Your time may yet come. Never give up.
Love you lots,
Camryn
CHAPTER 34
“Love, not nails, held Jesus to the cross.”
—Pastor J. Murdoch
“Let’s go out for breakfast,” Glenn said excitedly on the twelfth Easter of our marriage. “My treat.”
I fastened Elizabeth into her seatbelt, tickled her knee. “Did you call your mom?” I asked Glenn.
“No, why?” Glenn backed out of the driveway as the girls hopped their new stuffed bunnies around on their laps.
“Your dad died a year ago today.” I wondered why he hadn’t recalled. “I thought it would be nice for you to call your mom since she’s all alone.”
“She’s not all alone. My sister’s close.”
“But they hardly ever see each other,” I said, feeling sorry for Glenn’s mother. “Why don’t you ask her to come out here? We have an extra room.”
“Yeah!” Sydney cheered. “Have Grandma live with us.”
Glenn recoiled at the thought. “Over my dead body,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked to a chorus of move Grandma here, move Grandma here coming from the back seat.
“Are you crazy? She’d drive me nuts!”
“Well you probably drove her nuts when you were little.”
“What do you have for lunch this week?” Glenn asked—dropping the subject—tense and serious, like a prosecuting attorney.
“There’s Friday’s leftover casserole, or there’s leftover pizza from last night, leftover spaghetti . . . all sorts of things. Frozen dinners . . .”
“I don’t want leftovers and I don’t want frozen dinners,” Glenn said, irritated. “Why didn’t you get me lunchmeat like I asked?” His nostrils flared with disproportionate anger. “You never get me what I want, but you get the kids what they want.”
“I haven’t been to the store since Thursday. You don’t take lunch until Monday and I wouldn’t have wanted the lunchmeat going bad by then,” I said, defending myself, thinking if he’d actually eat the perfectly good food we already had, I wouldn’t have to make an extra grocery run—or have this conversation.
“So you planned on me taking lunchmeat. Why didn’t you just say that?” Glenn said, irate. “I’m sick of you always beating around the bush. Why can’t you just say what you mean?”
“I did say what I meant—”
“No you didn’t,” Glenn said, cutting me off. “You told me a list of things I didn’t want and then said you were going to buy lunchmeat today. Why couldn’t you have just said ‘lunchmeat’?” Glenn fumed. “See where you lose me?”
My head hurt.
“Will you stop already?” I said, my voice raised. Glenn jammed the shifter into park at the restaurant. “You asked what we had for lunch this week and I answered you. And it’s not like I feed the kids and you go hungry. I got the kids snacks because they needed some for school.”
“What about what I need?” Glenn clenched his jaw. “Don’t I matter?” Hate glared from his eyes. “I’m done,” he said. Giving me no chance to reply, he got out of the car saying, “Get out of the car, kids.”
“I’m not done,” I shouted across the parking lot, too upset to care about the example I was setting. An example of either standing my ground or being plowed over, maybe both.
Glenn stopped just long enough to say, “I am.”
“Knock it off.” I got in Glenn’s face, pushed him back toward the car. Standing in an oil-stained parking space, I said in a low growl, “Just knock it off. You can’t just rip my head off and leave.” Glenn jerked away and stood there with an I’ll-stand-here-while-you-talk-at-me-but-I’m-not-listening scowl.
Divorce the bast—flashed through my head. My body blanched with anger. I wondered why I hadn’t left him ages ago, perhaps when Reese had told me he still loved me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Reese enough to do it, it was that I didn’t love my family little enough.
“You asked me what we had to eat and I answered you,” I repeated, mad but calm, as the girls clung to my legs. “I didn’t say I was going to get lunchmeat, because we had leftover pizza because you wanted pizza. And we have leftover spaghetti to eat before it goes bad because you wanted spaghetti.” Glenn was still seething, but quiet. Trembling, I went on, “And we have frozen dinners because you asked me to get them three weeks ago—WHICH I DID—and you still haven’t eaten them.”
Straining to be polite and let me finish, Glenn said, “Are you done?”—a stern expression across his face.
“Yes,” I said, feeling no immediate relief for speaking my mind.
“If getting some sliced roast beef is such a problem for you, then I’ll do it,” Glenn said, notes of finality and of disappointment in me, in his voice.
I gave up.
Glenn marched into the restaurant, the girls—unsure whether to hurry right behind or tag along with me—reluctantly followed him. The waitress seated us quickly after Glenn expressed in no uncertain terms, that waiting in the foyer a minute was much too long.
The girls flanked me on one side of the booth, Glenn, alone on the other. Elizabeth stood on the seat, bending over to hug me and whispered loudly in my ear, “I love my Mommy.”
“Sit down,” Glenn barked at her. She looked at me with sad eyes.
“Sit down, honey,” I said, patting the seat next to me. She sat close, my personal space snuffed out.
When the waitress asked for our order, I was so worked up I couldn’t speak. The leopard seated across from me had my tongue. If I had uttered the first “b” of my planned biscuits and gravy order, tears would have rolled. I shook my head no and looked the other way as my order streamed down my face instead. I discretely dabbed my eyes with a napkin while Glenn said, “I’ll have the deluxe breakfast,” then looked at the girls. “You want pancakes?”
“Yeah! Pancakes,” they said, still bouncing their bunnies.
Happy fucking Easter, I thought.
Resurrection day for Glenn’s demons.
“Let me see that bunny,” I said, avoiding Glenn’s eye, putting on that everything was fine while playing with Elizabeth. No sense ruining their holiday more than we already had.
It had been a record three months since our last major argument—a food fight as well—when I forgot to buy sliced provolone. I wondered if Reese would have gone off if I had forgotten to buy cheese.
“Are you ok?” Glenn asked, as if he truly cared.
“No.” I felt like the three months’ progress we made was reset to zero.
“Come on, it’s over,” Glenn said, attempting to coax me into putting it in the past. It was an easy thing for he who started it to say, no residual browbeating to nurse. “It takes two . . .” Glenn recited another of his choice mantras, which, coming from him, actually meant that both were equally to blame even if one party was merely breathing.
Still on the edge, I said, “Why couldn’t you have just asked me to buy lunchmeat this afternoon if that’s what you wanted? ‘Hon, could you pick up some roast beef, I’d like to bring a sandwich tomorrow’ or something like that. Instead you ask me what we have for lunch and”—I stopped speaking because my emotionally stressed mind was full. A silent tear trickling down my face cached enough space for me to whisper—“I get the mental shit kicked out of me for giving you an answer.”
It wasn’t fair.
“Look, stop telling me what to say and how to say it. Stop putting words in my mouth. I’m not you. I don’t have your words. Why do I always have to say what you want me to say? Is that fair?” Glenn said through clenched teeth, his foul temper more intense with each word. “I said what I meant to say. Why do you keep bringing it up? I told you I’d get it.”
“Yeah, after all that,” I said, wondering why we had to go through this outrageous production, “you—”
Glenn cut me off, still shooting machine-gun words my direction. “I asked you a question. Is . . . that . . . fair? Don’t go talking about
something else when you haven’t even answered my question.”
It was a question with a no-win answer. It was a chase-your-tail, out-of-context, make-no-sense question. If I answered that it was not fair to make him speak my ‘required’ words, then he’d go off about why I asked him to. If I explained that I was not being a tyrant, insisting on my own way, but instead, offering more effective communication ideas, he’d tell me I was full of shit and I, was too, being oppressive. If I chose again, to tread lightly and not answer, I risked severe chastisement for being the non-communicative one; that out of common courtesy and respect for him, his question deserved an answer. I chose the walking-on-eggshells route. I would finish what I was going to say before Glenn had interrupted. I’d risk being told that I was ignoring his question, and being asked, was that, also fair? Ignoring his question?
If he knew my predictions of how he’d react, he’d take offense, saying I didn’t give him much credit, is that all the better I thought of him, and what am I, a mind reader? As if past experience counted for nothing. And the other question he seemed to have forgotten about, about why I keep bringing things up unnecessarily—I didn’t have the energy to jump through the thought-process hoops to ‘correctly’ answer that one.
“After all the arguing, yes, you offered to get lunchmeat. But you don’t get it,” I said, trying to convey that he didn’t understand the big-picture conversation.
“There you go again,” Glenn huffed, straightening up as the waitress set a platter of breakfast in front of him, then when she left he said, “playing mind games.” He stabbed an over-easy egg yolk with the triangular point of his toast and bit it off, just like my head.
Sydney interrupted, “Can you please help me cut my pancakes?”
I chopped her pancakes into bite-sized pieces while I explained, “I’m not playing mind games.”
“Camryn, I don’t like to fight,” Glenn said, offering a broken olive branch.
Could have fooled me, I thought, staring at him, wondering what he would say next. It seemed like fighting was a persistent hobby of his, along with irritation and anger. They were interests he’d had before we met, but I was never fully involved until after we were hitched.
“Then why do you?” I asked, loathing the hypocrisy.
He didn’t answer.
“Part of our problem is that we need to work out problems peacefully, where we deal with things and you don't get mad at me, and then me get mad back at you because you got mad at me, and then you become more mad at me because I got mad at you for being mad at me and then I'm more mad because you don't think I should have gotten mad because you got mad at me! The largest percentage of our heated discussions is being mad about being mad, not the original subject!” I caught my breath.
“That was a mouthful,” Glenn said, stuffing the last bite of hash browns into his own. “But I hear what you’re saying.” Unfortunately, he only seemed to hear when I was infuriated.
“Can we skip the getting mad at each other part and just move on to the solution?” I asked, thinking how stupid the whole thing was.
“I’d like that,” he said.
Then why don’t you do it? I stared at him, tears still welling in my eyes.
Looking sheepishly at his plate, he asked “Did you want some?”
“I’m not that hungry.” I had a total appetite loss when the waitress took our order, but a bite of something . . . .
“You can have a bite of mine, Mommy,” Sydney offered.
“Thanks, sweetie,” I said, taking the syrup-soaked pancake from her fork.
“I’m sorry,” Glenn said.
I wondered what exactly he was sorry for.
“They’ve got me on this project at work. I’m under six hundred thousand pounds of pressure. Every day is a life or death decision . . . and I can’t watch everyone. I wonder what I miss.” Glenn sipped his ice water; Elizabeth reached for his glass, asking to share. “Then you reminded me about Dad and laid a guilt trip on me about Mom . . .”
“It wasn’t a guilt trip,” I said, resenting the comment.
“Felt like it,” he said, as though there was no other interpretation.
I stared through the Easter basket centerpiece and whispered, “We need to do better.”
* * *
It wasn’t until Sydney was in third grade that Glenn came to think of helping her with homework as his parental responsibility. And it was not until both girls were in school that he suggested one of us drop them off in the mornings and the other pick them up as a routine division of labor. Baby steps.
We’d come a long way from my being repulsed by his touch—the distance of twelve years, far enough to feel safe. Those scars were sometimes overlooked reminders of battles well worn, not hurting every day as they once did. While life wasn’t wonderful, we made do, plodding along.
“I can’t believe those guys at work!” Glenn vented, arriving home with the kids. “Especially QA.” It wasn’t the first time he’d complained about Quality Assurance. “One of these days someone’s going to get killed. It’s out of control.”
He opened a beer, plopped on the couch, and shut his eyes, stress still apparent on his forehead.
“Elizabeth, get out your homework, I’ll help you tonight,” I said, knowing Glenn had a heavy weight on his shoulders. Our evening conversation had been the same for months, revolving around Glenn’s understaffed, demanding workload and high-pressure boss, Glenn still toughing it out despite threatening to switch jobs.
“I’ll read to”—Glenn started to say, then coughed a fit—“her.”
“It’s ok. I don’t mind,” I said. Picking up the extra load, lifting some of the stress off Glenn didn’t bother me when I knew he really needed the rest. It wasn’t the sheer laziness and ‘thou are my servant’ attitude it used to be. “Are you getting a cold?” I asked.
“No. I think I’m allergic to something,” he said, “maybe work.” And then he started in. “They’re idiots and I told them so.”
“You didn’t,” I said, appalled and embarrassed by his uncouth.
“Yes I did,” Glenn said, almost as angry with me for questioning his judgment as he was with them for being idiots. “I told them to inspect to blueprint and they didn’t bother. They said ‘We checked it the same way we did last time.’ The blueprints have changed five times since last time, plus last time they didn’t do it right anyway. Then their boss got mad at me for getting on ‘em. He took care of it himself and let them slide—said it was probably just a simple oversight, wouldn’t happen again.” Glenn looked like a trapped beast about to go berserk.
“Maybe they’d work with you better if you explained how important it is to find the current blueprint and how doing it right the first time saves everyone time and money in the long run, rather than calling them idiots. People tend to work together better when you’re nice,” I said, holding David in my lap while he purred.
“I’ve got a job to do, I don’t have time to be nice,” Glenn roared, not giving my “two cents’ worth” an ounce of consideration.
Take enough beatings and you might rise from the ashes too, I thought.
He fell asleep before dinner.
CHAPTER 35
“I can’t believe it!” I leapt joyous leaps and bounds, shouting, “I can’t believe it!” Glenn, stunned, wondered what had taken over my level-headed self, only seeing me in such animated elation one other time, the time I had passed five CLEP tests, saving myself a semester of college. “They bought my book!” I was jumping up and down—hugging Glenn at the same time—happy, excited tears rolling. The girls smiled, dumbfounded, not used to seeing their adolescent selves mirrored in their mother.
—Excerpt from New Novelist Magazine feature on Camryn Conroy
Since moving to California, I came to know which aircraft was flying overhead just by its sound. I learned to look for an airplane yards ahead of its thunder, often an F-16, sometimes an F-22 or C-17. Less often, B-2s, majestic lumbering bats, enrapt
ured the sky. U-2s and their loud, voluminous roaring whine ascended weekly to lofty heights. F-117s popped in and out, but none after the final formation of four dominated the heavens above for the last time. The sound of their engines, scraping the sky, was the only sound anyone heard as they watched the black birds in all their grandeur, a surreal moment that brought tears to even the most reserved and contained grown men. That day, they were all proud fathers.
And then there was project code name Aurora Australis. Glenn watched with a misty-eyed sense of wonder—a young bird from its nest, take flight, like sending a child off to school for the first time.
* * *
“I forgot to tell you last night,” Glenn said, rushing out the door, “that we have to deliver an airplane out of McBride Lake on Thursday and I have to be there.”
“They’re sending you to Alaska?”
Glenn stopped. “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked. Aircraft deliveries usually took place at In-The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, California, so this was highly unusual.
“If I told you . . . well . . . I’d like a wife to come back to.” Enough said. Same old story, the work included extra-super-top-secret stuff he was sworn to secrecy over, but through the years I deciphered at least part of the code. Sixth generation aircraft really did have human pilots, but perhaps not recognizably so, and they had sophisticated sensors that could read a person’s fingerprints on their fingers from never-before-flown altitudes, enabling pin-point strikes. Cadavers verified it. I bet John Doe didn’t anticipate this manifestation of donating his body to science. And when I overheard Glenn talking about the pilot super-sub-optimization mechanism, I stopped listening because I got the impression that sub meant smaller size and pilots didn’t need as much oxygen that way. I didn’t want to know any more. Advanced Development aircraft were a messy business. Another demonstration of how nothing in our lives was normal, but I had grown to embrace the unique abnormality.
* * *
Glenn came home from Alaska ashen.
“Hi Daddy,” Sydney and Elizabeth said as they breezed through the kitchen, having just come home from school.
Love, Carry My Bags Page 41