I Liked My Life(19)

Standing at the urinal appears to be the only place his mind rests. For a short moment, I have the stage. Show Eve the journal. Brady tilts his head to one side, straining to hear. I say it again: Show Eve the journal. His voice comes back, talking over mine. He asks it to himself as a question because, of course, it has to be his idea. Should I show Eve Maddy’s journal?

I shoot right back. It documents Maddy’s love. He receives it, but still as a question. Will it help? I have one more chance as he washes his hands. I repeat the full sequence. It works. Brady adds my request to his mental checklist, which is more reliable than death and taxes.

I wish I’d discovered this rational, simple approach while I was alive. Brady and I would’ve avoided so many confrontations. Every couple has one never-ending fight, one conflict that rears its head again and again. Each time it ends, you assume you’ve found resolution moving forward, but the same battle reinvents itself under a different pretense and bam! you’re right back where you started. For Brady and me, it was about vacation. I wanted to go; he didn’t. By our second night away, tanned and relaxed enough to wear a Tommy Bahama shirt, he’d offer a toast as an apology: To my beautiful wife who realizes that taking a wonderful vacation is worth a fight. I promise I’ll remember this moment next time.

And yet, when vacation rolled around again, getting Brady to agree to time off was like getting dried Parmesan off a dinner plate. Somehow his previous epiphany of appreciation was overshadowed by everything he was juggling at that moment. The fight always commenced the same way. I’d say, “Eve has a week off coming up and I thought we could go somewhere as a family.” Brady would agree to check his schedule. Tension steadily mounted over the next two weeks as I sought confirmation on our pending plans, until we hit the true beginning of the fight, when Brady said something like, “You know, honey, with work it’s just not in the cards for me right now, but you and Eve should go anyway.” Some variation of this sentence started about two fights a year throughout our entire marriage. That’s forty fights, fierce and long, on the same subject.

I went ballistic twice a year, calling him everything from a martyr to a cheater. I cried and questioned why he didn’t like spending time with his family. I stormed out of rooms. I cursed. One time, after a few glasses of wine and to my sincere embarrassment, I broke a plate on the floor. That night he accused me of acting like my mother. He’s lucky he survived the insult.

Listening to his systematic thought process, I now see that the fight for him was no longer about taking off work, it was that not taking off work didn’t make a person a masochist or adulterer. Logic owns my husband—being a hard worker does not equate to screwing someone else. That’s a fact; that’s what he was arguing.

“Maddy,” he’d say, “listen to yourself. You’re not making sense.”

His analytical response burned me. “You don’t care how upset I am.”

“I care, but come on, you’re being theatrical. I can’t take time off right now, that’s all. I don’t have a secret life, or any of the other crazy shit you’ve rattled off.”

I should’ve stated my case more simply. Brady is a numbers guy. Things add up to be correct or incorrect, not because of hype but in spite of it. I wonder how he’d have responded if I’d said something like, “We need to vacation as a family. It’s important for our marriage and your relationship with Eve. You can bring your iPad and check email, but I’m asking you to make this a priority.” I bet with a concentrated message like that, he wouldn’t have fought so hard. He would’ve respected my reasoning and agreed to go, perhaps with the caveat that we shorten the trip from seven days to five.

I could have lived with that.

Eve

Another lecture about drinking and driving is on its way. I’ll apologize and my predictable father will say, “That’s not good enough this time,” and announce the punishment he’s been “mulling over” all week. Whatever it is, I won’t give a shit because there’s nothing he can take from me that matters. This entire conversation is a waste.

“Help me understand what happened,” he says instead.

Oh, I get it. He’s attempting to approach it how my mother would have. I slouch, not knowing how to answer now that we’re off-script. I decide to make him uncomfortable so he’ll drop the act.

“I’m not a respected executive that people are afraid to offend, Dad. I hear people whispering about us. Not just Saturday. All. The. Time. It blows.”

“Not having to hear it doesn’t mean I don’t know what people are saying.”

He’s talking to me. For real. Maybe I should’ve gotten in a car accident sooner. “Well, it’s humiliating.”

He twitches. Humiliation is new to us both. I used to be proud of our family, not that I appreciated it at the time. Dad was successful and Mom wasn’t like the other moms who spent like three hours a day at the gym and kissed everyone’s ass. When I was twelve, she overheard this girl Lauren (whose dad owned practically every gas station in Boston) call this other girl fat. Mom barely knew either of them, but she paused her conversation with Paige, looked Lauren right in the eye, and calmly said, “That was mean. You should consider saying you’re sorry.”

“You’re not a teacher,” Lauren said.