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I glance out the window and see that the snow has started to fall. Fat, heavy flakes. I can never see weather like this without thinking of our trip to Leavenworth.
Chris and I had been married for a year. It was our anniversary. Pretty big deal, considering all we’d gone through in the past twelve months. Me losing Daddy. Him losing his temper. Both of us learning to exist with his rage and without my father.
By the time Chris surprised me with a two-night stay at the Stargazers’ Inn to celebrate our first anniversary, I thought things had started to improve. I thought all those prayers you were pouring out on my husband were finally making a difference. I looked back at how much pain my husband’s anger had caused and realized you were right all along. I just needed to be patient and wait for God to work in Chris’s heart in his way and in his good time.
The B&B was perfect. Chris was perfect. Not a single fight, not a single argument for three whole days. We even talked a little bit about our relationship on the drive there. The snow was falling just like this. Slow. Peaceful. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to have a deep conversation when you’re sitting side by side, not straight across from each other where you have to look at one another’s eyes? See each other’s expressions, each other’s hurt.
He apologized. I don’t know if that sounds like a big deal to you, but while the snow floated down around us, he actually apologized for the times he’d lost his temper. We still hadn’t gotten the bathroom mirror fixed, but he told me after his next paycheck he’d take me to the hardware store and we could pick something out together, something fancier than the plain piece of glass we inherited with the place.
I opened up a little, too. Told him how ashamed I’d been when I had to quit my job at the library, how I felt like I’d let my boss and co-workers down, how much of a failure I felt like when I just stopped showing up. I still hadn’t mentioned Reginald to him yet, but my old library patron friend had recently invited me to work at the new bookstore he was opening. I wasn’t sure if Chris would agree, but with the way the conversation was going, I was hopeful that maybe over the next few days I might find the right time to bring it up.
“I think that if I have a set schedule, something where I have to be there every day, it might help me manage the time I do spend at home better. Help me stay on top of things like the laundry and dishes.”
“I know it’s been hard for you,” Chris said, and he actually asked if I’d like him to take over one or two of the daily chores.
“No, I don’t want you to have to do that.” But he was so kind and adamant that eventually I dropped another hint about Reginald’s store. “I mean, if I ever got another part-time job or something, it might be nice if you pitched in, but right now I don’t have anything else going on, so it doesn’t make sense for you to do the housework.”
He didn’t respond, but it was the first time in a few months that I’d mentioned anything about money without him grumbling about what I was spending on books or worrying about the price of gas or about how I could never remember to tell him when the tank needed to be filled.
There were several turning points for us around the same time as our trip to Leavenworth. I remember it was that Christmas when you gave Chris those CD sermons he could listen to in the car while he drove around town delivering papers for work. CDs from the Truth Warriors conferences that had kind of spread across the country, big events in football stadiums where speakers got men all riled up to fulfill their duties as godly leaders. I know some modernized women seethe at the thought of five thousand men getting together to talk about biblical masculinity, but it did Chris some good. I could see he was growing closer to God, although in all honesty, his relationship with the Lord was never the issue. But whatever it was about the CDs, they encouraged my husband, and the difference it made in our relationship was night and day.
In some ways, coming home from our anniversary in Leavenworth was like recovering from my first round of depression. Now that things were better between us, I was able to finally understand how bad they’d gotten. Of course, no marriage is perfect, but there was steady progress, so much so that I began to believe God had answered my prayers to take away my husband’s rage. At the time, you’d pushed me toward the shut up and pray theology. I still don’t think it’ll work in every case. I doubt Abigail would have fared too well if she’d ignored the fact that King David and his men were mounting an attack and instead she had just committed herself to fervent prayer. But who’s to say for sure? Never put God in a box, right? I know that tactic certainly wouldn’t serve Mel very well, although she herself has admitted that even an atheist succumbs to prayer when her husband’s beefy hands are wrapped around her throat.
But in my case, I dared to believe that the worst was truly over for Chris and me. A few weeks after we got back from our anniversary getaway, I worked up the nerve to tell him that I’d met a man at the library who wanted to hire me part time at his new bookstore. I think Chris was a little surprised at first that I’d met anybody who wasn’t a woman, but once he found out that Reginald was an octogenarian who’d spent over twenty years getting beaten up by his wife, Chris realized our friendship posed no threat.
He encouraged me to take the job as long as I could work in the evenings so he could always have the car during the day. The pay was three dollars an hour higher than what I’d been making at the library, and I’m sure I cost Reginald more money than I ever helped him earn. He never complained, though. I think he liked the company if nothing else. The position was only part time (a few hours each evening and eight hours every Saturday), but I found it was helpful to have a reason to get out of the house. No, I didn’t become the perfect Sally Homemaker after that, but I had more energy and more motivation to keep things up.
I started writing a little during that time too. Dabbling, really. I mean, I wasn’t even at the aspiring author stage yet, I was a step or two behind that. But I’d write when things at the store were slow, and Reginald didn’t mind. He encouraged it. Sometimes he’d ask to read what I wrote, and he never criticized even though it was pure junk. I don’t have a single scrap of it left, but at least I felt like my life was moving in the direction I wanted it to.
Chris and I continued being involved at Valley Tabernacle. We bumped into a small scheduling glitch when the music team switched their practice from Sunday morning to Tuesday nights, but we made it work. Chris dropped me off at the bookstore then drove all the way across town to church, and after closing Reginald would take me home in his Explorer. It’s quite a generic car for a millionaire with such eccentric tastes as his, but he told me in his earlier days (by which I think he was referring to his seventies) he sported an Aston Martin and litigation-crazed drivers tried to deliberately get him into an accident. He was so much happier when he passed the luxury car on to his daughter and started driving her SUV, which he affectionately named Rocinante after Don Quixote’s faithful steed.
Have you ever noticed that when things get bad, they tend to fall apart all at once, but they often improve all at once too? That’s how it was for us. With me working again, it looked like we might realistically afford a law school deposit once Chris got his applications in. We’d be a year later than we’d originally hoped, but we were a full year wiser as well. I shudder to think what it would have been like if Chris jumped into grad school immediately after graduation when our fighting was so constant.
His anger issues were improving to the point where we had more good nights together than bad. I didn’t eye the clock every afternoon dreading the moment my husband would come home. My mental outlook was improving too. No major crashes. Being Reginald’s only employee really helped me stay focused and on target. He needed me, even if it was just to keep him company until closing time, and I wasn’t about to let him down by checking out of the world for a month or longer.
Maybe the writing was therapeutic too. I don’t know. It was all fluff. Dumb romances I’d never show a living soul today. Not even worth saving in case I ever make it big and my first drafts might find their way into some private collection or other. Chris was furiously preparing for his LSATs, I was surrounded by books all evening and getting paid to write nonsense in my free time, and you had mentored Chris to the point where he was finally accepting responsibility for his anger problems and making steady progress.
Maybe it was because things were improving so dramatically that Chris got it in his head it was time to get me pregnant.