Chapter 11
Jayne
“How do I talk about Rhys with you?” I ask Iris as I lie alone in bed.
“Babe, what’s going on?”
I stare at the ceiling. The room is dark except for the soft glow of my phone.
Rhys is in the guest room. I can hear the faint creak of the floorboards when he moves, a reminder that he’s both close and far away at the same time.
“I mean,” I try to explain, “you’ve known him as long as you’ve known me.”
“I’ve known you longer,” she drawls.
“True.” Iris and I’ve known each other since elementary school, while Rhys and I met in high school.
“And I imprinted on you, like a baby duck,” She declares. “Now tell me why you’re whispering like you’re calling from a hostage situation.”
“I have no idea.” I rub my forehead. “He’s…he’s in the guest room.”
“Oh, hell.” Sheets rustle on her end. She’s sitting up. She knows we’re having problems, but not the kind where we sleep apart.
“What happened?”
“I…it’s Tory…I think…I don’t know.”
“Did he marry Tory in secret and forget to tell you?”
“Can you not?” I mutter, even though the joke makes me smile…a little.
“Got it. Not in the mood for my excellent sense of humor.”
I take a breath. Then another. “I went to the hospital today.”
“Why?”
“He forgot his bandana.” I take deep breaths as one does before jumping off a diving board. “You know, the blue one I gave him before his first big surgery.”
“Yeah.” Her voice softens. “You still take care of that?”
“Apparently.” Like a good little wife. “I drove over to drop it off. His office door was open.”
I stop. The memory surges up hard and fast.
The sound of my name.
Tory’s voice.
Her casual insults wrapped in concern.
“What did you hear?”
I tell her. Every word. It’s cathartic even if it is painful to expose myself.
Iris doesn’t interrupt. She just breathes with me.
“By the time I got to work. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t take my coat off. I just…sat there crying.”
“I’m so sorry, Jayne,” she whispers. “That’s brutal.”
“It was.” My throat burns. “And then tonight, I told him that I heard him. He apologized, but it was as if he didn’t understand why it hurt so much. He said he was just venting.”
“Well,” she hesitates as if making sure she’s careful about what she says, “he was.”
That stings. “You’re taking his side?”
“Babe, I’m always on your side. You know that.”
I do know that.
“But,” she continues, “you vent about him, too.”
“Not like that.”
“Actually, just like that. Last week, you bitched about him, called him a son of a bitch, and said you’d rather be alone than lonely.”
I sigh. I did say that.
“You tell me you’re exhausted. You tell me he doesn’t show up. You tell me you want to throttle him and also climb him like a tree.”
I chuckle.
“We’re friends…best friends,” I argue. “You’re not trying to sleep with me.”
“Well, not with that attitude,” she quips dryly, then adds, “But hear me out. The Tory part? That’s not great. She has a crush, and he likes the ego boost. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But the venting part?”
“What about it?” I ask, but I know what she’s going to say. It’s what I’m thinking as well. We talk to our friends about our spouses; who else would we talk to?
“That’s what people do when they’re drowning,” Iris croons, soothing even as she whips me into shape. “They drive in on their BMW. You know, bitch, moan, and whine. It’s human.”
I bite my lower lip. “So, I overreacted?”
“No,” she says emphatically. “You reacted like a woman who’s been bleeding out slowly for a long time and just realized the surgeon holding the clamp isn’t actually paying attention.”
Iris is a marketing writer who works at an ad agency. She has a way with words.
“I’m so tired, Iris.” I sink further into my pillow, my body heavier with the heartache I carry. “He thinks I don’t appreciate him. That I’ve turned our home into hell. He doesn’t see anything I do. It’s like I’m invisible until he needs something.”
“I know. But I’m going to say something you’re not going to like.”
I make a face in the dark. “Of course you are.”
“You don’t tell him what you need. You tend to keep things to—"
“I do tell him.” The protest comes out hot. “I ask him to help. I ask him to pick up Finn. I—”
“Tend to keep things inside,” she talks right over me. “Remember the time when you didn’t tell him that he hurt your feelings because he didn’t congratulate you on your promotion?”
“I….”
“Then the time when he made plans for Thanksgiving as a surprise, but you’d made plans, too?”
I never even told him. I just canceled mine.
“You make requests,” she persists. “You negotiate logistics.”
“What am I supposed to do? Make demands?” I ask sourly.
“Hell, yeah!” Iris exclaims. “You need to tell him, straight up, ‘I can’t carry this alone, Rhys. I need you and not just your damn paycheck.’”
My mind flips through more scenes, more times where I smoothed things over, when I chose to make jokes and swallow my resentment to avoid conflict. And the result is this—everything is boiling over and spilling, making a damn mess.
“I don’t want to nag.” The excuse is feeble.
“I know.” Her voice softens. “You want to be the chill, competent wife who handles shit. You don’t want to be the stereotype.”
“You don’t make it sound like a good thing.”
“It’s not a good thing, Jayne! Because while you’re pretending you’re all alright, you’re crying in your own kitchen, and your son sees it.”
My chest tightens. “Did Finn talk to you?”
She doesn’t respond, and I know he did. But she won’t break his confidence.
Aunt Iris is a fixture in my life. Family, even though she technically isn’t.
I’m close enough with my real family, but not like this.
I’d never call my brother to talk about Rhys, and he’d never call me if he and his wife were having issues.
Our parents live in Palm Beach, Florida, and I wouldn’t burden them by complaining about my fabulous surgeon husband. They wouldn’t understand.
As I gather my thoughts, the house makes sounds. Somewhere down the hall, a pipe ticks.
“When I try to talk to him, he doesn’t want to.” My heart folds in on itself. “And just now he wanted to, and I told him I couldn’t.”
“Maybe he’s too tired when you want to talk, and you’re too tired when he does,” Iris suggests.
“When I’m calm and able, he shuts me down,” I complain. “He says he’s tired. He says he doesn’t want to fight.”
“So don’t fight,” she offers. “Talk.”
“You think I haven’t tried?”
“I think you stop when things get uncomfortable,” Iris counters gently. “You protect his peace. You smooth it over. You go, ‘Never mind, I’m fine,’ and change the subject.”
A bitter little laugh escapes me. “Do you have our house bugged?”
She ignores me. “Jayne, you’re allowed to need things. You’re allowed to demand things.”
I pout at her words. “He doesn’t listen.” It’s petty, but with Iris, at least, I can push the blame onto Rhys and take none for myself—not that she lets me get away with it.
There’s a time and place for that—I guess…when I’m venting. Not now, when I’m genuinely looking for advice.
Damn it! I did overreact.
Rhys was just spouting his frustration, as I do, and I went nuclear on him.
Don’t get me wrong, he shouldn’t be talking to her…but would I feel differently if I heard him talking to Paul? How would he feel if he heard me vent about him to Iris?
“Then you keep talking.” Iris yawns. “You force the issue, not as a screaming match or an ambush, but as, ‘This is what’s happening to me. This is how I am living. I need your help in this way.’”
“What if he tells me to go fuck myself?”
“Then that’s information.” I hear the rustle of sheets again—crisis averted, and she’s lying back down. “But right now, you’re guessing what he’ll say and do and hurting yourself twice: once in reality, once in your head.”
I wipe at my eyes. “He said our home is hell.”
“I’m not going to defend that.” I can all but see her shrug. “But I’ll say this: it’s hell for you, too. You both dislike this version of your lives.”
I stare at the ceiling again.
“I told him to sleep in the guest room,” I admit.
“That’s fair.”
“I wanted to tell him to leave,” I confess. “Pack a bag. Go. I almost did.”
“Do you want him gone?”
My heart lurches. “No.”
“Okay.” Her voice softens again. “That’s important for you to know. You’re allowed to be furious and still want him. It doesn’t make you weak or stupid. It makes you human.”
“How is it that you’re giving me relationship advice?”
She laughs. “You mean because I haven’t been in a relationship longer than six months?”
“Yeah, and that your most intimate relationship is with your vibrator,” I tease.
“True. But then, I think it’s easier to see inside someone else’s relationship from the outside, with fewer emotions clouding the facts. And as you said, I have known you both for a long time, and I know you very well.”
“And who am I, Iris?” She’s right about emotions clouding reality, but they’ve also blurred me out of my own picture.
“Babe, that you’re going to have to discover for yourself.”
After we end the call, I’m tempted to go into the guest room and sleep with Rhys. I hate being here without him, now that the heat of anger and hurt has cooled some.
But there is one truth that remains scorching hot.
I’m not happy.
I want to be more than his wife and their mother.
I want to be just Jayne. Working gives that to me.
Why can’t he understand it?
My job was good enough when it was paying our bills and putting him through medical school, but now it’s an inconvenience?
Well, not to me.
I hear Iris’s voice in my head, “Then explain that to him, calmly, without fighting, and most importantly, without hiding yourself.”