Marriage Matters

Sixty-six

After the engagement party was over, Kristine went straight home. She took off her dress, deleted the eight messages from Kevin all begging her to call him and went up to the attic.

The space was dusty and freezing cold. Ratty pink insulation hung out from the sides of the rafters and something scurried across the corner. She picked through the well-organized boxes, amazed that twenty-five years in one place could mean such an incredible accumulation of stuff.

In the corner, there was a collection of ski equipment, from the days when they used to take ski trips as a family. Now, they were covered in cobwebs and dust. There were boxes filled with Kevin’s baseball card collection from when he was a kid. It was carefully organized. Even though she knew nothing about baseball, she knew he had cards that were valuable because when he’d lost his job, he’d been tempted to sell them. “Absolutely not,” she’d said. “Some things are more important than money.” Then, of course, there was the section of the attic just filled with Chloe’s stuff. Even though Kristine was tempted every spring to throw away the sports uniforms, second grade spelling tests and essays, she could never bring herself to do it. In that way, she was a lot more like June than she wanted to admit.

Walking past the box that held the collection of love notes Kevin had once given her, Kristine found what she was looking for—her wedding album. Holding it in her hand, she looked down at the faded white silk cover. At the party, June had a collection of photos from the ceremony set up on a table, and Kristine hadn’t been able to even glance at them, for fear she’d burst into tears. Now that she was home, she gripped the book to her chest and climbed back down the rickety ladder.

Armed with a cup of hot tea, she sat on the comforter of her bed and flipped it open. She gazed at the first picture with a dispassionate eye. It was a photo of her hands gripping Kevin’s as they lit the unity candle. Their rings glistened in the muted yellow light, and in that moment, if it were possible, even their hands looked happy.

Slowly, she flipped through the pages, marveling at how young they looked. Kristine’s dress was just as beautiful as she remembered, floating around her like some ethereal cloud. Kevin looked strong and proud in every shot, his hand somehow always rested on her body. In one picture, his hand was on the small of her back. In another, it held on to her elbow. In another, he held her hand.

Kristine peered at the picture of the two of them cutting the wedding cake. When it came time to feed each other, they’d playfully smashed the cake into each other’s faces. Then they’d kissed and kissed, delighting in the fact that frosting was getting all over their hair and their clothes. She remembered him murmuring, “The sweetest first kiss,” before pulling her close once again.

Turning the page, she sucked in a sharp breath. There was a picture of her father dressed in a smart black suit, guiding her down the aisle. He looked exactly the way she held him in her memory: a precise, kind man with freckles on his nose and eyes that seemed to pick up on everything. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to have him back right now. She would ask him what she could do to get things back to good. Even though June would most certainly love to offer up volumes of opinion on the topic, Kristine trusted that her father would have known the answer. Even so many years after the fact, it was so confusing to her that he was really, truly gone.

Her father had died just a few months after the wedding, when Kristine and Kevin lived in an apartment in the city. In those first few, horrible months, she had spent many of those nights at June’s house, taking care of her. When she wasn’t with her mother, Kristine would come home and lie in bed with Kevin, staring blankly at the rusty fire escape just outside the window. At that stage, she still believed that if she’d just be patient, her father would climb up the fire escape, poke his head in the window and wave. “Not dead,” he’d say. “Just a joke.” June would pop up along behind him, laughing at the ruse the two had pulled off.

In those moments, Kristine would rifle through her favorite memories of her father. The time he taught her to ride a bike on the sidewalk in front of the house. The trip they took to Washington, DC, without June, exploring the White House and having lunch with a senator. The secret phone calls he made to her at college when June was not be around, just so he could get a word in edgewise. The memories would make her laugh and then, finally, cry.

“You okay?” Kevin would ask, cradling her head against his chest.

Kristine would nod, letting her most recent, favorite memory burn her father’s memory even more firmly into her brain. “At least he got to walk me down the aisle. How many girls get to say that?”

It was just two months after his death that Kevin walked into the room and found her staring out the window, yet again. On this particular day, snow was falling and the fire escape was thick with a fresh white powder. Kevin had walked into the room, whistling and carrying a big bowl of popcorn, but he stopped the second he noticed the look on her face.

“Are you thinking about your dad?” he asked, walking over to her.

“No,” Kristine said. “I was just thinking . . .” She stared at him as though he could answer the question growing inside her. “This is kind of strange, but . . .”

“What?” Plunking down on the edge of the bed, Kevin shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

She touched her stomach. “I think I’m pregnant.”

Kevin’s eyes practically bugged out of his head. He choked and as he sputtered, she patted him on the back. “Geez, honey. Are you okay?”

He turned to her, his face bright with excitement. “Are you being serious? Do you think we’ve got a little baby?”

Kristine looked down at her stomach.

“Yeah,” she said, looking up at him in wonder. “I think we do.”

The popcorn all but forgotten, Kevin climbed into bed and held her close. Kristine rested her head against his chest, staring out at the fire escape. In the light from their bedroom, the snow seemed to wink.

Over the years, Kristine watched Kevin become the type of father hers had been. For this, she found herself falling in love with him in new ways, as he taught Chloe how to catch bugs, how to throw a ball and, in particular, ride a bike. The fact that he had always been there for their family, just like her father always had, was something else that had made her love him, more than anything.

Tonight, when he had missed out on sharing their daughter’s engagement party with her, with their family . . . Kristine closed her eyes, fighting back yet another wave of pain. In twenty-five years of marriage, they had created one thing that mattered even more than their relationship—their daughter. That mattered more than anything. The fact that he was now giving that part of their relationship so little respect, as well . . .

Staring down at the wedding album, she gazed at a picture of the two of them. Their faces were filled with love and promise. It was hard to believe, looking at them back then, that they would ever be capable of drifting apart.

Kristine wanted their relationship to work. She wanted her family back. But after tonight, it had become pretty clear that her husband could not care less.

Closing the book, she set it on the bedside table. She turned off the lights and pulled the sheets to her chin, dreading the night ahead of her and the thoughts that would run through her mind. There was a lot to think about. Particularly, whether to keep fighting to save a marriage so clearly beyond repair.