Years pass. The house is a lot for us. Always a crack to fill, a carpet to rip up, a faucet to replace. Weeds in the backyard and big disgusting bugs in the basement. We’re tired. Birdie is a handful. Every day there’s a tantrum, a test of wills. We’ve become the stereotypical exhausted working parents. Our lives consist of work, the house, insane toddler, repeat. We take turns going out. He grabs drinks with his teacher friends or I hang with my media pals, while the other stays home with the insane toddler. We rarely go out together, if ever. But when we’re at the house, we are together. There are always people coming and going, neighbourhood children running around, my dad dropping by, or cousins or friends. Barbeques, beer-making, board games, crafts, trivia nights. A house full of life and energy.
And always in the crowd, I hear his laugh, or I catch his eye across the room and he winks at me, or just gives me that smirk. Our relationship like an inside joke between the two of us. I knew we would always be okay. We’d be the couple that would always be okay.
I was wrong.
ON STRIKE
Summer 2011. Birdie is four years old. The Husband and I are thirty-eight and thirty-six respectively. It’s been eleven years since he first grabbed my hand and kissed me hard in the basement of that bar. The lanky guy who is now this man before me, creeping up on forty, with broad shoulders and a beer belly, tiny silver flashes across the night sky of his hair.
God I love him when I look over at him. He infuriates me and excites me, even now, when we are tired and run-down because Birdie at age four is like having three children all screaming relentlessly at once directly in your face. We work all day and she yells at us all night until she mercifully falls asleep. Then we go to bed together and talk in whispers because we’re afraid she’ll hear us and wake up and yell at us more. We add a tiny hook-and-eye lock on our door so we can have sex at night without me worrying she’s going to walk in. We lie together and talk and giggle (in whispers) like teenagers until we fall asleep.
In the mornings I find him less adorable. He sleeps in while I get up and get ready first so I can then get Birdie up and get her ready. I look in our room and see him just sitting there on the edge of the bed, staring at the closet. Meanwhile, I get her on the toilet and wrangle her into clothes and beg and plead with her to brush her teeth and endure the screaming as I try to brush her hair or get her to brush it. I look in and he is still just sitting there, staring. And I want to scream, at him, at her, at everyone. Sometimes we do scream. It’s a terrible way to start the day.
It isn’t perfect, but what relationship is? What marriage is one hundred percent sunshine and roses? I love The Husband and he loves me, in spite of our exhausting hamster-wheel life, despite our differences and diverging interests. There is still plenty of common ground, and the foundation of our relationship is our similar spirit — the way we fight, hard, for the things and people we love. Our weird sense of humour, our own secret language. How he buys me the most perfect gifts for every occasion, a collection of necklaces and pendants that are unique and strange and so exactly me. How we still smirk at one another, still make out all the time and still have sex pretty much every day except when we’re way too tired or grumpy. We are still, after all this time, totally into each other. I feel absolutely confident that no matter how we sometimes argue or annoy each other, we are a team. A dedicated couple who have each other’s backs.
In the middle of July that year, The Husband goes away on a “guys’ weekend” with his old pals from high school, a mild-mannered bunch who like role-playing games and pot-smoking. I love these guys, I consider them my own friends, and I’m glad he’s getting a weekend away from our domestic life.
But when he returns, something is wrong. He’s completely different, and I don’t know why. He’s sullen, a lot, and quick to anger. His jaw is tighter and it seems like everything I say is the wrong thing to say. He insists on enrolling Birdie in full-time daycare for the summer, even though he’s a teacher and off, and even though it costs a lot of money and makes no sense. This makes me really angry, and we argue about it. I’m just supposed to go to work all day to pay for super-expensive daycare so he can stay home and do whatever he wants and not even hang out with his own kid, the kid he wanted so badly? But he doesn’t budge. And so I reason that at the very least, he’ll get some of the stuff around the house done — pull up the embarrassing weeds in the front yard, replace the screen door at the back of the house, paint the spare room.
He does none of it. He does nothing. All day long Birdie goes to daycare. All day long I go to work. All day long he … I don’t know. I don’t know what he does. He plays video games, I can see that. He drinks a lot; the recycling bin tells me that. It’s like he’s on strike. He’s become remote and absent even though he’s right in front of us. He is done. And it’s making me an angry, nervous wreck.
Summer turns into fall. The Husband turns into someone else completely.
It goes on like this for months. His jaw tighter, his eyes dull. Birdie and I chat at dinner and he’s there, physically, but not there at all. I start taking her everywhere without him because he doesn’t want to come to the park anymore, or to people’s houses, or kids’ birthday parties, or any of the other things we used to do the three of us, together. Birdie and I do art projects on the big dining table while he watches TV. We carve jack-o’-lanterns just the two of us, wrap Christmas presents without him, make a million valentines for her class. All while he sits there staring at the TV, beer in hand. (I guess I was being primed for single-parenthood. Funny to realize that now.)
During these six months, there are also good times. There are days when he is lovely and goofy and sweet and into me and into being a dad. There are days when we feel like a family. But mostly, things just get worse and worse between us. There are times when I look at him and it’s like he’s looking through me. We argue a lot, because I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with him and he won’t talk to me about it. Not knowing makes me angrier. I don’t like him a lot of the time, even though I so desperately love and miss him.
He stops coming to bed at the same time as me, preferring to stay downstairs and watch hours and hours of TV. I start to take food to bed with me. Food fills the gaping holes of knowledge, the things I don’t know, the questions he won’t answer. I feel dismissed and invisible and I eat to quell the gnawing pain in my gut that isn’t hunger, unless you count the hunger for a different life or the yearning to be seen again. Night after night in our bed alone, I eat cereal and toast and cookies and crackers, writing endlessly into my notebook: What has happened to him? Where has my husband gone? Why did I ever agree to get married? This is such bullshit!
As I put on more and more weight, he starts working out. He gets trim and fit and buys a bunch of new clothes — pants without cargo pockets, nice shirts, and shoes that aren’t sneakers. He starts wearing a tie to work every day. He styles his hair for what seems likes hours every morning. He looks good.
I know what you’re thinking, because in hindsight it’s obvious and probably at the top of the “Top 5 Things to Look For If You Think Your Spouse Is Cheating” list. But I wasn’t looking for clues because I didn’t think he was cheating. I didn’t even consider it. I mean, not seriously.
One morning, he’s painstakingly choosing his outfit for the day (who is this guy?) and I half-jokingly say, “You’re such a fucking dandy all of a sudden! Are you cheating on me or something?”
He spits back, “As if. When would I even have the time?” which seems as true a thing as he could say. Our lives are so busy, when would anyone have time to have an affair? I feel sheepish for even suggesting it. Of course he isn’t cheating on me. Everything is falling apart, I know that, but this all must be a phase, a normal phase of marriage. Or he’s just having a mid-life crisis or something. I mean, at least he hasn’t bought a Ferrari.