“Can you believe we live here?” we said to each other, often, never taking our surrounds for granted. Mountains to sound, brilliant sunshine when there wasn’t fantastical rain, cool moss and slow slugs; there was nothing not to love. Our lives, like the abundant native flowers, bloomed.
“I don’t want to build,” I said over a warm mocha, repressing bad memories. “I’d like a house already built.”
After viewing eighty homes from Edmonds to Stanwood, Whidbey to Snohomish, we settled on a nearly finished new home. All the others were too big or small, too expensive, too far, or smelled. The two thousand dollars from the sale of our St. Louis home was all we had at the first, readily eaten up with a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment, leaving nothing for a down payment. Thank God for VA loans.
The only home-finishing decisions to make were flooring selections, countertops, and lights. We had floors and counter tops down. Agreed, no question—compromised on the lights.
“We can always upgrade the lights later when we have the money, or build a new one on Whidbey,” Glenn said as he passed out beer and stogies to the landscaping crew.
“Yeah, if we want to,” I said, knowing we wouldn’t.
* * *
“I got a job! I got a job!” I yelled, hopping up and down. “Instead of scheduling air service, I’ll be scheduling airplane production. Maybe even on the XB321 line, that new Concorde replacement.” Airplanes were not the fabric of my being as they were Glenn’s. I didn’t eat, sleep, and breathe airplanes. They were more of an adornment for me, something to enjoy; still, I looked forward to starting work on a brand new program.
“They offered you a job on the spot?” Glenn asked.
“No, but I could tell they wanted me. They will.”
“Of course they wanted you. Who wouldn’t?” Glenn said. “Celebrate?”
We feasted on fresh salmon, enjoying the misty view from our dining room table.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Glenn said, referring to the meal, the place, and our fresh start. “You won’t believe what we are doing at work. I wish I could tell you. It is so cool.”
I smiled, happy all of our hard work was bearing fruit, his career aspirations, taking off. What shrouded, secret, airplane wonders he was working on, I could only imagine.
“So,” he said, “since everything is falling into place now, you ready to start a family?”
“Let me think about it,” I said, still smiling.
It had been nearly twelve months since I put those exciting plans on hold, when they had become frightening, complicating prospects in an unstable marriage. “They probably won’t be too happy if I get pregnant right away.”
“So,” Glenn said, his pat answer for everything.
I hemmed and hawed in my head, then finally concluded there was no point in putting it off. “We’d better practice,” I said. My mischievous grin invited him to touch me in spite of the undone dishes.
* * *
I called Glenn at home, the fourth attempt from my desk at work that afternoon. It was the third afternoon in a week the phone was perpetually busy. I bit my lip as my heart raced with arrhythmic anxiety and anguished fury, a predictable response given that this had happened at least eighty times too often. I was sure he was surfing the internet again. Most workday evenings, our computer’s cache contained cookies loaded with X-rated filling. It killed me every time. My nine lives combined had been used up more than nine times. He said he wouldn’t do it anymore, and at first, I believed him. But then when I typed www. and the URL address filled itself in with porn sites I never wanted to know existed, I knew he had lied. Suspicion set in and I found myself following his cyber tracks, seeing where he’d been, feeling betrayed. I’d lost some trust along the way. There wasn’t much point in asking him to stop, for the fifteenth time. Glenn’s porn habit was like the smallest cactus needle, nearly invisible, yet caused fierce pain.
Even though Glenn always looked for something new, I knew he would never cheat on me. I had never dreamed the something new would be cozying up to a computer. The girls on the machine didn’t care if he used them, or yelled at them. They had no feelings to dismiss. They were easily controlled. Exchanged. Swapped out.
He didn’t cheat in the traditional sense. He walked a fine line, bordering on infidelity, but since it wasn’t a real person, he thought he wasn’t hurting anyone.
But he was.
* * *
When I got home, Glenn was leafing through an Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine with a futuristic warfighting airplane on the front cover.
“Wouldn’t you rather work on commercial airplanes?” I asked, revering the merits of bringing people together, world commerce, and its inherent good and noble possibilities.
“No. Where’s the fun in that? We need speed, maneuverability, agility. Air dominance, man.” Glenn uttered a primal ‘arrrgh,’ growling his fierceness, then said, “It’s a guy thing.”
I wondered if tying up the phone for an hour and a half, leaving crumpled wads of toilet tissue in the office trash can was a guy thing too. Or was it an immaturity thing, inconsiderate thing, selfish thing, disrespectful thing? I didn’t know what it was except it was a disturbing thing.
To me.
Maybe Megan’s grandmother was right when she said marriage wasn’t about who you wanted to grow old with, it was about who you wanted to grow up with. But Glenn wasn’t growing. Flat out told me that he didn’t want to grow up, was afraid of getting old.
“Go put something sexy on for me,” Glenn said. He pulled down the blinds and turned on all the lights.
“I don’t really want to,” I said, repulsed by the idea, sure that he had just gotten it on with a girl in cyberspace. To Glenn, sex was a romp in the playground—I was the thing being trod upon, not the friend he was having fun with. Why don’t you wear sexy outfits? His oft-repeated question played in my mind. It was like asking the city council for new playground equipment after it had been repeatedly vandalized. It may take years for them to grant the request, waiting for the perpetrator to grow up or move out. In the meantime, it was ruined for everyone.
“You never want to,” he said.
“I’m fat,” I said, making up an excuse, knowing that a direct confrontation would start a fight.
“You’re not fat.”
How could he tell me I wasn’t fat when I was a good ten pounds heavier than when he had implied I was fat back in college? I didn’t believe him. He’d tell me anything just to get me to do what he wanted.
I was in no way turned on. Sex was neither physically nor emotionally satisfying; it was a chore. There was an odd once or twice a year I enjoyed it, but the other fifty times ranked right up there with cleaning the kitchen, something that had to be done. I remembered the time that Megan had called at an inopportune moment. “What are you doing,” she had said as Glenn finished his business.
“The dishes,” I had replied, pulling the covers up to my neck.
“I called at a bad time, didn’t I? I’ll call you back.” She had promptly hung up.
I needed to be turned on between the ears, not turned off so hard that I was broken. Megan’s grandma said that if a man stimulates a woman between the ears with respect and thoughtfulness, warmth and dignity, the rest will follow.
Megan’s grandmother had solved the time old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. She said, “The chicken always comes first. You gotta have a good relationship before you’ll have a good lay. The relationship is the chicken and the sex life is the egg.”
Our chicken was in mortal danger.
“I don’t feel good,” I said honestly, but not with the conventional meaning.
Frustrated, Glenn asked, “Don’t you love me?”
CHAPTER 23
“Clouds look soft and fluffy, but they’re actually bumpy. Try flying through one.”
—Captain J.H. Norris
Dear Megan,
How have you been
? Things are about the same here. Seattle continues to be amazing and my job is going well.
Congrats on your new job. Must be nice being on your way. Pretty soon you’ll not just be assistant to the VP, but the VP herself! I knew you could do it. You can do anything. But who’d a thought you’d end up in the seafood business? Hmmm.
Glenn’s job is going well—really fun for him. But at home it is still kind of up and down. Remember I told you he said I’d broken down this wall he had built up around him? Well, the debris field isn’t cleared. I’m still picking up the pieces. Bricks, one by one. Love, Camryn
* * *
I slipped in and out of work, unnoticed. Over six months had gone by since I hired in, loving every minute of it. But something was wrong that week . . . with me.
“You’ve lost it,” Dr. Martin said as she studied the results—my third blood test in five days. “Your hCG levels are not doubling, not like a normal pregnancy.” She tapped the report, setting it down after a final once over. “But everything should resolve itself.” Code words for no D&C needed. She had emptied all hope. “Over twenty percent of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. Most don’t even know they’ve miscarried.” Her statistic consoled only those who didn’t know it had happened to them. I knew. I felt hollow, as if I had suffered a great loss, but put on a stoic face.
“I understand. Thank you,” I said. Glenn could stop asking me, as he had every month, when I was going to get pregnant. I had been. Glenn, always on top of the matter, had said his biological clock was ticking, and in another couple of years he’d be too old for kids. I was under a strict time limit, no pressure.
On my first visit, Dr. Martin had done an ultrasound, then the blood tests just to make sure, but, to my own surprise, I held out hope that everything would be okay. Everything was not okay and when I got home, I told Glenn the news, surprising myself further by breaking down into tears.
“Don’t worry,” Glenn said, holding me as I wept. “We can try again. It’ll be fine.”
“I know,” I said, sniffling. “I didn’t expect to feel so sad. I didn’t even know I was pregnant.”
“You’ll make a good mommy.” Glenn traced over my eyebrows and down my nose with his finger. “Want an Irish coffee?”
I nodded, wondering why he thought I’d make a good mother, but glad he did.
* * *
Six months later, most people would not guess that I had been glowing for three months.
CHAPTER 24
“My wants were very me-centric. Of course I wanted to be spoiled rotten with thoughtful consideration, but just as much, I also wanted to give it.”
—F.W. Rolfe
Dear Megan,
You are not going to believe what just happened to me. I’m just so blown away—I’m beside myself! Okay Camryn, calm down. I just ran into an old friend from my high school. I was walking through a building at work and all of a sudden a guy stopped me and said, “Are you Camryn Johnson?” Can you believe it? No one has called me by that name for a few years now—since Glenn and I got married, obviously. So I said yes, while in a split second my mind raced. Do I know this guy from college? No, high school! It was Kurt. Kurt Stone. My friend Sarah’s brother. This is so amazing that in a company of 30,000 people, I’m walking through the hallway and run into an old friend from Harvard, Illinois, 2000 miles away! This is so cool. We talked for about 20 minutes. After I mentioned that I was pregnant with my first child and showed off my modest tummy, he got up and motioned for me to sit in his chair. What a gentleman. We caught up on what each other had been doing all these years and what had become of the old gang since Sarah, Kate, and I had fallen out of touch. Sarah and Kate have a bunch of kids, Kate eventually marrying Eric. Sarah’s fine, but I guess Kate and Eric aren’t happy. No wonder since he was such an asshole. Amazing how women can marry assholes even when all the signs are there. Kurt married Ashley and they wound up here when Microsoft recruited her. He says they have no time for anything and as soon as he can get his herd of miniature cows established for selling as luxury pets, he’s quitting. How funny is that? And then the conversation got around to Reese. You remember—he was the guy from back home that I couldn’t stop talking about while you and I were “exstrange” students in Australia. Kurt hadn’t heard anything from Reese in years and wondered what happened between us. All I could say was that I really didn’t know except that he stopped writing, I went off to college and met Glenn and the rest was history. Anyway, it was so great to run into someone from home. I’m way too excited.
Love, Camryn
* * *
After I shared my chance encounter with Glenn, he said, “That’s nice,” then went on to say, “How about a weekend away? Pretty soon it won’t be just you and me anymore.” He hugged me, careful not to smash the baby. “Let’s just go.” I felt happily spoiled, thinking he had planned a romantic getaway.
“Sure,” I said, “where are we going?”
“I don’t know. Plan something and I’ll take the weekend off,” he said, heading to happy hour. “Let me know when we’re going.”
I planned a trip to Victoria and the Butchart Gardens, crossing the Canadian border at Blaine, taking a ferry through evergreen isles from Tsawwassen, then back on another ferry to Anacortes. Before I was turned on to the Northwest, any tree with needles was a pine to me. As we sailed, I recognized cedar, hemlock and spruce lining the shores.
“Look over there,” Glenn said, almost in a reverent whisper. We saw a bald eagle swoop in to its nest, feet clutching a payload of salmon.
We wandered the vast and beautiful Gardens, a horticulturist’s Disneyland minus the stomach-churning rides and clever cartoons—a spectrum of color, fragrance, and texture, a living museum.
“I had no idea there were so many species of daisy in North America,” I said, “I thought they were only white and yellow—and the spray-painted ones.” I laughed at my own dumb joke. Glenn lightly knocked my head.
Glenn told me to splurge on a quaint room at the Empress with an ivy-obscured Inner Harbor view. “Overtime will cover it,” he had said.
We walked harborside, taking in the odd musician and the chalk artist who drew a large hole on the sidewalk which I nearly fell into. The fresh marine air and laid-back atmosphere lulled us into a calm sense of a warm home, savoring each other’s company as spouses who like each other should. It was our last night away alone.
* * *
“We’re having a girl!” I said, relieved. I had prayed for a girl.
“She was pretty sure, not definitely sure,” Glenn reminded me, holding out hope for a boy.
“You saw the ultrasound. Dr. Martin said to imagine the baby sitting on glass. You saw the three lines,” I said, elated. “You should be happy. You’ve asked every single visit for an ultrasound to find out, and today we did. It’s a girl.” I nudged his shoulder as we walked into the restaurant celebrating yet again.
God knew I couldn’t handle having the son of Glenn. My answered prayer was so satisfying that it lessened the sting of the argument we had two nights before.
When our new computer didn’t look or behave like the one at Glenn’s office, he became annoyed, saying, “It doesn’t work. You get on that phone and tell them to fix it! Make them come out to the house if that’s what it takes. I paid good money for that piece of shit . . .”
“You have a network at work, of course it’s going to work differently,” I tried to explain.
“What do you mean ‘of course it’s going to work differently’?” Glenn slapped the quick-start manual onto the desk, fuming in frustration. “It’s the same operating system we have at work; it should be just the same. Stop making excuses,” he said, as if I were a traitor, “Why are you defending them? They screwed it up. You need to call them.”
I felt my distressed blood pressure rise.
“I think if we just read the manual . . . . Everything is in there,” I said, sure the computer was fine, trying to calm Glenn down. “We just n
eed to customize the desktop. Find where stuff’s at, create a few shortcuts . . .”
“Since when are you the expert?” Glenn yelled. He kicked the shipping container. David bolted from the office, taking cover behind the couch.
I slumped to the ground, tired of being verbally beaten into submission, tired of standing. I sat leaning against the desk with my knees bent, bulging tummy between them. Tears streamed down my face, computer manual opened to my side. My heart beat fast. Stress coursed through my veins. This can’t be good for the baby filled my head, causing me to cry more, wishing it would all go away.
“I’m not an expert, but you asked me to set up the computer and I did. I think it just needs to be configured.” I bowed my head, pressing my eye pits into my knees, soaking up the tears. I wished he’d give me time to figure things out rather than yell that it wasn’t working exactly the way he thought it should the moment it was plugged in.
“I think is not going to cut it. I want someone who knows!” he bellowed. “And if you can’t make them fix it, I will.”
I wished he would have offered nicely to call customer service, rather than first wringing me out; but his belated offer, extended after pointing out my perceived inadequacy, was no help. I felt pressured to make it right right away to save me and a poor customer support person from Glenn’s verbal daggers.
I stayed up late reading the manual through bleary eyes, finding the correct icons, creating shortcuts on the desktop, setting up e-mail to look and feel like XB’s. After four hours sleep, I was able to give a full accounting.
“There was nothing wrong with it. It just needed to be set up,” I said.
“You didn’t need to stay up late,” he said, thoughtful and concerned. “I told you I’d take care of it.” Anyone listening in on the conversation for the first time would have been moved by his touching words.
Love, Carry My Bags Page 31