“Have you ever…felt that vulnerable with anyone?” I ask carefully.
“Yeah,” she answers with a sad smile. “My husband.”
A stretch of silence settles between us, and it feels like a small moment of grief. A paused in memoriam for a slice of her life that was all happiness and hope, now only reminding her of what could have been and what never will be.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I say, throwing back the same question she asked me. “Since we’re friends and all.”
She smirks. “Sure.”
“What happened?”
She pauses again, this time, the quiet feeling heavy and burdensome. “You know,” she starts. “In the beginning, it was really good. We were young and still figuring ourselves out, but we were doing it together. The thought of growing old with him made me happy. It was good until…”
“It wasn’t?”
She nods. “He gradually turned into someone entirely different. Our needs and wants started to change, and it was like I married a complete stranger, not the Frankie I fell in love with.”
I nod. “So, you decided to end things?”
“It was a little more complicated than that,” she says. Her shoulders slump, searching through the right words to tell me her story. “I convinced him to move to California after we werein Phoenix for so long. We stayed there because of his work and to be close to his family, but I wanted to be close to my own family. And Teeny was here too. For a while, I thought it was just a phase because he was settling into his work and getting used to the change. I thought we’d get through it, I just needed to be patient, and he’d go back to being my Frankie. And then he didn’t. I realized we wanted different things. I wanted to have a family, while he wanted to live this lavish life filled with expensive cars and designer clothes. Kids weren’t part of that plan. It was my fault.”
“How?” I ask with a furrowed brow.
“When we got engaged, we decided that we didn’t want kids,” she explains. “We just felt kids weren’t for us, and we were happy with our freedom. And then I got this itch. He was working a lot, and I got a case of baby fever. My sister was talking about having kids, I saw Teeny with Sadie, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was missing out on something.”
“He didn’t?”
“No,” she tells me with an added punch of certitude. “And after I brought it up, he started treating me differently. Going days without talking to me, and when he did, it was to rub in my face that I was backing out on our deal.”
“What deal? Your marriage?”
“Wanting kids,” she answers. “In the end, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I hated being treated like an unwanted guest in my own home. Always walking around on eggshells, worried he’d lash out his anger at me. So I asked for a divorce.”
“Wow.”
She nods. “If you ask him now what happened, he’d probably blame it all on me. And I guess, he’d probably be right.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Is it fair that I changed my mind after we already discussed it?”
“Grace, all you asked for was a future,” I argue. “You were still his wife. You exchanged vows. I think that overshadows any promise like kids.”
“So you think he should’ve just had a bunch of kids he didn’t even want?”
“Who says he wouldn’t want them once they’re born?”
“And who says hewouldwant them?” she rebuts. “Would it be better that he resents me?”
“I mean, no, but…”
“I wouldn’t have won either way,” she confesses, waving the white flag she already flung at her ex-husband. “I already lost the second he decided it was all an excuse to treat me like an enemy instead of a partner.”
It’s like she’s had this discussion a thousand times. She has a comeback for every scenario, and they’re all good, viable responses. Ones I can’t argue with. As much as I think she was essentially placed between a rock and a hard place, she has a point. And that’s the problem with letting someone in. There’s no win-win situation. At the end of it all, everyone loses. Hearts are broken, lives are ruined, and souls are crushed.
“So, commitment and marriage and that jazz,” I say. “It’s as scary as it sounds?”
She smiles a downcast smile that looks sadder than a tear-ridden pout. “Even scarier.”
