Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Two Days Married
It took only two days to know it was a mistake.
It takes years for some people. And then the realization comes only after much analysis and backtracking, bundles of tapes that get spliced and replayed until the boredom of it all chases one or the other out the door.
That’s not how it happened for me. We were married on Tuesday. By Thursday, I knew it was a bust.
I sat reading the newspaper next to his bed in his upper flat, our not having moved in together despite having gotten married, where he lay thrashing about, begging me to go to the store to find something to relieve the symptoms of his terrible cold. It was, at that moment, unbelievable to me that I had married such a man, a complainer, a thrasher, a beggar. What was it I had seen in him? And how could that have changed so rapidly, whipsawing me from good to bad and back again like how the scenes in my father’s endless travel slides careened from the geysers at Yellowstone to the bear that forced its way into the car window and then back again. There were buffalo in the road, that’s for sure.
In the next room, my 11-year old daughter was still sleeping in the bed that was normally occupied by Julietta, the refugee from El Salvador whom I had never seen but to whom my new husband swore he was providing refuge. “She spends most of her time on the south side,” he said, when I pressed him about why Julietta was never around. “She likes you, though. Because of your pies.”
Pies had become the currency of our speed dial relationship. Apple, peach, lemon meringue. The mistakes of my life, my divorce, my terrible relationship with a mad man, never mind correcting me, he was mad, an addict and mentally ill, don’t get me started, funneled down to the making of pies to win the one man in the landscape who seemed normal. Whenever I sensed him losing interest, I would drive to his flat, a pie wrapped in foil resting on the passenger seat buttressed by my coat or my sweater so it didn’t list and become unattractive. We couldn’t have that. A pie doesn’t have to be beautiful but it helps.
He looked at me again, depressed, it seemed, because I’d not put down the newspaper to go find something to heal him. It occurred to me that if a judge had magically appeared in the kitchen, maybe the same judge who married us, and offered to annul our marriage, to wipe the memory of our impulse buy from both our brains, that he would have lurched from his sick bed and beat me to His Honor.
It irked me that he was thinking this way. The disloyalty and lack of faith were galling. It had been just hours since we’d stood before the judge, the two of us and my daughter, dressed in a blue striped dress we’d gotten just the day before, her hair fastened with barrettes and her bangs curled, eyes fixed on the judge’s belt buckle, not looking up or down, just exasperated and disbelieving that she was in such a place with the woman formerly known as her mother and a man her mother had known for only a few months.
Nothing about this was going to work out.
I folded the newspaper, put it on the bed for him to read. “I need to get her up for school,” I said.
It was the one thing I could do right.
20 Comments on “Two Days Married”
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
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Jan, this is one of the reasons I did the Bachelor’s dance til I was 48 and Marilyn was obviously my life dance partner. Lucky for me, we’re still dancing 28 years later. I loved this post for its-YOUR honesty.
You really paint a picture with your words! I especially enjoyed the part where you are irked by ‘his’ disloyal thoughts. I loved this piece but now am craving pie…
Wow. Powerful and the details make me feel like I am right there…or being a nosy neighbor and peeking in your windows.
It’s usually looking back in hindsight on relationships that we realise our mistakes. It’s amazing just what we do to hide the truth from ourselves and then reality slaps us in the face. But then again, better late than never I suppose… 🙂
Wow. Thanks for sharing. The details about your daughter at the ceremony really made this piece somehow.
Those veils, like the one that lifted for you on the Thursday after you married that man, are so interesting: how we can suddenly just see the Truth. And I just realized you were inspired by the optional prompt.
Wow! This must have been extremely difficult for you.
loved this.
It’s good that clarity came to you soon…Some people wait for it for ages or worse lead a life without it
Random Thoughts Naba – Turn Back Time……
Great post… So wish I had that kind of clarity when I’m in the thick of things.
It’s funny how sometimes we know immediately things just aren’t going to work, then there’s those other times we just keeping beating our heads against the wall…
Oh you have me puzzled with this one. Fact, fiction or a mixture of both,it sings to me, anyway. Wonderful.
Whether two days or two months, we often go through serious doubts about our choices; Absolutely certain they were a horrible mistake. Sometimes it’s momentary, other times … well, not so much.
LIfe lesson well-learned! I can’t imagine, but I also salute you for not staying in something you knew wasn’t right. If only you had known two days before! Great post 🙂
Oh WOW. How long did it take to extricate yourself after you realized what a bad idea it had been? And what or who did Julietta turn out to be?
Interesting short story. Beautifully written and very engaging (it is…a short story isn’t it)?
Wow, how difficult that must have been. I want to say I can’t imagine, but honestly, I do know the feeling.
Hey – I was so wowed by your piece that it took me three tries to get a post going tonight…..it was that good. Glad I crossed paths with you!