there’s a tiny voice. “Guys?” the voice says. It’s Birdie. She always calls us “guys” which is usually the cutest, but right now it is 1:00 a.m. and she is four years old and in her pyjamas in the kitchen, possibly standing right on top of tiny pieces of glass.
The Husband springs up like a saviour, shouting at me, “Look what you’ve done!” and scoops her up, cooing to her gently. He whisks her upstairs, comforting her like World’s Best Dad, leaving me here, World’s Worst Mom, I guess. I can only guess. I don’t know why we are fighting like this, or what’s happening. I’m so unhappy. I miss him and us, and I hate him and us, and I feel trapped, but not in a way that makes me want to break free. No, just in a way that makes me want to understand and fix, a trapping we can somehow transcend, together.
So I sweep up the glass. I sweep and sweep. He comes back. He holds the dust pan. He explains the properties of the glass to me, by way of explaining how something so small could shatter into so many pieces.
And then, we sit on the kitchen floor and talk. We stare at each other across this floor that only a few years earlier we put in ourselves when I was pregnant, tearing it up to reveal layer upon layer of linoleum in every pattern imaginable, decades piled on top of one another, an excavation of another family’s life.
On this night, like all the others before it, neither of us storms off. Instead we talk. We talk and talk until we are calm again. Until one of us laughs. Until one person reaches out to the other and we are in each other’s arms. Until one of us says, Sorry, I’ll do better, and the other answers, No, no, I’m sorry, I will do better.
And so, like every single argument we have ever had, this one turns out okay. Exhausted, we go to bed together. We tangle our bodies up purposefully and kiss goodnight. We fall asleep pledging things will be different.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE BOMB
THE UMBRELLA
The umbrella is bright green, like a neon lime. I climb into the passenger seat of our car one morning when The Husband is driving me to the subway, and there it is, sticking out from under my seat. Clearly it’s a woman’s umbrella. But whose? And why? I lean over to get it, but it’s jammed under the seat. You might even say purposefully jammed, in hindsight, but you just don’t know, do you? I question The Husband and he seems unfazed, saying it must belong to a male colleague of his that he drove to a football game. I point out it’s a pretty fancy, feminine umbrella but he just shrugs.
All I know is there’s a woman from work he told me about a few weeks ago. It came out of nowhere, that revelation, like a scene in a David Mamet play. Something we were just speaking about, as an idea, not actually talking about, you know?
INT. BEDROOM — NIGHT
The HUSBAND and WIFE are lying in bed. They have just had sex and are looking up at the ceiling, legs in a tangle.
| HUSBAND | What would happen if I was unfaithful? |
| WIFE | Um. What? Uh … have you been? |
| HUSBAND | No. No. But, what if there was someone I was interested in sleeping with? |
| WIFE | Is there? |
| HUSBAND | Yes. |
| WIFE | Who is it? |
| HUSBAND | A woman. At work. We’ve been friends for years. We go for tea every day. We talk about work and Ultimate Frisbee. |
The WIFE takes a deep breath.
| HUSBAND | She propositioned me once. I thought about it, but of course I didn’t. |
| GREEK CHORUS | Oh yes, but he did! He did and did and did! |
| WIFE | Well, I get it. I mean, you’re friends, you can talk about work and she understands and cares about it. And besides, you have no baggage with her. She sits across from you and laughs at the things you say. She doesn’t ask you to take out the garbage, you don’t hate that she never stops cleaning. |
The HUSBAND sighs. He looks uncomfortable.
| WIFE | Has anything ever happened between you two? |
| HUSBAND | No. No, nothing has ever happened. |
| GREEK CHORUS | But it was happening. It had probably happened that very same day! |
And ... scene.
A few weeks later, the car ride, the green umbrella. Maybe they drove to the coffee shop that day because it was raining. But even though I know the umbrella is hers, I don’t push it with him. I honestly think that we’re going through a rough part of our marriage, and that he was finding missing pieces in this woman. I thought he was tempted, but would never actually go through with it. I thought we would work it out, that things would get better.
Am I the dumbest wife that ever lived, or what? KABOOM!
AN EDUCATION
Several times a year, The Husband would go out drinking with other teachers, sometimes after a school play or a colleague’s retirement and always after a long evening of parent-teacher interviews. On these nights, I knew not to expect him home until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., and I was fine with that. But in the past few months, these nights have become more frequent, and he has started arriving home much, much later, at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. Sometimes I wake up to the sound of him crashing around in the kitchen downstairs. He’s such a big, clumsy man at the best of times, but drunk and stoned, he’s an elephant, and all household items beware.
Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night in a sudden panic. Is he dead somewhere? Did he drink so much that he got in a fight with someone and is now lying in an alleyway somewhere, hurt? My heart races and I call him and text him, but often there’s no answer. Those nights are the worst. I lie there and worry, tossing and turning till I hear the lumbering giant come up the stairs.
I honestly only ever imagine that something horrible has happened to him. I never once think he’s with a woman. Can you believe it? But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry. By the time he stumbles in, I’m near-hysterical.
“You are a married man! A father!” I shout at him. “You could have answered me — I thought you were dead!”
And he mumbles, “Sorry, sorry …” Always so sorry after the fact.
The best times are when I sleep soundly and don’t wake up in a panic or hear him when he comes crashing into bed. Instead, I wake up in the morning light to find him lying beside me, his breathing heavy, his adorable but drunk face so
