Markie dropped the phone and heard it clatter on the table as she spun toward the door. But she couldn’t take a single step in retreat, because at the end of her turn, she crashed into a woman who was heading for the empty chair at the table. Markie wouldn’t have thought she could possibly feel any more agitated, but this was the one woman in their social circle whom she truly disliked.
She was the woman who headed up the Mothers’ Club, and as Markie had complained to Kyle many times, because of some weird competitive streak or superiority complex, this woman had slowly pitted their Saint Mark’s jobs against each other when they should have been working in concert. She was the only woman whose dinner invitations Markie was tempted to decline.
She was also the woman whose breasts Markie had just seen up close on a cell phone.
“Markie!” she said. “You’re joining us? Terrific! Like I said in my last e-mail, the Mothers’ Club could use more help with this year’s—”
It was then that the woman looked past Markie toward the table of her waiting friends. Her fake enthusiasm faded immediately, and before Markie could think to run past her and out the door, she saw the other woman’s eyes narrow, then darken with something Markie couldn’t readily name.
Of course Kyle was home when she screamed into the driveway moments later and tore through the front door. It turned out his “What’s on your agenda for the day?” every morning that week had been less about taking an interest in her life and more about determining when he could take a midday nap on the family-room couch without being caught jobless. She must have known that before. She must have sensed it in the tone of his question. Now, after her humiliation in the restaurant, she had—finally—lost her motivation to continue to overlook it.
“Let me see the account balances,” she said, clicking the TV off and slamming his laptop cover closed over his poker game. “Right now. All of them.”
It should have offended him that she asked about the money first, the women second. He should have felt the sting of that, and being Kyle, he should have manipulated that rejection into some kind of sorrowful accusation that Markie’s lack of jealousy showed how passionless their marriage had become, and that’s what had driven him to it.
Or maybe she should have been the one to feel hurt when he didn’t start by begging her forgiveness and pledging his undying love, but instead went straight to justifications and defensiveness. But that was the thing about their relationship: forgiveness-begging and love-pledging had long become things of the past. Now it was only about finger-pointing and blame-deflection.
They had been so close in the beginning. So crazy in love with each other—and despite what Clayton and Lydia had said, it had absolutely been true love and not “a grown daughter’s childish rebellion against her parents.” True love, true lust, of the flush-faced, pounding-heart, fluttery-stomach, “can’t take my hands off you, can’t stop thinking about you, can’t spend a day without you” type.
Back then, Markie couldn’t believe her luck. Charming, popular Kyle Bryant, in a different league from her in terms of sex appeal (a different stratosphere, really) wanted plain old unremarkable her? So smitten was she, so flattered by his attention, that it was no effort to excuse a few red flags. So he was a little immature, somewhat flaky and irresponsible, not very good at owning his mistakes, and not particularly ambitious. As the youngest of five and the only boy, he had been coddled like a little prince. What chance had he been given to grow up?
And look at the good traits a childhood with four sisters had given him: he was sensitive, understanding, more willing to share his feelings than any other guy she had ever known. And he was incredibly romantic, forever sweeping her up in long embraces or producing flowers or lighting candles even when they were only having boxed mac and cheese while she studied and he flipped through pages of a magazine. She decided those were the things that mattered most. Look at her parents: her father might have been upstanding and duty-bound since he was five, but where was the passion? If Markie had to choose between dependability and romance, she’d take the latter.
But that was before the kid and the big mortgage. Before she realized that it’s oh-so-easy to devote your heart, mind, and body to another person when you’re both in college and there’s so little stress in your lives. Romance and passion and long talks into the night can carry the day when there are no bills to pay, no jobs to hold down, no middle-of-the-night feedings, no debates about attachment parenting and discipline techniques.
After all those things, after all the pressure and stress the grown-up responsibilities brought with them, after all the tears from her about needing a real partner instead of a second child, the (broken) promises from Kyle about how, this time, he would finally begin to act like one, after all the fights when, ultimately, he threw up his hands and said she was expecting too much, things changed. “Crazy in love” was downgraded to “in this together,” which sank, eventually, to “We owe it to Jesse” and “What would people think if we split up?” For more years than she could count, staying together hadn’t been about the feeling they couldn’t live without each other, but only about their son and how it would look if the Golden Couple revealed their tarnish.
Kyle’s explanation for the mess he had gotten them into was―no surprise to Markie―immature, illogical, and devoid of personal responsibility. As for the repeated job loss, “Look, Markie, you’re the one who wanted me in all these big-shot sales positions. I never said I had what it took to do that kind of thing. I’d have been happier working construction; you know how much I loved those summer building jobs when we were in college. But you wanted a successful businessman for a husband, so I faked it at every company for as long as I could. For you. I could’ve told you they were all going to figure it out after a while.”