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It’s amazing what you can get used to when your options are all stripped away. Amazing how quickly I simply rolled over and accepted Chris’s anger problems as soon as they resurfaced. How his rough, unloving treatment in the bedroom no longer felt like degradation or abuse. Instead, subjecting myself to his every whim was simply a way I could build up his masculinity, which had taken such a fatal blow at the fertility clinic. I was nervous again, constantly on edge, constantly afraid I wasn’t enough for him, anxious he’d come home and find the house or his dinner weren’t up to his standards.
Now that I’d increased my hours at the store, Reginald also became the focal point for my husband’s ire.
“Doesn’t that man know you have a family to take care of?” Chris would shout if traffic kept me out ten minutes later than expected.
“I’m sorry,” I’d say. “I must not have been keeping track of the time.”
“Tell your boss if he wants you driving that stupid company car, he’s got to make sure to always leave you half a tank of gas or more.”
“It’s my fault,” I’d say. “I forgot to tell him the last time it got low.”
“Where are all my work shirts? I thought you were going to iron them this morning. Reginald didn’t call you into work early, did he? You know how I feel about that.”
“No, I’m sorry. I was on hold all day with children’s services.”
“So use a headset and iron while you talk.”
“I’m sorry.” It got to where I could say those two words in my sleep, but even then, it wasn’t enough for my husband.
“I’m sick of you telling me how sorry you are all the time but then you don’t lift a finger to change anything. Your apologies mean nothing to me anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” What else was there for me to say?
The snow’s still falling outside, but it’s changed. Heavier now. Gusts of wind swirling it all around. That sense of peaceful tranquility is long gone. This little winter tempest is actually a more fitting backdrop for Grandma Lucy’s feverish crescendo. Even while I’m staring out the window, I’m listening to every word she says. She’s gotten so loud it’s impossible to tune her out.
“A voice of one crying in the wilderness.” I’ve heard the reference before, read it myself several times. But there’s something about the way she says it now. The conviction in her tone. I’d call her bewitching if I didn’t think it would insult her faith. “Weeping and great mourning.”
As if I’m a stranger to tears and sorrow.
You’d think with my history, my depression would worsen depending on what was happening around me. But once we discovered Chris could never father a child, when the prognosis forced us to trudge through that valley of devastation and loss, my mind was clearer than it had been in years. It must have been some sort of survival mechanism that clicked on in my body, some latent instinct that told my psyche I had better function if I wanted to avoid my husband’s wrath.
Not that there was any real way to get around it.
Chris was as devastated by the news of his infertility as I expected him to be. And really, Pastor, I can’t help but blame you for some of that. Couldn’t you have waited to hear what the doctors said before jumping in and declaring that I’d soon find myself WITH CHILD by the power of the blood of JESUS? Is that really what you think my husband needed to hear at that moment? The same husband you knew was having so many problems with his anger and rage at home?
The months after our appointment at the fertility clinic were a blizzard of barked-out plans. Chris changed his mind every couple days. First off we were going to pay for the home inspection to get the ball rolling on a private adoption. Then we were going to start looking into international grants. A week or two after that, it was back to fostering through the state with the intent to adopt. I did what I could to appease him. I could have told you at that time my husband was incapable of making a single rational decision, but you’d drilled it into my head by then that he was the God-ordained leader of the household and all these important decisions fell on him.
So one week I was on the phone with Agape Adoption Ministries, and the next I was printing up applications for placements through India while at the same time Chris expected me to have turned in the last bundle of paperwork for our licensing through the state.
“I’m sorry,” I had to tell him. “The office was closed by the time I got there.”
“That’s it. You’re done at that stupid bookstore.” As obstinate as Chris was about certain things, this was the first time he gave me an official ultimatum. Before, it had always been passive-aggressive, like when he hid the keys from me until I lost my job at the library. But of course, that tactic wouldn’t have worked in this instance since it was Reginald’s company car I was driving.
Maybe you’ll take this as a sign that I was nothing more than a rebellious wife, but I wasn’t going to give up my job. Not without a fight. And it was epic. Something to make J. R. R. Tolkien burn with envy. I lost track of time, but I know we went at it several hours, which just goes to prove how much my friendship with Reginald had grown to mean to me. By that point in our marriage, I usually gave in after the first ten or fifteen minutes.
“I don’t care how old he is or what he thinks he’s done for us,” Chris insisted. “You’re calling him up tonight and telling him you quit.”
“So I messed up,” I told him. “I forgot one little errand. That’s no reason to lock me up in the house all day like I’m some sort of domestic slave.”
“Those forms were due at children’s services this afternoon. Why do you think I stayed up so late last night signing everything?”
“It was a simple mistake,” I told him.
“Yeah, a simple mistake that could cost us our fostering license.”
In spite of everything we’d gone through by then, I was still surprised from time to time how melodramatic he could be. “Do you have any idea how desperate they are for foster parents? I could turn in the forms next month and we’d still be approved in twenty-four hours.”
“I’m not talking about next month.” Chris’s voice trembled. I could tell he was trying hard to keep from roaring. You’ve got to give him that much credit.
“I already emailed the case manager, and she said I can go in tomorrow and drop everything off.”
“Well,” Chris huffed, “you should have gone in today.”
“I did go in today.” I’m sure all those authors of those books on how to be a submissive housewife would have been tremendously disappointed to hear the edge in my voice. “I went there right before five. I’d forgotten that they close at four.”
“You didn’t forget,” Chris told me like he was some sort of expert. “Your brain is just so full of those stupid books and that stupid job working for that eccentric old goon that you refused to take care of the paperwork like I asked you to.”
“You make it sound like I deliberately sabotaged this whole thing.” I was glad we weren’t living in the same apartment we’d moved into as newlyweds, glad that at least our voices couldn’t be heard by any neighbors.
“Admit it,” Chris pressed. “You’ve dragged your heels about getting this license ever since your boss sold you that sob story about some granddaughter of his.”
What do you say to an accusation like that? “I’m sorry. I’ll take the forms in tomorrow. I really don’t see what the big deal is.”
“That’s because you don’t care about ever being a family!” His voice was nearer to the roaring stage but still not quite there yet.
“I thought we already were a family,” I mumbled. It was so quiet I didn’t think he’d hear, but I was wrong.
“You want to talk about family?” he shouted. “How about this for family. How about you start acting like a wife and mother instead of some college student wasting her time around a bunch of old books because she’s convinced that she’s going to become some New York Times bestseller even though she can’t even complete the first chapter of anything she starts? You want to pretend we’re a family? What if instead of twiddling your thumbs at some stranger’s moldy bookstore you actually did your jobs around the house?” He shook his head. “Family.” He spat out the word like a curse.
I might have let it drop at that point. I was an expert at letting things drop by then, but he had to go and make it even more personal.
“Of course, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as how you’ve got such a big fan-girl crush on some impotent, eighty-year-old retired professor and literary wannabe who pays you twice what you’re worth and buys you a car because that’s the only way he can get anyone to pretend to love him.”
“Don’t you dare talk about Reginald that way.” I puffed out my chest like some angry gorilla trying to intimidate its opponent. “Don’t you dare.”
He sneered at me, as if my reaction alone was enough to prove his point. “You call him up and tell him you won’t be going in anymore. And tell him he can come pick up that stupid car of his whenever he feels man enough.”
I’m not usually a crier. In the heaviness of depression, I’m too emotionally numb, and in times of intense grieving, I’m too focused on keeping my mind’s tentative grip on reality to indulge in tears. The only thing that can really set me off is when I’m angry.
That night was the kicker.
“You can’t lay a hand on that car because it’s not yours. And you can’t tell me if I can or can’t go to work because it’s not your decision. It’s mine.” Now that I think about it, my tears had as much to do with Reginald and his deep loneliness than anything going on between my husband and me.
“You’re nothing but an ungrateful brat.” That’s the difference between Chris and me. When he’s in the throes of anger, his voice gets even calmer, more subdued until it takes on some eerie, other-worldly type of quality.
My voice, by contrast, just rises with my hysterics. “What do I have to be grateful to you for?” I shrieked. If I had something near me besides a couch pillow, I would have been tempted to launch it at his head. “What have you ever done that I should be grateful for?”
Chris balled his hands into fists, but even then I wasn’t afraid. Not yet.
“I’ve given you a home.” His voice was deadly calm. “I’ve paid all the bills. I’ve let you waste your time at that stupid bookstore ...”
I’m not proud of what I did next. I’m really not. But the past can never be altered, can it? I’ve begged God for forgiveness, which I guess is the most any one of us can do with those mistakes we’ve made and later regret. The thing about being married, especially if your relationship is as tumultuous and complicated as ours, is that after a few years you learn where to hit your spouse where it wounds the most.
Now it was my turn to sneer. After Chris finished rattling off every single thing he’d ever done for me, I looked him right in the eyes, certain my words would find their mark. “And after all that, you still couldn’t get me pregnant, could you?”
He grabbed me by the hair.
“What are you doing?” My heart was pounding, but even though my physiology went through the motions of fear, I don’t remember feeling it myself.
“Let go of me.” Even as I protested, I kept my voice calm. Tried to deescalate the situation.
Chris dragged me to the front door. It didn’t hurt, or if it did I don’t remember that part. His hand was on the knob. What was he going to do? Throw me out in the cold?
“Get out!”
I stumbled back. I was outside. Tottering off the porch. I don’t remember feeling surprised. I wasn’t even angry anymore. I just sat there and thought to myself, I shouldn’t have said that.
He threw my coat after me — it was the middle of winter — and slammed the door shut, and all I remember is thinking, At least he didn’t hit me.