And then I turned around and Victor had silently opened my car door and was kneeling and holding a diamond ring so small that I knew he had actually bought it himself. And so I said yes, partly because I loved him, partly out of relief that I was not going to be murdered, and partly because I knew he’d never let me out of the car to pee until I agreed to marry him. And then I kissed him and still he stayed knelt down, blocking my exit. And then I asked him if I could go to the bathroom, and he gave me this pained expression, and I wondered whether I’d fucked up his romantic moment, but then he straightened up and I noticed that he’d accidentally knelt right in a pile of broken glass, which was awesome, because there’s nothing more romantic than a proposal that ends with you needing a tetanus shot.
I remember thinking at the time that if I didn’t have to pee so badly I probably would have told him that we should wait, because truthfully, I knew I was a little too broken to be married to anyone. But by the time I’d gotten out of the bathroom he’d called everyone we knew and told them I said yes.
I tried to convince Victor several times that he’d made a terrible mistake in proposing, but whenever I insisted that he would be better off with one of his old debutantes, he dismissed it as low self-esteem. Even when I assured him I was kind of insane, he brushed it off as an exaggeration on my part, because he’d witnessed my minor panic attacks and occasional breakdowns and he wrongly assumed that was as bad as it got.
Then one morning, shortly after we got engaged, I woke up as Victor reached over for me, and he stopped suddenly and slowly sat up. In a carefully measured voice he said, “Honey . . . ? Did you . . . did you pee in the bed?”
And I was all, “WHAT?! Of course I didn’t pee in the bed!” And then I thought, “Ew, DID I pee in the bed?” and I felt around and I didn’t feel anything, but then I saw this large puddle seeping slowly though the top of the comforter into the valley between Victor and me. Then I screamed, “OHMYGOD, CAT PEE!” and I threw the comforter off me and the cat pee splashed everywhere.
Victor jumped out of bed, gagging and shouting profanities at both me and the cat, and then I realized that—in spite of his total disgust in thinking that I had peed on him—he had still struggled to maintain a calm and understanding demeanor. Because apparently he thought I was just crazy enough to randomly urinate on him. And that’s when I thought that just maybe we had a chance together.
Still, I felt sorry for Victor, because he did know that I was kind of mentally ill, but he also thought I was naturally thin, so he was kind of expecting “crazy,” but I think he was expecting hot, sexy crazy. Then Victor insisted I start seeing the college shrink, who coaxed me away from the anorexia, and I immediately gained thirty pounds, which was very healthy, but which seemed not hot at all. Also, I suddenly started eating solid food, so I cost a lot more than Victor had originally expected. Basically he got a really shitty deal.
And I was even crazier than I’d let on.
It Wasn’t Stew
It’s always seemed unfair to me that I’d had so little time to ingratiate myself with my soon-to-be in-laws, whereas Victor had a year to worm his way into my parents’ hearts before we got married.
Granted, it hadn’t been easy for any of us. One of the first times he’d come to my house for dinner, we were sitting in the living room visiting with my mom. My mom and I were on the couch, and from our vantage point, we could see my father tiptoeing into the room. He gestured with a finger to his lips not to let Victor know that he was behind him and a live bobcat was tucked under his right arm. This probably would have been my exact worst nightmare of bringing a boy home to meet my parents, if I’d ever had enough creativity to imagine my father throwing a live bobcat on the boy I was trying to impress. I assumed that Daddy had accidentally left a bobcat in the house, fallen asleep, realized his terrible mistake when he woke up and heard Victor’s voice, and was now surreptitiously sneaking it out the back door so that Victor would never suspect that we were the type of family to keep live bobcats in the house. Unfortunately, that was not my father’s intent at all, and my eyes widened in horror as my father leaned over and yelled in his booming, cheerful voice, “HELLOOOO, VICTOR,” while tossing a live bobcat on him.