“Oh, because having an orderly house where the slides are set upright would mean that I’m a better dad?”
“It would make you a better partner. Do you know what this here says?” I asked as I kicked the slide because, dammit, that’s what Angelina would have done. “It says nobody cares at all. It says, let all this shit hang out till Mom comes home because she’ll fix everything. She’ll earn all the money! She’ll order all the groceries and arrange for cleaning and cooking. She’ll get the car fixed on weekends and walk the dog at midnight, so let’s not get our fat asses off the couch EVER!”
“That’s the second time you mentioned my ass being fat and it’s not” was all that Bruce said before rising and walking out of the room.
The couch still held three, now sobbing, children. What had been a relatively calm room was then a disaster sight.
“Mom,” Kevin sniffed. “The slide was like that ’cause it was our fort. We played Forts tonight and the balls were the ammo and Daddy had to make a phone call so he just put on the TV, like, a minute ago.” Kevin stood up and stalked away.
“Oh,” I said weakly to his retreating back. I felt a little stupider and turned to Brigid.
“Oh, Brig, please stop crying. Mommy didn’t understand what she was looking at. I think I may have made a mistake.”
Brigid stood and pointed at my feet in disgust. “You changed your shoes,” she wailed, and threw her stuffed bunny down in protest. She too marched out of the room. Usually I remembered to just take my shoes off when I came home to keep the shoe deal between Brigid and me unquestioned. That night I had assumed she’d be asleep.
Several teary hours later, Bruce and I were speaking again. He can’t take my having this job any longer; the hours are too long and our kids are too young and I’m too uptight about the state of the financial world. He’s never said I’m a bad mother but I know he thinks that.
From my point of view, he’s too lazy in his life, he doesn’t share any financial worries, and never takes care of any family logistics. He gives our credit cards too much of a workout for an unemployed dad. I can hardly do more than glance at our statement of charges each month to spare myself from exploding over things like a $250 massage at a SoHo men’s spa. A spa during the day? He got his chest waxed, he told me, and “maybe” a hot stone massage. The hypocrisy hurts my stomach.
His defense is that he’s able to bench-press far more than his weight, he’s skateboarding again, and he can stand on his head in his yoga class. Achieving these mighty aspirations makes me a lucky woman, according to him, and aren’t I glad he’s not some paunchy guy headed to his middle-aged Barcalounger? We’ve cranked up our mutual feelings of frustration to full relationship distress.
To end our repetitive discussion about why I should quit my seventy-hour-per-week slog, and our only paycheck, Bruce insisted on this trip—his quest for me to gain some clarity, to see things his way, while deep down I feel he’s asking impossible things of me to justify his own immaturity. There, I said it. My husband hasn’t aged a day since we met because he hasn’t matured a day since then either. When I calmed down enough to reach for an olive branch, I would have agreed to anything to make our circular discussions stop and to find some common ground, so this trip seemed to be the solution and so here, on the runway, we sit.
My sister is married to a former member of the French ski team who now instructs three-year-olds to assume the pommes frites position with their baby skis. They moved to the small town of Argentière, in the French Alps, to rise above the sort of lunacy Bruce and I live within. They have four young girls, which should be just the happy ticket we seek: seven small children, two maritally challenged adults, and two other adults living out some scene from Heidi, all within the confines of a cabin and its wood-burning stove. We are calling this plan our vacation.