A Changing Marriage

by Susan Kietzman

  The word freedom sounded foreign to Karen, like she was using a word like voilà or arrivederci, something in a language other than English. Karen had used it as a weapon over the years, accusing Bob of having it and not appreciating it. He had argued back just how little freedom he had between his job and his family, saying that he was absolutely maxed out. It was, in fact, Karen who had the freedom to do whatever she wanted with her day. And Karen had shot back how little he knew about being maxed out. People like him didn’t understand what freedom meant because they’d always had it.

  After these heated discussions, when she was calm, Karen acknowledged to herself that Bob’s point was valid. Staying home with children afforded her certain luxuries. It was Karen who dictated the day’s activities, especially during the summer. She decided when and for how long Rebecca and Robert watched television. She decided when they went to the park. She decided when they had company for lunch or for the afternoon. She decided when she needed a babysitter to relieve her for a few hours. Plus, as Bob pointed out whenever she brought it up, Karen had choices. She could stay home with the children, or she could hire a full-time babysitter and return to work. She could hire a part-time babysitter and return to work part-time. She could do exactly what she wanted to do, but instead of intentionally choosing, she whined. If you don’t like it, he said, change it.

  Even though Bob was technically correct, he knew and she knew it was more complicated than that. Karen talked about it more with Sarah than with Bob because, as another full-time mother, Sarah understood all the angles. Bob liked to call it a choice, but for Karen and Sarah, it wasn’t. When they made the decision to have children, they simultaneously made the decision to raise them. In theory, having a job outside of the home while raising children seemed reasonable, but the practice was miserable. Karen’s college roommate, Allison, was a full-time schoolteacher who, as she said, put everything and everyone on hold, emergencies aside, so she could make it through the school year, and then exhausted herself in the summertime trying to catch up. And Sarah had friends in similar situations. They loved their jobs and they loved their children, but they struggled with excelling at managing both. Karen and Sarah agreed that, unless they really needed the money, they couldn’t do it, especially when factoring in the guilt. Complain about their self-made predicaments as they often did, they considered themselves stuck.

  Being an at-home mother when the children were younger wasn’t always difficult or tedious. Karen enjoyed the advantages, like spending the afternoon sipping tea with a friend while the children played in another room, reading while the children took naps, and living in casual clothes instead of suits and stockings and heels, sporting just-right, blow dryer–mandatory hairstyles. Still, the unbreakable, constant attachment to young children was ever present for Karen, whether she was in the house, running errands, out to dinner, or even asleep. Rebecca and Robert were always in and on her mind; her worrying about them appeared to need no rest. She hadn’t been free from them since she had expelled them from her swollen body. And yet, having them in school all day afforded Karen the illusion of freedom, the sensation of being able to do exactly as she pleased.

  “I never thought this day would come.” Sarah sipped a mug of coffee.

  “You and me both. Lunch on the first day of school was a great idea. Just think—we could do this every day.”

  Sarah laughed. “And Vincent would have my head.”

  “It’s not like they don’t go out to lunch every day. Bob’s not packing a brown bag. It may be just fast food, but that counts in my book.”

  “Vincent claims to be way too busy for that. He either takes something from home or doesn’t eat at all.”

  “No lunch break?”

  “I know; it’s crazy. He’s says he gets wrapped up in what he’s doing, and by the time he looks at a clock, it’s midafternoon.”

  “That’s definitely a guy thing. I’m never busy enough that I forget to eat.”

  Sarah and Karen split the check and walked out to their cars. They promised to call one another in a day or two to make more plans. Karen sang with the car radio on the way home. As she put her car keys on the hook in the kitchen, she realized Sarah was right; she still had another hour before the kids came home. She could go for a walk, but she had just eaten. She could bake the cookies, but she wanted to do that at the last minute. So, she decided to sit under the tree in the backyard and read the newspaper. She changed from a skirt to shorts, and shed her leather sandals in favor of her favorite rubber flip-flops. She poured herself a glass of cold water, took the newspaper from the kitchen table where Bob had looked at it while he ate his cereal, and walked out the back door. She grabbed a beach chair from the shed that housed Bob’s lawn mower and Karen’s barely touched gardening tools, an illogical Mother’s Day gift, and sat in the shade beneath a sugar maple. She had forty-five minutes before cookie time. She skimmed the second section, reading two articles thoroughly. She checked her watch. She had thirty-two minutes left. She drank her water, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. She opened them. She had twenty-seven minutes left. She got out of the chair and walked back into the house, taking the newspaper with her. She refilled her water glass and turned on the oven and then walked upstairs. She took Rebecca’s clothes from the dryer to her bedroom, where she folded them before delivering them to Rebecca’s room. She walked back down the hall and started another load. Then she walked into Robert’s room and unloaded the dirty clothes from his hamper. She walked the armful back down the hall and dropped it into the laundry basket next to the washing machine. She walked back into Robert’s room and picked up the cars he had played with before the bus came that morning. She checked her watch; she had another fifteen minutes. She walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she scooped the chilled dough onto a cookie sheet. She poured two glasses of milk and put them in the fridge and slid the dough into the oven. As soon as the timer rang, she removed the cookies from the oven and then took the newspaper to the front steps, where she could sit and read and still be ready for the bus. She glanced at a story about free-range chickens, then looked at her watch. With just three minutes left, she walked to the corner to wait for the bus.

  Robert descended the bus’s metal steps and ran to her. “Mommy!” he said, crashing into her hip.

  “Oh my,” she said, bending down and hugging him. “I think you’ve grown while you were at school. You’re so big!”

  “I am big,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Hi, honey,” said Karen to Rebecca. “How’s my fourth grader?”

  “Great!” said Rebecca. “My teacher is so nice. She let us have an extra long recess, and she brought in popcorn and juice for reading time.”

  “That is definitely nice,” said Karen, wrapping her arm around her daughter. “Do you have any homework?”

  “No,” said Rebecca, “but you do. There are a million forms for you to sign by tomorrow.”

  “Oh boy,” said Karen, leading them into the house.

  Karen unpacked their backpacks while the children ate their snack. Robert announced that he had been chosen to sit in the front row because that’s where all the smart kids sit, and Rebecca talked about Melanie, a new girl in her class, who could jump rope longer than any kid on the playground. Karen listened as she looked at the bundle of colored papers that came out of Rebecca’s bag: health forms, school lunch tickets information, an ice-cream social later that week, field trip chaperoning opportunities, room parent criteria, Girl Scouts, after-school care, and a number of others. Robert’s papers, while not as numerous, included a half-completed math sheet.

  “Can we go to the park today?” asked Rebecca. “I want to tell Britney all about school.”

  “Let’s play here today. Your dad is coming home early tonight for a barbecue.”

  “Please?” whined Rebecca. “Just for an hour?”

  “Call her on the phone,” said Karen. “See if they’re free tomorrow.” Rebecca scooted out o
f her seat and ran to the wall phone. She pushed the buttons of Britney’s phone number, which she had memorized the day the girls met. While they talked, Karen refilled her water glass and sat with Robert at the table. “Tell me more about Mrs. O’Donnell.”

  Robert put his half-eaten cookie on the table. “She’s really smart. She knows all her math facts.”

  “That is smart.”

  “I have homework. Most of the kids finished at school.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They got stickers on their papers.”

  Karen took Robert’s unfinished math sheet from his pile of papers. “Let’s get to this now so we won’t have to think about it later.”

  “Can I play first?”

  Karen looked at her watch. “For one hour. I’ve got some things to do to get ready for dinner. After that, we’ll hit the books.”

  Robert finished his cookie while Rebecca wrapped up her conversation with Britney. “They’re free tomorrow,” she said after she hung up the phone. “Mrs. Keyworth will call you in the morning with the details.”

  “Perfect. Head outside now and have some fun with your brother. He and I need to do some homework in a little bit.”

  Rebecca looked at Robert. “You got homework?”

  “Only a little bit.”

  “Your teacher must be insane.”

  “That’s enough,” said Karen. “You haven’t seen each other all day. Be nice, Rebecca.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Can I make a hopscotch on the driveway?”

  “Absolutely. You know where the chalk is.”

  Karen peeled and boiled potatoes, then chopped celery, onion, and hard-boiled eggs for potato salad. She made hamburger patties and chocolate pudding and decided a green salad would round out the meal. She washed her hands, then called to Robert.

  “Oh, Mom,” he said, his body already drooping.

  “Right now. You’ve been out there for an hour and a half.”

  “Go do your homework, baby,” said Rebecca to her brother.

  Robert stuck out his tongue at her, then threw his stick of purple chalk to the ground. “I hate you,” he said.

  “Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks onto you,” said Rebecca smartly, hands folded across her chest.

  “Let’s go, Robert.” Karen opened the back door wide for him. Robert walked into the house. “She’s so mean.”

  “Big sisters can be. Let’s sit at the table and have a look at that sheet.”

  Robert sat down, and Karen sat down next to him. He looked at the first problem, then looked at his mother. “Do you have something I can count with? At school, we have little plastic animals. So for four plus five, you make a group of four monkeys and a group of five tigers. Then you count all the animals, and you know the answer.”

  “That’s clever.”

  “Some kids don’t need the animals. They can do it in their heads.”

  Karen kissed her son’s forehead. “I have wagon-wheel noodles,” she said getting up from the table. “Will they work?”

  “They should.”

  Karen spilled a few dozen noodles out onto the table and watched Robert group them. He was slow and sometimes lost count, so unlike Rebecca, who was quick to grasp new concepts and even quicker at producing excellent, flawless work. Robert, Karen already knew, was a different kind of student. Being slow didn’t mean he wasn’t smart—he got all the answers on the first half of the sheet correct—but it was a handicap in a class full of kids. The quicker ones would finish faster and earn the adulation of their peers. The slower ones, like Robert, would lose out on incentives or, worse, be teased. “How many do you have there?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Count again.” Methodically, he moved each noodle and mouthed numbers from one to twelve. He erased the second one in eleven and replaced it with a two. On closer inspection of his paper, Karen saw several erasure marks. “You keep working,” she said, getting up from the table. “I’m going to do a few more things for dinner, but I’ll be right here if you need me.”

  Karen mixed the potato salad ingredients with mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard, salt, and pepper—just the way Bob liked it. She cut tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad, which she put in the fridge to chill, and then set the table on the porch. She moved a block of Muenster cheese from the fridge to the counter and opened a new box of Ritz crackers. The kids could split a soda, and she and Bob would have a drink to celebrate the first day of school. Karen sat back down at the table and was relieved to find Robert almost done. It had taken him twenty-five minutes to do eight problems. At this pace, he would have homework every night. “All done,” he said.

  Karen checked the answers. “Excellent.” She peeled the backing off the sticker his teacher had paper-clipped to the page and placed the grinning sun next to Robert’s name at the top of the sheet. “Go out and find your sister. Daddy will be home soon.”

  “Daddy’s coming home for dinner?”

  “He switched his flight to be here.”

  Robert opened the back door and called out to his sister, who was doing cartwheels. “Daddy’s coming home for a special dinner!”

  “What are we having?” she called back.

  Robert looked at his mother.

  “Hamburgers and chocolate pudding.”

  On his way out the door, Robert called back to his sister, who clapped at the news.

  Karen washed all the dishes in the sink, then ran upstairs and switched the laundry. She took her clean clothes from the dryer and folded them on her bed. She changed back into the skirt she had worn to lunch and brushed her hair. She walked back down the stairs to the kitchen and put the tossed salad together. Just as she was slicing the cheese for the hamburgers, she heard Bob in the backyard. She looked out the window. Rebecca was on his back, and Robert was holding his briefcase. When they all walked in the back door, Karen kissed Bob on the lips. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “I was glad, too, until a bunch of wild monkeys attacked me in a backyard.”

  “Dad!” said Rebecca, laughing. “You attacked us!”

  “That’s what monkeys always say.”

  “Who wants a grape soda?” asked Karen. Robert jumped up and down. “Go out to the porch. Daddy and I will be right out.” Karen poured the sodas while Bob poured Karen a glass of wine and himself a beer. “How was your day?”

  “Great. I had a meeting with Todd Martin this morning. He’s going to retire at the end of the month.”

  “And?” said Karen, turning to face her husband.

  Bob grinned. “I got the job.”

  Karen covered her open mouth with her hands.

  “I can’t believe it’s really happening. I’ve thought about this day for years, and it’s really here. I’m the youngest vice president in Forester’s history.”

  “I can’t believe it either.”

  “I’ll have to do some traveling.”

  “I know that,” said Karen, nodding her head. “You travel now, and that’s okay.”

  “This promotion, counting bonuses, will double my salary as well as my responsibilities. It’s incredible.”

  Karen put her arms around Bob’s neck and kissed him on the mouth. “You’re incredible. Later, we’ll have our own celebration.”

  CHAPTER 10

  OCTOBER 2002

  The morning of Bob’s first business trip as vice president of sales for Forester Paper, Karen signed up for tennis lessons. Shelley was thrilled, telling her daughter on the phone how much tennis meant to her, both physically and mentally. “My tennis buddies,” she said, “are my closest friends.” She advised Karen to start slowly, to choose an intermediate group and work her way up if she desired. “The last thing you want is rotator cuff problems from overdoing it,” said Shelley, who had done just that and endured shoulder surgery as a result. Karen called the town tennis center as soon as she hung up with her mother and, after listening to her options, joined the Second Time Around Ladies Clinic on Tuesdays an
d Thursdays. It seemed custom-made for Karen, for women who had played before so they knew the rudiments of the game, but were not quite ready for league play. Karen played as a child, had played well, in fact, until she broke her leg the summer after sixth grade while running along the uneven surface of a public tennis court. She and a friend biked every day it didn’t rain to the downtown park that featured two baseball diamonds, several play and picnic areas, and six underused asphalt courts, and were both developing into decent players. Their goal was to make the middle school team the following fall. And Karen knew, even as a child, that she would have made the team easily had she seen and avoided the grass-filled crack behind the court as she was running to return a baseline lob three weeks before tryouts.

  She was in a cast for eight weeks, which of course knocked her right out of the running for a spot on the team. Her friend Kelly Brady made the team, which made Karen all the more bitter. She routinely beat Kelly by a margin of more than the required two games. As a member of the team, Kelly was busy with practice after school and had little time to socialize with Karen. She was making new friends while Karen and her crutches rode the bus home every day. By the springtime, when Karen’s leg was fully healed and she was as strong physically as she had been before the fall, Kelly no longer wanted to play tennis with her. Kelly had progressed to the point of only wanting to play with opponents who could keep up with her lively game. Karen, who was out of practice, hit too many balls into the net or out of bounds. When Kelly started declining Karen’s offers to play and then refusing her phone calls altogether, Karen stopped calling. And since Kelly was her only friend who played tennis, Karen stopped playing. She joined the track team instead—running relays, doing the long jump, making new friends—and forgot about tennis and Kelly. It was as Karen and Bob watched television on Labor Day weekend and he clicked by chance to the women’s singles of the U.S. Open that Karen rediscovered her interest in the game.