THE NEXT DAY, at the wedding reception, Megan gave her maid-of-honor speech. She told her own story this time. She described how, when we were little girls, I would often charge into the street without watching for cars. She described how she always had to reach out and pull me back.
She looked at Caleb, and her voice cracked. “That’s your job now,” she said. “Don’t let her rush into incoming traffic without looking both ways. It’s your job to keep her safe.”
THE DAY OF Megan’s own bridal shower, I spent the morning cleaning the house in a rush. Megan hadn’t seen Reed since he was a newborn, and she was going to come over and visit before we went to the shower together. I was excited to show her our house, and to show off Reed, who by then was a darling ten-month-old. As I cleaned, Caleb’s mood grew dark. “Why do you need to clean so much?” he asked. “It’s just Megan. She doesn’t care how the house looks.”
“I just want it to look nice,” I said. He was grumpy, but I knew that he would get over it when Megan arrived. He was always cheerful when other people were around.
Just as Megan was due to arrive, I received a phone call from her. She was stuck downtown with a different friend. “It’s okay,” I said. “That’s fine. No worries.” Still, I hung up the phone and started crying. I wasn’t angry at her, but I was disappointed, and I had always been an easy crier.
Caleb hated my easy tears, and this was no exception. He screamed, “Why are you crying? This is not about you. This is about Megan. You are making this about you.”
His rage overwhelmed me, and I started to sob. I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling, which was that I was disappointed, hurt, and a little bit jealous of that other friend, but that it was really no big deal, and I would be over my hurt feelings in time for the shower. The weight of Caleb’s fury kept me from saying any of that. All I could do was sob.
He screamed, a loud, guttural scream, and I shrank back, shaking. His scream worked. My sobs stopped. He picked up Reed’s baby bouncer and threw it against the wall. Reed was sleeping in his crib. The bouncer was his favorite toy. I stared. Shivers seemed to come all the way from my organs. I started to hiccup. I couldn’t talk. “You’re being hysterical,” Caleb screamed at me.
He pointed at the clock. It was almost time for the shower. “I can’t drive like this,” I gasped, between hiccups.
“Get ready, and I’ll drive you,” he yelled. “God, I have to do everything for you.”
I went into the bathroom and saw my face. I was an ugly crier. The tears came back. I went outside. “I’m not going,” I said.
By then, Caleb had calmed down.
I called Megan. I didn’t know what to say, so I told her that Caleb and I had a fight, and I wasn’t in a state to attend the party. Her voice was worried. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” I said, as fast as I could because I wanted off the phone before I broke into tears again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll tell your mom.”
AFTER I HUNG up the phone, I watched Caleb put the pieces of Reed’s bouncer in the trash outside. I looked over and saw the neighbor woman, an older Mormon woman, looking at us out of her window. Her eyes were compassionate.
Caleb came back in the house. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have broken Reed’s baby bouncer.”
“I just needed you to listen,” I said. “Then I would have been fine, but you scared me.”
“I know, and there’s no excuse for that. I acted horribly,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. I should have just listened to you. Of course your feelings would be hurt that your friend broke your plans, and you went to so much effort to get the house looking nice. I know that you would have been fine for the shower. I really messed up. Can you forgive me?”
I was no longer afraid, and his compassion felt so sweet, so needed. “You’re such a good friend,” he said. “And such a good wife and mother. I don’t deserve you.”
“Of course you do,” I said. And I meant it. Of course he deserved me. Or maybe I deserved him. Maybe we just deserved each other.
THAT NIGHT MY mother came over, and she didn’t ask any questions. She told us to go out to dinner, to have a night off, that she would watch Reed. Caleb and I ate at our favorite restaurant. We laughed and had a good time, but my feelings were still tender. Caleb drank three beers with dinner, and in the car on the way home, I said something about being upset that I had missed Megan’s shower. “Why won’t you ever let anything go?” he yelled. “I thought that we had put this behind us.” I couldn’t believe that he was yelling again. It made me feel like his apology had meant nothing.
When we got home, I marched into the house, past my mother, and went to the fridge. I took out Caleb’s beer and went into the backyard. I dropped the bottles one by one onto the cement patio. They shattered, and then I went back into the house. I looked at Caleb and my mother. “I’m done,” I said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
My mother sent Caleb to our bedroom. She took me into the backyard, and I told her, “He’s so mean to me, Mom. He loses his temper, and I’m scared of him. He lies to me, and I don’t trust him. I’ve never been more miserable.”
I wanted my mother to tell me that she would fix it. I wanted her to fix it in the way that she had fixed everything before, but she couldn’t fix this. She looked at me straight on and said, “Listen to me. It is not better on the other side. I have seen it on the other side. Try hard. Try hard before you give up.”
I stared through the glass door into the house. I knew that my baby was sleeping in there. I knew that I couldn’t afford that house on my own. I thought of my mother’s friends, the ones who had left their husbands, who had lived on “the other side.” I thought of the ways they had lapsed into poverty, or worse, into relationships that were uglier than the ones they had left.
I knew that Caleb loved Reed and me, that he felt remorse, and at that time, I thought I wasn’t the greatest catch myself. Hadn’t I been breaking things too? Hadn’t I gotten hysterical at a slight disappointment by my best friend? I had never felt more inadequate in my life, less worthy of love.
My mother hugged me. “Go to bed,” she said. “I will clean this up.” I went to bed, crawled in next to Caleb, and he pulled me into his arms. Even when I was angry, I loved the way that my body fit into his. I loved the way he always held me so freely.
Even when he was angry at me, with his back turned, he would still let me wrap my body around his. Always, I could feel the way that he would soften into my embrace. He could never stay angry for too long, and neither could I. We fit each other too well to stay angry.
The next morning, when I woke up, my mother was gone.
A COUPLE OF days later, there was a knock at the door. Two young male Mormon missionaries stood on the stoop. In high school, I had sometimes hung out with the Mormon missionaries for fun, but I had never received an impromptu visit. I gave them the line that I had always heard my mother use with Jehovah’s Witnesses: “I already have a religion.”
One of them spoke up. “We just thought there might be someone here who wanted to talk,” he said.
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
The other one piped up, “There’s no one here who wants to talk? Maybe a young mother in distress with a child?”
I looked back at Reed playing on the floor and understood. The neighbor had called them. I looked back at the missionaries in their black slacks and white shirts.
I hesitated, and then said, “No, there is no young mother in distress here.”
As they walked away, I briefly thought about running after them, but I closed the door instead.
I just needed to try harder.
12
Playlist for a Broken Heart
I KNEW THAT SOMETHING needed to change, but I wasn’t sure what that something was. We didn’t have much money. I was still in college, and Caleb was teaching five classes as an adjunct instructor at Boise State Univer
sity. When we couldn’t pay the bills, Caleb would gather up our books and CDs, take them to the Hastings on the corner, and sell them. My heart hurt as Caleb walked out the door, a paper bag full of books in his arms. Fortunately, Reed was covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and because my friend had rented her house to us for only $550 a month, we were able to scrape by on what we had.
After the day of Megan’s shower, Caleb hovered anxiously around me, always reaching out to touch me for reassurance. If I ate a sandwich, he would have the dirty plate out of my hands before I could stand up. He went for long walks with me and cooked wonderful meals. He changed Reed’s diapers and vacuumed the floor. I was confused by this sudden change, and I felt guilty that he was being so helpful.
Still, he was irritable. If I tried to bring up something that upset me, he would yell, “Look at everything I’ve done for you! Doesn’t that count for something?” Sometimes, he would get angry and scare me so much that I would burst into tears and start shivering. By then the shivering had become normal. I didn’t understand what had happened to me—when had I become so weak and hysterical?
Sometimes Caleb would say, “Now you’ve made me act so awful that I have to apologize to you.” Confusion and guilt rose in my chest. Had I created his anger? Had I pushed him so hard that he was forced to lash out at me in those ways? Was I somehow responsible for his behavior? I only knew that I no longer felt like myself. I was weepy and irritable. Maybe he was right and I had made him into the person he had become.
I STARTED GOING to Kelly M.’s when we fought. Reed was such a good sleeper by then that he went to bed every night at six and slept until six in the morning, so I knew that I could leave him sleeping peacefully and return before he woke. And the truth was that Caleb was a wonderful father.
Though Caleb was unpredictable with me, he was patient and loving with Reed. I had grown up in a culture where, outside of sports, men didn’t participate much in their children’s lives, but Caleb wasn’t that kind of father. He would wake first in the morning with Reed and let me sleep in. When I would come into the living room, I would find them on the couch together, Reed cuddled up on Caleb’s chest or Caleb doing something silly to make Reed squeal with laughter.
Caleb was not a part-time dad. He was as present for Reed as I was.
AT HEART I knew that in some ways, Caleb might be even more present for Reed than I was. Caleb would play games with Reed and make him laugh, but much of the time I was too sad to be playful. I knew that Caleb wasn’t struggling with sadness, or distrust, or confusion about whether he had made the right decisions in his life.
I knew that it was hard for me to be fully present for Reed when I was curled up in bed, crying.
KELLY M. WOULD make up a bed for me on the couch, loan me pajamas, and then crawl in next to me. I don’t remember much about those evenings. I remember that Kelly M.’s apartment was cold and small, and it didn’t feel like a home. I remember that her pajamas didn’t fit me right.
YEARS LATER, KELLY M. would tell me that I would talk for hours about what was going on with Caleb, that I would be determined to leave, but then, at some point in the evening, I would fatigue, soften, and suddenly say, “I just want to be with my husband.”
She said that I never called him Caleb. I called him “my husband.” I was fixated on the idea of marriage as sacred, even though she would talk about her own parents divorcing many years too late. She had seen the kind of pain that an unhappy marriage could create, but she knew that I couldn’t hear that yet.
IN THE END I would always get up from Kelly M.’s couch, dress again, and go home to “my husband” and my baby. I’d climb into our warm bed, Caleb would pull me in close, and I would relax into the forgiveness. Forgiveness was so much easier than staying angry. Staying angry meant that I would have had to leave, and I simply wasn’t up to that.
STILL, SOMETHING HAD changed. I didn’t feel the same way about Caleb, and though I couldn’t and wouldn’t have articulated that to him, he sensed my withdrawal. Finally he grew desperate. Even though we couldn’t really afford it, he said, “You need a girls’ weekend away. You deserve it. Why don’t you see if Jeannie will go on one with you?” I thought of what he had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe I just needed a vacation. I thought that she could give me some advice, help me know how to move forward.
I was also grateful to have a husband who would cheerfully watch our child while I went away for a weekend. Not many women have husbands like this, I thought. I’m very lucky, I thought.
Why didn’t I feel lucky?
I CALLED JEANNIE, and it was decided. We were going for a long weekend to Seattle. I flew in a day earlier than Jeannie, booked a bed in a hostel, dropped off my stuff, then walked to Pike Place Market. I had a cup of chowder and browsed the shops. I had always been independent—I was not afraid of traveling by myself—but the marriage had changed me. Seattle was beautiful, and the travel felt like an adventure, but I couldn’t stop thinking of how much I wished that Caleb was there with me. I also couldn’t stop thinking of how much I wished I could leave him.
I wondered how it was possible to hold two such completely incongruent thoughts at the same time. More than that, though, I realized that I had grown dependent on Caleb in ways I had never anticipated. There I was, in Seattle, such a beautiful city, and I was unable to enjoy it because I no longer knew how to be by myself. That night I put my stuff in a locker, then got into my bunk bed in a room full of other people. As I lay in that dark room, I could hear the rhythmic breathing around me, but I had never felt so alone.
I THOUGHT THAT it would be better when Jeannie joined me, and at first, it was. Jeannie had such a large presence and joyful spirit. She always knew how to make me feel better, but when I confided to her that I was miserable with Caleb, she confided to me that she, too, was miserable with Jay. Two women in miserable marriages is not a recipe for a fun weekend away.
JEANNIE AND I ate fish and chips on the wharf and took the ferry to Bainbridge Island, but I missed Caleb. The last night that we were there, I called an old friend from college. We all went to a pub and split a bottle of wine, and then Jeannie and I went back to the hostel. I had booked a private room for us, and once we were alone, she cried on the bed, her body shaking with sobs. I was shocked. I had known Jeannie since we were children, and I don’t think I had ever seen her cry.
That night she told me secrets about her life, her marriage—dark secrets that tumbled out of her mouth like rocks, secrets I never repeated, secrets that reminded me of the secrets I was keeping about my own marriage. Her despair was so evident that I wanted to protect her. I reassured her that everything would be okay, and I reassured myself of the same thing, but I didn’t believe it.
WHEN CALEB PICKED me up at the airport, I hugged him, but I felt at a remove. I wondered if I would be unhappy for as long as Jeannie had been. I wondered how things could ever possibly get better. I wondered how I could support myself and Reed if I left Caleb.
Caleb seemed disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm when I saw him. “I thought that this weekend would have rejuvenated you,” he said.
I confided to him that I was drained and disappointed because, instead of Jeannie reassuring me, I felt like I had seen my own future ahead of me, and it was a future of sadness. He seemed so hurt by my statement that I reached across the car and squeezed his hand. I didn’t know what else to do.
WHEN WE ARRIVED home, he sat down next to me on the couch. He was nervous. He pulled out an envelope and gave it to me with a compact disc, a mix CD that he had made for me. I remembered how I had made a mix CD for him when we were dating, and he had listened to it in his truck on repeat. I remembered how Cory had told me that, while he and Caleb were driving in the woods listening to my mix CD, Caleb had said that I was the one—the woman he wanted to marry.
HE HAD WRITTEN a letter to accompany the CD, and the letter was an annotated playlist. He had chosen songs from our time together and described
the moments that accompanied those songs as a way of reminding me of how special our connection was.
HE WROTE THAT he had chosen “Harvest Moon” because he met me in autumn, and fall was his favorite season. Someday he wanted to take me home to West Virginia in the fall, he said, so that the most beautiful woman in the world could be in the most beautiful place.
HE CHOSE MY favorite song from high school, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” and wrote that in the midst of all of the hipsters at the Neurolux, he had found me seeping empathy. He questioned how he could have possibly found me there.
HE CHOSE “GOLD to Me” because I had looked like gold to him when we met.
FOR THE SONG “Hey, Good Lookin’,” he described the way that he had sat next to me on my couch the first night I took him home. He wrote that when he put his arm around me, those were the words that came to mind. He also wrote that he loved that I sang that song to Reed. I would change his diaper, singing those words, kissing his bare belly when I was finished; and then, because Caleb was never far from me, I would turn and hold Reed between my softness and Caleb’s hard chest. His eyes were never hard in those moments, and as his arms wrapped around both of us, I would lean in for a kiss and whisper to Caleb, “Hey, Good Lookin’.”
“SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE” REMINDED him of how he had taken me to bed that first night we met. I had worn a thin red-and-white-striped shirt with spaghetti straps, and though we kissed and touched all night, I didn’t take off my shirt. He wrote about the song “Can I Sleep In Your Arms?” and how he had asked me to take my shirt off so he could feel my skin against his.
HE WROTE THAT “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” made him think of how, when we were dating, he had loved booze and treated me wrong because of that. He wrote that he had talked to God, and asked to be forgiven. He asked me not to rush my forgiveness, that he had to earn it.
“LAY, LADY, LAY” reminded him of how, when he lived in the shack in the woods, he would watch out the window for me for hours, making sure I didn’t miss the turn off Highway 21. He described how we would sleep on his couch beside each other, and he never felt crowded because we fit so perfectly together.
Goodbye, Sweet Girl Page 12