Chapter 11
The fight started over chicken. Chicken. Can you even imagine such a thing?
Claire had made roasted chicken for dinner. This was not an unusual thing. She made roasted chicken at least once a week because Greg liked it and it was easy.
She’d been cooking dinner for the same man for well over two decades, and at some point, the meals had stopped being choices and had become rotations.
Roasted chicken was on Tuesday, the way spaghetti was on Thursday, the way leftovers were on Sunday. Pizza from their favorite place was sprinkled in between.
She had seasoned it just the way she always did, with rosemary and lemon and a little too much garlic, because she loved garlic. Greg tolerated garlic.
She set it on the table for two with the everyday plates and the everyday napkins.
She put the salt and pepper shakers that were shaped like little lighthouses that they bought on their honeymoon in Maine twenty-six years ago, back when they bought things together, back when a lighthouse seemed charming instead of ironic.
Now, even a lighthouse couldn’t help her see the way home to her marriage that she used to love.
Greg came to the table. He sat down, and he looked at the chicken as if someone was about to walk him straight down to the electric chair.
“Chicken again?”
Claire counted to three. One, two, three.
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Well, no. I just feel like we eat chicken a lot.”
“We do eat chicken a lot. You like chicken.”
“I suppose I like chicken fine. I’m just saying we could mix it up a little bit.”
Claire sat down across from him. She picked up her fork, but then put it down.
Then she picked it up again. The lighthouse salt shaker stared at her from the middle of the table, and she thought about how many meals she had eaten at this table, in this same kitchen, across from this same man.
Thousands. Literally thousands of meals that she had cooked, every single one of them.
And never once in the twenty-six years she had cooked had he offered to cook instead.
“What would you like me to make?” She kept her voice steady. Her hands under the table were not.
“I don’t know. Something different.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Claire. I’m not a cook.”
She counted to three again. She’d been counting to three in her marriage for so long that she did it quickly now.
There were no pauses. She held a tiny breath that nobody ever noticed, not even her most of the time.
Right now, she noticed it. She noticed her jaw tightening, her shoulders rising to her earlobes, the way she braced her body every single time.
She was swallowing words that she really wanted to say, and she had just grown tired of swallowing.
“You could cook,” she said matter-of-factly.
He looked up from his plate. He looked as if he’d just been told something in a language he didn’t speak. He was confused, maybe offended, uncertain how to respond.
“Excuse me, what?”
“If you want something different, you are able to cook it yourself. The kitchen is right there,” she said, pointing across the room. “It’s been right there for twenty-six years.”
Greg set his fork down. He wasn’t even angry. It was like he was doing it carefully, the way you would set down a tool so you didn’t accidentally cut off your hand. Or you’d set down a bag of steaks when an angry bear approaches.
“What is going on with you?”
“Nothing is going on with me.”
“Oh, something’s going on. You’ve been acting weird for months. You’re gone all the time. You got a tattoo. You sleep in the guest room. And now you’re picking a fight over chicken.”
“I am not picking a fight. I am just suggesting that you could participate in the feeding of yourself.”
“See, that right there,” Greg pointed at her. “That tone. You never used to talk to me like that.”
Claire felt something rising up in her chest like lava.
She recognized it as the thing she’d been counting to three to avoid.
Not anger, exactly, but something bigger than that.
What was bigger than anger? Something that had been sitting in the basement of her marriage for so long, it felt like it had grown roots.
“You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t used to talk to you like that. I used to count to three and then say something nice. I’ve been counting to three and saying nice things since the millennium, Greg. Do you know how many times I’ve counted to three in this marriage?”
He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve spent all of our marriage making everything in this house work.
The cooking, the cleaning, the kids’ school, the holidays, the birthday parties, thank-you notes, groceries, appointments, all of it.
Every single piece of life I’ve managed.
And you’ve sat in that den, put an indentation in a ratty old recliner from your butt cheeks, and watched the Braves, assuming that everything would just keep happening. ”
The kitchen went quiet. She could hear the refrigerator humming. She could feel the napkin hanging on the fridge, as if it were watching her, a witness. How had this all started with a napkin?
“I work too, Claire,” Greg said. His voice had gone careful, like he was navigating land he had never been to. “I’ve worked this whole time. I’ve provided for this family.”
“Yes, you have. You’ve worked, and you’ve provided. You’ve been a good father and a reliable human. I’m not saying you haven’t done those things.”
“Then what are you saying?”
She looked at him, the man she’d been married to.
He had been steady and kind, making her feel safe when she was twenty-four years old.
He’d held her hand in the delivery room twice.
He had built a bookshelf for their daughter’s room and mowed the lawn every Saturday.
He’d paid the mortgage on time every month for all twenty-six years.
He was not a bad man. He was not a cruel man.
He was a man who had done everything he’d been taught that a husband should do and just could not understand why that wasn’t enough.
“I’m saying that you gave me a gift card for my fiftieth birthday.”
He blinked. “What?”
“You gave me a gift card. Not even one to a specific store that you know I like, a universal one that I could use at the gas station, the grocery store, or to buy adult diapers. You couldn’t be bothered to choose a store, Greg.
I turned fifty, and you gave me a piece of plastic that said, ‘Hey, here’s something worth thirty dollars at any participating retailer,’ and you thought that was fine. ”
“You said you liked it.”
“I say I like everything! That’s what I do to survive. I say I like things. I say I’m fine. I say, ‘Oh, no big deal.’ I’ve been saying that for so long that you actually believe me, and I don’t know if it’s your fault or mine, but I just can’t do it anymore.”
Greg sat still. Claire could see him trying to process all the words she was saying. The moment he realized that the woman sitting across from him was not the woman he’d been eating chicken with for the past couple of decades, she could see it on his face.
“Are you saying you want to divorce?” he asked. His voice was quiet and a little scared.
“No,” Claire said. “I’m not saying that.
I’m saying I want you to see me. I want you to ask me where I’m going, not when I’m coming back.
I want you to notice when I’m wearing a new dress.
I want you to know I’ve been drawing again, and I want you to ask to see what I’ve drawn.
I want you to wonder about me, Greg, on your own, without me telling you to.
I want you to be curious about this person you’re married to. ”
The kitchen was so quiet now that Claire could hear the clock on the wall. It was one she’d bought at a craft fair in Beaufort twelve years ago.
Greg looked at his hands. They were resting on either side of his plate.
She could see them clearly, his wedding ring, the calluses from yard work, the shape of his fingers that she’d know anywhere, the hands that had held hers thousands of times.
He looked older than she usually let herself notice.
He had gray at his temples now, lines around his eyes.
She did, too. There was a slight heaviness in his shoulders that hadn’t been there when they were young.
“I had no idea you were drawing again.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t know to ask.”
“That’s the problem, Greg. You don’t know because you stopped looking at me a long time ago.”
He was quiet. The chicken cooled on their plates. The lighthouse salt shaker stood there, witnessing all of it.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said finally.
“I think we need help,” she said. “Professional help. Somebody we can talk to.”
“You mean counseling?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. She could see the resistance in his shoulders tightening and his jaw working.
Greg definitely didn’t believe in counseling.
He thought you should deal with everything privately, which meant he believed in not dealing with anything at all.
And that’s how they had arrived at this table with cold chicken and years of unspoken truth between them.
“I don’t know, Claire.”
“Greg, I’m just asking you for one thing. One thing in all these years that’s just for me. Actually, just for us.”
He looked at her. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The napkin hung on the fridge. Time stood still.
“Okay,” Greg said. “Okay, I’ll go.”
It wasn’t a resolution to all the problems. It wasn’t even really a breakthrough.
It was just a man saying okay, with the enthusiasm of someone who had just agreed to get a root canal.
Claire knew that “okay” didn’t mean he understood, that he would change, or that the next few months wouldn’t be the hardest of their marriage. But right now, okay was what she had.