story is muddy.
To co-opt his experience is wrong, to deny the effects untruthful. Partners like me are often left on the sidelines, watching the effects of childhood sexual abuse play out on the field of our husbands’ psyches—a field where there is little room for our own selves.
“I am glad this happened to me and not you,” Trav mused at the New Orleans café table when his coffee cup was empty. He paused before finishing his thought, skimming the ceramic handle with his thumb.
“Knowing that someone hurt my wife would be so much worse.”
A week or so before we made it to New Orleans, on the morning of our month-long Americana road trip departure, I was stuck in a state of ennui. Last-minute packing, cleaning, and shopping topped my to-do list, but my body stayed weighted and listless under a heavy quilt. The words in my head: overwhelmed, tired, sad, lonely, and angry.
These were all abstractions—intangible words that cannot be tasted, touched, seen, or heard, and I regularly encouraged creative writing students to avoid them. Much better, I taught, are concrete examples. Abstractions are vague non-descriptors, and I illustrate this in my classroom by requesting immediate associations for “love.”
Kittens! My boyfriend! Jesus! Chocolate! My baby! These always topped the responses, and I spoke about command of language and craft. “Do you,” I asked, “want to use a word that elicits such a varied reader response?”
It is always better to use specifics: a blue-edged teacup, a banana peel, or the corn-chip scent of an Australian shepherd puppy paw.
As I burrowed deeper into the blankets, I knew my abstractions were dull, but the concrete expressions felt too depressing: Maine winter temperatures drop to −32oF. My husband must consume six prescription drugs daily. One of our dogs died last month. As a child in the care of the American Boychoir School, Trav experienced a level of sex abuse that profoundly affects all aspects of his—and therefore my—adult life.
My concrete expressions were vivid, but heavy. I dug even farther under the covers, thinking about the conversation from the night before.
Trav and I sat at opposite ends of our couch on a strangely warm day in late January with a thermometer reading in the upper thirties that prompted a pseudospring of melting ice and felt like the cruelest sort of joke in a state with fifteen hours of daily winter darkness that does not grow consistent green grass until May.
“Is this how couples break up?” he asked.
We had reached a life stage where it seemed like every month a different friend or family member announced a split.
Trav poured himself a cup of coffee, and he refreshed my tea water from our orange kettle. He would leave soon for his last nighttime performance before our road trip, and I had already been home from campus for an hour. I brought takeout food, but like his tea water refresh, it seemed like the smallest of gestures. Winter and ambivalence overwhelmed us both.
Trav is a musician, and I am a writer. Having managed opposite schedules since we first met, when we find ourselves in a rare moment of overlapping time, we are generally direct and honest in our assessments.
He continued, facing forward with no eye contact. “I can see why some couples divorce.”
The divorce word gave me pause, not because I wasn’t thinking it myself, but because I did not know it was on Trav’s mind.
Our tactic had always been to let situations breathe, but that night on the couch felt absent of oxygen. I studied his strong and muscular features—after all these years, a familiar silhouette. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans, sock-footed, with his boots beside the coffee table. In profile, I watched him sip from his mug and unwrap his veggie focaccia sandwich, a sandwich I have ordered for him a hundred times. Salt and pepper, no mayonnaise.
The word divorce felt like a test in the way canaries were used in old coal mines, and I considered my reaction.
It had been a rough year.
Trav went public with the sex abuse he had endured while studying at the American Boychoir School, and the anger and the repercussions reverberated through our marriage until the noise was so loud, I could no longer hear. For Trav, getting through the day was a win, and sleeping through the night was a gold medal.
Once Trav’s vague memories of his time as a choirboy became more detailed, the details did not stop. This afternoon he remembered the effects of his friend’s most violent rape. It was the worst to date. He coped by doing fifty hard push-ups after telling me. Finding no physical release, he smashed an old dartboard with a hammer until the noise scared our dog. I brought him an antianxiety pill, and we sat together.
This is what post-traumatic stress disorder looks like in our house.
“Why didn’t I tell anyone?” he asked.
“Because you were a little boy, had no language, and did not feel safe,” I said. It was a small comfort, and when the first pill did not work, he swallowed more until his words slurred.
Compounding the issue, Trav had misjudged the time and was due onstage in two hours.
“Do you think you can perform?” I asked, glancing at the clock.
“If I am seated, yes.”
Placing a warm washcloth on Trav’s neck, I visualized the dim, rear-corner stage setup. The venue was a blues bar, and the show was a power lounge trio. Trav had worked this spot regularly for more than a year, and since the bar staff loved him, they would cut him some slack for a seated performance.
“B.B. King performed seated,” I joked. “You are channeling your blues master roots.”
Though alert enough to pack his own equipment, Trav was in no way able to drive. I left a heads-up message with the bass player who booked the gig, and as I piloted the van into town, I asked Trav to sing to me.
His voice projected well, and he remembered most of the lyrics. This was a comfort.
The drummer met us at the curb, saw Trav’s nodding head, and left to find coffee. I thanked him, grateful for the discretion and absence of questions.
Trav righted his shoulders and inhaled deeply. He opened the passenger-side door and stepped onto the curb. A bartender on a smoke break greeted him with a hearty handshake, and Trav walked inside, smiling, steady, and not stumbling.
By the time I returned after midnight to drive him home, I had baked three apple pies from scratch as stress relief. While the pies bubbled in the oven, with a full name from Trav’s afternoon
