Chapter Twenty-two
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Now
He kissed another woman.
I stare at the text I’m about to send Ava, but then I remember she’s several hours ahead where she lives. I would feel bad, knowing this is the text she’ll wake up to. I delete it.
It’s been half an hour since Graham gave up and went back inside, but I’m still sitting in my car. I think I’m too wounded to move. I have no idea if any of this is my fault or if it’s his fault or if it’s no one’s fault. The only thing I know is that he hurt me. And he hurt me because I’ve been hurting him. It doesn’t make what he did right in any sense, but a person can understand a behavior without excusing it.
Now we’re both full of so much pain, I don’t even know where to go from here. No matter how much you love someone—the capacity of that love is meaningless if it outweighs your capacity to forgive.
Part of me wonders if we’d even be having any of these problems if we would have been able to have a baby. I’m not sure that our marriage would have taken the turn it did because I would have never been as devastated as I’ve been the last few years. And Graham wouldn’t have had to walk on eggshells around me.
But then part of me wonders if this was inevitable. Maybe a child wouldn’t have changed our marriage and instead of just being an unhappy couple, we would have been an unhappy family. And then what would that make us? Just another married couple staying together for the sake of the children.
I wonder how many marriages would have survived if it weren’t for the children they created together. How many couples would have continued to live together happily without the children being the glue that holds their family together?
Maybe we should get a dog. See if that fixes us.
Maybe that’s exactly what Graham was thinking when he sat in my car earlier and said, “Why did we never get a dog?”
Of course, that’s what he was thinking. He’s just as aware of our problems as I am. It only makes sense our minds would head in the same direction.
When it grows too cold in the car, I walk back into our house and sit on the edge of the sofa. I don’t want to go to my bedroom where Graham is sleeping. A while ago he was screaming that he loves me at the top of his lungs. He was so loud, I’m sure all the neighbors woke up to the sound of him yelling and the pounding of his fist against metal.
But right now, our house is silent. And that silence between us is so loud; I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fall asleep.
We’ve tried therapy in the past, hoping it would help with the infertility issues we struggled with. I got bored with it. He got bored with it. And then we bonded over how boring therapy was. Therapists do nothing but try to make you recognize the wrongs within yourself. That’s not Graham’s issue and it’s not my issue. We know our faults. We recognize them. My fault is that I can’t have a baby and it makes me sad. Graham’s fault is that he can’t fix me and it makes him sad. There’s no magical cure that therapy will bring us. No matter how much we spend on trying to fix our issue, no therapist in the world can get me pregnant. Therefore, therapy is just a drain on a bank account that has already had one too many leaks.
Maybe the only cure for us is divorce. It’s weird, having thoughts of divorcing someone I’m in love with. But I think about it a lot. I think about how much time Graham is wasting by being with me. He would be sad if I left him, but he’d meet someone new. He’s too good not to. He’d fall in love and he could make a baby and he’d be able to rejoin that circle of life that I ripped him out of. When I think about Graham being a father someday, it always makes me smile . . . even if the thought of him being a father doesn’t include me being a mother.
I think the only reason I never completely let him go is because of the miracles. I read the articles and the books and the blog posts from the mothers who tried to conceive for years and then just as they were about to give up, voilà! Pregnant!
The miracles gave me hope. Enough hope to hang on to Graham just enough in case we ever got a miracle of our own. Maybe that miracle would have fixed us. Put a Band-Aid on our broken marriage.
I want to hate him for kissing someone else. But I can’t, because part of me doesn’t blame him. I’ve been giving him every excuse in the world to walk out on me. We haven’t had sex in a while, but I know that’s not why he strayed outside of our marriage. Graham would go a lifetime without sex if I needed him to.
The reason he allowed himself to fuck up is because he gave up on us.
Back when I was in college, I was assigned to do an article on a couple who had been married for sixty years. They were both in their eighties. When I showed up to the interview, I was shocked at how in tune they were with each other. I assumed, after living with someone for sixty years, you’d be sick of them. But they looked at each other like they still somehow respected and admired each other, even after all they’d been through.
I asked them a number of questions during the interview, but the question I ended the interview with left such an impact on me. I asked, “What’s the secret to such a perfect marriage?”
The old man leaned forward and looked at me very seriously. “Our marriage hasn’t been perfect. No marriage is perfect. There were times when she gave up on us. There were even more times when I gave up on us. The secret to our longevity is that we never gave up at the same time.”
I’ll never forget the honesty in that man’s answer.
And now I truly feel like I’m living that. I believe that’s why Graham did what he did. Because he finally gave up on us. He’s not a superhero. He’s human. There isn’t a person in this world who could put up with being shut out for as long as Graham has put up with it. He has been our strength in the past and I’ve continually been our weakest link. But now the tables have turned and Graham was momentarily our weakest link.
The problem is—I feel like I’ve given up, too. I feel like we’ve both given up at the same time and there may be no turning back from that. I know I could fix it by forgiving him and telling him I’ll try harder, but part of me wonders if that’s the right choice.
Why fight for something that will likely never get better? How long can a couple cling to a past they both prefer in order to justify a present where neither of them is happy?
There is no doubt in my mind that Graham and I used to be perfect for each other. But just because we used to be perfect for each other doesn’t mean we’re perfect together now. We’re far from it.
I look at the clock, wishing it would magically fast forward through tomorrow. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be so much worse than today was. Because tomorrow I feel like we’ll be forced to make a decision.
We’ll have to decide if it’s finally time to open that wooden box.
The thought of it makes my stomach turn. A pain rips through me and I clench at my shirt as I lean forward. I am so heartbroken; I can actually physically feel it. But I don’t cry, because in this situation, my tears cause me even more pain.
I walk to our bedroom with dry eyes. It’s the longest stretch of time I’ve gone in the last twenty-four hours without crying. I push open our bedroom door, expecting Graham to be asleep. Instead, he’s sitting up against the headboard. His reading glasses are at the tip of his nose and he’s holding a book in his lap. His bedside lamp is on and we make eye contact for a brief second.