Chapter 39 Before and After #2
with his life. Whereas I—” He shifted his eyes abruptly from hers. “Never mind. Guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself. Or
ashamed of myself.”
He tried to turn away, but Margaret put her hand on his shoulder.
“Ashamed? Why? No, really,” she said when he tried to dismiss her. “Why do you feel ashamed, honey? I want to understand.”
Walt hesitated, as if weighing how much he wanted to reveal.
“You remember how I was back in college? I wanted to do everything. Now here I am, thirty-six years old. And what have I done
with my life? Nothing.”
Though Margaret flinched inwardly, she knew he didn’t mean it the way it sounded. After all, she’d experienced some of those same feelings recently, the sense that her life didn’t amount to much. And so rather than remind him of his children and her, she bit her tongue.
As it turned out, he didn’t need reminding.
“No, no,” he said. “I take that back. I wanted to marry you. That was the only thing I was certain of back then, the one decision
I never second-guessed. I was willing to do whatever I had to do to make it happen, and I’ve never regretted it, not for one
minute.”
His words made Margaret flinch again, but for a different reason. She pushed herself to a sitting position.
“Well, I regret it,” she said. “Not that we got married. Only the hoops I made you jump through to get me to say yes. You
only went into accounting because of me.”
Walt sat up too. “Yes, because I wanted a life and a family with you. If studying accounting was what it took to make it happen, I was fine with that. I still am. You and the kids are everything
to me. And I had to figure out some way to support you, didn’t I? You may not realize this, Maggie, but nobody who lives in
Concordia majored in philosophy.”
Walt smiled, trying to lighten her mood. Margaret hugged her knees to her chest, thinking back to the day he’d proposed, how
relieved she’d been that Walt had finally come to his senses and settled on a profession that could support a family, that
could support her. But shouldn’t she have supported him as well? Considered his happiness along with her own?
Walt ducked his head so he could see her eyes.
“Maggie, don’t be so hard on yourself. Remember how young we were. We were just trying to figure everything out, doing what
we thought we were supposed to do.”
True. They had been raised to believe that the road to a happy, successful adulthood was well defined but extremely narrow,
and that deviating from the path was not only irresponsible but also wrong, a quick route to certain disaster.
Margaret thought back to the words she’d written months before, that there were a million good and right ways to be a woman, and only two wrong ways.
First, to insist that your way was the only way.
Second, to allow your unique, square-peg soul to be deformed and misshapen, pounded into the round hole of someone else’s
ideal.
If that was true for women, shouldn’t it be true for men as well?
She sat up straighter, replaying Walt’s words in her mind.
“But honey? We’re not young anymore.”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “We are not.”
“So if that’s true,” Margaret said slowly, brow creasing as she gathered her thoughts, “why are we still acting like it? No
one knows what we want out of our lives more than we do. So why are we still following a script somebody else wrote?”
She spun around to face Walt, sitting cross-legged and looking into his face with an intent, expectant expression.
“All right,” she said in a tone that was simultaneously elated and practical. “Certain things are givens. We’re married and
we have three kids, so that’s always going to be part of the equation. But beyond that, if we could do anything we wanted
to do, live however and wherever we wanted to live, what would that look like?”
Walt narrowed his eyes. “Margaret, am I supposed to believe you’re serious?”
“I am serious.”
Walt frowned and fell silent.
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment, turning out his hands. “Honestly, Maggie, I don’t have any more clue now than I did
in college.”
“Exactly! Neither do I. And that’s the problem!” She leaned toward him, grabbed his hand. “It’s like you said—we were still
trying to figure everything out back then. But the thing is, we never did figure it out, did we? Instead, we just did what
we thought we were supposed to do, kept following the rules like everyone else.
“But here’s the good news,” she said, squeezing his hand because she just couldn’t contain her excitement. “It’s not too late to do something about it! And I think we should, together. Maybe we’re not as young as we used to be, but we’re still young. Let’s quit wasting time and figure this out.
“So, I ask you again, Mr. Ryan, if we could do anything we wanted with our lives—no boundaries, no buts, and no shoulds—what
would it be?”
Margaret squared her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap, awaiting his response with an alert expression. Walt smiled,
the warmth of his affection spreading over his face and into his eyes.
“I love you, Maggie.”
“I love you too. Now answer the question. Oh, wait!” she cried just as Walt opened his mouth to speak. “Hold that thought!”
Margaret sprang from the bed and started digging frantically through the nightstand.
Walt shook his head, laughing. “What are you doing?”
“I always think better if I write things down,” Margaret said, pulling a pen and notepad from the drawer and brandishing them
with a triumphant gesture before climbing back into bed. “We should probably make a list. Or a few? I have a feeling this
might take a while.”
* * *
It was the start of a long conversation—one that would stretch on for months, and that they would revisit year upon year,
decade upon decade.
However, that first round of talks reached its apex in early June of the following year.
Walt, carrying a rubber mallet with a long wooden handle, exited the garage and called to Margaret through the front door
of the house, which stood partly ajar.
“Honey? I found it!”
Margaret emerged a moment later, holding a red and white “For Sale” sign in her hands.
They walked down the driveway together and across the lawn to a spot near the curb. Margaret knelt on the grass and pushed
the pointed end of the wooden stake into the turf as far as it would go, steadying the sign with her hands.
Walt raised the mallet above his shoulders, preparing to swing.
“You’re sure you’re ready for this? Because if you’re not . . .”
Margaret shifted her weight back, sitting on her haunches and taking in her surroundings—the peaceful neighborhood, the white
house with the forest-green shutters, the tidy yard, the two birch trees.
She thought about unlocking the door for the very first time, walking through the vacant rooms, breathing in the scent of
paint, sawdust, and new beginnings. It had been her dream house, back before she understood that dreams could change. For
a season she had loved it.
The trees, on the other hand, Margaret had never loved. Though they really were quite lovely now, with spreading branches and a wealth of bright green leaves, she still didn’t.
But someone else would. And that was just as it should be.
Margaret rocked forward again, tightened her hold on the sign, and smiled up at Walt.
“I’m sure.”