“Yes,” I told him. “It’s the spaghetti Bolognese I made last night.”
He crinkled his nose.
“If you don’t like it, make something else,” I told him, pulling a sweater over my head.
“I don’t know why we have leftovers so much for lunch.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. “If you don’t want leftovers, why don’t you be in charge of lunches for us? I’m making the dinners, Martin.”
He looked at me like I was crazy, then shook his head and sighed.
When I got home from work, he would often be playing video games. He would say, “What’s for dinner?”
And I would say, “What did you make?”
And he would glare at me.
I made dinner because it was easier.
Did we have good times those first months, too? Yes. We went on trips. We went out to eat. We laughed over movies and shows. We explored Portland.
I told myself that after we had our daughter—the ultrasound told us the baby was a girl—we would come together as a family. I knew I was lying to myself. I knew I had made a mistake in marrying him. The pregnancy was not a mistake, because I loved my baby. But as I tried to rememberwhenI got pregnant, I realized what Martin had done that one time when we were at the beach. He had deliberately not used a condom. I couldn’t use other birth control options because they made me feel sick and anxious.
I asked him later about it, and he said he had “forgotten” and was “so sorry.” But I know what happened. He knew I was close to breaking up with him, so he wanted me pregnant. To trap me. And I had stayed trapped. He was happy about the trap.
Then I miscarried. In my seventh month.
I could not have been more devastated.
The miscarriage was a major split in our relationship. I grieved and cried, alone, my body shaking. Martin handled the loss differently. He went with his friends to bars, and on fishing and hunting trips. I had not wanted to get pregnant when I did, but I had already loved that sweet baby and could not wait to hold her. I already loved our daughter. I talked to her all the time, played my favorite music, told her how much fun we would have.
I could not help but compare Martin to Logan—Logan would have cried with me, tear for tear, I knew that. Martin withdrewfrom me, had no patience for my grief, and wanted to forget it had happened.
I told my mom about the miscarriage, and she was so upset she had to hang up and lie down. She called me later, and I could tell she was trying not to sob. “I am so sorry, baby. So sorry.”
I was sorry, too. For the dear daughter I would never hold, who would always be a part of me. I could hardly breathe through my deep, aching sadness.
It was the beginning of the end for Martin and me, but my devastating grief turned me into someone I had never been. I fell into a black, deadening depression. I lived in a fog. I cried at unexpected moments. I believed that marriage should be forever and that we could make it work, but we started to fight more. He would shut me down or stop talking to me and give me the silent treatment.
When he did not pass his CPA tests, it was my fault. I gave up on the marriage, and I shut down.
“Bellini, if you hadn’t made me go away two weekends ago to the beach, I would have had more time to study… You were distracting all the time, constantly trying to talk to me, even the morning of the test. You know I don’t like omelets…”
Months later, on a Tuesday afternoon, finally finding courage and strength, totally sick of him and our marriage, I packed up to leave.
He came home from work early—I had planned to be gone because I couldn’t handle dealing with him anymore—and flipped out when he saw my suitcases. “What’s going on? Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
He was shocked. He seriously hadn’t seen it coming. He wasthatdense. “What? Why?”
“You really don’t know?”
He shook his head, stunned. “No. Why? What did I do? I thought we were happy. What’s wrong? What the hell is this, Bellini?” Then the anger came barreling through. Again. He said it one more time, with even more anger, his fists clenched. “This is coming out of the blue. You didn’t even tell me you were unhappy. You didn’t even tell me you were thinking of leaving. We fight sometimes. All couples fight. Why are you leaving?”
“Your anger, for one,” I told him.
“My anger?” he shouted at me. “What do you mean ‘my anger’?”
