Chapter 17 #3
A month after I found out I was pregnant, Martin and I graduated, and we moved to Portland because he got a job at a downtown CPA firm. I worked as a graphic designer for a shoe company. He studied to pass his CPA tests.
I wanted things to work. I ignored the fact that I did all the cooking and cleaning. He thanked me for the meals, usually, and asked each morning where the lunch I prepared for him was located. Each morning, it was in the fridge, as usual.
“Leftovers?” he often said, peering into his bag.
“Yes,” I told him. “It’s the spaghetti Bolognese I made last night.”
He crinkled his nose.
“If you don’t like it, make something else,” I told him, pulling a sweater over my head.
“I don’t know why we have leftovers so much for lunch.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. “If you don’t want leftovers, why don’t you be in charge of lunches for us? I’m making the dinners, Martin.”
He looked at me like I was crazy, then shook his head and sighed.
When I got home from work, he would often be playing video games. He would say, “What’s for dinner?”
And I would say, “What did you make?”
And he would glare at me.
I made dinner because it was easier.
Did we have good times those first months, too? Yes. We went on trips. We went out to eat. We laughed over movies and shows. We explored Portland.
I told myself that after we had our daughter—the ultrasound told us the baby was a girl—we would come together as a family.
I knew I was lying to myself. I knew I had made a mistake in marrying him.
The pregnancy was not a mistake, because I loved my baby.
But as I tried to remember when I got pregnant, I realized what Martin had done that one time when we were at the beach.
He had deliberately not used a condom. I couldn’t use other birth control options because they made me feel sick and anxious.
I asked him later about it, and he said he had “forgotten” and was “so sorry.” But I know what happened. He knew I was close to breaking up with him, so he wanted me pregnant. To trap me. And I had stayed trapped. He was happy about the trap.
Then I miscarried. In my seventh month.
I could not have been more devastated.
The miscarriage was a major split in our relationship.
I grieved and cried, alone, my body shaking.
Martin handled the loss differently. He went with his friends to bars, and on fishing and hunting trips.
I had not wanted to get pregnant when I did, but I had already loved that sweet baby and could not wait to hold her.
I already loved our daughter. I talked to her all the time, played my favorite music, told her how much fun we would have.
I could not help but compare Martin to Logan—Logan would have cried with me, tear for tear, I knew that. Martin withdrew from me, had no patience for my grief, and wanted to forget it had happened.
I told my mom about the miscarriage, and she was so upset she had to hang up and lie down. She called me later, and I could tell she was trying not to sob. “I am so sorry, baby. So sorry.”
I was sorry, too. For the dear daughter I would never hold, who would always be a part of me. I could hardly breathe through my deep, aching sadness.
It was the beginning of the end for Martin and me, but my devastating grief turned me into someone I had never been.
I fell into a black, deadening depression.
I lived in a fog. I cried at unexpected moments.
I believed that marriage should be forever and that we could make it work, but we started to fight more.
He would shut me down or stop talking to me and give me the silent treatment.
When he did not pass his CPA tests, it was my fault. I gave up on the marriage, and I shut down.
“Bellini, if you hadn’t made me go away two weekends ago to the beach, I would have had more time to study… You were distracting all the time, constantly trying to talk to me, even the morning of the test. You know I don’t like omelets…”
Months later, on a Tuesday afternoon, finally finding courage and strength, totally sick of him and our marriage, I packed up to leave.
He came home from work early—I had planned to be gone because I couldn’t handle dealing with him anymore—and flipped out when he saw my suitcases. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
He was shocked. He seriously hadn’t seen it coming. He was that dense. “What? Why?”
“You really don’t know?”
He shook his head, stunned. “No. Why? What did I do? I thought we were happy. What’s wrong?
What the hell is this, Bellini?” Then the anger came barreling through.
Again. He said it one more time, with even more anger, his fists clenched.
“This is coming out of the blue. You didn’t even tell me you were unhappy.
You didn’t even tell me you were thinking of leaving.
We fight sometimes. All couples fight. Why are you leaving? ”
“Your anger, for one,” I told him.
“My anger?” he shouted at me. “What do you mean ‘my anger’?”
“Yes,” I said, still packing. “That.”
He was relentless. He told me to stop packing. When I didn’t respond, he finally collapsed. “Why? Why are you leaving?”
“How can you possibly not know? Why would you think I would be happy with you? Do you not see me crying? Do you not understand that our fights are hard on me? Do you not see that I’m no longer the woman you married?
What do you do to make me happy in this marriage?
You’re dismissive. You give me the silent treatment when you’re mad.
You don’t care how I’m doing or what I’m thinking.
I’m here. Like a servant. You don’t do your share of chores around the house.
You don’t cook. You don’t clean. I walk in the door from work, and you ask me where dinner is.
You criticize me. You blame me because you flunked your tax tests.
You play video games all the time. You do nothing to make my life easier, though I’m constantly doing things for you, and nothing I do is enough.
I’m sick of it. I’m exhausted. I can’t do this anymore. ”
His mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. His shoulders sank. His anger dissipated. “You are enough. You’re more than enough. I do care how you’re doing. It’s not your fault I didn’t pass the tests. I should have studied more… Look, Bellini, I didn’t know you needed help around the house!”
“What?” I was baffled.
“My mom always did all the housework, and she worked at the tire company full time.” He said this with a tone like, my mother does this, why can’t you? What’s your problem?
“I am not your mother. That is one of our biggest problems. You want to be married to your mother. Don’t make that face.
You think it’s gross? It is. I don’t want a husband who wants to be married to a mother figure.
I am your wife. Let me ask you a question, Martin.
When you were living at home and your mom and dad both got home from work, your dad would sit down and watch TV, and she would make dinner, clean up after dinner, then spend her weekends doing housework, right?
Was that fair to her? Do you think she was happy with that arrangement? Why didn’t your dad help?”
He was still stunned, then stuttered out, “My…my dad mowed the lawn and changed…he changed the oil in the cars.”
“That’s nothing, Martin. The lawn is a once-a-week chore—and not even during the rainy months. The oil is sporadic. Your mom did way more work than your dad. Do you not see that? Do you not see the unfairness in their relationship? I don’t want to be your mom.” I pulled my suitcases off the bed.
He blocked my way. I tried to go around him. He blocked me again, begging, then crying.
It was a horrible night. I gave in because I didn’t have the strength to fight. I stayed. In the morning, I went to work. I waited until I knew he would be at work, then I went home to get my suitcases. He had unpacked everything. I packed everything back up. I left.
And that’s when I made yet another mistake.
I moved into an apartment. I got a month-to-month lease.
Martin began calling and pleading for forgiveness, promising he would change, and after several months, I relented.
There was part of me that still loved the boisterous, full-of-life man I dated in college, and I told Martin that I needed to be married to the man I knew before.
He promised he would do better, be better.
I moved back in. He changed. He started helping with the housework.
He was considerate and funny. We went to the beach. Our marriage was better. Healthier.
Months later, he flunked his tax tests again.
We went to dinner that weekend, and Martin was in a foul, angry mood.
I said, “What’s wrong?”
And he said, “Nothin’.”
But I found out anyhow.
On a rainy Saturday, he said, “We’re moving back home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Bellini—” He saw the expression on my face at his sharp voice and stopped. Gentling his voice, he said, “I need to move back home because my dad needs help with the tire shop. He had a heart attack, as you know.”
Yes, I knew that. “No. I’m not moving to Grant’s Station.”
We argued. Martin told me it would be only until his dad was better.
He cried about his father, with whom he was very close.
I felt sorry for Martin. He was not going to be a CPA.
He was not going to pass the tests. They were hard tests, but Martin didn’t have the dedication or the work ethic or the intelligence to pass.
He could be successful at his family’s tire shop, and he knew it.
I continued my graphic design work online, and we moved to the small, dusty town in Eastern Oregon that he and all his male relatives and most of his female relatives had grown up in.
He knew everyone, they knew him. I was an outsider.
We moved into a house that his great-uncle, who had died three years ago, used to live in on the family compound.