks later Caleb was lost to his music and Gracie was deep in her book. Emma lowered the radio and spoke in the sweet voice she used when she wanted something. “Some of us are going out tonight, okay?”

“Going out? And who are ‘some of us’?”

“We’re going to Prudential or Copley. Just to hang out.”

“You’re not allowed alone on the bus at night,” she said. “You know that.”

“We’re meeting at J.P. Licks. Do you think I’ll get murdered in half a block?”

“Daddy or I will walk you over. Maybe we’ll all get some ice cream—”

“Mom, please! I’ll look like an idiot.”

“We’re walking you. And you need to call when you’re ready to leave the mall. One of us will pick you up.”

Emma removed her gum and held it in her hand. “God. You can be so
arbitrary.
” She rolled the word out with an obvious delight in herself.

“Wrap that up and put it in the trash.” Maddy understood how one could end up saying yes to everything when children became teenagers. Energy was on their side.

Emma stuck the wet gum in her T-shirt pocket. “Fine. Are you happy now?”

“No, because now I’ll find it all over a shirt of mine when I do the wash. Throw it out properly. Who are these other people?”

“Just Sammi, Caro, and some boys.”

“You’re not going out with some boys we don’t know.”

“I know them.”

“Very funny.” Maddy pulled into the Whole Foods lot on Centre Street. “Do you have your phone?”

“Why?”

“Because I suggest you call those boys and have them meet you at the house.”

Emma crossed her arms and stuck her legs out as far as they would go. Maddy reached over and grabbed her pocketbook from the floor in the back.

“I’ll be right back. Watch the kids and call me if anything happens.”

“I hate you sometimes,” Emma said.

Maddy closed the door as quietly as possible.

CHAPTER 4

Ben

At five thirty, half a dozen other attorneys jammed into the conference room. They’d gone from bullshitting about their cases to bullshitting about the Red Sox. Debates on whether the Blue Jays or the Yankees had a chance at the wild card grew more raucous with the size of the crowd. Ben and Elizabeth were the only ones who hadn’t yet voiced an opinion on the topic.

Ben put his feet up on the scarred wooden table. “Don’t assume the Red Sox will make the playoffs. It’s only August.” He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back. Brass studs punctuating the upholstered chair felt cool and rich against his laced fingers. Other than bookcases stuffed with journals, all that decorated the room was a large oil painting of a nondescript ship navigating rocky waters.

“Point, Ben,” Aaron said. He was Ben’s get-it-done guy this year. “And the Yankees have stronger pitching, no matter what anyone says.”

Overeager Gerry from the appeals unit stuck his head in. “Are we going for beers, or should I sit?”

They looked to Ben for a decision. They deferred to him on everything, including when and where to drink, and when to go
home to their families. Ben basically owned the Boston office of the Massachusetts Public Defender Division. He liked to consider himself a benevolent despot, but after so many years atop this small mountain, the thrill was gone. Admiration wasn’t enough anymore—these days only pure worship gave him a rush.