1-29-03

She wasn't expecting it.  They'd had a fight - a worse-than-usual fight - where she imparted her wisdom, in her most annoying fashion, about how he should fix his relationship with his daughter.  Lots of wise counsel that, unfortunately, kept starting with "You need to. . .",  or "This isn't about YOU, you know. . ."

He said, "You're talking to me like you're my mother!".  She helpfully pointed out that perhaps he NEEDED the advice of an adult, since he didn't seem inclined to, personally, achieve adulthood.  He escalated and, uncharacteristically, threw the cutesy pottery lamp, one she hated anyway, at the wall.  He  said, "I'm gettin' out" . . . out of this house tonight, she thought, away from this fight.

But what he meant was out of the marriage.  Out of her life.

For a day and a half, she puttered, unaware.  She tended the garden, the late winter days mild, pleasantly vague, like her mood.  The gray sky sheltered her. 

Pruning dormant fruit trees, she thought it was peaceful, not having to manage his moods, his ever-sparking emotions.  Not being nervous about loving her daughter because it made him feel something was being stolen from him. 

As she pulled dead leaves from around the roses, she thought, "Everyone has times like this.  I had to say my peace; we'll hash it out when he comes home.  I'll tell him I'm sorry for being a know-it-all, he'll have thought about what I said."  They would make love and go back to that sweet, holding place that seems to heal any rift. 

They were married.  They'd work it out.

She could hear the familiar whine of his truck from a block away.  With some regret at the end of her peaceful limbo, she set down her shears, kicked off her muddy shoes, and went in to talk it out.  Then she saw his face.

She knew there would be no talking it out.  He was somber, not affectionate, not angry.  Mostly sad.

"I've tried," he said, "to make this work".  "I love you," he said.  "You're so good," he said, "but I can't be here". 

And he was gone.

She sat, stunned, on the bed.  Her eyes leaked onto the "wedding ring" quilt they'd been given, a gift from back when life seemed chartable, controllable.  She buried her face in the pillow that still smelled of him, and cried - great, animal howls.  And finally, slept.

Emptied, wrung out, she got up, wondering what to do.  What DO you do at a time like this?  You cry until it begins to seem like a cliche - then what?  She went outside to her plants, always a comfort.  The garden now dead-looking, ugly in its covering of rotting leaves.  The grey,  sky, once comforting, now threatened.  But the peach tree showed tiny leaf buds;  the narcissus pushed up slivers of green through the decay.

Hold on, they said.  Hold on.