The Secret Ingredient for a Happy Marriage

by Shirley Jump

  “Maybe. I haven’t decided anything.” When Ma turned around, her perpetual scowl was back in place. “And I hope you won’t go telling the free world about my plans. I’m just thinking about it because we are friends and he is going to be there and offered to take me with him for a few days. As friends, so don’t create some spurious motivations behind me wanting a little sun and sand. In the meantime, it would be nice if you stepped up. You’ve been gone an awful lot, and the business is suffering.”

  The old Ma was back again. Maybe that moment of weakness was a mini-stroke or something. “Okay. I will. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much. I’m just…going through a lot.”

  Ma cut her daughter a sharp look. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine, Ma. It’s fine.” Nora straightened a place setting that was already perfectly aligned. “Do you want me to talk to Iris?”

  “I will. It could be nothing more than an innocent mistake,” Ma said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Me too,” Ma said quietly. “I’ve taken quite a shine to that girl. She reminds me of the four of you.”

  Nora put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll all work out. Like you said, probably just an innocent mistake.”

  The doorbell rang, Bridget called out that she’d get it, and a second later, Jake and Sarah came running into the room, beelining straight for their grandmother. “Gramma! Can we have a cookie?” Jake asked. “Daddy says I gotta wait for dinner, but I am really hungry right now. Like a bear.”

  Ma laughed and ruffled Jake’s hair. “No cookies before dinner. Why don’t you and Sarah go wash up, and by the time you get to the table, we’ll be just about ready to eat. And if you finish all your dinner, you can have two cookies.”

  The kids tossed their mother a quick hello and then hurried down the hall while Nora and her mother carried the pot roast and potatoes out to the table. Ben was talking to Abby and Jessie, so Nora, the Queen of Avoidance, ducked back into the kitchen. She washed the few dishes in the sink, cleaned countertops that were already sparkling, and folded a load of laundry.

  Maybe if she kept busy enough, she’d forget about how she had kissed another man just this afternoon and that she had thought about doing much more. Forget about the difficult conversation with the kids that would be coming soon. Forget about the decisions she was going to have to make in the next few weeks—finding an attorney, filing for divorce, dividing the house…

  Admitting her life was a failure of epic proportions.

  “Hey, sis, what’s up?” Abby breezed into the kitchen, depositing her coat on the back of the chair. Jessie, her new wife, followed behind carrying a basket of fresh-baked rolls. Tall, thin, and blond, Jessie worked as a lit professor at Brown and had the patience of Job. She meshed well with the more energetic, emotional Abby, and whenever they were together, both of them glowed.

  “Hi, Abs. Hi, Jessie.” Nora worked up a smile that she didn’t feel. “How’s married life?”

  “Awesome.” Abby grinned. “Even better than we expected.”

  “Definitely.” Jessie put a hand on Abby’s shoulder and looked at her with such love that Nora had to glance away.

  You used to look at me like that.

  Ben’s words, echoing in her mind. They’d toyed at the edges of her thoughts the whole way home from Truro. When had her look changed? Was it the day she found out he was gambling? Or the day she’d lost the baby?

  “Uh, we’re all set in here,” Nora said. Her throat was thick, and her eyes burned. She pretended to scrub an invisible stain off the countertop, her back to her sister. “So if you guys want to go keep Ma company and see the kids, go ahead.”

  Abby went off to finish setting the table, Jessie heading into the family room to visit with Colleen. Bridget arrived a few minutes later with dessert, and Aunt Mary came down the back stairs, looking a little pale but definitely better than she had weeks ago.

  Aunt Mary opened her arms and pulled Nora into a warm, firm hug. “How are you, dear?”

  “I’m fine.” Far easier to say that into someone’s shoulder than to their face. Nothing about Nora was fine, especially not after she’d complicated all of it by kissing Will.

  Aunt Mary drew back, cupped Nora’s cheek, and shook her head. “Sweetheart, you are far from fine. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated, but there was a catch in her throat and her damned eyes kept burning.

  Aunt Mary studied her for a moment, looking like she was about to say something, but she suddenly stepped back. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Leave us alone?

  Nora pivoted and found Ben standing in the kitchen. He had on the dark brown jacket she’d bought him two Christmases ago, the one that brought out his eyes. The suede was butter soft, and it still had that new scent because Ben so rarely dressed in anything other than work clothes. Her hand ached to run down the fabric, sliding over the hills and valleys of his shoulders, his arms, his chest. The thought of Will became distant, as if she’d been with the other man ten years ago, not a few hours earlier. “Ben. I thought you left already.”

  “I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

  She grabbed a stack of napkins and took a step toward the doorway. Could he see in her face that she’d gone to the Cape today? That she’d kissed another man? That she still had a trickle of guilt running through her even though very little happened? “Well, dinner’s about to be served and—”

  “It’ll only take a minute, Nora.”

  She drew in a deep breath and put her back to the counter, clutching the napkins to her chest like some kind of shield. “Okay. Let’s talk.”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said two weeks ago.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, something he only did when he was nervous. “And I think if you want a divorce, then I won’t contest it. I won’t fight you. We’ll get it over with quickly and amicably and make it as easy on the kids as possible.”

  “Thank you for that.” But hearing him say it aloud, with that finality in his voice, made her throat hurt. We’ll get it over with. A dozen years of marriage being ended with all the enthusiasm of a toddler eating a bowl of brussels sprouts. But he was right—they wanted different things out of their future. All they’d been doing was fooling themselves for the last year.

  “But if you aren’t sure or you want to wait a bit, I’m willing to do what it takes for that too.” He thumbed toward the dining room. “Those are our kids out there, our family. I don’t want to break that up if we don’t have to. My parents got divorced when I was Sarah’s age, and it was the hardest thing I ever went through.”

  “Your parents fought a lot, though, Ben. That makes it harder.” Even now, her in-laws argued at baptisms and birthday parties. It was a wonder they’d ever fallen in love, given how they hated each other now. She and Ben had fought, as all couples did, but never that no-holds-barred, expletive-filled nastiness she’d seen in her in-laws over the years. Half the time she thought they’d all be better off if the two of them went into a cage and had at it until there was only one victor.

  “They argued like it was the Civil War every day, and that made a part of me grateful they got divorced.” Ben sighed. “I meant the aftermath. When I had half my stuff at my dad’s house, half at my mom’s, I never felt like I had a home. Like I belonged anywhere.”

  She remembered him telling her about that before they got married. It had been part of why she married him, because Ben had talked about how much he wanted to put down roots, to buy a home where they would raise their children and welcome their grandchildren. She’d bought into that dream, and now it was gone. “We’ll make it work with the kids, Ben. We just have to communicate.”

  She could hear the TV playing and the low murmur of conversation in the living room, which meant Ma was keeping the kids and the rest of the family out of earshot. Thank God. None of the people sitting in front of Wheel of
Fortune knew that in another room, Nora’s world was crumbling.

  “When we bought that house, Nora, and we added Sarah and then Jake, I felt like I belonged. We had a family. We had a home.” He took a step closer. She caught the scent of his cologne, the same scent he had worn as long as she’d known him. It was familiar and warm. And tempting. “We belong in that house. All of us.”

  “The house is gone, Ben. Why can’t you accept that? What do we have, like twelve days until it’s on the auction block? There’s no fairy godmother coming down to save the day, no leprechaun showing up with a pot of gold. It’s gone, and that dream is gone too. I don’t want what you do anymore.”

  “How do you know what I want? You stopped talking to me, Nora. Maybe if we had talked more, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Talked about what, Ben? All I ever heard you say was that you wanted more kids. A bigger family. And at the same time, you’re blowing all our money and destroying our future.” She cursed and then, in a hot rush, everything she had stuffed deep inside her exploded. All those thoughts she had kept to herself, all those words she had never said out loud. Maybe it was the day on the beach, the kiss with another man, the breaking of all those stringent rules that finally unleashed the truth. “The truth is, a part of me was relieved when I lost that baby.”

  There. She’d said it. She had been secretly grateful for the miscarriage. What kind of mother felt like that?

  A long moment passed, with only the sound of Pat Sajak and an overly enthusiastic audience in the background. “What do you mean, you were relieved?”

  “I don’t want any more kids, Ben.” She let out a deep breath. “I want a life.”

  “We had a life together, Nora.”

  “Maybe you did, but I didn’t. I worked, I raised the kids, I cleaned the house, but there was no me. All those days I was in Truro”—with another man, her mind reminded her—“I got back to me. I started running again and reading and not being…anyone other than myself. And I imagined a different future.”

  “With someone else?”

  She waited a beat. The answer was more complicated than yes or no. She’d had what she thought she wanted in front of her a few hours ago, and she had pushed it away. “Just a different future. One where I have a life, Ben, outside of the kids and the housework and the bakery.”

  “I’ve never stopped you from that, Nora. You did that. You stopped talking to me. You shut me out of your life and out of your heart.”

  “Because I had to, Ben. You were destroying me. Destroying us.” The bright kitchen seemed too happy, too chipper, to be the right place for this conversation. Maybe they should have gone in the basement or out into the dark evening, where the world was colder and grayer and more like the truth. “I hate what you did to us. How can you say you don’t want to break us up, that you don’t want to lose the house, when you were the one who gave our money to the fucking roulette table? You might as well have stood there and put the keys to our house on red twenty-one. I hate you for what you did. I hate that this is where we are.”

  Except for that winter day, she had tamed her words and her anger. Nora had buried it all in working long hours and organizing closets and dusting shelves—anything to keep from exploding at Ben. She told herself he was getting help, that a good wife would be supportive of those efforts and not keep rubbing his face in his mistakes. The psychologist she’d spoken to at the rehab place had told her over and over again that those early days of recovery were fragile. One little thing could tip the scale and send Ben back to the casino. So she’d put on a cheery face and pretended all was well and stayed in the guest room. Because even she couldn’t maintain the façade when the lights went out and it was just the two of them in a queen-sized bed.

  “I quit gambling a year ago, Nora, and yet you can’t seem to stop beating me up about it. I got help, and yeah, I know we are still behind the eight ball financially, but we can salvage this—”

  “God, you are delusional.” She started to walk away. “This is a pointless conversation.”

  He grabbed her arm and stopped her. “You call me delusional? You’re the one who kept pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t. The one who refused to face reality. The one who has blamed me over and over again, instead of admitting your own mistakes. Remember last year when I asked if we could meet with a financial planner when things got really bad? You refused.”

  “Because I could handle it. Besides, why would we pay someone to tell us what we already knew? We were broke and in debt. There was nothing he could do.”

  “Maybe there would have been, but we’ll never know. You wouldn’t talk to anyone, wouldn’t take any help, not even that free debt class they offered at St. Gregory’s. You kept on spending money, living our life as if nothing had changed. You took over the bills. I couldn’t even buy a loaf of bread without checking with you—”

  “Because you would take that money and buy ten Megabucks tickets. Or stop at the OTB and bet on some horse named Lucky Shot.”

  “I would have. Past tense. But even after all the work I did, all the counseling and recovery, you still held those reins. What are you so afraid of, Nora? Why can’t you just let go and trust?”

  “Someone had to be in charge, Ben. I was just trying to hold our family together.” And because she was afraid that he’d run right back to gambling if she gave him the checkbook. I gambled because I needed some excitement in my life, he’d said. And all she’d heard was my life with you is boring. Once he came home from rehab and they settled back into playdates and parent-teacher conferences and work, they were back to that same world that lacked excitement. When the kids were acting up and the hot water heater was leaking, would he take that checkbook and go right back to finding his excitement elsewhere?

  Like he’d been doing every Friday and Saturday night for a year?

  Okay, so yeah, maybe she had kept spending money as if they didn’t have a looming debt. But it wasn’t like she spent thousands of dollars. It was twenty dollars for costume material, ten bucks for a pizza. All to preserve some sense of normalcy for the kids.

  “Instead of trying to hold our family together, you just drove a wedge deeper into our lives,” Ben said. “You thought you were helping me. Or helping us. Instead you were controlling everything, just like you always have. You control what time the kids go to bed, what we eat, but most of all, what people think of us. That image of the perfect family was so damned important to you, you refused to ask for help when we really could have used it. And you know what happens when you try to control everything? You end up controlling nothing.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, spare me from your recovery group mantras.”

  “They’re mantras because they are true. Control is an illusion, Nora. It’s only by letting go of control and admitting you don’t have your shit together that you find out what you really have.”

  “I did that with you. I told you when we got behind on the mortgage. I told you we were on the brink of losing the house. And what did you do? Nothing.”

  “You didn’t let me do a damned thing about it.” His voice started to rise, but then he took a breath and forced it into a harsh whisper. “I offered to call the mortgage company, and you said you would. I offered to negotiate with the bank—”

  “You’re not a negotiator, Ben. And having two people in the mix would have just made it worse.” Ben was one of those friendly guys who would pay a higher price for some lumber because the yard owner told him he was putting a kid through college. He rarely bickered on pricing or quotes, saying that it all evened out at the end of the day.

  “Listen to you,” he said. “Two people? It’s not like we’re picking up a hitchhiker and bringing him to the meetings with the loan officer. This is you and me, husband and wife, trying to save our house. Together.”

  They had stopped making decisions together a long time ago, and they both knew it. “Why are we even talking about this? It’s too late anyway.”

 
“Because I’m still trying to save something.” He closed the gap between them, his eyes softening just a bit. “Us.”

  How she wanted to believe that. To fall into the trap again of feeling like they were a team. But it was too late. It was far too late. So she steeled her spine and pushed out the words that needed to be said. “There’s nothing left to save, Ben. I’m sorry.”

  “Nora, you can’t throw away our marriage and our kids’ lives this easily.” His voice cracked.

  Nora hated that her weak, foolish heart still loved him. “You did that with your first bet, Ben. Why don’t you go cry to Joyce? She seems to care an awful lot about what’s going on with you. I have to go. My family is waiting for me.”

  It was a low shot, and she hated herself as soon as she said the words. She would have taken them back, but Ben stalked out of the kitchen, gave the kids a quick goodbye, and left.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  After the front door shut, Nora emerged from the kitchen, still holding napkins they didn’t need. Magpie had arrived while Nora was talking to Ben. She looked a little tired, which was unusual because, of the four of them, Magpie was the one who could stay awake all night and perk up before her morning cup of coffee. This Magpie looked subdued, pale, and worried. Nora realized she never had had that late-night conversation with her sister; in fact, she’d forgotten entirely that Magpie had wanted to talk.

  What was happening to Nora? Since when did she let her family down like that? It was all that conflict with Ben, she told herself. Once they were divorced—

  Divorced. God, the word held a razor edge that stole her breath and ached in her chest. It equated to failure in her mind. She had done everything right—and still failed to keep her family together.

  “Come on, everyone, stop lollygagging,” Ma said, ushering everyone forward like a mother hen. “Dinner is going to get cold.”

  They all sat down, with one vacant chair. Nora expected to see a place setting, the same one Ma had set every night for two decades for the husband she had lost, but the space before the chair was empty. Nora pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Did you want me to get Dad’s plate, Ma?”