And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (14 page)

I had been stirring with discontentment for a long time, jealous of the corporate world that received the best he had. We got his tired body, his agitated voice, his scant leftovers. At least that’s what it felt like, and it had felt this way for a long, long time.

I had read about a space shuttle’s reentry to Earth, how the astronauts must gauge the perfect speed and trajectory, or the space shuttle will explode on impact. Who knows where I read this, since I’m neither a space enthusiast nor an avid reader of textbooks. But I know a word
picture when I see one. The boys and I are the Earth; Robb is the astronaut returning in his neat, tidy space shuttle. We do not change. If he couldn’t adapt to our speed and trajectory upon reentry, there was bound to be an explosion.

In that instant I decided to say it. I decided to say it all. I dried my hands and set my dishtowel on the counter. I turned to him with a heated posture: one hand on the counter, one hand on my hip.

“Robb, you are angry, always. Always. And I don’t think you realize it. For so many weeks you’ve been home for one angry day, and then you skip town again.”

“I do not skip town, dear. I travel as part of my job. The job that provides for our family, that keeps you from having to do work you don’t like, that gives us airline miles and hotel points to take us on vacations we wouldn’t otherwise have. I do not
skip town
.”

“Whatever. Okay, you don’t skip town. But you leave. Again and again, you leave. And before we can even find you again, you have to leave. And please—
please
—don’t tell me how fortunate I am for the airline miles and the hotel points. Because, honestly, if we’re not talking to each other on a regular basis, I don’t exactly want to go on a vacation with you.”

“Nice, Tricia. Nice.”

I hate when I say something I really mean, but I wish I didn’t really mean it. When it feels like I should take it back, but I really don’t want to. “Robb, all I’m saying is that the promise of a week at the beach in the spring doesn’t exactly carry me through a dozen lonely nights in a row. Honestly. This is not working.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that you don’t appreciate anything I do around here.” Classically sardonic. Extreme conclusions. Predictable patterns for our arguing.

I shrieked with notorious exasperation. I threw my hands in the air and rolled my eyes. “That is not what I’m saying! You know that is not what I’m saying!” I looked at him, my palms open. I suspected this would go more smoothly if my voice were gentler, softer, but I forged ahead with the edgy tone. “What I’m saying is that I miss you.”

“Well, forgive me, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because I’m standing right here.”

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. “Robb, you can be here all weekend long, and it’s possible that we could never, ever find each other.”

Silence filled the room. Our arguments didn’t have a whole lot of words. No, scratch that. Our arguments didn’t have a lot of dialogue, but they had plenty of words—
mine.
The thing is, I could always outargue Robb. With a quick wit and a writer’s command of the language, I could chase that man to the moon and back with my comments and rebuttals. It’s a pretty unfair battleground. He was an internal processor, he needed time to think, and his words mattered when he said them. But I was impatient.

In every fight of our marriage, he retreated, and I chased him. I have had a lifelong tendency to want to resolve every conflict—
now
—for my own self-assurance. I want to process my thoughts and feelings with quick transparency, and I need (okay,
want
) the person with whom I am in conflict to do the same, regardless of whether he or she may be ready to deal with the conflict—or even realize that there is
one. So in all fairness, while Robb might have erred on the side of dragging his feet, my style of conflict resolution wasn’t highly effective either as I plowed full-speed ahead, rushing the process, and dragging him behind me.

“I’m worried.”

“What are you worried about.” It was neither a question nor an invitation. It was a statement.

“I’m worried about your relationship with the boys.”

His eyes lit with fire. “You have no reason to worry about my relationship with my sons, thank you very much. And I think it is none of your business to claim any responsibility for it. Those boys and I are just fine. And we will always be fine.”

“First of all, I am their mother and your wife, and that means it is absolutely my business. Second, how can you be so sure that everything is fine, that everything ‘will always be fine’?” My hands made air quotes.

“Oh, I love these conversations, Tricia. Why do you think you’re the parenting expert?”

“Well, for starters, what books have you read recently on parenting?”

“It’s not all about books, Tricia.” He used my name a lot when we were fighting.

“I know it’s not,
Robb,
but there is a reason why experts have written books on how to do this. It’s because it’s hard to do.”

“Yes, thank you, Child Development Specialist. We don’t have to do everything your way.”

“I’m not saying we do.”

“Really? ’Cause it sure feels like you’re telling me what to do.”

“I’m telling you what’s not working, and I am asking you to be intentional. And you’re not being intentional.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, can you tell me your intentions?”

I knew it was an unfair, leading question even before the expression on his face proved it. His fury grew; our voices rose. “How dare you say something like that.”

Robb was a maddeningly stubborn man, and he hated to be confronted or criticized on any level. He was a hardworking, self-motivated perfectionist with a big heart, so he rarely faced criticism. Any whisper of mine felt like a shouting rebuke to him, and he would shut down for days. Days. I had to be very sure and aware of the consequences before I started a conversation that addressed any idea of improvement, because the freezing, silent aftermath was overwhelming. I hadn’t planned to say what I said next. But I said it. I took a deep breath, and I made a splashy cannonball into the waters of conflict, a place I dearly dread.

“Robb, let me tell you what Tucker said this week. He was playing rough, and the arm broke off his Emperor Zurg toy. He said, ‘Mommy, I’m afraid to tell Daddy about it. I’m afraid he will be mad at me again.’ Did you hear that? ‘Mad at me again.’ ”

He said nothing. His eyes flickered in a way I had never seen.

Following my usual dance steps, I filled the silence. “You touch down for a few days in our home, you go on an organizational rampage, and you’re gone again. It’s not working for me, and it’s not working for them. I do not wish to be a single mom.”

“Please do not ever say that again.” His voice was even and steady, heavy and dark. “You are not a single mom, and I resent those words. I am their father, I am your husband, and I am here.”

“Yes. You are. You are all those things. But I’m starting to feel like I’m doing this without you, and that’s what I’m worried about. Stuff like that. Your relationship with your sons. Your relationship with me.”

“Stop! Just stop. Okay? Stop.” He stepped back and raised his hands against my words as if to ward off the blow.

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying it. I get it, okay? I get it.”

“Do you get it? Because I need you to.” I pushed him. If we were going to have this conversation, then we were going to
have this conversation.
I didn’t know if I would have the courage to initiate it again.

“Yes. Yes, okay?” His flickering, angry eyes filled with tears, and he looked away from me, out into the backyard where the boys played. The boys he loved with every ounce of his being. His sons, our sons. “It’s tearing me up to know that Tucker said that, that he was afraid.”

Such discussions often brought tears from me, but I had never seen him respond that way. “I didn’t want to tell you, but that’s something you need to know.”

“Okay.”

I have mixed feelings about “okay.” It sends two messages: (1) I have heard you, and (2) I am done talking now. The “okay” calls me to the dance of waiting until he has found words. It’s like a thirty-second warning that this round is drawing to a close. I sensed the window of communication closing, and I wedged it open with my words. “I think we need help.”

“What kind?” His tears were gone, and his voice was hard.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t know either.”

“Well, Robb, you have one week to figure it out,” I said.

In our early dating days, filled with romance and naiveté, we had promised we would never entertain the possibility of divorce. But twelve years later this was so much harder than I had imagined it could be. One step at a time over the course of twelve years, we had silently followed separate paths in the road, teetering dangerously close to being “married singles.” There was little evidence of our marriage aside from the wedding bands we wore. If we were going to live in this together, then we needed to fight for it. My voice held fierce protection as I laid down the ultimatum.

His eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you show me the plan. Our home needs to change, and I can’t make enough changes for both of us. So you decide what you can do, or make an appointment for us to see a marriage counselor. I can’t handle the verbal explosions of your anger, and the boys can’t either. Figure out a way to get that under control, or decide who will counsel us through it. I’ll talk to anybody, but I know you won’t, so you’ll need to decide on the counselor you can trust, and I will meet you at his office.” Only after I finished my paragraph did I realize I had been pointing my finger at him, hammering the words into the air.

“Okay.” There it was again.

“Okay?”

“Got it.”

He was done. I felt emptied, having dropped the bomb. And as if he had snatched a baton in a relay, he claimed the fury for his own.

“Well, are you mad at me?” I hate this question every time I hear myself ask it. It’s a standard dance step. Five, six, seven, eight. Step ball change and then try to retract anything that might not feel good on this side after all.

“Tricia, you just gave me a list of all the things I’m doing wrong as a parent. Yes. I’m pretty angry.”

“At me, though? Are you mad at me?” There it was, that pesky urgency to resolve all tough feelings
now.

“I don’t know. I’m mad. Are we finished?”

“Yes, and I’m canceling our appointment with Matthew this afternoon.” Matthew was a budding photographer, and he had asked to photograph our family for his portfolio. We had signed on for the photo shoot in support of our close friend, and the discounted family portraits weren’t bad perks. But I had changed my mind. “No pictures today.”

He surprised me with his adamant response. “You can’t cancel.”

“Why?”

“Because we told him we would do it.”

“Robb, there’s not a chance I want a picture taken of this day.”

“Then we won’t buy any. But we’re keeping the appointment. He asked us to, and we’d be schmucks to cancel now. The appointment is in an hour.”

“You seriously want to do this.”

“No. I don’t. But we’re going to. Anything else?” He raised his eyebrows, and his lips were a straight, thin line.

“No.”

And with the firm set to his jaw, he took his rake and went to the garage.

The photo session was horrible. We were not a family unified. We brought a big ol’ fight to the photo shoot. This does not make for a photogenic day.

Matthew posed us on a bench; we sat staunchly, untouching. He asked us to hold hands as we walked down a path; we put the boys between us, managing to keep from engaging each other at all. He asked us to kiss; Robb said no. He honestly said no! We had no affection in us that day. It’s really a wonder that Matthew didn’t call the whole thing off and ask us to reschedule after we were on speaking terms.

I’m not sure it was the biggest fight of our marriage, if one can quantify such things. But it was assuredly the most defining argument. On that day, after that conversation, something would change—for better or for worse. And the defining day was captured on film.

Our home felt stone cold for four solid days. We operated like a well-oiled, heartless machine. We were miserable, but I consoled myself by noting that we were miserable together. That felt slightly better than feeling miserable alone.

I told myself that if I had the courage to start the argument, then I needed the courage to let it finish in its own time. The decision to not rescue is a choice, and it’s not an easy one. Feelings can be uncomfortable, and it’s very much within my nature to rescue the people I love from the feelings they don’t enjoy. But feelings are neither right
nor wrong; they simply are. Everyone is entitled to his own. My words may have been hard to hear, but I was convinced they were true. I resisted my instinct to smooth it over. I didn’t fix it. I didn’t take it back. I didn’t rescue. I stood my ground.

And I plodded through the silence and the cold nights.

“Did you see Matthew’s pictures in your e-mail?” I asked across the dinner table, stepping carefully across the line drawn between us.

“I did.”

“Did you like them?”

“He did a good job.”

“He did.” I watched as he looked down at his plate and nudged some food around with his fork. With his chin still down, his voice reached to me. “Dude, you are so mad at me in those pictures.”

Our eyes met, bridging the silent void. He gave me a smirk and a wink. And there it was: the first sign of softening.

“I was.” I smiled gently. I felt the same caution as when the boys and I encountered a bunny on the sidewalk path. I was so still, afraid to move too quickly or make too much noise, so that I didn’t miss my chance to come closer.

“Are you still mad?” He bit the food off his fork and chewed slowly.

“I don’t want to be.”

“I don’t either,” he said.

“So, you think we can do this thing?”

“I think we better.” He unscrewed the cap of the bottle of Diet Pepsi. “You want some more to drink?”