The Problem With Loving Exclusively
The first time my wife told me she didn’t love me I waited patiently for the punchline. I was sitting on the couch. Both of our children were crisscross on the floor in front of the television. She stood there stoney-faced, pinned to the floor, barely blinking. I left that night to stay at my brother’s house. Four months later we were back together. A couple weeks after I returned I asked her what her episode was all about. We were lying in bed, the television flashing silently in the corner of the room.
“I don’t know, I was just in a bad place.” She cuddled up next to me, wrapped her leg around mine. “You know, my dad just died and – ” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I was just confused.”
The second time she told me she didn’t love me, I flipped.
“You’re insane,” I told her. “You know that?” I was convinced that, like her mother, she had finally lost it.
I went to my brother’s again – she kept the kids – working on making my third wheel liveable. I was using an electric sander to prep the walls for a fresh coat of paint, drinking tequila and beer as I worked in the deadening summer sun. My brother had heard from one of his coworkers that my wife went on a week long singles’ cruise a month or two back. Multiple times she’d accused me of being unfaithful.
“I know you look at other women,” she’d say. “Do you touch them, too?”
“Babe, I’ve never laid my finger on another woman all the years we’ve been together.”
“Yeah right, you’re satisfied with this body?” She’d lift her shirt up to her breasts exposing stretch marks, scars and cellulite. This had become a semi-weekly routine, my confirmation of fidelity; she was never thoroughly convinced. Once, during one of these debates, our daughter came running into the kitchen.
“Momma, what’s wrong with your belly?” My wife lowered her shirt and glanced at me – defeated.
“Honey,” she said, tucking her shirt back in and looking softly to our daughter, “what can I do for you?” Her smile was gracious and loving like a bed patiently awaiting arrival. My daughter jumped onto her lap and they nearly sunk to the floor. My wife had always been very slender. She managed to collect stretch marks and other damages from two pregnancies. She was small but not lean; the kind of woman who always asks someone else to open the pickle jar.
I finished up the sanding, hopped into my Suburban and headed for the hardware store to buy paint. I took a bottle of Corona with me. The sweat had gathered in pools on my back, armpits and chest. My undershirt changed from white to a dull gray and wood shavings were tangled in my greasy hair. While I drove I thought of her on that cruise, wondered if she’d ever been unfaithful to me. Maybe all those conversations were meant to be prompts; her always hoping I’d ask her the same questions she’d ask me; she could confess and her guilty conscious would be lifted. There was certainly a weight that held her down day to day during our seven years together. I imagined her prancing about in a one piece (covering the evidence of her having birthed two children), dangling a martini glass between her fingers as she tip-toed across the hardwood deck of a mediocre cruise ship, the sun reflected off her cheap department store sunglasses. A target in a firing range.
I was a couple miles from the store when I decided to take a side road and pass up the old house. It was an old craftsmen home with a few modern additions: a bay window that allowed the sun’s nectar-like rays to bathe you as you read the morning paper, a two car garage with a shop bench and beer fridge, and a second floor deck. I pulled into the drive and put the Suburban in park. The radio was off. The only thing I could hear was the chugging of the engine and the muffler beating a tinny rhythm against the chassis. My bottle rattled in the cup holder. I grabbed it and took a drink.
I started drinking when I was five. When my dad got back from Vietnam he didn’t talk much unless he drank and all his drinking buddies were either dead or mental. Not long after my fifth birthday he filled me up a short glass of Johnny Walker, lit me a cool cigarette, and smiled through a scar and a buzz cut as he handed them to me like a king knighting his loyal subject. I remained his sole drinking buddy my entire childhood. By fifteen I’d been hospitalized twice due to alcohol poisoning. He didn’t do it to me because he didn’t love me or was a bad father – quite the opposite. He wanted me to enjoy life’s pleasures; valuable father-son time.
The house hadn’t changed any, it was still in magnificent shape, The lawn, though, was a bit overgrown. One of the few things I was sure of was that the yard would never again be groomed as well as when I lived there. I took a Polaroid in my mind, took another drink, shifted into reverse, and backed out toward the street. I heard the sound of snapping wood and felt the Suburban lift up a couple inches. I rolled down the window and looked back. The mailbox hung limply beneath the rear bumper like a wilting flower. “Shit.”
I pulled forward a few feet and it fell all the way to the sidewalk with a metallic clank. I looked down the street both ways; no children playing, no mailman stuffing – stillness and silence save for the exhaust pumping slowly out of the Suburban. My hands shook on the steering wheel, the onset of my anxiety. The mail was splayed out all over the cracks in the cement. Her name was written across them with my last name still attached. It seemed strange to see them merged as one, the world still unaware of our separation. I felt territorial. Imagining her frolicking on that cruise with strange men made my cheeks burn red and my temples pulse like a war drum beneath pounding sticks. The thing my therapist tells me is that it’s not about reversing my anxiety and anger, it’s simply about acknowledging the presence of them. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But my therapist has never told me how to handle thoughts of my wife sleeping with other men. I like to pretend that even though she’s not with me I was the only man she ever loved, the only man she ever fucked, the only man she ever went grocery shopping with, and the last man she’ll ever do any of those things with. The problem is I was never all that good at any of those things, just loyal. My loyalty is my gift. Everything else is sub-par.
She recently purchased a new sedan – Imported. Air conditioned. Air bags throughout. Efficient mileage. I know this because she drove by my brother’s one day as I was washing the third wheel. She didn’t so much as glance in my direction. Obviously she knew I was there and must have driven by on purpose, just as I’d made the venture to our old house. The new car had a shimmer that day unlike any car over a year old. Her composure was strong, her head held high and her eyes focused on the road. A man sat next to her in the passenger seat with his head turned away from me. All I could see was his brown wavy hair and a prim collared shirt. I imagined his jaw finely carved, his chest accurately sculpted by God’s chisel – God’s real only begotten son. As they passed I just stood there, the hose pouring out into the street, suds washing slowly down the drain labeled ‘Protect Our Fish: This Water Goes Directly to Our Rivers!’
The Suburban was now halfway on the sidewalk, halfway in the driveway. I contemplated my next move, took another glance at the injured mailbox. I pulled up a few feet, steering the nose of the Suburban toward the garage door and paused for a moment, a very brief moment. I decided, ultimately, to scrap all rationality. I floored it, grinning as I did. I imagined her pristine new import parked behind the garage door and how little she deserved it. When I hit the door it bent inward, cracking down the center, but I hit nothing else. The garage was still full of some of my old tools that I didn’t yet have the space to take. Old movie posters hung on the walls in cheap plastic frames. I drove all the way to the back wall, carrying a piece of the garage door atop the roof, and went through my old beer fridge. The car wasn’t there. I gazed at the wounded fridge and closed my eyes. I pulled my Corona from the cup holder, took one last hit, and threw it out the window against the wall. I backed out of the garage. I turned the suburban toward the vibrantly stained porch and floored it again. As I hit it it crinkled like a paper airplane being kicked by a boy’s boot. It hung onto the house, barely. Tears began to come down my dirty cheeks. I felt awkward, as if the whole world were watching me lose my shit. I could hear sirens far down the highway. The tires wove intricate dirt patterns in the overgrown grass as I pulled back, my vision blurred, onto the front yard. I sat still in the Suburban a minute, put it in park and played with the gas pedal. The engine got louder and louder, teasing the calmness of the neighborhood. The sirens grew louder. The sirens and the engine gathered in a sort of crescendo. At their climax I shifted to drive. The tires dug holes into the grass before shooting the Suburban and I through the bay window. The coffee table and countless decorations – house plants, lamps, family photos – all picked up into a cloud. The sound of glass breaking, wood snapping, and carpet tearing all rang out in a glorious symphony. The Suburban stopped part way through the dining room wall, the engine dead and smoke rising from the hood. Breathing hard, I crawled out the open window. The door was jammed and the windshield had blown out. I cut my hands on glass as I crawled then dropped to the dining room floor, landing next to a displaced dinner plate. The scene was very peculiar; something between a garbage sale and a parking lot. With my hands on my knees, my mind spinning and my head dripping with sweat, I spent a few moments trying to collect myself before breaking into a run out the hole where the bay window had once been and heading North toward my brother’s. Sweat fell off me like rain and alcohol pulsed through my veins. Evening was coming down hard as I ran.
Once, when I was a boy, my brother and I were exploring my grandfather’s backyard. Grandpa had a large hilly back forty with cows, pigs and trees that stretched for acres. He kept all the animals in a pathetic looking electric fence strapped with signs that read ‘Danger: high voltage’ every fifty feet or so. My brother is seven years older than me and has always used that to his advantage.
“Come on,” my brother said. “Touch it!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “What if it, you know, kills us or something.”
“You’re such a pussy. It’s not going to kill us.”
“What if we get burned or our hair sticks up like in the movies and grandpa yells at us for playing around with the fence and tells mom. Or worse, doesn’t tell mom.”
“Are you being serious right now?”
“Here,” he said, “watch.” He leaned forward, stretching his fingers out slowly. I could see them shaking, I wasn’t the only one scared. It was a cool summer afternoon, I was on break and he had dropped out. There weren’t many clouds in the sky but the Washington climate refused to allow heat to enter the atmosphere. As he got closer I grew more and more scared for him. He finally touched it, slowly, and screamed louder than I’d ever heard him scream. He began convulsing and spitting. I ran to him, yelling his name. When I reached him he fell to the grass next to a cow pie and began laughing like a lunatic.
“You’re a jerk,” I told him, reaching out to the fence myself. The feeling through my body as I touched it was nothing like I’d expected. It was as if my entire body had fallen asleep and was tingling all over. There was a light pulsing throughout my limbs and I was more surprised than anything. I stood there, holding on for a long time. Eventually my brother stopped laughing and just looked at me, expressionless.
“Hey,” he said, “Oliver.” I held on. I Felt the electricity move my blood. My world sank away and I closed my eyes. “Hey!” he yelled. I heard him get up off the ground and take a few steps toward me. After a moment he tackled me to the ground and held me there, smacking my face. “Oliver!” I opened my eyes and looked up to the sky, grinning as big as I knew how to.
I looked back as I ran. The police lights were flashing toward me. To my right laid a steep hill splotched with blackberry bushes. I made a cut for it and stepped on a loose patch of mud, falling directly on my tailbone. I began to slide down the hill, scraping my back on the jagged rocks as I went, finally stopping in a blackberry bush. My vision was even more blurred. Everything I was enduring seemed surreal. I stood up to head down the hill again, dirtier and more exhausted than before. After another minute or so I came across another loose patch. This time stopped by an even larger blackberry bush. I rolled into the middle, getting scratches all over my face and finally losing my momentum like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. “Fuck.”
I climbed through the bushes toward what sounded like a river, the Green River I guessed. I reached a clearing and peeled the thorns from my arms and cheeks, my forehead and ass. I began to wish I had brought the tequila with me, or at least another Corona. I figured I’d been running for about an hour. The night was heavy with darkness and I heard two things: above me I heard the spinning of a helicopter’s blade. Behind me, the barking and scurrying of police dogs. I couldn’t see shit but the sounds were enough to keep me running blindly. I reached the river and jumped in without hesitation. The water was cold but not debilitating. I turned back and viewed the silhouettes of two – maybe three, maybe six – dogs running toward the river. My pace quickened. The water grew deeper, almost to my chest, and I slipped on a smooth rock, submerging me completely. The sounds of the chase dissolved into splashing, bubbles, and the gentle flow of the river. It was falsely comforting. For a moment I considered staying under till it all had passed but then my instincts kicked in and I began flapping my arms like fins, reached my head toward the surface. The dogs were in the water now, paddling towards me with their mouths open and flaring like furnaces. I tried to swim away but was no match for their efficiency. I slipped once more on a large smooth rock. I felt, briefly, as if a major league pitcher had thrown a baseball at my forehead, then I felt nothing.
Fluorescent lights hung neutrally above me. I tried to sit up but couldn’t because my wrist was handcuffed to the rail of a hospital bed. A police officer stood like a royal guard outside the door of my room. My head felt like a thousand pounds of coal in a burlap sack. To my surprise, my wife was standing there as well. Her mouth was moving and her hands were flying about, full of emotion as usual. God’s only begotten son stood proudly next to her. Her prize winning’s from the week long cruise I assumed. None of them looked all that angry, which relieved me, but I was nonetheless fearful of their presence. I laid back down and exhaled like a whale, feeling all the spots where the blackberry bushes had pierced me burn like splashes of boiling water on my skin. They all noticed I had woken at the same time. Their conversation stopped and she motioned to both of them to stay outside.
