I'll Be You(79)
I headed out in the delivery van nearly an hour late, with no time to address the piles of paperwork that I promised myself I’d attend to. Five years in, and my business was still only barely scraping by. I loved the buckets of flowers brimming with possibility, the blank canvas of a vase, the clouds of sweet fragrance and the dark taint of earth just below, but I was dismal as a businesswoman. Dr. Cindy said that I’d undermined myself by choosing a career path at which I was doomed to fail. “You should consider selling your business and becoming a Mentor when you hit Level Ten,” she’d suggested, a prospect that both thrilled and terrified me. Was I ready for that kind of a commitment to the Method? (But if not, why was I pursuing it at all?)
I dropped the flowers at a modernist compound up in the Montecito hills, with a vanishing pool that looked out to the sea and a Richard Serra sculpture gracing the front garden. The client, deep in conversation with the caterer, was too distracted to notice the lackluster height of her centerpieces. I left the flowers and then drove back to my house, planning to stop in for just a few minutes before heading back out to a GenFem meeting.
I was in the kitchen, weighing out my carrot sticks, when I heard a thump above me, the sound of something heavy being scraped along the hardwood floor. I followed the sound up the stairs and found Chuck in the office, digging through the closet. Sports equipment and luggage were piled on the floor next to him, golf clubs tangling with duffel bags and tennis gear. A tube of neon green tennis balls rolled drunkenly across the room and stopped just at my feet.
He looked up to see me standing there and startled, a guilty, stricken look on his face. It wasn’t even six p.m. but he’d already changed out of his suit into jeans and a faded T-shirt that read Jackson Hole Ski Team. He’d bought that shirt on a trip we took nearly five years back, a ski vacation in Wyoming that ended in a snowstorm. The snow was so heavy that they closed down the resort, so instead of skiing we spent most of the trip naked by the fireplace in our hotel suite, having sex and ordering room service champagne. That was the vacation that we decided to throw my birth control in the trash. I remembered Chuck rolling over to me in the flickering light from the fire, his hands cradling my face, as he whispered, “Think of how incredible our babies are going to be. They’ll be the best of both of us.” I felt like a red carpet was unfurling before me, a plush path toward my future, leading to a perfect baby, our perfect family. When Chuck pushed inside me I whispered, “I’ve never been so happy” in his ear, and meant it.
When life has yet to disappoint you, you have no reason to believe it ever will. It’s only later, when you’ve been battered by failed expectations, that you grow cynical. Is it ever possible to find your way back to that initial, blissful optimism? Maybe not. Maybe that’s why I was so willing to believe in the other path, the one that GenFem was teaching me: cudgeling your way through life, fueled by self-righteous rage, demanding to be given what you believe you deserve. Less hope than brute force.
My husband and I stared at each other across the room. “What are you doing?” I asked even though it was obvious, of course it was, from the heap of objects at my husband’s feet, the presence of the matching suitcases that his parents gave us for our wedding.
“The company had a sudden opening in our Tokyo office,” he said. “I’m taking it.”
I almost laughed, because of course he had to be joking, until I realized, with a nauseating twist of the gut, that he wasn’t joking at all. “You’re moving to Japan and you just decided to tell your wife? You never even thought about asking me to come?”
Chuck looked terrible. The skin under his eyes was baggy and bruised, and he’d gained at least ten pounds, probably due to the fact that he’d been living on takeout. “I’m sorry. But we need a break anyway. We both know that this is unsustainable,” he said. “Our relationship—it’s broken.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s fixable. I’ve already explained to you exactly what I want. All you need to do is agree to start looking into adoption, and everything will be fine again.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going there again, Elli. This isn’t even about that anymore, don’t you realize? It’s about how irrational you’ve gotten, how single-minded and obsessive. It’s your way or it’s no way at all. I don’t understand what’s gotten into you. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership, not a dictatorship.”
“Exactly.” I sensed that this was one of the moments that GenFem had warned me about, when a Toxic tries to break you down into smaller pieces so that they can make themselves feel bigger. The important thing is to stand strong in your beliefs and remain whole. Page twenty-seven of my binder: I’d highlighted that sentence just last week. “And you don’t get to dictate that we aren’t going to have a family just because you suddenly decide you don’t want one anymore.”
“But I do want a family,” he said. His eyes had dropped to the floor and his voice was as low and flat as the pile of our Persian rug. “That’s why I’m leaving.”
“You’re leaving me because I’m infertile?”
“No.” He nudged at a golf club with his foot. “I’m leaving you because you aren’t you anymore. You’re not the same person I wanted to start a family with.”
“I am me. I’m more me than I’ve ever been.”