Once Upon a Marriage

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  And whose one weakness was enough to debilitate her.

  “And you think Liam will hurt her? Something to do with this editor woman?”

  “No!” Well. Maybe. “It’s just... Liam has always had a bit of a roving eye where women are concerned. He used to talk to us about his girlfriends. And he told us how even when he was steady with someone...well, other women still attracted him.”

  “You’ve always told me Liam was the best man you’d ever known. You and Gabi, both. He’s your best friend. You trust him with your lives. You went into business with him.”

  “He is! We do! I don’t... I never expected the two of them to get married. I mean, I saw it happening, and I was happy for them. I am happy for them. I want them together. It’s just that it was all so fast—going from best friends to...more than that. And I want them together forever. Not just for now.”

  She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. And knew that while she’d give her life for Gabi, it wasn’t really just Gabi she was worried about. If she was going to believe that Gabi and Liam could make their marriage work, she had to open the door to the fact that a lot of marriages did work. That maybe Barbara and Bruce would live happily ever after, too. That maybe she’d been depriving herself of any chance to find out what that meant.

  “More marriages work than fail, sweetie.” Barbara’s tone was soft. Somber.

  Marie turned her head, looking at the woman who’d raised her, single-handedly when necessary. The woman who, no matter what she’d been going through, had always been there for her only child. “That’s not what the most recent studies show,” she said, though, as she’d told Elliott, she took the studies with a grain of salt.

  Still, there was some truth to them. And Barbara had put a lot of stock in them.

  “A psychiatrist, one of Bruce’s colleagues from Harvard, actually, recently had an article published in a national journal of psychology. He says that some of those studies, the ones I used to take to heart and repeat to you, were not created by real statistics garnered from scientifically gathered information, but were results of skewed polls conducted by marketing companies who had been hired to promote companies that help others get over infidelity. Online relationship finders. That kind of thing.”

  “Places like the one where you read that seventy percent of men polled admitted to cheating on their wives?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the US has national statistics. And those show that forty to fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce.” She hated to admit it, but she’d looked. Three days ago.

  “They also show that the divorce rate is declining. That ninety percent of the American public is married by age forty, and that women with college degrees who marry after the age of twenty-five are at the lowest risk of divorce.”

  Yeah, she’d read that, too. But...

  “I made some mistakes, Marie.” Barbara’s tone was serious. “With you. I quoted statistics and figures, and maybe made some of the more bogus ones sound legitimate, because I was so afraid for you. You’ve always been so social. So open and loving. Ready to like everyone. You’ve got a huge heart. I was scared to death that as you got into your teens and early twenties, you’d be gooey-eyed like I was. And end up hurt. Like I was.”

  There were tears in Barbara’s eyes. Choked up, Marie stared at her mother in the light coming through the window.

  “I didn’t want you to be like me. I didn’t want you to follow in my footsteps,” Barbara nearly whispered. “It was bad enough that my choices had ruined my life, but I felt so responsible for you, for the example I was setting. For the things you were learning at my hand...”

  “I learned how to love at your hand,” Marie said softly, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. And she’d learned how to protect herself by choosing men who didn’t put her first.

  “You were so trusting,” Barbara said now. “It scared me to death. I was petrified some man was going to come along and take advantage of you. They say girls go for men like their fathers and...”

  Marie wasn’t trusting anymore. Not where men were concerned. If she’d ever been.

  These days she was so lacking in an ability to trust a man that she was even doubting that her second-best friend in the world would be true to his wife. Her first best friend.

  And she was alone.

  Completely and totally alone.

  “I’m just... I’m worried. I see what I’ve done to you, and I don’t know how to fix it.” Barbara started, stopped, and started again.

  “You want me to suddenly open up and trust every man I meet?” Marie tried to lighten the moment. Life was what it was. People were, in part, what life made them. Experience had taught her that.

  “No.” Barbara didn’t smile. “And that’s the worst part of it.” she said. “I still worry that you’ll be hurt. I want you to be discerning. I just don’t want you to spend your life alone.”

  Marie didn’t want to have this conversation. Didn’t know what to say. Except “I’m glad for the things you taught me, Mom. I’m glad you love me so much. I love you, too.”

  It wasn’t quite what she’d meant to say. So she tried again. “And I’m an adult now. I have my own mind and heart, my own accountability. It’s up to me to learn from you and from everything else life has taught me.”

  “I know.”

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that the choices I make aren’t your responsibility. Or your fault, either.”

  That also didn’t come out right.

  “You’re right, of course. But a mother never quits being a mother. She never quits worrying or looking out for her children no matter how old they get.”

  “I know.”

  So. Good. They’d reached an understanding. Marie was alone because alone was where her choices had led her.

  And if she didn’t like it, only she could change that.

  But not being alone meant that someone else had to be involved. And she had no control over that someone’s choices. Like Gabi choosing to marry Liam and move out.

  Like what’s-his-name choosing to move home to marry a girl from his church. And her med student choosing her coworker over her...

  Like Burton choosing to go steady with the woman of his dreams. And her mother choosing to marry Bruce.

  Like her father choosing to have girlfriends while he was married...

  “I know you think my marriage to Bruce is too sudden.” Barbara’s voice once again broke the silence that had fallen. Only this time, Marie welcomed the sound.

  Wished for a second there that she was young again. Young enough to roll over, snuggle up and be held within her mother’s safe embrace

  “I just don’t want you to be hurt again,” she said instead. The strong one. A role she’d taken on so many years ago she couldn’t remember being without it.

  And yet she had memories of the capable and confident woman her mother had once been.

  “You know life gives us no guarantees of that. Tragedy could strike any of us tomorrow.”

  Yes, but...

  “All the more reason to control the areas in our lives where we can prevent being hurt.”

  “So you think you hurt less alone than you would if you took a chance on loving completely?”

  The question was curious, coming from her mother.

  “You used to.”

  “No, sweetie, I didn’t. Why do you think I took your father back? And kept letting him visit even though I was telling him we weren’t ever going to get back together?”

  “Because you loved him.”

  “Yes, but also because I loved having his companionship. Because he was my man, and I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “So now you have a new man? You suddenly just stop loving Dad?”

  Whe
n she said the words out loud, she sounded to herself like a disgruntled kid.

  But that wasn’t how she was feeling inside. At all.

  “I’ll probably always have warm feelings for your father. He’s the father of my child,” Barbara said. And then shook her head on the pillow. “But I haven’t been in love with him, romantically, for years. He broke my heart, Marie. So many times. Until all that was left was scar tissue.”

  “You were still vulnerable to him.”

  “Yes. I still believed I needed him.”

  Turning to her side, Marie was inches from her mother, face-to-face, which was all that was showing of either woman, with covers up over their shoulders. “So how do you know you aren’t just believing that you need or love Bruce?”

  Barbara’s smile grew slowly. And surprised Marie. It was an expression she didn’t recognize on her mother’s face. As if it held answers to life’s mysteries or something.

  Kind of like the Mona Lisa smile she and Gabi had made fun of during their freshman year art appreciation class.

  Those days were so long ago. And seemed too close for comfort, too. As if she were still a kid hanging out with her best friend, rather than a grown woman with a successful business of her own and a slew of people who depended upon her.

  “My past, my time with your father, was difficult. Painful,” Barbara started slowly. “But it also served a purpose. A good purpose.”

  Marie wasn’t following. And braced herself for whatever cockamamie thing her mother might come out with next.

  “You know, they say that all things happen for a reason. That sometimes the most painful journeys are the way to the greatest joys...”

  She didn’t want philosophy. She needed to know her mother was going to be okay.

  “I knew the very first time I crossed the line from looking at Bruce as my doctor and started seeing him as a man, that my life had changed,” Barbara said. She didn’t look gooey-eyed. Nor did she sound it.

  But she had to be suffering from the malady just the same. This was her mother. Not some twenty-year-old college girl who still believed in love at first sight.

  “How long ago was that?” Marie asked. Curious. And trying to figure out what to say next. Did she try to discourage the wedding?

  Or keep her worry to herself and give her mother the full support she so obviously wanted?

  “Not quite six months.”

  “But you said...the whole transference thing. You thought you just had a thing for him, which is common between therapists and their patients. You said that had been going on for a long time.” Or at least that was how Marie remembered it.

  Something wasn’t right here. It was up to her to figure this out. To be there for her mother.

  “I’d had a crush on him, which I understood to be transference, for years. That’s true.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?” Had the man taken advantage of Barbara?

  “No. I knew enough to know what it was. That it wasn’t unusual.”

  “I’m confused,” Marie said, frowning. “So, when did you cross the line from therapist to man? What happened? Why did things suddenly change?”

  Had the man come on to a lonely, vulnerable woman? Was her mother on the rebound?

  “Nothing happened. I walked into his office one day to tell him that I didn’t need therapy anymore, to tell him thank you and goodbye. He hadn’t heard me come in. Didn’t even know I was there. He was standing at the window, his shoulders were slightly slumped and he looked tired.”

  Marie waited, practically holding her breath. “So what happened?” she finally asked.

  “That’s it. I saw a man who was tired. Whose shoulders were heavy with the weight they bore. And long after I left his office, I kept seeing that man in my mind. Not the doctor. Not the medical professional who’d helped me. But the man.”

  The reply left Marie with more questions than answers. “So you said Dad’s last effort to get back together was the catalyst. But you’d withstood his attempts in the past. What makes you think that this time is different? That you were really ready to be done with therapy?” She attacked the easiest confusion first.

  “I’d been off medication for months. And your father had come to visit me.”

  Marie had known her father had tried, again, to get back with her mother. He’d tried to get her in the middle of it all. Neither of her parents had told her the attempt had included an in-person visit.

  “At the house?”

  “Yes.”

  Oh. Her stomach filled with dread. In-person visits always meant they shared a room. Maybe because they couldn’t help it. Or just because they always had. Marie had never asked. But how could her mother have her father over and be suddenly in love with someone else? Marrying someone else?

  Turning on her side, Barbara faced Marie, too. And sliding her hand out from under the covers, brushed a hand across Marie’s face.

  “He slept in the guest room, sweetie. Because I told him he could stay, but I had absolutely no desire to get back together. He brought flowers. Got on his knees and made promises. Big promises. Ones that should have won me over. He had this idea that he’d keep a tracking app on his phone, that I’d have all his accounts and passwords, he was putting a text app on his tablet and he’d leave that at home so I could see all his texts. He wanted us to have the same phone plan so I could see all numbers he communicated with if I needed to do so...”

  Her father had told her about all his big promises. They’d been his attempt to keep himself in line. Because he wanted so badly to be a good husband to her mother. He’d need to have the measures in place that would ensure that he’d be caught before he cheated...

  “I didn’t want to live my life as a police warden,” Barbara said, her eyes sad. “I couldn’t face a life where I’d be constantly checking numbers and data and text messages to ensure that my husband was being faithful to me. I didn’t want to even think about such things. And I didn’t want to live life with your father anymore, either. I was saddened by the realization, but I wasn’t heartbroken. I was well and truly over him. And that’s why I went to tell Bruce that I wasn’t going to be coming to counseling anymore.”

  “And then as soon as you told Bruce you were through, you started dating him?”

  Marie had read the statistics, too. To appease her mother, she’d read far too much propaganda and professional opinion on infidelity and discourse on why men cheat. The ways they cheat. The probability of saving a marriage after cheating. How to save a marriage after cheating.

  How to know when your husband was cheating. How to prevent him from cheating.

  And one thing that had been clear in almost all the pieces she’d read was that women often turned to another man, another relationship, to give them something to lean on as they let go of an old one.

  “We ran into each other,” Barbara said. “I was at a shop I’d never been to before, getting new tires on my car, and he was there, too. He’d had a flat that morning, driven over a nail and was waiting for it to be fixed.

  “I sat down next to him. He asked me how I was doing. And I saw those tired shoulders. I saw a man who had flat tires. And a life outside of counseling people. I asked him about himself. Somewhat to satisfy the curiosity that had been growing inside me ever since that day in his office. As it turned out, we’d just seen the same movie. We liked the same foods. The same kind of landscaping. He’d just had his redone. But mostly what struck me was the way he talked when he wasn’t working. He has a sense of humor, a way of seeing the world, that delights me...”

  Okay. Wow. Marie scrambled, looking for whatever had to be wrong in what her mother was saying.

  “I knew, as I sat there in the greasy shop that smelled like rubber, that he was someone important to my life. As soon as I knew he felt the same, I was certain
I’d finally found the right man.”

  “How can you be so certain, Mom? You remember the throes of first love. You told me about it often enough, when you warned me about how you’d fallen for Dad in the beginning.”

  “This is different, Marie. With your father there was always an element of...unrest. I don’t know how else to describe it. There was excitement. And love. But there was...” Barbara shrugged, lifting the covers enough that a burst of cool air chilled Marie.

  “With Bruce, there is peace. I know it sounds corny, but when you feel it, you’ll know.”

  Peace. Gabi had said something similar the night before she’d married Liam. She’d said that it just felt right. That she wasn’t worried. She saw all the dangers inherent in a relationship between longtime friends who knew more about each other than a lot of husbands and wives ever knew. Dangers inherent in people from two completely different social classes hooking up. Money mattered a heck of a lot more to Liam than it did to Gabi.

  He was a fly-by-nighter. She was a planner.

  If their marriage didn’t work, Threefold would be in jeopardy, and the company currently held Gabi’s entire life savings.

  If their marriage didn’t work, a lifelong friendship would end.

  And Gabi had said marrying Liam still felt right.

  “But...” Marie wasn’t ready to give it up.

  And didn’t want to examine possible reasons for her to be holding so tightly to her need to believe that marriage was a business too risky to invest in.

  “I need to marry him more than I fear being hurt,” Barbara said. And then nodded, a smile breaking through on her face again. “That’s how you know. When you need to marry him more than you fear being hurt, then he’s the right one for you.”

  Maybe her mother’s words wouldn’t work for the general public, but to Marie, they made perfect sense.

  They also calmed her enough to help her sleep.

  Or at least to end the barrage of questions that had been attacking her mind.

  Which was a good thing. She needed her rest.

  Her mother was getting married in the morning.