Always the Last to Know(13)
He thought Juliet had just come out a certain way, as if she raised herself.
Sometimes, I had to grit my teeth when people told us what a great kid she was, and John would glow with pride. He’d say things like, “Well, my mom loves poetry, too,” forgetting that I read poetry to our daughter (and no one had ever read poetry to me, you can be sure about that). He sure didn’t read poetry—and he was related to Robert Frost, maybe! He rarely made it home in time to read anything at all to Juliet.
The truth was, John didn’t do a lot with our daughter except provide. And he was a good provider. I valued that. Of course I did, and I still tried to be a good wife, asking him how his day went, arranging our social life because he certainly didn’t. I’d invite the partners of his firm over for dinner and make sure everything was delicious and beautiful, and he’d say, “That was nice, hon,” and then try to put the moves on me, and ignore the fact that I had just made a dinner for twelve people and was darn tired. But I’d have sex with him, and when he was sound asleep, I’d go downstairs and clean up the mess from dinner.
His personal habits began to scrape my nerve endings raw. When we were new to Stoningham and I had nothing but the house and volunteering to occupy my time, it was absolutely fine if he left a towel on the bathroom floor or didn’t rinse out the sink after he shaved. I was a housewife, so I didn’t mind cleaning up after him, though it reminded me that when we both worked full-time, I still did ninety-five percent of the housework.
But now, raising our beautiful, wonderful daughter, that towel and sink told me he didn’t think anything had changed. That he was too important to put his own dang towel on the rack or in the laundry basket, that three seconds of sink rinsing was beneath him because he was a lawyer and I was just a mother.
Again, in hindsight, I probably should’ve said something about this.
His own mother appreciated me, because she’d been me. When his parents came to visit, John and his father would play golf, while Eleanor and I admired Juliet, because really, isn’t that what grandmothers do? She cooed and praised and held her granddaughter close. Once, when it was just the two of us, Juliet asleep in her arms, she said, “No one knows how much of your soul you give to your baby. They think it’s just luck or chance that your baby sleeps through the night, or doesn’t pitch a tantrum when you’re leaving a store, or knows to say thank you. They think you were tapped by a fairy wand, and they ignore all the hours you put in, shaping them.”
Gosh, it felt so good to be truly seen that way! Sad to say, Eleanor died when Sadie was three months old. I wondered if things would’ve been different if she’d lived. I bet she would’ve helped, and maybe recognized that I had postpartum depression, because she was a smart one, that Eleanor. She was always kind and wise. Much more so than my own mother, may she rest in peace.
But as it was, both John and I lost our mothers in the span of six months, and right smack in between those deaths, we had a newborn. Seemed like God was laughing at all those years of trying to have Juliet, and then, when Juliet was almost twelve, surprise!
John felt very heroic, taking care of Sadie, changing diapers and getting up in the middle of the night . . . something he’d almost never done with Juliet. He loved to tell me how much he did, as my breasts felt like they were being sliced by knives and turning hard as rocks. When my incision needed to be restitched because I’d had a coughing fit (don’t the doctors just love to tell you how you were responsible for everything that goes wrong?), John told me how he’d brilliantly arranged for Caro to pick up Juliet for Girl Scouts. Not only that, he’d taken a casserole I’d made the month before out of the freezer, so dinner was all set. I’d been saving that casserole for when he went back to work and was traveling, when I’d be alone with our baby and adolescent, when all household and child-related responsibilities would be on me and me alone. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he said at dinner that night. “Who made this?”
He was just so . . . obtuse sometimes. Most times, to be honest.
Just as Juliet and I had our own little world, he had one with Sadie. Juliet loved her little sister, but their time together was limited; she had homework and projects, activities and friends. The sides were pretty clear—Sadie and John, Juliet and me. I couldn’t help resenting his adoration of Sadie, because Juliet had gotten none of that. Sometimes I’d see her face as she watched her father giving horsey rides to Sadie, or drawing with her for an hour after supper, and I knew she was hurt.
When Juliet left for college, things got worse in our marriage. He was critical of how I interacted with Sadie, telling me I was too strict, that Sadie was a free spirit, that I had to be more flexible. If I said, “No more cookies, Sadie,” he’d inevitably sneak her one more. If I said it was bedtime, he’d give her fifteen minutes longer. He came home every night at six thirty and it seemed like all he did was pick at me regarding Sadie. Why was she in her room? So what if she’d told her teacher math was stupid and she wouldn’t do her assignments? Everyone hated math. Were we having pork chops again? Didn’t we just have them?
And he said these things in an amiable way, so if I were to say, “No, John, that was in April. I make a meal plan so we never have the same dinner twice in any month, and I’ve done that since the day we were married. Haven’t you noticed?” he’d say, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. My mistake. I didn’t mean to offend you.” Then he’d wink at Sadie, or sigh if she wasn’t in the room, letting me know I was the bad guy here.