SUDDENLY, HERE IS WINTER, vast, waiting, a great cat lying patiently for her kill. He quickly figures how to heat a small corner of the Barn with space heaters. We bring down the bed and finally sleep on it. We bring home as well his dear dog. Some of our walls are missing still, as are many windows upstairs, but we have a blessed roof. A blessing even greater is you, my love, loyal through the seasons, though there are hardly any windows to sit by without falling through.
Without the loan and its monthly installments, he and I barely scrape by on what we earn between the restaurant and babysitting. As there isn’t anything left to pay for materials or labor for the Barn, he has halted all progress. Unable to be purposeful, he spins. He grows more and more insecure.
We have an enormous number of bills, possessions, and properties. While I’ve always lived an ascetic life, he enjoys collecting and buying. We have the mortgages for the Barn and his City apartment. He has the Bus and the new Prius. We have two sets of car insurance, homeowner’s insurance, two storage units in Connecticut and one in the City. Two cars, two properties, and we live like church mice. Ashram mice. Ashram mice who live on steamed veggies cooked on a hot plate.
We live week to week, dollar to dollar. While I try to persuade him to relinquish some things, our frugality and uncertainty don’t weigh on me or make me feel as though we haven’t enough. I feel I always have enough. And I love the feeling of building something together. He and I are working toward stability, comfort, success. While I thrive on adversity, it daunts and depresses him. I sometimes succeed in pulling him from his melancholia and frustration, only to return home and find him back in bed, perusing porn, YouTube, Netflix.
I look at him. Born with every privilege under the sun, including being treated as the sun. Perhaps this is why, here he lies.
“Just get famous and rich already,” he groans.
“I will, I promise. I’m a million-dollar idea that works.” I keep my voice small and soft like a molten M&M, lest he declare me vain and grows angry.
Without meaning to, he teaches me: We humans become the expectations we assign ourselves. We grow to the limits or limitlessness wherein we place our identity.
His temper has grown worse. Or, I’m not as effective as I was at calming him. He has grown used to me. I watch this storm in the form of a man. I sense him on the lookout, daring life and me to prove his disdain for us correct.
“Why are you quiet?”
“Nothing, sweetheart. Just a bit cold, that’s all. What would you like for dinner?”
“You’re always complaining!” he yells.
“It’s not an affront to you. You asked and I—I’m sorry.”
I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry. Please tell me. How does it come undone so easily? Like pulling one end of a string and watching, disbelievingly, the entire spool unravel in a messy heap in my lap. A cat’s cradle without an exit or solution. He manages to weaponize every event and twist every word into incentive to feel angry, hurt, disappointed, threatened, insulted.
Where did you go? Where do you go? Where have you gone? Come back.
I want to bring him back. I want to smooth away his anger like an iron soothes cloth. At night, his back to me, I want to turn and return him to face me, look at me, please, again. His trichotillomania has grown worse. Little knots of hair scatter our bedsheets like lost punctuation.
I see a moment to nudge my way in. I lull him, bring him back. I make him laugh. I remind him he is loved. He croons his favorite song. “I Won’t Grow Up” from Peter Pan. He smiles again.
In place of work, he devotes most of his day to Netflix. He rifles through actresses, pointing out parts of their bodies more attractive than mine.
“You’re too bony. Those are breasts.”
He concocts stories of having sex with various actresses. The alleged rendezvous took place years ago in Europe when touring with his band, or out in LA, or in Manhattan. He claims if he wanted to bed them he could, again.
On his bad days, he tells me I am his wife for “greensies,” not “realsies.” On the rare good day, I return to being his wife for realsies. He calls me wife for greensies to remind me that my green card is dependent on him. To remind me that power only responds to power, and as a mere Bangladeshi immigrant woman to his white, male American privilege, I have no power. To remind me that his love can be withdrawn so easily, that I can be disowned and perhaps deported so casually. To remind me I am caught by a noose woven partly by my complicit hands.
I am stunned by the nonchalance with which he wounds.
America’s almighty son, around him I orbit. Sometimes, he adopts a baby voice. I’ve known girls to do that, to be cute or coy. It’s disconcerting. He pouts, dons the voice and puppy-dog eyes during apologies following his daily explosions.
“I’m sowwy, baby. I yelled at my boss. I might be fiyurd.” He sticks out his bottom lip, raises his eyebrows, his enormous blue eyes beckoning like the sea. He means to endear me.
I don’t feel endeared. I feel like his mother.
I voice nothing.
One followed by another, my flaws stack, a looming monolith of traits he finds insufferable.
“You’re too calm,” he says.
“Too ambitious,” he says.
“Too intelligent.”
“Too disciplined.”
“Too polite.”
“Too thin.”
“Too measured.”
“Too responsible.”
“Too young.”
“Too mature.”
“Too optimistic.”
“Too realistic.”
“Too perfect,” in a way he no longer finds attractive.
Imperfect, in a way he no longer finds charming.
It seems my lifelong crime is that I’m obstinately myself. He desires for me to change my molecular design.
Seemingly overnight, I can do no right. I morph from perfection incarnate to a cancerous blight.
“MAYBE I NEED a girlfriend.”
I stare, stunned. I’m laying out lunch while he sorts mail. His previous sentence was, “Car payment, mortgage, homeowner’s insurance—that looks great, honey, and put some hummus on mine.”
“A girlfriend? Why?”
“So she could take the pressure off you.”
“I don’t feel . . . any pressure.”
“Pressure to be more of what I want. Need.”
“Okay,” I nod slowly, “What more would you like me to be?” I arrange each syllable carefully. Nearby, my love, I feel you sigh.
“I wish you were more sporty. And outdoorsy.”
“Okay. We’ve lived outdoors for our entire marriage, sweetheart.”
“You’re complaining again.” His voice is low, toeing the line between teasing and menacing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. If you’d like, we can start going on runs and hikes together.”
“No. I just think a girlfriend is a practical solution. Like, she and I could ski.”
“I’ve never known you to ski.”
“Exactly. I need someone to inspire me.”
A pause. He is still looking for a muse. Someone he could defer responsibility to.
“Here, honey. Lunch. Extra hummus.”
His idea festers into a maniacal campaign pitched daily, persistently, decisively. He argues, pleads, bargains, rants. I marvel thinking of the man he could be were a morsel of his determination redirected toward work, health, a hobby, a business. I love that imaginary man. He, as the self he chooses to be, flaunts his desire for other women the way a child threatens to run away from home. A tantrum means Look under the bed. Find the monster. Ask its name.
“It’s not cheating,” he insists. “They’d be like sister-wives. A sisterhood—it’s pretty feminist.”
“Feminism is equality. Would I sleep with other men, then?” Such is not a thing I desire but a point he needs to hear.
“No way. I’d kill them.”
The conversation rests for an evening but, like a trick candle, lights up again.
“You want me to be happy, don’t you?” He frowns. “I deserve to be happy.”
“Yes, of course, love, but at the cost of my happiness?”
“When I was dating a few women at a time, I’d last longer.” He paces. “Sister-wives would be a win-win, baby.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t want a polygamist commune. I want a marriage.”
“I know.” He sighs. “Me too.” He starts dancing a light, sexy samba, sings a song in characteristic gibberish, draws me to him, spins me, pulls a laugh and kiss from my lips.
The next day, another bill, another setback, another fit. He throws down a stack of mail and curses.
“Honey, you’re offended that life’s being lifelike?”
“It’s too hard,” he yells. “Let’s get a divorce.”
“A divorce won’t nullify the electricity bill. We can’t get a divorce simply because we’re having a hard day. You can’t pop marriages and divorces like Skittles.”
He explodes, this time with laughter. Just like that, my love returns.
He goes to work. I return to mine. The birds sing, the wind whistles, the light shifts and time redelivers the proposal, laced with a new chemical the way dealers enhance previous iterations of a drug to make it stronger, costlier, deadlier.
“Women love me. It’s one of my gifts. I make them feel loved and appreciated. You’re holding me back from sharing my talent.”
I look up from my laptop. I rub my eyes. “What you propose lives contrary to our values, and our families’ values. Monogamy is nonnegotiable. And this sort of talk . . . these words lack dignity.”
“I’m being honest,” he says, a rationale he repeats like dawn follows night. “You want me to be honest, don’t you?”
“The root word of honesty is honor,” I reply, “Synonymous with integrity. Authentic honesty isn’t honesty unless it contains integrity.”
“I don’t, can’t, un-der-stand you,” he says, drawing his syllables like the arrogant wind pulls the clouds. I’ve committed my usual misdemeanor: uttering sounds that swerve him entirely.
Days turn into weeks, weeks into months. He crusades for sister-wives. My patience holds steady. But finally, one night, I feel my frustration swell and tolerance fade. I try to warn him.
“Please, baby. You’re exploiting my compassion. Don’t push me into a debate.”
He pushes. Hard. And then, my love, I commit treason: I unleash my wrath. I descend and eviscerate like a murder of crows, an unforgiving mouth sent from the heavens. My father’s daughter, I gut my husband, his innards spilling with slippery ease: “Which woman, aside from my insane self, would find you attractive? With what promises would you lure anyone into this pit of a life?” I stare at him. I smile. “You’re an aging Adonis losing his light, threatened by anyone more intelligent, beautiful, or strong, in other words, nearly any woman. Do you think you’re actually capable of sleeping with another woman?”
“Absolutely!” he yells. “Anyone would love—would be lucky—” His words hang flaccid in the air. He visibly shrinks, and I hate myself for it. Stop, I order myself. Do not attack the weak. Do not attack, period.
I resume my usual soft manner. There I stay. I apologize. I listen. I comfort.
The following day, another claim:
“I need more attention.”
I close my laptop. I’m baffled. In the spectrum of emotional, verbal, and physical affection, I, akin to a boarder collie, will shepherd, protect, and love on anything with a pulse.
“More attention?”
“Let’s go on a trip. Let’s get in the car and just drive.”
“We can’t, sweetheart. We have work in the morning. We have to show up.”
The next day, he adds another spin: “Leave!” he shouts, the exertion mottling his skin red and bloated, as though drunk with petulance. “I can’t do this! Get out!” Again, I’m visited by Papa.
“I love you. No one is leaving. This is our home.”
But tomorrow is the same as yesterday. He petitions, I try to defuse the arguments with food, sex, jokes, distractions, keeping my voice calm, wanting neither to lose his love nor to exacerbate his temper, especially without another soul for miles. I try to soothe his anxiety over work, money, identity, and feelings of purposelessness. I remind myself everything in life is about love and its absence: every gesture is an act of love or a cry for love. These words become my prayer beads, and my morphine.
“You’re an amazing man. This is part of your path. It’ll be okay. I believe in you.”
Finally I say, “Love, a girlfriend won’t address the underlying issues. A person isn’t a solution.”
He exhales, wilting. He walks over. We hug for what feels like an eternity.
“You are my wife,” he says. “You are my life.”
He says this after every outburst. He says, “Thank you for staying. For understanding. I would die if you left. You are my wife, you are my life.” The couplet I adored from the moment he first tied my ring, I’ve now grown to loathe.
“Of course, my love,” I reply. “I am yours.”
In sickness and in health goes the vow. Insecurity, the most common sickness, more than the cold. Feeling small, he wishes me the same. These countless changes fall into my hands like broken-winged chicks orphaned of their nest. I, a profoundly ordinary creature, am meant to mend and save these lives. These nights, insomnia hounds me like a vicious rumor. I am his wife. This is our life. I repeat the words, hoping they’ll induce me to sleep, a lullaby at once sacred and scathing.